strong> phill Parsons
The Australian Editorial on the 31st of March lauds geosequestration of CO2 from coal burning and castigates Brown and Flannery for their calls to move to a low carbon economy, one supposedly without coal fulfilling the fears of king coal and queen oil.
Is it possible to meet the goal of keeping CO2 under 450pppmv using geosequestration, as the Editorial claims with its inherent support for the geosequesters Howard and Rudd, is a question central to the climate change debate.
Firstly some parameters
The limitation of 450ppmv of CO2 is a goal set by the IPCC and Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change Conference and supported by the Stern Review. If, as The Australian claims, Stern is right on the importance geosequestration as a method of managing CO2 emissions from coal fired energy then he must also be right about the importance of keeping CO2 below 450ppmv in the atmosphere.
Further, The Australian has reported on and generally supports the conclusions of the IPCC, that we need to act to mitigate global heating. It no longer mounts serious arguments against the IPCC’s conclusions and does not directly advocate greater levels of global heating before stabilization, if stabilization is possible at those greater levels.
At a current level of 382ppmv when will the threshold of 450 be crossed
Last centuries rate of growth of 1.5ppm a year left a little room for maneuver before 2050, the time when the reduction of growth in CO2 by 60% is thought by many experts to be enough to avoid further dangerous climate change by keeping the ppmv below 450.
60% may be a low goal because, as the CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase, natural systems find it hard to capture more. There is a point where those systems will fail and CO2 will grow unchecked. Higher targets may be safer but for the purpose of testing the effectivness of geosequestration 60% will be used.
At the current rate of change, an average of 2.2ppmv over the first years of this century, the time line to 450 shortens to 31 years or 2038.
Another increase in the rate of change of 50%, the one that became apparent at the turn of the century, would see the rate at 3.3ppmv and more years stripped off the date that 450ppmv is passed. [I understand 2006 had a rate of 2.9ppmv]
How likely is such a change
With the rate jumping to 2.2ppmv average, a ramp up over the period before 2050 is within the bounds of possibilities, reflecting the failure of natural systems to sequester carbon above rate of release.
In the major and developing economies the use of coal and oil is forecast to double by 2050 and treble by 2100. This gives an idea of how important bringing CO2 emissions down to low levels is.
Further, as we move closer to the threshold of dangerous climate change, a natural release of a large volume of greenhouse gases makes a runaway heating impact more likely. One source is methane frozen in the Arctic.
How much of total emissions will geosequestration effect
There are two major contributors to anthropogenically sourced greenhouse gases that we may be able to alter in a timely way, coal and oil, with natural gas running a lower third.
Sectors of the economy involved with coal include energy production and industrial processes such as steel making.
Oil and transport are like the horse and carriage, fuelling air, ship and motor vehicle transport to a large degree.
However, these are not the only means of fuelling these processes. Hydroelectricity, water ,natural gas, nuclear power, wind and solar power, biofuels, and wave energy have all been shown to be low carbon energy sources for these activities.
Also involved in greenhouse gas releases is agricultural production and the logging of forests, both of which increase emissions by breaking the storage patterns of natural systems.
There may be room to reduce emissions from these 2 sources through changed practices and from residential power use through improved house design.
This leaves out the interference in the capacity of natural systems to capture and store carbon that the rising emissions are generating as natural systems of greenhouse gas storage are impacted by global heating and release gases.
Given that The Australian Editorial has incorrectly placed the solution to global warming in the basket of the geosequestration of carbon emissions from coal fired power production lets look at that sector in comparison to other sectors impacts.
Firstly, coal’s importance in global carbon emissions lies somewhere in the area of one third or currently about 2.3Gt of carbon. This is predicted to rise as the emerging economies grow and could end up in the order of 7Gt in 2100, the total of current emissions, without a change to use or emission levels.
CO2, is currently growing at 2.2ppmv and by the time the first commercial geosequestration plants are added to coal fired power stations in about 2017, given the rate remains the same, the total will be at 400pppmv with about another 23 years to reach 450ppmv.
Predictions of effectiveness for geosequestration lie between 30% and 90% of carbon emitted being captured. No time scale has been set for conversion of plants.
Let us say that the rate achieved is at the higher end on average, say 70%, and the time to convert all coal fired power stations is 30 years or so, about 2050.
