Climate change: Indecision creates an increasingly dismal future

Photo courtesy bloguin.com

Looking into the future is a universal concept. While ancient man stared at the heavens for clues on what the seasons would bring, contemporary corporate man stares at the electronic equivalent of financial ticker tape, trying to discern future financial trends.

No matter what the era, those who picked right usually reaped some reward.

But from a climate scientist's perspective, every scenario looks pretty grim. Climate change is coming. It's just a matter of determining how dramatic it will be. Choosing the level of environmental impact due to rising levels of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and other pollutants leading to global warming depends on how quickly society accepts the situation and reacts.

Change is coming

Changing direction is impossible. An analogy made by the California Air Resources Board likened the situation to a person rowing a boat into a dock. Because the boat already is moving forward, it can't come to an immediate stop. Pulling the oars from the water will help. But what's needed is immediate reversal. In other words, dip those oars in and start reversing course. The boat will still drift forward, but it will begin to slow and turn.

What we're doing now, the ARB says, is rowing forward as if there's nothing ahead to ram into.

Boom.

In November 2000, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was jointly established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, released a report on the climate scenarios facing the planet. The highly technical report says everything depends on stemming the increase in emissions and decoding "long-term uncertainties."

Flash Gordon didn't bother with fossil fuels

Buster Crabbe played the iconic Flash Gordon like a man obsessed, giving the legendary movie serial its high-octane action and frenetic speed.

He didn't wait around for help when faced with certain death, and leaped into action. Somehow rescue always came after the cliff-hanger that ended each episode.

Likewise, the creators of the then high-cost production didn't mess around to make sure all scientific details matched reality or potential possibilities of space-time theory. They created staged sets complemented with electricity arcs, surreal noise and big machines with concentric circles of blinking lights. They fuzzed over details when it came to power sources, transportation and various high-flying technologies. The bird men's floating city comes to mind.

Doctor Zarkov in his introduction to the dungeon-like palace laboratory immediately figured out the nuclear energy source that enabled Ming the Merciless to rule over all of Mongo and threaten the hapless planet Earth. Things that make you go, "Hmmmm," to quote Arsenio Hall found no answers in the script.

Society could use such enthusiasm and blind faith about now. The debate over climate change has dropped out of the presidential campaign. And energy independence is coming to mean relying on burning coal and natural gas. But sordid, particulate-filled air will soon be determined to be the most costly disaster in the history of mankind.

We could use a hero.

Mongo and climate change

Eugene Robinson with the Washington Post calls out the president and his challenger on climate change, saying "neither has mentioned the subject in the debates."

Solar could unlock path to clean energy; the sooner the better

The man with gnarled hands was a legend in Skagit County.

Many in the Washington state farming region said he could find water in a desert. The man's name eludes me and I'm sure he passed from this world, but he developed a reputation for finding the shortest route to tap fresh ground water. He charged nothing, and people from all walks swore by his skills.

I feel like asking that old water witcher for his advice now. But rather than water, I'd ask him to work his magic on the clean energy industry. Maybe take that fresh-cut Y-shaped branch and point to the shortest route for unlocking thousands of jobs in the promising sector.

Kind of a wise man (or woman) on the mountain thing.

After several years of hype, the clean energy industry appears on the verge. Solar's finally looking like it's got the chops to compete. Biofuel breakthroughs may propel relatively cheap new sources of U.S.-made fuel into the domestic pipeline. And wind continues to kick up dust, not to mention a bubbly hillbilly cousin, geothermal.

Solar could unlock path to clean energy; the sooner the better

The man with gnarled hands was a legend in Skagit County.

Many in the Washington state farming region said he could find water in a desert. The man's name eludes me and I'm sure he passed from this world, but he developed a reputation for finding the shortest route to tap fresh ground water. He charged nothing, and people from all walks swore by his skills.

I feel like asking that old water witcher for his advice now. But rather than water, I'd ask him to work his magic on the clean energy industry. Maybe take that fresh-cut Y-shaped branch and point to the shortest route for unlocking thousands of jobs in the promising sector.

Kind of a wise man (or woman) on the mountain thing.

After several years of hype, the clean energy industry appears on the verge. Solar's finally looking like it's got the chops to compete. Biofuel breakthroughs may propel relatively cheap new sources of U.S.-made fuel into the domestic pipeline. And wind continues to kick up dust, not to mention a bubbly hillbilly cousin, geothermal.

Nuclear's Fukushima shuffle appears to have added shine to the green sector. Nuclear power's reliance on huge government subsidies don't help it much either. And Germany's backing off nuclear further burnishes renewables's image.

Microgrids, solar and achieving energy independence

Comedian George Wallace often starts a joke with the line, "I be thinking."

