What do I think, What can I do?

Will carbon storage be an effective climate change strategy?

12 02 17

carbon capture and storage

One of the fields of active research related with climate change is CO2 storage. Some new findings are promising as read here. These technologies have the advantage that they can work on-site in the CO2 heavy production works and do not introduce the carbon in low mines.

Theoretically we could even close the carbon cycle, burn a fossil fuel, capture carbon, make another fuel, burnt It again,… The only problem is that it doesn’t seem possible to get so much efficiency, and even in that hypothetical case a good filtering of particles needed for public health combined with carbon capture could lead to a cost increment that could make solar energy really cheap in comparison. Because the great thing of fossil fuels is that they store a lot of energy in the chemical bindings among carbons, it doesn’t seem easy to bind them again without expending even a higher energy again.

Anyway, I have not reliable data about those hypotheses. It would be really great although really unlikely to enjoy the advantages of fossil fuels without altering our climate. We do not have to close any door because the problem is complex and there is no magic solution.

Nevertheless, sooner or later we will have think in some alternative to fossil fuels because as they are not renewable they will end someday. So maybe climate change is not only a great risk, it can be also the opportunity to begin this way.

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Why is peer review under suspiction?

12 02 13

Skeptical blogosphere shows a dual behavior regarding scientific results. The famous skeptical WUWT blog is a good example. This post is based on a peer reviewed paper (that I still do not know how is related with climate change apart from some confusing but meaningless semantic similarities) whereas, frequently criticizes peer reviewed scientific literature either by showing failure cases or simply proposing a Web 2.0 alternative to peer review.

Although I had the opportunity to publish a peer reviewed paper some time ago, I am not an expert about science publishing. But I know some active scientists and, of course, they recognize the limitations of the system. It is not perfect, science is not perfect, but it is very reasonable and it has been very successful, just think in the incredible discoveries of the last 100 years and it is not questioned regarding astronomy, particle physics, paleontology,… This another post refers to an astronomer explaining that his work  is not different from any other one from climatologists, the only difference is the public treatment he obtains; maybe because someone is afraid about implications. It is a very interesting reading. This last post for today makes a thorough analysis from the point of view of an active scientist.

And apart from the undeniable success of science peer-review has at least other two favorable arguments:

  1. It is widely accepted by scientists.
  2. There is no reasonable alternative ( the web 2.0 peer review in the first paragraph is not too serious)

OK, I am not neutral, I am pro-science. But I consider quite contradictory to question all the scientific publishing method because the result is not what I wish and at the same time use peer reviewed articles when they may seem to endorse my point of view. It looks like amateurs complaining about professionals but at the same time wanting to be them.

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skeptical about skeptics

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Snow at home

12 02 11

This week has been unusually cold in the whole Europe, and also for me. I am not used to see all this snow around me, and even if some snow around Bilbao is not strange every winter I do not remember it lasting so long. My memories of childhood remember a friend always asking for snow to avoid going to school as it happened once, but regrettably for him no more in our school years.
Anyway I may be wrong because I do not trust too much my weather memories, nor the memories of people surrounding me, because it is easy to listen many people explaining how extreme has been any weather condition every year. Nevertheless, as I frequently discuss with my wife climate change is not about our vague memories or climate feelings, it is about data, long term and geographically widespread data. For this reason I do not read with much interest the frequent posts in skeptic blogs about cold winter in India, or in Nebraska, or this time in Europe.
The skeptic posts about those freezing temperatures are widespread, here, here, here , and here, as it is cold is not warming. The answer in climate hawks blogs is that more energy in the atmosphere means more extreme weather events and I remember a conference about climate change where the speaker say precisely that, more extreme events in Europe would occur due to changes in wind regimes could be a consequence of higher global temperatures.

I think that it is important to distinguish weather tfrom global climate, wonderfully explained in this video. This winter is not a probe against climate change and it is not a probe of it although matches with some of the predictions. Even having extreme events doesn’t probe anything, the increasing number of extreme events is the key index to check, along with many others.

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Interesting Consequences

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Climateinsight author passed away

12 02 03

I try to read several blogs about climate change, climate hawks and skeptics. And the more I read the more interest I have and the more I learn, I hope. Of course, I am a total amateur with limited time, so I read only a small part of the post from the blogs I am subscribed.

