“DAC not …a climate solution but a way to continue producing petroleum”
Greg Rau
“ Occidental Petroleum Corp. leader Vicki Hollub has described DAC not as a climate solution but a way to continue producing petroleum.
“We believe that our direct capture technology is going to be the technology that helps to preserve our industry over time,” she said at an oil and gas conference earlier this year. “This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”
GR - Any questions?
Peter Eisenberger
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Jim Baird
Boiling the ocean is not recommended.
"Boil the Ocean", is a business meme that means to undertake an impossible task or project or to make a job or project unnecessarily difficult.
Some put global warming mitigation in the realm of the impossible.
These are the adapters, who seek to reduce the negative effects of climate change and to take advantage of every opportunity it might present. (Ready OXY and the like)
There is plenty of evidence in support of this position considering all efforts to date to contain emissions have flopped.
But in the words of Upton Sinclair, the American writer, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California come to mind with respect to the difficulty of the problem, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
There are plenty of salaries dependent on not understanding how to solve the problem of global warming. Which oddly enough requires boiling.
Just not of water.
The idiom, “Boil the Ocean”, is attributed to Will Rogers, the American humorist, who suggested boiling the ocean was the only way to deal with World War I's German U-boats.
“I think if you heated up the Atlantic ocean, the submarines would turn pink and rise to the surface where you could easily capture them,” he said.
And in response to a question from a man in his audience who asked, “But how do you boil an ocean?” Rogers responded, “I’ve given you the solution. It’s up to you to work out the details.”
A recent study suggests, our neighboring planet, Venus, may have had a liquid surface for billions of years. Before UV radiation broke the water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen that has escaped to space. With the result the current atmosphere of Venus is made up almost completely of carbon dioxide that has produced a greenhouse blanket that has warmed the surface to a temperature of 464 degrees Celsius.
The Washington Post reports the current heat dome over the American Southeast has led to ocean surface temperatures of between 32 and 35 degrees Celsius in the Florida Keys.
This is remote from the boiling temperature of water. But the transformation of energy into heat is among the most ubiquitous processes of physics. With the result, as Tom Murphy, professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego, notes in his book Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, given the steady energy growth of 2.3% America has experienced since 1650, the Earth’s surface temperature will be 100 degrees Celsius in 450 years per the following graphic.
And in fact ocean water can be boiled today at room temperature under a vacuum, which is the principle behind “Open Cycle Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion”.
Warm surface water is introduced through a valve in a low pressure compartment and flash evaporated. The vapor drives a generator and is condensed by the cold seawater pumped up from below. The condensed water can be collected and because it is fresh water, used for various purposes per the following graphic.
But this design as well as all conventional ocean thermal energy conversion approaches is at least half as efficient as Thermodynamic Geoengineering, which uses both warm and cold water contiguous to the evaporator and condenser, doesn’t dump cold water near the ocean surface, uses pipe that are one order in diameter smaller, thus reducing the entire cost of the system, pumps 1/200th of the fluids, and reduces the parasitic pumping losses of these fluids by a third. Per the following graphic.
Thermodynamic Geoengineering operates on the same principle as a heat pump. Both transfer thermal energy between two locations.
Heat flows naturally from places of higher temperature to locations with lower temperatures but in the oceans, which are the repository of 93% of the heat of warming, hot warm water is more buoyant than cold water. To cool the surface therefore, which is the requirement for climate mitigation, surface water has to be pumped against buoyancy deeper, or it has to be diluted by cold water pumped up to the surface. Which in either instance consumes energy.
Like a heat pump, though, Thermodynamic Geoengineering moves heat through the phases of a low-boiling-point working fluid. But in the case of Thermodynamic Geoengineering this is a free ride. Furthermore the hotter the ocean surface gets, the more energy and more efficient is Thermodynamic Geoengineering.
A evaporator at the surface boils the working fluid, producing a pressure that allows the vapor to flow into the deep, cold, water where the vapor condenses to a liquid that is pumped back to the surface to complete the cycle.
These vapor flow can be interrupted by a heat engine that can convert the vapor into electrical energy with a loss of only about 4.8% in pumping losses returning the condenser working fluid back to the surface. Or In other words, almost 12 times much energy is produced by the system as is consumed internally by the pumps.
Heat pumps typically use about five times less energy in the cooling mode than in their heating mode because in cold weather there isn’t as much heat that can be absorbed from outside the system.
Thermodynamic Geoengineering is also a highly efficient way of cooling the surface. In part because there is a lot more cold water in the oceans than hot water. Which in the latter case is the principle hazard of climate change.
Using this resource to the best advantage by using it to boil a working fluid like ammonia or carbon dioxide, can mitigate every consequence of climate change, and can provide all the energy necessary to provide all of the planets cooling and heating needs as well as the fuel every hard to decarbonize sector of the economy requires.
There are a lot more salaries dependent on understanding the basic physics of global warming than there are in the extractive and productive side of the fossils fuel industry, which is also flush with the technical expertise that is transferable to producing a sustainable economy and planet.
Instead of making the job of defeating climate change unnecessarily difficult, it is long past time we starting taking the easy route too planetary salvation dictated by the laws of thermodynamics.
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Amal Bhattarai
Actually I have long had a relevant question……
Nucleation Capital
Peter,
Exxon Mobil invests in Global Thermostat carbon capture technology
"Our scientists see potential in this exciting technology that could lead to more affordable methods to reduce emissions in power generation and manufacturing, along with removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere," said Vijay Swarup, Exxon vice president of research and development.
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Chris Van Arsdale
Actually I have long had a relevant question……
At todays rates of adoption, when is solar/wind /etc forecasted to beat fossil fuels in terms of cost and power output?
Is it 30-ish years or “60,70,80 years”? Fossil industry has consistently underestimated sustainable energy progress.On Monday, July 17, 2023 at 11:05:18 PM UTC-7 Greg Rau wrote:
“ Occidental Petroleum Corp. leader Vicki Hollub has described DAC not as a climate solution but a way to continue producing petroleum.“We believe that our direct capture technology is going to be the technology that helps to preserve our industry over time,” she said at an oil and gas conference earlier this year. “This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”
GR - Any questions?
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Greg Rau
Anton Alferness
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Michael Hayes
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Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
For utility scale energy generation, wind and solar have been at
or below parity for coal going on for geeze, getting close to 10
years now for wind, a little less for solar. Fracking gave
renewables a run for their money, but the steady decline of
renewable's costs, that as yet has no real end in sight, has
allowed the lowest costs of combined cycle natural gas to exceed
parity too. See Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy - These
costs are net, including capitalization. The head slapper is: Why
would energy companies be building renewables so strongly, and
abandoning coal so rapidly, if renewables were not a better
financial deal with an even better future?
https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
Staying wet outside in Austin,
B
Air temp at 10:54 is 89 to 91 around the region. A couple days
ago at 105 in the middle of the afternoon the pavement temp was
166.
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
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Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
IRS' 45Q is not limited only to fossil fuels and renewables have
their own incentive platforms. The fossil fuel only IRS 45Q
incentive ended with Trump's enhancements several years ago and
added direct capture. The incentive now has a cash pay with the
IRA enhancements, instead of tax reduction only. As of Turmp's
enhancements the only strategies that were not allowed incentive
or pay were photosynthetic. The new rules with the IRA
enhancements that should be coming out any month now may allow
photosynthesis strategies, fingers crossed. If this happens, the
incentive will be available for all, or almost all CDR strategies.
I am not holding out hope for forests or other classic
photosynthetic strategies. These are all in some sort or collapse
now or will be any minute now, and are not capable of
sequestering. But biochar, algae and other photosynthetic
processes like ocean pasture's and etc. are what will be
important. This is also a strange and significantly inequitable
issue here in that there is one photosynthetic CDR strategy that
is currently receiving large 45Q incentives: BECCS.
And what was the fundamental concept of Obama's original 45Q in
the first place? It was scaling air capture, literally from the
first draft of the Green New Deal. All the chatter about moral
hazard and the FFIX's continuing burning of fossil fuels is valid
of course, but misplaced. Originally, 45Q was only for flue gas
capture. The deal with scaling air capture is that most of flue
gas capture and components are identical to air capture. Scale
flue gas capture and we scale air capture components at the same
time. IRS 45Q sought to use an existing robust industry to scale
the tech because without scaling air capture, no matter have fast
we achieve the Holy Grail of decarbonization, we lose. They also
did this via positive incentive because we could not get a
negative incentive implemented. Since Obama's time we have known
that future emissions reductions would not carry us through to a
safe climate.
