If Iceland can dump use of most fossil fuels...can't the US?

This Cornell link is exceedingly positive. I have been to Iceland, and yes they are sitting on top of a huge geothermal resource, but at least they responded and utilized it.

We in the US are sitting on top of or near huge geothermal, solar and wind resources, but in my opinion, our government is not adequately supporting significant enough utilization of these resources.

Am I a Cornell grad? Take a guess, and whatever, I am certainly pleased with the Iceland presentation by their President.

A Special Moment in my life

In Baja Mexico, on a Searcher trip, I took this "selfie" of my hand on a Gray Whale back, and also the UW pic of a baby with a hand held UW camera.

These Gray Whales used to be killed by us at great rates because they were so easy to kill. Then their killing got banned, and they have come back as "our friends". Truly amazing!

Can I explain? NO. Am I happy with where we both are? Very much so. My encouragement to you is to go meet them. The local tour boats that take you to greet them are also very vigorously protecting the Gray Whales breeding and nursing lagoons, because our tour fees provide income to support their families. Our tour company was Searcher Natural History Tours. We had been with them before to see Blue Whales and pelagic birds, and they are excellent!

The Allam Cycle - An efficient way to Capture and Store CO2 (aka CCS)

Thermodynamic principals work strongly against the efficient (read economic) capture and storage of CO2 from conventional fossil fuel power plants. Dilution of the CO2 by nitrogen in the flue gas from the air used for combustion is a primary issue.

But, if we can burn the carbon containing fuels with pure oxygen, then the effluent is mostly CO2 and water vapor, which can be easily separated, and the CO2 compressed for efficient, and hopefully safe, underground storage.

So see what you think about the Allam Cycle. I am glad to see a major project going forward to determine future economic feasibility. Technology can do a lot, but technology can not override the laws of thermodynamics.

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Annual Cycle Visualization from NASA

We have the science to understand and deal with global warming, we just don't have the willpower.

The NASA video in this link from Climate Central is truly amazing...and scary. Be sure to note the CO2 scaling in the key. The effect of vegetative growth on CO2 concentrations is also impressive, and highlights two other key avenues to reduced CO2....(1) stop cutting down forests to raise beef, and (2) promote reforestation and grassland restoration.

Ocean Currents and Accelerated Antarctic Glacial Melting

This has been a well publicized topic in recent news, but thought you might like to view the web page from Cal Tech, as they are behind a lot of the science that is making this happen. Me as a retired engineer, love the simplicity of how they are moving the "robotic ocean gliders" both up and down in the water column, and laterally at the same time, with very little energy being expended....only enough to regulate the buoyancy and move the dive fin positions. And when on the surface, they send all their depth-temperature-position data back to Cal Tech.

So what does this mean for us and Global Warming? Well first we know that the oceans are absorbing at least 90% of the excess solar energy from the Greenhouse Gas Effect and rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. And one of the greatest concerns of global warming is sea level rise. So now we have warming oceans, the largest heat sink of global warming, acting directly on the largest "ice sink", Antarctic glaciers, the melting of which is THE greatest threat to cause catastrophic sea level rise.

Perhaps we could build underwater habitats for billions of people at less expense than we could stop emitting trillions of tons of CO2. That would probably be more politically acceptable to our Congress, for reason you no doubt already know.

Oceans and IPCC AR-5

From the IPCC AR-5 Summary for Policymakers Report, following is a statement about how the oceans are involved in absorbing the added heat input from the greenhouse gas effect:

Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence), with only about 1% stored in the atmosphere. On a global scale, the ocean warming is largest near the surface, and the upper 75 m warmed by 0.11 [0.09 to 0.13] °C per decade over the period 1971 to 2010. It is virtually certain that the upper ocean (0−700 m) warmed from 1971 to 2010, and it likely warmed between the 1870s and 1971. 

And a significant additional change is also taking place....ocean acidification:

Since the beginning of the industrial era, oceanic uptake of CO2 has resulted in acidification of the ocean; the pH of ocean surface water has decreased by 0.1 (high confidence), corresponding to a 26% increase in acidity, measured as hydrogen ion concentration. 

Two observable effects from these changes are, one, sea level rise due to thermal expansion of the warming oceans, and two, deterioration of marine ecosystems dependent on calcified exoskeletons, such as shellfish and coral reefs.

So is there any good news from the oceans? I think there is a lot, and one specific item is Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC. More on that in my next post. 

And below, a few pics of zero carbon energy generation based at sea. The top pic is of the Pelamis wave powered electric generator, and bottom, sea based wind turbines. 
Source: BBC article, In Pictures: Green Energy Awards photography contest.

 

Climate Change 2014: IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR-5)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Nov 1, 2014 released a new report titled:

Climate Change 2014

Synthesis Report

It is available in 2 versions: a shorter version of 40 pages for policy makers, and a longer version of 116 pages. Both can be accessed HERE.

Even the shorter version for policymakers is very technical (but I am sure our policymakers have good technical people on their staff). Also many referenced figures are not yet included, and every page has a disclaimer at the bottom saying, "Subject to copy editing and layout".

Even so, there is a vast amount of current information on climate change prepared by some of the world's most qualified scientists. I will begin a series of posts on this subject by quoting a few highlights, then in subsequent posts I will focus on the oceans involvement, as I will be doing a class on The World's Oceans and Climate Change for Osher Lifelong Learning (Lewes, DE) in the spring of 2015.

Following are two paragraphs from page 3 of the 40 page summary for policy makers:

1.1 Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.

Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850. The period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years in the Northern Hemisphere, where such assessment is possible (medium confidence). The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend, show a warming of 0.8 [0.65 to 1.06] °C over the period 1880 to 2012, when multiple independently produced data sets exist.

The Storm of '62

Many Delaware residents have heard of the Storm of '62, even if few of us experienced it. So after Rae Tyson's recent Osher Climate Class, with Molly Murray of the News Journal as the presenter showing several pics of the Storm of '62, I decided to see what pics are available on-line, and the Cape Gazette has a good presentation of these at The Storm of '62 in Photos. Above is the lead photo from their linked web page.