However, today I read a post that moved me. The author of climateinsight passed away. I did not know him but I read in this small biography that he was physicist and mathematician and worked in many fields leading him to be interested in the climate change impact on public safety, after that, nowadays retired, he was very active in his blog until recently. I did not read thoroughly most of his posts either (they where prior to my discovery of his blog) but checking them now I think they are a very interesting information source that deserve a good reading.

I hope WordPress maintain them for a long time as a wonderful memorial open to the world. It is interesting to think how the Internet allows a person to continue saying a lot of things for years.

Thanks Allan, for writing.

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Feed-in-Tarif Stopped in Spain

12 02 01

Image from Wikipedia

Spanish new conservative government has decided to stop feed-in-tarif for new renewable installations. The installed ones will continue to receive their feed-in-tarif. Although media coverage has not been too extensive the people around renewable energy are very disappointed.

The responsible minister, Soria, said that it is not definitive but this is impossible to say now. It is very important to contextualize this decision and to understand the possible causes:

  • Spanish economy is in a very bad time, and the government is desperately looking for any cost reduction. However the have not touch for the moment carbon subsidies
  • Spanish energy production will be higher than demand in a shrinking economy (it was last years with a better situation). So new installations would be redundant economically if others are not shut down, for example the ancient nuclear in Garoña, very similar to Fukushima.
  • There is a very-difficult-to-understand thing in the Spanish electric market called tarif-deficit. In two words, recognized costs to the companies are lower than allowed energy sale prices. And this creates a debt that want to stop (this issue deserves many post itself).
  • The powerful power companies were asking for something like this.
  • Feed-in-tarif has been very successful, with a lot of wind and solar power installed the last years.

But, at the same time the story of feed-in-tarif in Spain and its relationship with politics is neither simple nor free of contradictions. In a very simplistic and undeserved explanation: The former conservative government was the one to put it in practice and many local conservative governments applied it very effusively. During the last 8 years of progressive government the feed-in-tarif suffered some noticeable cuts and a lot of uncertainty, sometimes criticised heavily by conservative local governments. And the fathers have finally kill the baby.

Certainly, feed-in-tarif has helped to save a lot of tons of CO2, develop many new economy companies and jobs (now at severe risk) and for sure help to reduce production costs for windmills, solar panels,… So, it has been a story of success, but at the same time there are many lessons to learn as how to link it with the rest of traditional energy system cost, howto explain it, howto include the big energy players to get their compromise, howto invest in R&D enough of the income, howto plan the amounts of tarif, of installed power and tarif evolution and how to discuss the conditions with the renewable energy sector and howto offer enough stability not depending on the government in charge.

And the future? Uncertain, with some hopes in international markets for some companies, with hope in the not so far grid parity for some others whereas unemployment or great activity reduction will be inevitable for many others. And still with too much CO2 in the air and a changing climate menace in the way.

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Smoking and KWhs

12 01 31

Heating lamp in the outside of a bar in winter time

Some weeks ago I took this photo in a cold winter day close to Bilbao. This heaters have become popular since smoking is not allowed in bars and restaurants. It was an unexpected and unnoticed consequence of smoking ban in closed places. I had seen those heater before in central Europe but not close to my home, perhaps they are following the smoking rules throughout the world. Actually, the ban is helpful for those vendors, for gas resellers and maybe for short-term economy (the bars do not agree with this but this is another question), but nobody has complained about the new KWh needed for that, the loose of energy efficiency and the increment of some more CO2 tons. I know it is not a key issue, but had it be another the problem surely it would have been present in some newspapers and discussions, at least to criticize the government forbidding smoking. Surely, we are not too conscious of climate change, energy efficiency and shavings in every day actions nor politics, in the best case the commitment  is too theoretical

And the most funny contradiction is that I was quite happy personally for the smoking ban because being a non-smoker I prefer a smoke free places, but this is not a post about smoking, is more about KWs and CO2.

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Hiriko, will I see this electric can in the streets?

12 01 25

 

Image from http://www.hiriko.com image gallery

Hiriko is a car prototype; it has been presented to EU commission yesterday. It is small, fully electric, very electronic, absolutely urban and designed and developed by basque companies with MIT collaboration, following their city-car concept. In the web it is claimed that apart from the car itself the production and business model is also innovative.

I do not know if I will be able to see those cars running around my home or in other cities in Europe or the world but I like the concept and I like the ambition to innovate in transportation. Transportation is one of our great challenges to reduce CO2 emissions, responsible of more or less 25% of the emissions and without clear alternatives for the moment because most people don’t think of driving anything powered without oil.