Staying wet in Austin,
B
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
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Bruce Parker
If “DAC is not a climate solution” how will we remove enough CO2 from the atmosphere to limit the temperature increase to an “acceptable” level? The current temperature increase is already not “acceptable”, there is a large energy imbalance, atmospheric concentration CO2,CH4 and N2O are increasing at an accelerating rate, and GHG emissions are not expected to drop significantly for decades. So there is a “huge” need for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Can any other technology/methodology” do the job at scale at an acceptable cost?
“Under the IRA, DAC facilities are eligible for up to $130/MT for captured QCO used in EOR or utilized in certain industrial applications and $180/MT for other geologically sequestered QCO (subject to the same 80 percent haircut as other projects noted above if the DAC facility fails new prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements).”
“ As a result, a congressional research agency estimates that 45Q alone will cost taxpayers $3.2 billion over the next 10 years. “ (https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/2022/10/17/cashing-in-on-carbon-capture-how-big-oil-will-spend-our-money/ )
“Via a plant-level bottom-up and top-down cost assessment, we find that [DAC] costs could drop to $100-600 t-CO2-1 by 2050” (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332223003007 )
One aim of 45Q is to bring down the cost of DAC by providing the tax credit (i.e., without a tax credit there would be a lot less DAC so it would take longer to get the needed “learning curve” cost reductions). The US will probably have a CDR/DAC “requirement “ of over 1 GCO2/year by 2050 (and more likely at least 5 GCO2/year) (see my last email which showed that we need to remove 500 GTCO2 + all future emissions in order to reduce atmospheric CO2 to 350PPM). At $100/ton, that’s $100-$500 billion/year. (And at $200/ton, that’s $200-$1,000 billion/year.) So the expected 45Q costs will be a “drop in the bucket” compared to expected future DAC expenditures , and will (hopefully!) help bring the DAC costs down to an “affordable” level. (Personally, I don’t expect DAC to get “cheap enough” for politicians to be willing to commit the funds needed to deploy DAC at the scale needed).
Bruce Parker
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Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Note on 45Q - it has no tax incentive or direct pay limit - zero. The $3.2 is quite low and so is the $8.6 billion by 2030 I have seen. If the 200+/-, 1 Mt per year facilities that are already committed are online in 2030, costs at an average of $100 per ton incentive/pay would be $20 trillion per year.
Costs as per Keith 2018 for Oxy's 100 committed 1 Mt per year
facilities on paper are $94 ton with the cheapest commercial
fracked gas at $0.03 kWh. With $0.01 kWh renewables and 87% of
costs being energy (ignoring the need for heat energy not capable
of being supplied by renewables) this is $39 per ton -- before
process advancements and further scaling.
Staying wet in Austin,
B
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
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Dan Galpern
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Anton Alferness
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Peter Eisenberger
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
I try and talk to Jim whenever I have the chance. His work in
2008 and 2017 is responsible for the lowering of Sierra Club's
target from 1.5 C to 1 C, that I was solely responsible or -
thanks to the policy team and all the reviewers and committees and
the board for approving. His rationale was "earth systems
boundaries," and natural feedback emissions from their collapse
once we exceed the temperatures of the Holocene, that maxed out at
less than 1 C above normal.
What I am concerned with is an overly aggressive reporting of the
simple "heat wave" concept with global warming - even with "new
normal" as a byline... Even with "and it gets worse form here" as
a byline... It is extremely likely that Hansen talked about
tipping and ecological collapse/Earth systems boundaries in this
interview, but they didn't cover it. This is what is important.
The heat is only several degrees above normal which is trouble for
our grids and pockets, but nothing near like the trouble it is for
our Earth systems. The killer is that our current average amount
of warming is beyond the evolutionary boundaries of our Earth's
systems. When these boundaries are exceeded, 10th grade science
tells us the systems collapse so new species and mechanisms can
evolve into the void that are tolerant of the new conditions. This
is what is happening now with the fires, insect and simple water
stress mortality. It's this water stress mortality that when
doubled, carbon storage is halved. Because our biggest natural
systems sequestration is forests, and because most forests
globally have already seen a doubling to quadrupling of mortality,
and because forest sequestration is only modest when in full
health, we have natural systems feedback emissions in our
immediate future that dwarf humankind's.
Steep trails,
B
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
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Dan Galpern
global gross forest fluxes, accounting for 78% of gross emissions
(6.3 ± 2.4 GtCO2e yr−1) and 55% of gross removals
(−8.6 ± 7.6 GtCO2e yr−1) (Table 1). While these forests removed
more atmospheric carbon than temperate and boreal forests on a
gross basis (−8.6 versus −4.4 and −2.5 GtCO2e yr−1, respectively),
tropical and subtropical forests contributed just 30% to the global
net carbon sink; about two-thirds of the global net sink was in temperate
(47%) and boreal (21%) forests, resulting from substantially
lower gross emissions there than in the subtropics and tropics (0.87
and 0.88 versus 6.3 GtCO2e yr−1, respectively).
"Just six large forested countries (Brazil, Canada, China,
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Russia and the United States)
accounted for 51% of global gross emissions, 56% of global gross
removals and 60% of net flux. Forests in nearly all countries were
net carbon negative, that is, gross carbon removals from established
and regrowing forests exceeded gross emissions from land-use
change and other forest disturbances."
Anton Alferness
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Hi Dan and all,
We have to be careful in understanding the data we use. Harris
2021 uses 30m data that does not understand mortality. This work
is a simple area=emissions inventory of forests that then applies
assumptions about C flux based on healthy forest conditions. An
example of how this kind of method can be biased is the extensive
reporting on the Amazon that says it is now a carbon source of
around a Gt CO2eq annually, and no longer sequestering, based on
multiple lines of research. Harris 2021 says the Amazon has a net
sequestration of 1.2
Gt CO2 (from presentation).
Looking at the methods in Harris 2021 (free
account required for download), this simple inventory of
global forests uses other's data published from the period 2003 to
2017, but based on the individual dates of data collection for
each of the individual findings. (see Fig. 1 from the extended
data in Harris 2021 below)
There are several biases possible in this work: their lidar
conversions do not have the resolution to evaluate changes in
mortality from 0.25 percent to 1 percent, nor do they do
comparisons to understand the change in mortality that is causing
our global forests to flip from sinks to sources. Their data are
old, relatively, as the conditions that have caused the increases
in forest mortality are new, relatively. Their conversions do not
understand standing dead (or fallen dead) C fluxes, where after
mortality, C is released slowly during decomposition.
This kind of interpretation that you have made is very common and I have to go through each paper that is suggested in these conflicts to understand the scenarios that create these statements about things like the plausible sequestration capacity of our forests. Different research on perceptibly the same topics is often based on different things. This is called scenario bias. All research is based on scenarios, or is focused on particular criteria that represent specific scenarios. If other important criteria are not evaluated, the particular finding is agnostic on the other criteria. With climate change having so many eyes on it, and so many folks being emotionally vested in their beliefs, is is an enormous challenge to keep up with why certain folks believe what they believe based on the science, or reporting o the science they have read or heard about. This bias in reporting of Harris 2021 is not a bad thing, it is just a thing. All science has caveats. The caveat with this work is that it is a simple inventory of global forests made from others work that is dated in a world where our climate is rapidly changing.
Below are three sets of citations with summaries that interpret
the latest individual findings on forest health: one is the on the
flip of the Amazon, the other the (relatively) recent increase in
forest mortality, and the third is on forest regeneration failure.
As an example of how Harris 2021 is biased, the Amazon has been
flipping back and forth between sink and source since the first
100-year climate change-caused drought in 2005. Because a
rainforest is an extremely rapid carbon cycling machine, it is
plausible the Amazon flipped back to a sink before the next even
greater than 100-year drought in 2010, then again with the even
greater drought during the Super El Nino of 2016. Since, there has
been additional publishing on C flux in the Amazon based on
independent data collection that shows it is still emitting.
The second set of citations with summaries is on increasing
forest mortality globally where in the tropics, Western US, Canada
and Europe, mortality is (likely) now double to quadruple normal,
where a doubling of mortality halves carbon storage. The mortality
is caused by water stress either directly from precipitation
drought or indirectly from nonlinearly increasing evaporation from
warming. There are certainly forests where mortality has not
increased and the net fate of global forests carbon flux could
still be positive. There are also other forests that are also very
likely now carbon sources that have not yet been published upon
(Siberia). The writing is on the wall however. The trend in
mortality will not decline because this trend has been caused by a
fundamental shift of our climate to a different condition than our
forests' evolution. Once evolutionary boundaries are crossed, a
system collapses so that it can re-evolve with species and
mechanisms that are tolerant of the new conditions. Our old
climate represented by the Holocene's natural variation, maxed at
around 0.5 to 1.0 degrees C above normal.