The rate of geosequestration will be determined by the technology, the available geology for storage and the rate of plant conversion by the perception of the threat.
Let us also accept that the emerging economies will grow. The predictions from the ABARE 06.01 report for the AP6 of a doubling of use by 2050.
So here we are taking current emissions of 2.2ppmv down by 0.6ppmv by 2045 through geosequestration from coal burning, and thus reducing total emissions back to 20th century levels and thus impacting on the level of CO2 provided the level does not increase from failure of natural systems to capture and store greenhouse gases.
At the same time we see the use of coal and oil, along with other energy sources, predicted to grow so that we end up with a doubling of emissions from the remainder.
That is to say by 2050 the 2.3GT of carbon from coal has been reduced to 1.38Gt whilst from oil it may have doubled to 4.6GT and from agriculture and forestry have remained about the same at 2.1Gt. Total 8.1Gt or 15% above the level of today.
Result; we pass 450ppmv about 2038, provided the rate of emissions does not rise through further positive feedback. This is not a recipe for global success in avoiding the danger from further heating of the climate.
Of course a hydrogen economy could emerge to fuel land transport and much of the shipping be powered by wind, the time between ports for goods increasing the volumes of stock held, with some at sea or indeed a return to local production negating the need for shipment. Air travel would remain fuelled by liquidified fossil fuel.
Let’s say such a change to transport has a similar impact to geosequestration in terms of carbon. We see Gt of carbon emitted fall to about 5Gt by 2050, effectively slowing the rate of growth and delaying warming, given that positive feedbacks have not commenced to drive global heating inexorably to its negative conclusion.
These are big expenditures, with cost impacts on current production technology as it becomes obsolete, but they are also stimuli to economic activity when converting to a lower carbon economy. Although without planning sucha conversion could stimulate the growth of greenhouse gases.
Of course geosequestreation may only achieve 30% effectiveness, or not be taken up widely, taking the coal derived emissions up to 3.2Gt by 2050 leaving us with a dangerous growth rate of about 10Gt pa without a hydrogen economy or with perhaps retaining business as usual at about 7GT.
And then there is the possibility of coal being eclipsed as a fuel as new technologies reduce the costs of alternative energy to very low levels, leaving our coal with a much lower value and Australia, having failed to lead on solar energy, without the innovations to sell to replace the current importance of coal to the economy.
It is these known unknowns that make the possibility of predicting some bright future based on geosequestration from coal impossible.
It is also why Flannery is right to be critical of the social responsibility of the coal and oil industries as they appear to do everything in their power to avoid being good corporate citizens, even though the evidence for the absolute need to be so acting is there for all to see.
It is why Brown is right to call for a 3 year period of national planning to change from a carbon economy. The façade of such a policy appears to have been ingested by the Labor party but whether digestion results in a golden egg or a turd is too far into the future to be clear.
Labor in Britain is currently failing to meet the targets for reducing carbon it set. Austrlaia was allowed an 8% increase in emissions on 1990 levels and states that it will meet it with the one off cessation of broad scale land clearing assisting that once only.
However, the impasse that I predicted would break in Australia, has broken, and climate change, a leading environmental issue, will run hot and strong in the coming national election. Congratulations to all campaigners for and against action, stark choices are to be presented, even though the election result will be masked by a complex of issues.
Paul Kelly writing in the same edition of The Australian notes the playing of politics when there is limited knowledge, no plan, no global agreement or any other thing on which to base optimism. That there is no clear solution is a manifest defect in this debate.
Balance
Therefore, unlike the claim at the end of The Australians Editorial, the use of coal remains as a potential danger to all of us until a COMPREHENSIVE, EFFECTIVE and TIMELY range of steps to reduce that danger are formulated and enacted globally, from the near to the long term period.
It is not to say that measures of limited effectiveness are not worthwhile, within their limitations. It is those shortcomings that leave the poorly informed and innocent at the mercy of those who believe they are only playing a great game and not deciding life and death for human achievement, with all its warts.
One example is the Howard/Turnbull tropical forest initiative, where we understand that some replanting will be assisted and monitored. This process will have all the failings of any system of forest practices management from the massive at start up to the institutionalized as it becomes part of established practice.
In Tasmanian we are familiar with that through the revelations of Bill Mainwaring, the failure of the Tasmanian Community Forest Agreement to meet its old growth conservation goals and the as yet the Weilangta appeal decision about threatened species management.
