The Great Carbon Bubble
Why the Fossil Fuel Industry Fights So Hard
By Bill McKibben
If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet — as we shall see — it’s unfortunately largely invisible to us.
In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on January 4th, a good day for snapping photos because there weren’t many clouds.
It was also a good day because of the striking way it could demonstrate to us just how much the planet has changed in 40 years. As Jeff Masters, the web’s most widely read meteorologist, explains, “The U.S. and Canada are virtually snow-free and cloud-free, which is extremely rare for a January day. The lack of snow in the mountains of the Western U.S. is particularly unusual. I doubt one could find a January day this cloud-free with so little snow on the ground throughout the entire satellite record, going back to the early 1960s.”
In fact, it’s likely that the week that photo was taken will prove “the driest first week in recorded U.S. history.” Indeed, it followed on 2011, which showed the greatest weather extremes in our history — 56% of the country was either in drought or flood, which was no surprise since “climate change science predicts wet areas will tend to get wetter and dry areas will tend to get drier.” Indeed, the nation suffered 14 weather disasters each causing $1 billion or more in damage last year. (The old record was nine.) Masters again: “Watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids.”
In the face of such data — statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet — you’d think we’d already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we’re witnessing an all-out effort to… deny there’s a problem.
Our GOP presidential candidates are working hard to make sure no one thinks they’d appease chemistry and physics. At the last Republican debate in Florida, Rick Santorum insisted that he should be the nominee because he’d caught on earlier than Newt or Mitt to the global warming “hoax.”
Most of the media pays remarkably little attention to what’s happening. Coverage of global warming has dipped 40% over the last two years. When, say, there’s a rare outbreak of January tornadoes, TV anchors politely discuss “extreme weather,” but climate change is the disaster that dare not speak its name.
And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. Last month, for instance, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by “16 scientists and engineers” headlined “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” The article was easily debunked. It was nothing but a mash-up of long-since-disproved arguments by people who turned out mostly not to be climate scientists at all, quoting other scientists who immediately said their actual work showed just the opposite.
It’s no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. (Of the 16 authors of the Journal article, for instance, five had had ties to Exxon.) Writers from Ross Gelbspan to Naomi Oreskes have made this case with such overwhelming power that no one even really tries denying it any more. The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we’ve ever faced.
Shale-Shocked
Fracking Gets Its Own Occupy Movement
By Ellen Cantarow
This is a story about water, the land surrounding it, and the lives it sustains. Clean water should be a right: there is no life without it. New York is what you might call a “water state.” Its rivers and their tributaries only start with the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna. The best known of its lakes are Great Lakes Erie and Ontario, Lake George, and the Finger Lakes. Its brooks, creeks, and trout streams are fishermen’s lore.
Far below this rippling wealth there’s a vast, rocky netherworld called the Marcellus Shale. Stretching through southern New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, the shale contains bubbles of methane, the remains of life that died 400 million years ago. Gas corporations have lusted for the methane in the Marcellus since at least 1967 when one of them plotted with the Atomic Energy Agency to explode a nuclear bomb to unleash it. That idea died, but it’s been reborn in the form of a technology invented by Halliburton Corporation: high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing — “fracking” for short.
Fracking uses prodigious amounts of water laced with sand and a startling menu of poisonous chemicals to blast the methane out of the shale. At hyperbaric bomb-like pressures, this technology propels five to seven million gallons of sand-and-chemical-laced water a mile or so down a well bore into the shale.
Up comes the methane — along with about a million gallons of wastewater containing the original fracking chemicals and other substances that were also in the shale, among them radioactive elements and carcinogens. There are 400,000 such wells in the United States. Surrounded by rumbling machinery, serviced by tens of thousands of diesel trucks, this nightmare technology for energy release has turned rural areas in 34 U.S. states into toxic industrial zones.
Shale gas isn’t the conventional kind that lit your grandmother’s stove. It’s one of those “extreme energy” forms so difficult to produce that merely accessing them poses unprecedented dangers to the planet. In every fracking state but New York, where a moratorium against the process has been in effect since 2010, the gas industry has contaminated ground water, sickened people, poisoned livestock, and killed wildlife.
The Yemeni revolution shows no sign of subsiding, but it so far has not been strong enough to displace the president, who has ruled as dictator for decades.
Aljazeera English reports in Saleh’s crackdown at the city of Ta’iz, the country’s third-largest, on Friday.
Many of Yemen’s problems come from being badly governed. For instance, the government has not been good about providing universal K-12 education. The literacy rate is only 54 percent over-all, and 25 percent of school-age children are not in school. Only 37% of high-school-aged youngsters were actually in high school in one recent year. Only 25 percent of high-school-aged girls were in high school.
Not only is there a problem with the formation of human capital, but there is a severe resource problem. Some 60% of Yemen’s income is from its small petroleum production. In ordinary times, it only produces 280,000 barrels and day, and exports 105,000 of them. Since the revolution began, Yemen’s oil exports have fallen because of poor security (one pipeline was attacked by rebellious tribesmen, costing the country hundreds of million dollars a year).