The third set of citations and summaries is on the emergency of
forest regeneration failure as our climate has now warmed out of
its natural variation of the last 10,000 years of the Holocene. A
good general statement on regeneration failure is that in the
western US, a third of forests that burned around the turn of the
century are not regenerating and of the remaining, half are only
regenerating at half the 20th century rate (Stevens-Rumann 2017).
The literature cited mostly looks at regeneration after fire, but
several authors state that beetle killed forests are likely
behaving in the same way. You probably also read about the popular
press reporting on "zombie forests." This is another ongoing thing
in many forests where old trees live on, but because of increased
dryness, new trees are not establishing.
Steep trails,
B
~ ~ ~
Amazon Master
~ ~ ~
Amazon
emissions of 0.67 Pg C (2.45 Gt CO2eq) from 2010 to 2019
based on satellite
canopy density, with forest degradation 3X the loss of
deforestation… "During
2010-2019, the
Brazilian Amazon had a cumulative gross loss of 4.45 Pg C
against a gross gain
of 3.78 Pg C, resulting in net AGB loss of 0.67 Pg C. Forest
degradation
(73%) contributed three times more to the gross AGB loss than
deforestation
(27%), given that the areal extent of degradation exceeds
deforestation. This
indicates that forest degradation has become the largest
process driving carbon
loss and should become a higher policy priority."
Qin
et al., Carbon loss from forest degradation exceeds that from
deforestation in
the Brazilian Amazon, Nature Climate Change, April 29, 2021.
preprint - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361323731_Carbon_loss_from_forest_degradation_exceeds_that_from_deforestation_in_the_Brazilian_Amazon
Paywall
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01026-5
Amazon
emitting, not absorbing, 1 Gt CO2 annually on average from
2010 to 2018… based
on atmospheric measurements over time…
"Considering
the upwind areas of each site, we combine fluxes from all
sites to calculate a
total Amazonia carbon balance for our nine-year study period
(see Methods) of
0.29±0.40 Pg Cyr−1
(FCTotal=0.11±0.15gCm−2d−1), where fire
emissions represent
0.41±0.05PgCyr−1 (FCFire=0.15±0.02gCm−2d−1),
with NBE removing −0.12±0.40PgCyr−1 (31% of fire
emissions) from the
atmosphere (FCNBE=−0.05±0.15gCm−d−1).
The east (region 1 in Extended Data Fig.6), which represents
24% of Amazonia
(of which 27% has been deforested), is responsible for 72% of
total Amazonian
carbon emissions, where 62% is from fires. One recent study
showed cumulative
gross emissions of carbon of about 126.1MgCO2 ha−1
for
30yr after a fire event, where cumulative CO2 uptake from
forest regrowth
offsets only 35% of the emissions. Another recent study13
reported that fire
emissions from Amazonia are about 0.21±0.23PgCyr−1.
Recently, vander Werf etal.24 estimated for the period
1997–2009 that globally,
fires were responsible for an annual mean carbon emission of
2.0PgCyr−1, where about 8%
appears to have
been associated with South American forest fires, according to
estimates from
the Global Fire Emission Data set (GFED V.3). The Amazon
Forest Inventory
Network (RAINFOR) project showed a decline in sink capacity of
mature forests
due to an increase in mortality1–3. Adjusting the three
RAINFOR studies to a
consistent area (7.25×106km2) and taking their mean yields a
basin-wide sink
for intact forests of about −0.57,
−0.41 and −0.23PgCyr−1 for 1990–1999,
2000–2009
and 2010–2019,
respectively. The NBE from this study is consistent with the
RAINFOR results
for the last decade, because NBE represents the uptake from
forest but also all
non-fire emissions, such as decomposition, degradation and
other anthropogenic
emissions (see Supplementary Table 3)."
Gatti
et al., Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation
and climate change,
Nature, July 14, 2021.
https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/176729920/s41586_021_03629_6.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03629-6.epdf?sharing_token=lsfPlVRsW05dUMB_VD-zItRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NILaci0q8CXtVe4JKM-xF0Z0ZQpmJpnpSclAjJeIV-vCjviXK_Mb9hvvU5C3CiJVgu82-RGuHR01gFiQZAVMzDCCxiRyvlh0MBQxTvGN2oHmf2jIOC7MEEGXrOPGIblsh57v9qXkkZbM7U0OH8zbdQ4jnVO1zD9R1jeDcUVBS22YVLkjWEvC5vrNMdQ416fmEBL9kIHYs2ptVibFKXLxEuh-TQ08w-QGSFzN6221KgguYTe0Q9FoZ1J-Wksf4tWXrjv-xu34UpgYqxQWwLTTbTgHYTuglT_tSVd4WaweL9fg%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=www.theguardian.com
Guardian
article above based on Gatti 2021… "The study
found fires
produced about 1.5bn tonnes of CO2 a year, with forest growth
removing 0.5bn
tonnes. The 1bn tonnes left in the atmosphere is equivalent to
the annual
emissions of Japan."
Carrington, Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than
it absorbs,
Guardian, July 14, 2021.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/14/amazon-rainforest-now-emitting-more-co2-than-it-absorbs
The Amazon is flipping from carbon sink to source 70 years ahead of projections… The Amazon has flipped from carbon sink to carbon source three times 2005, 2010, 2016, with 100-year or more extreme drought, each increasing in severity from the previous event. Flipping three times is a fair enough interpretation. In 2010, the Amazon was near neutral with carbon emissions of 0.07 gigaton C (256 megatons CO2 equivalent.) The 2005 drought created emissions of 0.43 gigaton C (1.6 PgC reduction – 1.1 PgC) or 1.6 gigatons C. The 2016 drought was more severe than either, but the quantity of emissions has not yet been published.
2005
and 2010 Droughts… (Abstract) “Based on these ground
data, live biomass in
trees and corresponding estimates of live biomass in lianas
and roots, we
estimate that intact forests in Amazonia were carbon neutral
in 2010 (-0.07 Pg
C yr1 CI: -0.42, 0.23), consistent with results from an
independent analysis of
airborne estimates of land-atmospheric fluxes during 2010.
Relative to the
long-term mean, the 2010 drought resulted in a reduction in
biomass carbon
uptake of 1.1 Pg C, compared to 1.6 Pg C for the 2005 event.”
Therefore, if the
2010 drought was carbon neutral, the 2005 drought resulted in
carbon emissions.
Feldpausch,
Amazon forest response to repeated droughts, Global
Biogeochemical Cycles, July
1, 2016.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GB005133
Press
Release - https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GB005133
2005
Amazon drought continued to create carbon
emissions through 2008 of 1.1 gigatons CO2 per year...
(abstract) "Amazon forests have experienced frequent and
severe droughts in the past two decades. However, little is
known about the large-scale legacy of droughts on carbon
stocks and dynamics of forests. Using systematic sampling of
forest structure measured by LiDAR waveforms from 2003 to
2008, here we show a significant loss of carbon over the
entire Amazon basin at a rate of 0.3 ± 0.2 (95% CI) PgC yr−1
after the 2005 mega-drought, which continued persistently over
the next 3 years (2005–2008). The changes in forest structure,
captured by average LiDAR forest height and converted to above
ground biomass carbon density, show an average loss of
2.35 ± 1.80 MgC ha−1 a year after (2006) in the epicenter of
the drought. With more frequent droughts expected in future,
forests of Amazon may lose their role as a robust sink of
carbon, leading to a significant positive climate feedback and
exacerbating warming trends."
Yang
et al., Post-drought decline of the Amazon carbon sink,
Nature, August 9, 2018.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05668-6
2016
Drought… (Abstract)
Tropical and sub-tropical South America are highly susceptible
to extreme
droughts. Recent events include two droughts (2005 and 2010)
exceeding the
100-year return value in the Amazon and recurrent extreme
droughts in the
Nordeste region, with profound eco-hydrological and
socioeconomic impacts. In
2015–2016, both regions were hit by another drought. Here, we
show that the
severity of the 2015–2016 drought ("2016 drought" hereafter)
is
unprecedented based on multiple precipitation products (since
1900),
satellite-derived data on terrestrial water storage (since
2002) and two
vegetation indices (since 2004). The ecohydrological
consequences from the 2016
drought are more severe and extensive than the 2005 and 2010
droughts.