So, new ideas, projects and realities are not only welcomed but necessary. They have to be innovative, brave and attractive for the potential customers who have been using internal combustion engines for a century and they will need help from institutions and citizens.
Many projects will fail but this is part of research and if only one of them gets the accurate combination technology, a good product, business concept and intuition; it will make a very important contribution to change our carbon footprint.
Sometimes getting the right concept is only evident later as happened with the iphone. Many where looking for something like it but without getting it right.

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Small Great things, Uncategorized

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Proxy, indirect measurements

12 01 24

Proxy. This word has been fascinating for me for a long time. I think I understood more or less the meaning from the first time, but it was quite inaccurate. In this moment I feel much more comfortable to read and use it. A proxy is an indirect measurement of some magnitude. For example in cooking, if you are not able to measure the cooking state or temperature of the turkey you can guide yourself by the time. We use proxies all the time and rely on them very confidently, because they are based on the knowledge of the issue we have.
Proxy measurements are also a source of criticism by skeptics as it is very easy cast a doubt about them. Even more, in some cases they will be right as a particular proxy may be a wrong measurement technique (if you cook pasta in Bolivia, the time measurement is not right, becuase the pressure is low and the boiling temperature changes, OK we have learnt something new about this proxy, its application scope). This is science, learning from errors, getting more reliable data and questioning them and the previous theories.

But even if they are not perfect, proxies are many times the only source of information for many sciences (nobody measured the weight of dinosaurs, or has been close to our sun) and they are one of the fascinating things about science: how indirect measurements, hints in some cases, combine with solid base of science and theories to be proben true or false to get a coherent picture.

Because climate change is not based in a weak proxy, it is based on knowledge of greenhouse effect, many current measurements and many different proxies from the past. And the models are only considered reasonable when they fit those data.

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Climate, ridiculously complex but modelizable.

12 01 22

Frequently the problem seem overwhelming but this is the art of modelling: to find the main lines

In a recent post in skeptic blog WUWT, they compile a great number of factors affecting climate to show how complex is to understand the whole picture.

I recognize the merit of this work in a blog. Even if the ultimate goal is to explain why climate models cannot cope with the “ridiculously complex” system.

However, this way, they are implicitly recognising a that they are very far in knowledge and accumulated work from the scientits community that has been working in climate models since the fisrt success in 1956 by Norman Philips or the first General Circulation Model (GCM) in the late sixties. The computer running that model had to be really incredible.

This 50 years work along with the different data is very important for the scientific community understanding of present, past and future climate is critical for the IPCC forecasting.

Of course, those models are far from perfect but good modelers know that you cannot make a perfect model from the beginning. You try with a rough approximation that handles the most critical factors, if you are succesful you go for including more complex aspects always within the capability of your calculation system. You compare with data, with other models results, discuss, get more powerful computers,… And the model is never perfect but it get better and better, sometimes very slowly, sometimes going backwards in some step. A nice explanation for anyone of climate models is here and a more detailed explanation of how to use one here.

The other possibility is to consider is “ridiculously complex” and just enumerate the difficulties because you are not able to reach perfection, but this way we would not have modeled the solar system, the galaxy, the solid state physics that allowed the microelectronics,… Because in this aspect physics and mathematics are very different, mathematics look for the exact solution and physics looks for the main aspects that explain the phenomenon, this way you can reach a reasonable mathematical model that works within its application scope.

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Methane Hydrates, energy solution, bombshell or just a beautiful fire?

12 01 19
Figure

Image from Wikipedia

Recently I read in a sceptic blog a post about methane hydrates. They are a huge potential source of methane or natural gas in the bottom of the sea. Their extraction and use as fuel it is not straightforward nor cheap, but some researchers claim they have found a way to do it economically. This wonderful “burning fire” promises a new oil era, a longer one to continue with fossil fuel energy.

It is interesting for me to see the fascination that some feel for fossil fuels or anything that burns. Because in order to find some new energy source they could explain the new possibilities of nanotechnologies in this field or advances in biofuels. All those researches could become real or not , the same as methane hydrates. Yet they have a big difference, they do not emit CO2 and would help us reduce climate change.

And all this if due to climate change some of those methane hydrates do not start to melt just by the higher temperature, something quite dangerous as methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and it would ignite a strong positive feedback. It seems unlikely, fortunately. but it they want to get it all for sure they will have to be fast.

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