Even if Saleh is overthrown, the question of how the new state can survive looms large. Seven million out of Yemen’s 24 million are living on less than one full meal a day.
The country faces a severe water shortage. Aquifers are falling and Sanaa may be out of water in only ten years. The problem might be confronted by systematic collection of rainwater and by switching to crops that are less water-intensive, but you would need an efficient government with popular legitimacy for such a program.
Yemen has many coastal areas with strong wind potential, not to mention highlands. A small wind project at Mocha was planned for 2012, but the political turmoil has probably impeded progress on it. Someone needs to buy Yemen lots of those new enormous 7-megawatt wind turbines, along with an electrical grid that can deliver the power around the country.
Saleh is clearly incapable of running Yemen in a forward-looking way. The country needs a new government desperately. But it also needs new sources of energy and jobs, which renewables could accomplish. All the violence we hear about in Yemen, including that of sectarian groups such as the Huthis and that of radicals such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is driven in part by struggles over scarce resources, especially water rights.
For the world community to let Yemen sink would be for it to risk violence, terrorism, and displacement on a vast scale (millions of Yemenis could be forced to emigrate, potentially causing more disruption to their host country– likely Saudi Arabia). The world community not only needs to find ways of easing Saleh out, it needs to find ways of funding green energy projects in Yemen, which among all the countries in the world probably most urgently needs them. Yemen is facing the water and electricity shortages now that the whole world will likely confront in the not so distant future.
Tom Boden, head of the Department of Energy’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center in Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, is quoted by AFP: “It’s big… Our data go back to 1751, even before the Industrial Revolution. Never before have we seen a 500-million-metric-ton carbon increase in a single year.” 512 million metric tons, to be precise.
Well, if it hasn’t been done since 1751, it has never been done by human beings. The last time this happened was 55 to 40 million years ago, in the Eocene. When India went plowing into Asia and threw up the Himalayas, the impact heated up the crust and released massive amounts of carbon dioxide. That happened, likely, over a long period of time, but the effect was an increase in the average surface temperature of the earth of 4-5 degrees Celsius. Antarctica became a tropical jungle.
While the increase is disheartening, it isn’t surprising. It was clear that the amazing Chinese economic engine was chugging along at its usual brisk pace last year. The US recovered somewhat from 2008–2009. And India had good growth last year, in common with Asian countries that are recovering from 2008 more quickly than the US and Europe because they were not so stupid as to deregulate their banks or mortgage markets.
But what struck me in the figures was that India came in just behind the United States in extra emissions over the previous year at 48 million metric tons of carbon. The US produced 59 million MT more, and China a dragon-sized 212 million. Of the 512 million MT increase over the previous year, those three countries were responsible for about 3/5s of it!
India is an enormous country with over a billion people, but its relatively high carbon footprint comes from getting much of its electricity from coal. It is the fourth largest producer of carbon emissions in the world, but working toward third.
They should be made to look into wind turbines and solar panels instead. India has 15 gigawatts of installed wind turbine capacity already, making it the fifth country in the world for wind power. But it is estimated that its on-shore wind generation capacity at current technology is 65 gigawatts. Obviously, India would have a lot of potential for offshore wind and of wave generation of electricity, being surrounded by water on three sides.
At this point, the trillion-dollar question is how bad the tropical climate of five hundred years from now will be (the oceans warm up very slowly so massive climate change won’t be immediate), and whether we’ll lose 1/6 or 1/3 of the current dry land.
I already find India hard to take in the summers, and I don’t think it will be good for Indian agriculture if the average temperature increases dramatically. Models suggest that climate change will cause the interior of continents to become arid, something that could happen to India. Some think India’s wheat crop in the Punjab will be devastated.
The rude burp of carbon that the industrial nations spewed forth last year should galvanize everyone on emissions. It is a clear signal that business as usual is unacceptable if we are to avoid ending up poached. The US and China built their grids and facilities for hydrocarbons, and the US business elites are detached from reality and so are mostly useless on this issue. India has a chance to do things right. The government still has a lot of power there over economic developments, and pushing Coal India to become Wind and Solar India in short order is absolutely essential.
The bad news is that I’ve been reading David Archer’s The Long Thaw on climate change projections, and he thinks that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been way too conservative. As I understand him, his research shows that because of massive carbon emissions produced by human beings, by 2100 the average temperature of the earth’s surface will likely increase by 3 degrees C. But, he thinks that thereafter it will go on up another 2 degrees, for a total of 5 over the next few generations. The last time you had a climate 5 degree C. warmer than our prehistoric climate was the Eocene, 40 million years ago. All surface ice melted and the climate was tropical all the way to the poles.