Empirical relationships between rainfall and sea surface
temperatures (SSTs)
over the tropical Pacific and Atlantic are used to assess the
role of tropical
oceanic variability in the observed precipitation anomalies.
Our results
indicate that warmer-than-usual SSTs in the Tropical Pacific
(including El Niño
events) and Atlantic were the main drivers of extreme droughts
in South
America, but are unable to explain the severity of the 2016
observed rainfall
deficits for a substantial portion of the Amazonia and
Nordeste regions. This
strongly suggests potential contribution of nonoceanic factors
(e.g., land
cover change and CO2-induced warming) to the 2016 drought.
Erfanian
et al., Unprecedented drought over tropical South America in
2016 significantly
under-predicted by tropical SST, Nature Scientific Reports,
July 19, 2017.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5517600/
The
Amazon has flipped from a carbon sink to a carbon source … A
personal email
correspondence with Lewis helped with the math… 2.2 and 1.6 Gt
of Carbon (C)
were killed in 2010 and 2005. It takes four years for half to
decay and another
25 for the rest to decay resulting in 0.475 Gt emissions the
first four years
spread out non-linearly thereafter. The Amazon normally
captures 0.4 Gt C in a
non-drought year, so for the first +/- ten years after 2010
emissions will be
greater than captured C.
Lewis
et al., The 2010 Amazon Drought, Science, February, 2011.
Abstract
only: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6017/554
Press
Release: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/593178
Over 2 billion trees... Lewis is quoted in the Guardian “in the low billions of trees.” http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/feb/03/tree-deaths-amazon-climate
The
Amazon tipping point - historic tipping was 4 C warming, 70
years ahead of
projections… Considering 4 C warming under BAU
near the end of
the century, the Amazon has flipped 70 years ahead of
projections.
"Many studies show that in
the absence of other contributing factors, 4 degrees Celsius
of global warming would
be the tipping point…"
Lovejoy and Nobre, Amazon Tipping Point, Science advances,
February 21, 2018.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/4/2/eaat2340.full.pdf
Last
change for action…
"We are scientists who have been studying the Amazon and all
its wondrous
assets for many decades. Today, we stand exactly in a moment
of destiny: The
tipping point is here, it is now. The peoples and leaders of
the Amazon
countries together have the power, the science, and the tools
to avoid a
continental-scale, indeed, a global environmental disaster.
Together, we need
the will and imagination to tip the direction of change in
favor of a
sustainable Amazon."
–Thomas
E. Lovejoy and Carlos Nobre
Lovejoy and Nobre, Amazon tipping point, Last chance for
action, Science
Advances, December 20, 2019.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/5/12/eaba2949.full.pdf
~ ~
~
Forest
Mortality Master
~ ~ ~
Canada's boreal forest
mortality about
doubled 1970 to 2020 and lost
(net) 3.5
Gt carbon as CO2, about 90 percent since 2002… "From 1970
to 2020. We
show that the average annual tree mortality rate is
approximately 2.7%.
Approximately 43% of Canada's boreal forests have experienced
significantly
increasing tree mortality trends (71% of which are located in
the western
region of the country), and these trends have accelerated since
2002. This
increase in tree mortality has resulted in significant biomass
carbon losses at
an approximate rate of
1.51 ± 0.29 MgC
ha−1 year−1 (95% confidence interval) with an approximate total
loss of 0.46 ± 0.09 PgC
year−1 (95% confidence interval). Under the drought condition
increases
predicted for this century, the capacity of Canada's boreal
forests to act as a
carbon sink will be further reduced, potentially leading to a
significant
positive climate feedback effect… The boreal ecosystem accounts
for about a
third of the Earth's extant forests, containing an estimated
one-third of the
stored terrestrial C stocks (Bradshaw & Warkentin, 2015; Pan
et al., 2011).
The land area of Canada's boreal forests (including other wooded
land types)
covers 309 Mha (Brandt et al., 2013), nearly 30% of the global
boreal forested
area (Brandt, 2009)… The overall increase in the biomass loss
rate led to a
significant reduction in biomass over the study period. From
1970 to 2020, the
reduction in biomass was estimated at 3.01 ± 0.58 Mg ha−1 year−1
(95%
confidence interval) with a total biomass loss throughout the
entire boreal
forested area of Canada (310 Mha) of approximately 0.93 ± 0.18
Pg, [3.4 Gt
CO2eq] of which 83% was aboveground biomass and 17% was
belowground
biomass." Mortality increase from Figure 1b.
Liu et al., Drought-induced increase in tree mortality and
corresponding
decrease in the carbon sink capacity of Canada's boreal forests
from 1970 to
2020, Global Change Biology, January 3, 2023.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1962503
Global tropical, high altitude and high latitude forests have likely flipped on average from sequestration sink to emissions source, based on Bauman 2022 and McDowell 2015…
(Summary)
Bauman
2022 shows Australian tropical forests have seen a doubling of
forest mortality
which translates to a halving of carbon storage. Because forests
are only
modest carbon sinks, Bauman 2022 suggests Australian tropical
forests have now
flipped to emitting GHGs. They also suggest that southeast Asian
forests are
likely behaving similarly. I spoke to Bauman to confirm and he
said what he now
believes is that globally, because of the same water stress the
created a
doubling of Australian tropical forest mortality, all tropical
forests globally
are likely now behaving similarly.
McDowell 2015 describes forest mortality across western
North America
with ranges from nearly doubling to quadrupling and using the
same logic as
Baumann 2022, this means these forests are now emitting, not
absorbing. This is
backed up by findings that Canadian forests (Canadian Forest
Service 2020), the
Amazon (Gatti 2021) and net permafrost thaw emissions including
forest drowning
(Natali 2019), are all now emitting and not sequestering.
Assuming
that western North American high altitude and high latitude
forests are also
analog to similar ecologies across the globe where a doubling of
mortality
results in a halving of carbon storage, on average then it is
likely that in
addition to tropical forests globally, high altitude and high
latitude forests
globally have also flipped from sink to source. This
interpretation is backed up by flips of the Amazon (1 Gt CO2eq
emissions
annually - Gatti 2021), Canadian forests (250 Mt CO2eq emissions
annually -
Canadian Forest Service 2020), and permafrost (2.3 Gt CO2eq
emissions annually
- Natali 2019, where this is net emissions that include drowned
forests). We
also need to consider the Amazon and permafrost emissions are
averages, and
both were likely stable at the beginning of the averaging
period, therefor
emissions at the end of the averaging period could be
interpreted as being
double the average, assuming a linear increase. This would put
emissions from
just the Amazon, Canadian forests and permafrost regions at
about 7 Gt CO2
annually.
(End
Summary)
Australian tropical
forest mortality
doubled in the last 35 years, mostly recently. A personal
communication with
Baumann says global tropical forests are likely behaving
similarly because of
the same water stress… Bauman 2022 analyzed a 49-year
record across 24
old-growth tropical forests in Australia and found mortality has
doubled
because of water stress across all plots in the last 35 years
indicating a
halving of life expectancy and carbon residence time and
suggesting that
Australian tropical forests have now flipped from a CO2 sink to
a source of CO2
emissions. Further, they suggest Southeast Asian tropical
forests are behaving
similarly. When I asked Bauman to confirm that Australian
tropical forests are
analog to Southeast Asian tropical forests,
he suggested what he believed now was that the same water
stress is
likely affecting all tropical forests globally in a similar way.
Bauman et al., Tropical tree mortality has increased with rising
atmospheric
water stress, Nature, May 17, 2022.
(Researchgate, free account required) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360691427_Tropical_tree_mortality_has_increased_with_rising_atmospheric_water_stress
Mortality of Western North
American forests from McDowell
2015 - Increased forest mortality
in Western North America between 1980 and the mid-2000s with
much of the
increase happening recently… It is also pertinent that
warming since the
mid-2000s has just about doubled as of 2022, and that much of
the recent western
US forest mortality from bark beetles and increase in burn area
was not
captured in McDowell 2015:
Mortality of Western North American forests:
-- Sierra Nevada mortality has doubled from 0.75 to 1.5 percent
-- Western Canadian forest mortality has quadrupled from 0.6
percent to 2.5
percent
-- Eastern Canadian forest mortality has nearly doubled from 0.8
to 1.45 percent
-- Western US interior forests mortality has more than doubled
from 0.3 percent to 0.65 percent
-- Pacific Northwest forests mortality has tripled from 0.45 to
1.25 percent
McDowell
et al., Multi-scale predictions of massive conifer mortality due
to chronic
temperature rise, Los Alamos National lab, Nature Climate
Change, December 21,
2015.
https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~dsmackay/mackay/pubs/pdfs/nclimate2873.pdf
US West tree mortality from
the
mid 1950s to late 2000s, more than doubled… This
is a good view of
early tree mortality trends showing the increasing trend
accelerating after the
1970s. Regional mortality in prior to the 1970s was 0.2, 0.4
and 0.8 percent in
Pacific Northwest, Coastal California, and the interior. After
the 1970s
mortality rate accelerated and at 2008 was 0.5, 1.3 and 1.8
percent, indicating
a more than doubling to a more than tripling or mortality.