I use the reference for two reasons. First, I saw Wallace in Vegas recently (and I totally recommend his show) and second, because I'd been thinking about teaming solar with fuel cells to create power producers on a small scale via energy-independent homes, commercial buildings and industrial scale operations.

The conclusion? The merger is possible. But more importantly, the query introduced me to the concept of microgrids and the Galvin Electricity Initiative.

I'd posed the question of fuel cell-solar viability to Al Weinrub, who penned the report, "Community Power: Decentralized Renewable Energy in California." Weinrub, coordinator of the San Francisco Bay Area Local Clean Energy Alliance, said quite a few people have been thinking in the direction of microgrids, which he defined as "islands of self-sufficient energy producers that are independent of the grid or possibly networked into the grid."

Galvin Electricity Initiative

And he said the group includes folks who want to create net-zero communities not dependent on the grid. He introduced me to the Galvin Electricity Initiative, founded by former Motorola Chairman and CEO Robert Galvin. The initiative addresses a revamped utility system incorporating microelectrity production. Galvin's proposal is meant to be a catalyst for transforming America’s electric grid to "ways that are profoundly beneficial to consumers, the environment and the economy."

"In these models, fuel cells can play a role, but there is little reason to go to fossil-based fuel cells," Weinrub said. "That would only prolong the use of fossil fuels."

Rio must bring out the best in clean energy

Protestors in Rio, courtesy 350.org.

World leaders will debate the merits of sustainable development and a green economy at Rio + 20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development to take place in Rio de Janeiro.

Protesters will use the event to highlight injustice.

And something substantive benefiting the environment may actually get done this week. This year's theme is after all "a green economy in the context of sustainable development poverty eradication and the institutional framework for sustainable development."

However, listening to current U.S. political discourse makes me wonder if anybody in government seriously considers steering toward a green economy.

Wall street bankers, brokers and speculators remain so fixated on profits and bizarre anti-populist goals like killing Dodd-Frank (read Matt Taibbi's "How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform" on rollingstone.com), the already weak-kneed consumer protection act, that real values get swept away like last quarter's balance sheet. The concepts of quality of life, a better place for children and continued proliferation of the American way -- where everyone has a chance to make it big -- get nothing but lip service.

A trillion reasons

Robert Redford put it succinctly in a piece on Huffington Post: "We can do better," he writes. His point is that with so much at stake, we need to shift some emphasis to clean energy and eliminate the near "one trillion dollars of subsidies ... handed out to help the fossil fuel industry" each year.

The Great White North may be key to promoting energy efficiency

Bob and Doug McKenzie on the set of SCTV.

The War of 1812 is long forgotten.

Few other than history buffs and students know much of the series of bloody battles which pitted what is now Canada against its southern neighbor. Those included the slow slaughter of Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend by then-Col. Andrew Jackson or the Battle of Bladensburg during which British forces captured and torched Washington, D.C.

Now Canada is good buddies with the United States. The country mostly surfaces in the news as being the source of Justin Bieber or, energy-wise, for its rich oil sands in the Athabasca-Wabasca, Peace River and Cold Lake reserves in Alberta. Estimates vary but Oil Sands InfoMine puts the recoverable deposits at about 170 billion barrels, placing Canada just behind Saudi Arabia. That oil is being extracted at a rate of about 1 million barrels a day and is expected to grow to about 4 million barrels by 2020.

Canada's energy rep

Canada's hardly known for its energy efficiency or its embrace of renewables like solar, wind and geothermal. Just ask activist and author Bill McKibben, one of the chief opponents of the Keystone Pipeline, which would send all that "tar" sands oil to the Gulf Coast.

But that could change. On June 21, 2012, Environment Canada and the U.S. Department of Energy released the second part of an ambitious plan outlining how the two countries will jointly advance clean energy technologies. The effort has possibly the least sexy name in clean energy history, dubbed the "U.S.-Canada Clean Energy Dialogue Action Plan II," or CED for short.

You dirty rat: Global warming's fossil fuel friends

The temperature is a little warm.

The forecast for this early August day called for 111 degrees in Fresno/Clovis, Calif. where I live. That's relatively common in this region, where 40 or more days above 100 is common for summer. But it appears more of the United States is in for similar treatment.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center says July was the hottest month in recorded history.

In fact, its State of the Climate report says, January through July was the warmest first seven months of any year on record for the contiguous United States. The national temperature of 56.4 degrees was 4.3 degrees above the long-term average, with only the Pacific Northwest, which was near average, bucking the trend.

And of course Alaska's a bit cooler. My friend Steve likes to post data on his runs in Anchorage's scenic Kincaid Park. The latest was 55 degrees. Sweltering.

Superheating the atmosphere

This temperature stuff is more than just fodder for oblique discussions of the weather. The ramifications are huge, and most scientists predict dire consequences should the trend not be reversed.