In countries with endemic corruption, such as Indonesia, it will be much more difficult to establish an effective system and it will be some time before sustainable forestry is established and some surety about a one off carbon rebiosequestration can be depended on, if it can be depended on at all.
In the meantime the loss of carbon from the peat on which previously untouched tropical rainforest grows in much of Indonesia will continue to fuel the growth in the rate of greenhouse gases as it dries in the sun having lost it tree cover or is drained for oil palm plantations to make biodiesel for us to continue our self harming behavior.
Just as in Tasmania, old growth forests carbon and regrowth forests carbon is cycled to the atmosphere through logging to make short life product, such as converting woodchips to paper, and regeneration burning continues to release a large portion of the balance, so those activities will drive the madness of forest destruction across the planet.
Outcomes
The ignoring of the reality of further dangerous climate change by avoiding addressing the growth of greenhouse gases in a COMPREHENSIVE, EFFECTIVE and TIMELY way, and thus reduce their heating effect, is denial of reality.
Perhaps more understandable as a conservative attitude to change than arguing against the evidence of the climatologists of the IPCC, but still a head in the sand attitude, that could be diagnosed as insanity.
Admitting climate change is real but doing as little as possible, just enough to be electoraly palatable, is not the course that will protect the future generations and the efforts of the past.
It puts all of human activity at risk and sacrifices those future generations’ opportunities, the ones that are supposedly the drivers of our current dangerous activities to make us more, unless of course it is actually the simple greed of a few of the current generation, the balance being rhetoric for consumption by mass of mug punters.
Whilst we continue on a course that denies the impact that failing to fully address the causes of further dangerous climate change, humanity remains in mortal danger.
Similar to living with effects of a nuclear war, it may seem unlikely at the moment, but there is a nagging doubt something will go wrong.
The difference with that policy of Mutually Assured Destruction is, that by not taking comprehensive, effective and timely action to avoid further dangerous climate change we know what will go wrong, the IPCC has given us predictions from which we may draw conclusions.
The course of Howard entrenches danger because he remains a denier in his heart. Turnbull and the others in the Liberal Party know something more must be done but are also in denial because of the impacts they see on today’s economic mix and thus their power.
Rudd is in denial about the scale of action required, believing the setting of targets is sufficient, because he wants the power Howard has, and thus will fall imnto the same trap of insufficient action.
Neither will be able to retain this course.
Of the political leaders only Brown, who has less to loose, is willing to admit the real scale of the problem and call for a national plan to decarbon the economy to meet targets, thus setting in place a role for Australia establishing an effective second round of the Kyoto negotiations and develop new technologies, and so see a path to a future giving hope to many.
The danger is that with ill informed efforts to protect the status quo by assorted vested interests, as represented by the Editorial writer, the chance of stabilizing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere will be lost, allowing runaway global heating to cause the mother of all disasters.
One wonders what words the Editor of the Australian would use at that time, unreserved apology would certainly be too little.
What we need to see is not just the likelihood and impacts of heating as given by the climatologists of the IPCC or CSIRO nor the costs to the Australian economy of scenarios of action to avert those impacts, as assessed by ABARE, but a comparison between those costs and scenarios of action to adapt to and mitigate against global heating against the costs of inaction allowing warming up to and including runaway global heating.
The Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change Conference held by the UK Meteorological Office and the subsequent Stern Review of the economic impact attempted to define likelihood of heating and the costs of action and inaction. This has seen UK and Europe adopt goals to reduce greenhouse gases as a result of the conference and review.
It is time Australia had an independent and open assessment of the costs and impacts so the community has the data to decide what course to take.
phill Parsons would like to thank Paul Kelly for his refreshing honesty and wishes that all the scientists working on mitigation measures produce solutions tomorrow, the day after could be too late.
He would also like to castigate Minister McFarlane for his stupid comment on solar power “on the days the sun doesn’t shine.” [ABC AM 02APR07]. Minister, in terms of solar energy, there aren’t such days, generation levels may fall but the sun shines every day.
Turnbull, sticking it into emission targets and their supposed impact on the national economy, [Lateline] disingenuously fails to mention the impacts and costs of not taking action. A nation that fails to lead has very little moral persuasion in the global community that the government depends on to set a new Kyoto involving all.