Average forest age
was 450 to 1000 years.
Mantgem et al., Widespread increase of tree mortality rates in
the Western
United States, Science , January 23, 2009.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2009_vanmantgem001.pdf
Globally,
Forests
mortality more than doubled… "The impacts of global
change on forest
demographic rates may already be materializing. In mature
ecosystems, tree
mortality rates have doubled throughout much of the Americas and
in Europe over
the last four decades (7-9)… Beyond
changing vegetation dynamics within “intact” or relatively
undisturbed forests,
episodic disturbances are tending to be larger, more severe and,
in some
regions, more frequent under
global
change(17-20). Similarly,
the rates and
types of land-use change (LUC) vary widely (21) but have, on
average, increased
globally in the past few centuries (2,22,23)… Thus, at the
global scale,
disturbances [climate change related] and LUC [land use change]
have likely
amplified tree mortality beyond that suggested by the doubling
of background
mortality rates in undisturbed forests (7-9)."
McDowell et al, Pervasive shifts in forest dynamics in a
changing world, Science, May 29, 202.
https://www.dora.lib4ri.ch/wsl/islandora/object/wsl%3A23827/datastream/PDF2/McDowell-2020-Pervasive_shifts_in_forest_dynamics-%28accepted_version%29.pdf
Rosenblad
2023,
Thermophilization… Simply put, thermophilization is forest
evolution due to
warming. It is driven in Western US forests by two factors,
recruitment of new
heat and drought tolerant species and mortality of less heat and
drought
tolerant species. Mortality is winning by 2:1. Rosenblad
revealsa 20 percent
mortality rate in 10 years - four to eight times normal. A
doubling of
mortality rate halves carbon storage... ""Here, we analyze 10-y
changes in tree community composition across 44,992 forest
subplots in the
western United States... The dataset comprised 316,519 trees
that survived between
censuses (mean = 5.6 per subplot), 64,024 that died (1.1 per
subplot), and
35,836 that recruited (0.63 per subplot)."
Thermophilization... Rosenblad et al., Climate change, tree
demography, and
thermophilization in western US forests, PNAS, April 24, 2023.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2301754120
Canada's boreal forest
mortality about
doubled 1970 to 2020 and lost
(net) 3.5
Gt carbon as CO2, about 90 percent since 2002… "From 1970
to 2020. We
show that the average annual tree mortality rate is
approximately 2.7%.
Approximately 43% of Canada's boreal forests have experienced
significantly
increasing tree mortality trends (71% of which are located in
the western
region of the country), and these trends have accelerated since
2002. This
increase in tree mortality has resulted in significant biomass
carbon losses at
an approximate rate of
1.51 ± 0.29 MgC
ha−1 year−1 (95% confidence interval) with an approximate total
loss of 0.46 ± 0.09 PgC
year−1 (95% confidence interval). Under the drought condition
increases
predicted for this century, the capacity of Canada's boreal
forests to act as a
carbon sink will be further reduced, potentially leading to a
significant
positive climate feedback effect… The boreal ecosystem accounts
for about a
third of the Earth's extant forests, containing an estimated
one-third of the
stored terrestrial C stocks (Bradshaw & Warkentin, 2015; Pan
et al., 2011).
The land area of Canada's boreal forests (including other wooded
land types)
covers 309 Mha (Brandt et al., 2013), nearly 30% of the global
boreal forested
area (Brandt, 2009)… The overall increase in the biomass loss
rate led to a
significant reduction in biomass over the study period. From
1970 to 2020, the
reduction in biomass was estimated at 3.01 ± 0.58 Mg ha−1 year−1
(95%
confidence interval) with a total biomass loss throughout the
entire boreal
forested area of Canada (310 Mha) of approximately 0.93 ± 0.18
Pg, [3.4 Gt
CO2eq] of which 83% was aboveground biomass and 17% was
belowground
biomass." Mortality increase from Figure 1b.
Liu et al., Drought-induced increase in tree mortality and
corresponding
decrease in the carbon sink capacity of Canada's boreal forests
from 1970 to
2020, Global Change Biology, January 3, 2023.
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1962503
~
~ ~
Regeneration Failure Master
~ ~ ~
Increased
regeneration failure and wildfire risk from warming across the
Sierra Nevada (Zombie Forests)…
Warming has created regeneration failure and a greater risk of
wildfire across
up to 19.5 percent of the Sierra Nevada. In this study that
compared assumed
stable forest conditions from 1915 to 1955, a mismatch in climate
and forest
regeneration for forest stability was found compared to the period
2000 to 2022.
This mismatch is degrading or eliminating regeneration or the
ability of
sapling trees to survive because of water stress in the warmed
environment at
lower elevation areas along the western slope of the Sierras. Of
most
importance in this study, the comparison was made between the
average
conditions from 1915 to 1955 and 2000 to 2022. Because it is quite
likely that
the period 2000 to 2022 has seen more warming later rather than
sooner during
this period, the 19.5 percent mismatch is biased low or is
understated.
Full - Hill et al., Low-elevation conifers in California’s Sierra
Nevada are
out of equilibrium with climate, PNAS, February 28, 2023.
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article-pdf/2/2/pgad004/49406200/pgad004.pdf
Press Release - Jordan, Stanford-led study reveals a fifth of
California’s
Sierra Nevada conifer forests are stranded in habitats that have
grown too warm
for them, Stanford, February 28, 2023.
https://news.stanford.edu/press-releases/2023/02/28/zombie-forests/
Seedling regeneration
in unburned plots is reduced by 15 to 36 percent from 2000 to
2019 in Western
forests... In burned plots, seedling regeneration is 89
percent greater
than in unburned plots with regeneration reduced by 28 to 68
percent. This study
is based on the average regeneration of 28 different tree species.
It also
includes a bias where recent warming is greater than earlier
warming during the
study period of 2000 to 2019, as well as not including the most
warming during
the period 2020 to present where wildfire burn area in California
increased to Pre-European burned area in 2020.
Hill and Field, Forest fires and climate-induced tree range
shifts in the western US, Nature Communications, November 15,
2022.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26838-z
Press Release - Jordan, Stanford researchers reveal how wildfire
accelerates
forest changes, Stanford, November 15, 2022.
https://news.stanford.edu/2021/11/15/trees-on-the-move/
Poor
Ponderosa Regeneration because of
climate warming and moisture limitation… "Regeneration
density varied among fires but
analysis of regeneration in aggregated edge and core plots
showed that
abundance of seed availability was not the sole factor that
limited ponderosa
pine regeneration, probably because of surviving tree refugia
within
high-severity burn patches. furthermore,
our findings emphasize that ponderosa pine regeneration in our
study area was
significantly impacted by xeric topographic environments and
vegetation
competition. Continued warm and dry conditions and increased
wildfire activity
may delay the natural recovery of ponderosa
pine forests, underscoring the importance of restoration efforts
in large,
high-severity burn patches."
Singleton, Moisture and
vegetation cover limit ponderosa pine regeneration in
high-severity burn
patches in the southwestern US, Fire Ecology, May 7, 2021.
https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-021-00095-3
An era when prefire
forests may not return… "Changing disturbance regimes and
climate can
overcome forest ecosystem resilience. Following high-severity
fire, forest
recovery may be compromised by lack of tree seed sources, warmer
and drier
postfire climate, or short-interval reburning. A potential outcome
of the loss
of resilience is the conversion of the prefire forest to a
different forest
type or nonforest vegetation. Conversion implies major, extensive,
and enduring
changes in dominant species, life forms, or functions, with
impacts on
ecosystem services. In the present article, we synthesize a
growing body of evidence
of fire-driven conversion and our understanding of its causes
across western
North America. We assess our capacity to predict conversion and
highlight
important uncertainties. Increasing forest vulnerability to
changing fire
activity and climate compels shifts in management approaches, and
we propose
key themes for applied research coproduced by scientists and
managers to
support decision-making in an era when the prefire forest may not
return."