We don’t actually know if there has ever been such a rapid increase in carbon in the atmosphere (there have been occasional periods in geological time when the earth warmed up similarly, as with the Eocene, but it is impossible to know at the moment over what time period that occurred). Human beings nowadays are carbon-spewers on steroids.
Archer argues that the dynamics of ocean water flows and the uncertainties of how quickly the oceans will absorb some of the extra carbon mean that the worst of the climate change effects will likely be delayed beyond 2100. Typically, sea level has risen 10-20 yards / meters for every increase of 1 degree in the surface temperature. So a 5 degree rise will eventually likely mean a sea level rise of 50 to 70 meters, which would cover a third more of the land mass than currently. The rise will take place over several centuries. Kevin Costner’s Waterworld may have been a bad film, but it might be good future history.
It will take about 100,000 years (the entire likely age of homo sapiens sapiens as a species) for the oceans and igneous rocks to wash the extra carbon out of the atmosphere.
Since the human species and human civilization arose under very different and significantly colder conditions, it is possible that a 5 degree rise in the average earth temperature over two or three centuries could lead to severe civilizational crisis and even extinction. On past evidence, the acidification of the oceans from carbon absorption will likely kill most marine life, a major human food source. And, human agricultural techniques assume large temperate zones.
Archer’s pessimism, beyond the IPCC conservative estimates also suggests a problem, which is that the worst catastrophes facing our species because of our current carbon binge may take place over centuries (apparently the first 1,000 years after the period of large carbon emissions will be the worst). If we can’t get people alarmed about 2100 because it is too far off (it is only a human lifetime off in fact), how can we excite them about 2500?
Well, we’re probably screwed. But the more we move to renewable energy in this generation, the less dramatic the millennial calamity. Archer’s worst case assumes that we’ll burn all the coal now known to exist. Friends, really. We don’t need to do that. James Hansen has suggested that coal burning should be a hanging crime, like horse stealing in the old West. Anyway, here are some slim reeds of hope:
1. Solar energy costs are falling so quickly that in a matter of a few years they will be competitive with hydrocarbons on a purely market basis. Controversy has attended the industry (especially in oil-and-gas-oriented America) because of government subsidies. But likely they won’t even be a question soon. On the other hand, it would be nice if the subsidies for petroleum, gas and coal were removed.
2. A solar power generation plant near Seville, Spain, started by Torresol (a joint venture of Spain’s Sener and Abu Dhabi’s Masdar) uses molten salt technology to generate power 24 hours a day. In this way the problem of “intermittency” (solar and wind power aren’t available 24 hours a day) is beginning to be addressed. The plant will supply electricity to 25,000 homes in Andalucia.
3. A German consortium is planning a $2 billion 500-megawatt solar plant in Morocco, with ground-breaking planned for 2012. It is a step toward a new North African electrical grid that may also supply Europe with 15% of its electricity by 2050. The 12-mile plant will use mirrors to run steam turbines rather than depending on photovoltaic cells. The Desertec Industrial Initiative, which includes Siemens, is also exploring putting a plant in newly democratizing Tunisia. DII intends that the plants should also supply electricity in the North African counties, as well as generating green jobs in countries that suffer from high unemployment.
4. Indonesia, with a large number of active volcanoes and more geothermal “hot spots” than any other country, is seeking to put in 9 gigawatts of geothermal electricity-generating plants by 2025 (roughly the equivalent of 9 nuclear power plants). Its biggest problem is attracting foreign investment for the $30 billion development, though recent changes in the law allowing foreign companies to operate as long as they have an Indonesian partner with at least 5% ownership, may help bring in money from abroad.
5. India is developing a new generation of small thorium nuclear reactors. These plants produce 400 megawatts of electricity but do not use uranium, the waste product of which can last thousands of years. Thorium wast might last only hundreds of years. India is relatively rich in thorium, and so far has few hydrocarbons such as petroleum and natural gas. The thorium nuclear plants will be a source of low-carbon energy.
7. India’s solar power costs are projected to fall by 40% over the next 4 years, making solar power generation competitive with India’s (limited) petroleum and gas industries, according to Reuters. India hopes to generate 20 gigawatts via solar plants by 2022, and plans to put $70 billion into fostering this outcome. At the moment, 70% of India’s electricity is generated by coal. The solar energy in India is expected to generate 100,000 jobs by 2022.
This projection is encouraging, but, alas, this isn’t nearly enough. The world consumes roughly 15,000 gigawatts (15 terawatts) of energy nowadays, generated by all its gadgets, most of them driven by hydrocarbons. All of that capacity needs to be replaced as soon as possible with green energy if we are to avoid the worst case scenarios for global warming. But with emerging nations like India coming on line and newly hungry for electricity and automobiles, the world will likely need 30,000 gigawatts or 30 terawatts by 2050. So about 2 terawatts from wind by 2030 is a drop in the bucket. Some scientists have argued that only solar energy has a prayer of meeting the needs of the world on this time scale.
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