Coop et al., Wildfire Driven Forest Conversion in Western
North American Landscapes, BioScience, July 1, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaa061
Old
trees just don't
die, they are killed by something and old forests are a part of
a stable
ecology… "Large, majestic trees are iconic symbols of great
age among living
organisms. Published evidence suggests that trees do not die
because of
genetically programmed senescence in their meristems, but rather
are killed by
an external agent or a disturbance event. Long tree lifespans are
therefore
allowed by specific combinations of life history traits within
realized niches
that support resistance to, or avoidance of, extrinsic mortality.
Another
requirement for trees to achieve their maximum longevity is either
sustained
growth over extended periods of time or at least the capacity to
increase their
growth rates when conditions allow it. The growth plasticity and
modularity of
trees can then be viewed as an evolutionary advantage that allows
them to
survive and reproduce for centuries and millennia. As more and
more scientific
information is systematically collected on tree ages under various
ecological
settings, it is becoming clear that tree longevity is a key trait
for global
syntheses of life history strategies, especially in connection
with disturbance
regimes and their possible future modifications."
Piovesan and Biondi, On tree longevity, New Phytologist, November
25, 2020.
https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nph.17148
Davis
2019 -- Forests Exceed Climate Change Regeneration Threshold
Leading to
Non-forested States... The take-away, "In areas that
have crossed climatic thresholds for
regeneration, stand-replacing fires may result in abrupt ecosystem
transitions
to nonforest states." The authors "examine[d] the relationship
between annual climate and postfire tree regeneration of two
dominant,
low-elevation conifers (ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir) using
annually resolved
establishment dates from 2,935 destructively sampled trees from 33
wildfires
across four regions in the western United States... [They]
demonstrate[d] that
... forests of the western United States have crossed a critical
climate
threshold for postfire tree regeneration. [They] found abrupt
declines in
modeled annual recruitment probability in the 1990s for both
species
and across all regions. Annual rates of tree regeneration
exhibited
strongly nonlinear relationships with annual climate conditions,
with distinct
threshold responses to summer VPD [humidity], soil moisture, and
maximum
surface temperatures. Across the study region, seasonal to annual
climate
conditions from the early 1990s through 2015 have crossed these
climate
thresholds at the majority of sites. [Their] findings suggest that
many low
elevation mixed conifer forests in the western United States have
already
crossed climatic thresholds beyond which the climate is unsuitable
for
regeneration. The nonlinear relationships between annual climate
and
regeneration observed in this study are likely not unique to these
two
species."
Davis et al., Wildfires and climate change push low-elevation
forests across a
critical climate threshold for tree regeneration, PNAS, March 26,
2019.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/13/6193
One third of burned forests are not regenerating at all… Conclusion, "Significantly less tree regeneration is occurring after wildfires in the start of 21st century compared to the end of the 20th century, and key drivers of this change were warmer and drier mean climatic conditions. Our findings demonstrate the increased vulnerability of both dry and moist forests to climate-induced regeneration failures following wildfires. The lack of regeneration indicates either substantially longer periods of forest recovery to pre-fire tree densities, or potential shifts to lower density forests or non-forest cover types after 21st-century wildfires… Our results suggest that predicted shifts from forest to non-forested vegetation may be underway, expedited by fire disturbances [and] that short post-fire periods of wetter climate that have favoured tree regeneration in the past may not occur frequently enough to facilitate tree regeneration in the future, across a broad region and multiple forest types in the Rocky Mountains… Our results suggest a high likelihood that future wildfires will facilitate shifts to lower density forest or non-forested states under a warming climate."
Data, "For sites burned at the end of the 20th century vs. the first decade of the 21st century, the proportion of sites meeting or exceeding pre-fire tree densities (e.g. recruitment threshold of 100%) decreased by nearly half (from 70 to 46%) and the percentage of sites experiencing no post-fire tree regeneration nearly doubled (from 19 to 32%)… This negative relationship demonstrates the potential increased vulnerability and lack of resilience on hotter and drier sites, or of dry forest species, to climate warming… Tree seedlings may establish in response to short-term anomalous wetter periods in the future, but our results highlight that such conditions have become significantly less common since 2000, and they are expected to be less likely in the future… Further, persistent or long-lasting vegetation changes following wildfires have been observed worldwide." … Sevenens-Rumann 2017 found a significant decrease in tree regeneration in post fire landscapes in the last 15 years (since 2015) vs. the previous 15 years. For fires that burned in the early 21st century, regeneration tree density decreased by nearly half, and sites experiencing no post-fire regeneration nearly doubled, over fires that burned at the end of the 20th century.
From the abstract, "Forest resilience to climate change is a global concern given the potential effects of increased disturbance activity, warming temperatures and increased moisture stress on plants. We used a multi-regional dataset of 1485 sites across 52 wildfires from the US Rocky Mountains to ask if and how changing climate over the last several decades impacted post-fire tree regeneration, a key indicator of forest resilience. Results highlight significant decreases in tree regeneration in the 21st century. Annual moisture deficits were significantly greater from 2000 to 2015 as compared to 1985–1999, suggesting increasingly unfavourable post-fire growing conditions, corresponding to significantly lower seedling densities and increased regeneration failure. Dry forests that already occur at the edge of their climatic tolerance are most prone to conversion to non-forests after wildfires. Major climate-induced reduction in forest density and extent has important consequences for a myriad of ecosystem services now and in the future."
Stevens-Rumann et
al., Evidence for
declining forest resilience to wildfires under climate,
Ecology Letters,
December 12, 2017.
(Paywall)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ele.12889
Full (Researchgate free account required)
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Monica_Rother/publication/321753770_Evidence_for_declining_forest_resilience_to_wildfires_under_climate_change/links/5a315ae90f7e9b2a284cea8f/Evidence-for-declining-forest-resilience-to-wildfires-under-climate-change.pdf
Press Release, University of Montana -
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-12/tuom-sfr121317.php
Ecological
Drought,
shifting ecosystems – New Climate Change Drought Category…
“Ecological
drought has recently
been proposed as a fifth drought metric classification. In
contrast to other
drought classifications, ecological drought metrics attempt to
describe
abnormal departures from moisture conditions when accounting for
local
ecosystems without a human-specific viewpoint of drought
effects. Ecological
drought metrics identify droughts on longer time and larger
spatial scales that
have the potential to shift ecosystems—as well as human
systems—past their
adaptive capacity (Crausbay et al. 2017). Addressing the
prevalence of
ecologically significant droughts in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries
requires a metric suited to addressing long-term ecosystem
trends.”
Crockett and Westerling, Greater Temperature and Precipitation
Extremes
Intensify Western US Drought, Wildfire Severity, and Sierra
Nevada Tree
Mortality, Journal of Climate, January 2018.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0254.1
Anticipated
transition from
forested to shrubland ecosystems...
"Droughts of the 21st century are characterized by hotter
temperatures,
longer duration and greater spatial extent, and are increasingly
exacerbated by
human demands for water. This situation increases the
vulnerability of
ecosystems to drought, including a rise in drought-driven tree
mortality
globally (Allen et al. 2015) and anticipated ecosystem
transformations from one
state to another, e.g., forest to a shrubland (Jiang et al.
2013)."
Crausbay et al., Defining ecological drought for the 21 st
century, BAMS, July
27, 2017.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0292.1
Poor
Ponderosa Regeneration because of
climate warming and moisture limitation… "Regeneration
density varied among fires but
analysis of regeneration in aggregated edge and core plots
showed that
abundance of seed availability was not the sole factor that
limited ponderosa
pine regeneration, probably because of surviving tree refugia
within
high-severity burn patches. furthermore,
our findings emphasize that ponderosa pine regeneration in our
study area was
significantly impacted by xeric topographic environments and
vegetation
competition. Continued warm and dry conditions and increased
wildfire activity
may delay the natural recovery of
ponderosa pine forests, underscoring the importance of
restoration
efforts in large, high-severity burn patches."
Singleton, Moisture and
vegetation cover limit ponderosa pine regeneration in
high-severity burn
patches in the southwestern US, Fire Ecology, May 7, 2021.
https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-021-00095-3
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Hi Dan and all. See the post I sent out a little while ago. It is extremely important to understand what studies of forests are evaluating and when. An example of recent extreme changes in the state of our forests health that was not included in my previous email is the fate of carbon offset forests in California, plausibly the place with the most forest offset programs in the world.
California's 100-year
carbon credit buffer
pool has almost completely burned, mostly in fires in 2020
and 2021, showing extreme lack of permanence… "Wildfires have depleted
nearly
one-fifth of the total buffer pool in less than a decade,
equivalent to at
least 95 percent of the program wide contribution intended to
manage all fire
risks for 100 years. We also show that potential carbon losses
from a single
forest disease, sudden oak death, could fully encumber all
credits set aside
for disease and insect risks. These findings indicate that
California’s buffer
pool is severely undercapitalized and therefore unlikely to be
able to
guarantee the environmental integrity of California’s forest
offsets program
for 100 years." … "Estimated carbon losses from wildfires
within the
offset program’s first 10 years have depleted at least 95
percent of the
contributions set aside to protect against all fire risks over
100 years."
… "the potential carbon losses associated with a single
disease (sudden
oak death) and its impacts on a single species (tanoak) is
large enough to
fully encumber the total credits set aside for all disease-
and insect-related
mortality over 100 years." … "From the program’s inception
through
our study cut-off date of January 5, 2022, a total of 31.0
million credits
(13.4 percent) had been contributed to the buffer pool out of
a total 231.5
million issued credits, such that the 31.0 million buffer pool
credits insure a
portfolio of 200.5 million credits against permanence risks."
Badgley et al.,
California's forest carbon offsets buffer pool is severely
undercapitalized,
Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, August 5, 2022.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2022.930426/full
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1
Nucleation Capital
On Jul 19, 2023, at 1:26 PM, Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com> wrote:
ValerieI am certainly against any subsidies for oil and gas usage and for subsidies for renewable energy !
I should have been more direct in expressing my view rather than just saying I was against what Oxy was doing to use DAC CO2 to push oil out of the ground where it is only economical because of government subsidies. In fact I am against any subsidy for avoided emissions using fossil fuel sources.IMy point was that we would need to continue to use fossil fuels because energy equity is the other challenge we are facing since the UN has shown their human development index correlates with energy per capita
<image.png>and it will take quite some while for renewables to provide the global demand for energyMy point of view about the transition we are going through to address the two main challenges we face,energy equity and climate change, is expressed in the not for profit I have founded , Equitable Climate Innovations Institute(https://eciinstitute.org/) . By the way I am very pro nuclear because I believe in the end our species will get its energy from nuclearand it will be nuclear fusion. If you are interested read REME -- Renewable Energy and Materials Economy -- The Path to Energy Security, Prosperity and Climate Stability https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14976I hope this clarifies things but please do not hesitate to voice any other concernsPeter
On Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at 6:37 PM Nucleation Capital <nucleati...@gmail.com> wrote:
Peter,
It is disappointing to hear you talk like this and it appears you have bought into Exxon’s self-serving arguments lock, stock and oil-filled barrel. My question to you is, how much have they invested in Global Thermostat and is it worth it?Their "business as usual” approach, even with their (hopefully not too modest) investments in Global Thermostat, will doom our planet. What you’ve written is fossil fuel propaganda because nuclear power, which today produces almost 50% of US clean electrons and about 20% of US electricity and 10% of global energy could easily be expanded globally with vastly less mortality than what is caused by using fossil fuels, even before we factor in climate impacts. Every nuclear plant built supplants a coal or gas plant's worth of demand or more and saves lives in the process. But they tend to omit that and are threatened by this fact. You too?Nuclear combined with renewables creates very cost-effective 100% clean energy combinations, can be deployed globally to meet what is growing energy demand worldwide, of combined electricity, industry process heat, transportation and built environment heat/cooling needs. Of course we want to meet the energy needs of underserved populations but we definitely don’t need fossil fuels to do that! They just want us to ignore the nuclear option, so we think we do.You may be correct in saying that renewables cannot grow fast enough to meet those needs but combined with nuclear power and, very soon, Gen IV small modular nuclear power plants, we can create 100% clean, reliable and climate resilient energy systems. Nuclear will come in a wider range of sizes and styles and can be built almost anywhere—even at former coal or gas plants, at industrial plants and even anywhere that CCUS needs a 24x7x52 power source.Had the US stayed on the course set by President Kennedy for our nuclear build out, we might not even have the climate crisis we have now. Instead, nuclear was attacked through very effective antinuclear campaigns (most of which had funding from fossil fuel) and so the fossil fuel industry was able to extend its death grip on our energy appetites an extra fifty years, killing millions globally every year with toxic pollution, accidents, and deadly geopolitics, in the interest of serving our energy needs, while actively keeping the public opposed to clean and safe nuclear power.Unfortunately, the world cannot afford to allow that to continue any longer and we must do better than to have our collective will being compromised by the fossil appeasement mindset you now spout, as well as omitting or propagating fictions about nuclear power, which is the best energy mankind's ever developed. We neither need nor can we afford the "slow down the energy transition" mantra spewed by the fossil fuel industry. That is pure bunk.Of course, I agree that in the 19th and 20th centuries, fossil fuels accelerated human development and population. I also agree that this industry has enormous expertise in global scale projects. However, that does not expunge their sins. They worked to deny climate truth, sought to obfuscate the science to the public, demonized climate scientists and supported deniers and threatened to oppose politicians seeking to address the problem. All to extend their profits and power well past the time that they knew what the impacts of their products’ emissions would be on the planet—and they are still doing so now, more fifty years later. That’s not showing integrity and they deserve to be demonized for that ongoing and greenwashed behavior.You really want to “come together and repurpose their capability to enable using fossil fuels while we reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere at the same time?” You really think that will keep our planet from overheating beyond the endurance of the ecosystems that humans rely on? Have you missed seeing Dr. Hansen's recent climate reports? I’ve attached the headliner image as a reminder.
<James Hansen graphic.png>
Michael Hayes
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/BF1622F9-4C78-4E32-B000-15DFCDD25686%40gmail.com.
Bru Pearce
Hi Valerie,
Fully in agreement with you and I would add:
5) Food synthesis to feed 9 billion people and freeing up vast amounts of currently farmed land for rewilding.
6) To power adaptation to committed impacts of sea-level rise.
Best wishes,,
Bru
Pearce
E-mail b...@envisionation.org
Skype brupearce
Work +44 20 8144 0431 Mobile +44 7740 854713
Salcombe, Devon, UK
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Dan Miller
Nucleation Capital
Jim Baird
The energy solution for a boiling planet
UN chief Antonio Guterres announced Thursday, that record-shattering July temperatures show Earth has passed from a warming phase into an "era of global boiling."
Ocean heat uptake is the essential measure of the Earth’s climate with 93% of the heat of global warming is going into the oceans. Where in the tropics the oceans are thermally stratifying, with lighter water near the surface and denser water at greater depth.
This configuration acts as a barrier to the efficient mixing of heat, carbon, oxygen, and the nutrients vital to aquatic life.
Efficient mixing of these ingredients would eliminate all risks of climate change, while producing twice as much energy as is currently being derived from fossil fuels.
A thermally stratified ocean lends itself to the conversion of a portion of the heat of global warming to work in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics and to the movement, through heat pipes, of surface heat to deep water where it is no longer any kind of environmental threat.
Global warming is problem of thermodynamics, governed by the laws of thermodynamics.
The first law is the application of conservation of energy to the system and shows how energy, including global warming, can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.
The second law sets the limits on the possible efficiency of a heat engine and determines the direction of energy flow, which is always from a region of high heat to a lower one.
Geoengineering is a set of emerging technologies designed to manipulate the environment and offset some of the impacts of climate change.
These technologies are typically split into two categories: carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management.
Thermodynamic Geoengineering is a third way. It is the conversion of the heat of global warming to productive energy as was first demonstrated by the Greek, Hero of Alexandria, in the first century AD with his Aeolipile .
While Hero showed his Aeolipile could lift a weight, in 1845, the English Physicist James Prescott Joule used a falling weight to spin a paddle wheel in an insulated barrel to demonstrate how this mechanical energy raised the temperature of the water in the barrel.
His mechanical equivalent to heat was a 427 kilogram mass falling 1 meter against a 1 G gravitational field to increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by 1° Celsius.
This equivalency between work and heat energy led to the formulation of the first law of thermodynamics.
The process whereby the conversion of heat to work is accomplished is referred to ocean thermal energy conversion or OTEC, which is one the few non-polluting renewable energy technologies capable of delivering baseload power.
But not all OTEC is created equally.
With conventional OTEC, water is brought to the surface by massive pipes to condense a working fluid after it has passed through a turbine to produce power after the working fluid has been first vaporized using surface heat. The thermodynamic efficiency of this process is only about 3 percent and the 97 percent of the surface heat diluted by the cold water, is dispersed outward towards the poles that in the case of the Arctic is warmed 4 degrees over the course of 1,000 years at the same time as the tropics are cooled by the same amount.
This upwelling approach is at least two and a half times less efficient than Thermodynamic Geoengineering, which uses both warm and cold water contiguous to the evaporator and condenser, doesn’t dump cold water near the ocean surface, uses pipe that are one order in diameter smaller, thus reducing the entire cost of the system by a third, pumps 1/200th of the fluids, and reduces the parasitic pumping losses of these fluids by a third.
In their paper "Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide composition, an international team of scientists calculated the amount of heat gain in the ocean between 1991 and 2016, on the basis of the amount of atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide released from the ocean as it warms. They found that the ocean gained on average 1.29 ± 0.79 times 10 to the 22nd power Joules of heat, which equates to 409 terawatts a year.
In a 2007 patent filing, the experimental physicist Melvin Prueitt, calculated an OTEC system like Thermodynamic Geoengineering, using a heat pipe to convey tropical heat into deep water could convert about 7.6% of the surface heat to work.
Four hundred nine terawatts of heat converted to work at 7.6 percent efficiency, produces 31 terawatts of primary energy, about 2.1 times as much energy as is currently being derived from fossil fuels.
About a sixth of the world’s electricity is currently produced by hydropower, which represents about seventy percent of our current renewable energy production.
Hydropower exploits the energy potential of gravity, the same way Joules experiment did, but in an open system, gravity is overcome by evaporation that converts surface water into vapor that rises to a higher elevation where it gains greater gravitational potential.
The temperature differential between a tropical surface and a depth of 1000 meters, where the temperature is universally about 4 degrees Celsius, has the same kind of hydraulic potential as the head of a hydroelectric dam.
Each degree centigrade corresponds to a hydraulic head of 427-meters.
Whereas the efficiency of a conventional dam is about 90 percent, the efficiency of Thermodynamic Geoengineering is about 7.6 %.
An OTEC map shows large areas of the tropical surface with a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius or greater, making a temperature differential between the surface and 1000 meters of 26 degrees, at 7.6 percent efficiency, equates to a theoretical head of 844 meters.
This then has to be halved because Thermodynamic Geoengineering is theoretically an irreversible process, leaving a head of 422 meters.
However, the diffusion rate of ocean heat from a depth of 1000 meters is one centimeter per day through the deepest 900 meters of the ocean and 1 meter per day through the 100 meters of the ocean mixed layer. So, the initial unconverted heat is back at the surface in about 226 years where it can be recycled. In total 13 times making Thermodynamic Geoengineering, at 92.4 %, even more efficient than hydroelectricity.
The tallest dam in the world at 305 meters is the Jinping dam on the Yalong river in China.
And China also has the largest hydroelectric facility, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, with a hydraulic head of 80.6 meters and a capacity of 39.3 cubic kilometers.
The intertropical Convergence Zone is the best location for implementing Thermodynamic Geoengineering because it spans the equator and cyclones don’t form there due to the self-cancelling of the Coriolis effect as it switches from positive In the Northern Hemisphere to negative in the Southern Hemisphere.
It has a width of about 7 degrees latitude and covers about 70 percent of the tropical surface for a total of about 28,000 square kilometers, or about 712 times the surface of the Three Gorges Dam, times 5.2 for the difference in hydraulic heads, equals 3700 times the electrical potential of the Three Gorges Dam, which is estimated to cost US$37 billion and has an installed capacity of 22,500 megawatts.
Prorating 22,500 megawatts and $37 billion to the 31 terawatt electrical potential of Thermodynamic Geoengineering with its estimated cost of $2.9 trillion as estimated and confirmed by Ron Baiman, Associate Professor of Economics at Benedictine University, and with the Healthy Planet Action Coalition, Thermodynamic Geoengineering is 17 and a half times more cost effective than the Three Gorges Dam.
And although the Three Gorges Dam is for flood control and navigation purposes, as well as for power generation, a catalogue of Thermodynamic Geoengineering benefits beyond power generation lists surface cooling, reversal of the off gassing of oxygen and carbon dioxide from the ocean to the atmosphere as the ocean warms, the removal of cyclone fuel from the surface to deep water, the reduction of sea level rise due the thermal expansion of the ocean - the coefficient of expansion of sea water is half at 1000 meters it is at the tropical surface - and heat moved into deep water is unavailable to melt icecaps, produce drought or wild fires, reduces floods, and warming impacts on human health and biodiversity.
At a cost of $2.9 trillion annually, Thermodynamic Geoengineering is $3 trillion cheaper than the $5.9 trillion, the International Monetary Fund has estimated is the environmental cost of doing business burning fossil fuels.
Thirty-one terawatts of energy that in turn cools the ocean surface would reverse the offgassiing of 4.3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the ocean to the atmosphere. And since the notional cost of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere is $100 per tonne, This cooling and energy production would save on the expenditure of $430 billion for carbon dioxide removal.
In combination with removing the environmental cost of burning fossil fuels, this energy production would be effectively too cheap to meter.
At scale, it would produce electricity at a cost of 1.1 cents per kilowatt hour.
Wind and solar are promoted as the best renewable energy resources for replacing fossil fuels, but the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory has determined that the total useful surface area for a wind farm is about 250,000 square meters per megawatt of power and for photovoltaics it is about 16,000 square meters per megawatt.
Considering Thermodynamic Geoengineering would produce 200 megawatts of OTEC from 10,000 square meters of the ocean’s surface, it is a 300 times greater solar concentrator than conventional photovoltaic devices.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration says, energy heat pumps, powered by low‐emissions electricity, are the central technology in the global transition to secure and sustainable heating.
They are currently available on the market and are three‐to‐five times more energy efficient than natural gas boilers.
They reduce householders’ exposure to fossil fuel price spikes and can provide cooling as well as heating, which is responsible for 4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually or about 10% of all emissions.
Like a heat pump, Thermodynamic Geoengineering moves heat through the phases of a low-boiling-point working fluid. But in the latter case this is a free ride. Furthermore, the hotter the ocean surface gets, the more energy this process produces and the more efficient it becomes.
An evaporator at the surface passively boils the Thermodynamic Geoengineering working fluid, producing a pressure that allows the vapor to flow into the deep, cold, water at a velocity approaching that of sound, where the vapor condenses to a liquid that is pumped back to the surface to complete the cycle.
This vapor flow is interrupted by a heat engine that changes the work into electrical energy with a loss of only about 4.8% in pumping losses incurred returning the condensed working fluid back to the surface.
In other words, about 12 times more energy is produced by the system as is consumed internally by the pumps.
Heat pumps typically use about five times less energy in their cooling mode than in their heating mode, because in cold weather there isn’t as much heat that can be absorbed from outside the system.
Since Thermodynamic Geoengineering is always in a cooling mode, it is a highly efficient way of cooling the surface. In part because there is always a lot more cold water in the oceans than hot water, which in the latter case is the principle threat from global warming.
The final obstacle that must be overcome before we can get to a viable fossil fuel transition, is the availability of raw material.
The oceans contain 47 minerals and metals dissolved in solution, some of which are already being harvested.
Thermodynamic Geoengineering platforms harvesting surface heat to produce energy would pass millions of tonnes of water through their heat exchangers, which could be adapted to extract a portion of the 50 quadrillion tons of trace elements that are dissolved in solution in the oceans.
For example, 31,000 one gigawatt Thermodynamic Geoengineering plants would, move 124,000,000 tonnes of water per second through their heat exchangers. Which means the 1.45 quintillion short tons of water - the total mass of the ocean’s water- would be shifted to these heat exchangers in about 370 years.
The concentration of magnesium, currently valued at between $12,000 to $15,000 per tonne, is 1,272 parts per million. About 3 times the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which it is notionally being contemplated should be removed from the atmosphere at a cost of about $100 per tonne.
The method of precipitating magnesium from sea water has been know for over a century. And magnesium alloys reduce the weight of heat-removing elements like heat exchangers used for Thermodynamic Geoengineering by a third without losing its heat transferring properties.
At 1272 parts per million of the 1.45 quintillion short tons of water in the ocean, the current cost of the metal would be reduced by several orders of magnitude when produced as an adjunct to Thermodynamic Geoengineering energy producing operations.
In short, Thermodynamic Geoengineering is the hybrid “Heat Pump”, “Heat Pipe”, “Heat Engine”, holistic approach to the problems of global warming and fossil fuel replacement.
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Seth Miller
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Clive Elsworth
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