Forecast: America to be hit by temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees

[Sam Carana]

Forecast: America to be hit by temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees 
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/01/forecast-america-to-be-hit-by-temperatures-as-low-as-minus-40-degrees.html

Cheers,

Sam Carana

[Dale Lanan]

I was looking at the y = (1E-5X)^4 - approx X^3 + approx 278X^2 -approx 358k X +2E +8 with R^2=approx 3/4 and think it should be updated because some of the feedback processes of past are fading or bobbing out. And new ones are showing up although I can't isolate that in my mind..

For instance had Barack not acted like Methane Man on steroids in State of the Union the constant would have likely been moved.. Updating the polynomial would end run run around the Power's-that-be and maybe score a 'what would Alexander the Great' do battle strategy win.

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 6:48 AM, Dale Lanan <dale...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sam, I'm not sure people will be able to assemble action needed in the face of crop loss and stuff coming. And all the plans using root core change to world trade exchange and monetary value will be undercut by corruption. I'm afraid to go on Facebook for fear of being jumped and fruit flied by a powerful undercurrent of faux news.. I don't have the ability to be on two planets at the same time..

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[Christopher Masiero]

I'm not so convinced about this 'Methane Man' stuff at all.

Used as an energy source, methane is much cleaner and cheaper than any alternative than can be ramped up quickly.

Using Methane as a resource is the issue, nor the problem.  Methane stored in hydrates and spewing out into our atmosphere is the only problem we need to think about. 

I also still firmly believe, dear friends, that the lack of official action by all governments, is clearly a ruse to keep control of the situation.  I think most of you would agree.  As Boromir would say 'One does not Simply ignore Methane Hydrates in the IPPC Report'

Given the lack of 'apparent' action to hydrates, but clear knowledge if it, this can only mean one of two things;

1 - The world governments know all about it, and are bent on destroying the earth by not doing anything.

2 - The world governments know all about it, and are bent on fixing the problem in secret.

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm taking option 2 as the only reasonable option there is.

[Dr Louis Arnoux]

Hello Everyone,

I would like to stress a point developed in the paper I recently sent (ITS-EROI-Strategic-Briefing-v4.4.pdf).  No fuel in particular is a priori better than any other, neither methane or Thorium or anything else…  What matters fundamentally is the net energy flow one gets, in other words the ration of energy invested versus obtained.  This is a technology matter.  Methane or coal or petrol in the ground is not a resource in the absence of technology to find, extract, transport and use it.  Presently ALL EROIs are far too low to maintain the industrialised world people are familiar with; I stress ALL, including technology concerning so-called renewable sources, and all forms of nukes, even Thorium.  People can wiggle about whichever way they want it is not possible to cheat thermodynamics.  This is why we are in a two folded emergency: (1) we are falling into an energy trap and (2) we are dangerously close to abrupt climate change of a kind that potentially may wipe out over 90% of life on earth and certainly what we recognise as a more or less  civilised world, while we do not have the first Joule to do anything about it.  There are technologies and deployment methods able to deal with this (i.e. not to avoid a crash, it is too late for this< but to exit form one) but presently they are being ignored.  And no it's not a matter of conspiracy or secret plans on the part of "powers-that-be".  I am sufficiently acquainted with them to have been able to observe first hand the prevalent abysmal ignorance and lack of intelligence in such circles, i.e. not even able to figure out what would be in their best interest.

Maybe to assist this dialogue I will refer to a personal experience:

In 1981, Laura Nader and I met at the ANAAS Congress held that year at University of Queensland in Brisbane.  We were both guest speakers on matters of how societies actually deal with energy crises and decide about courses of action.  Her paper was spot on and we had great exchanges of views as I had observed exactly the same phenomena in my own Australasian activities (Nader, L., 1981, Energy and Equity, “Magic, Science and Religion” Revisited, 51^st ANZAAS Congress, Brisbane).  She had become part of US bodies oversewing responses to the first and second oil shocks and the US nuclear energy industry.  As an anthropologist she was initially taken aback by what she observed and proceeded to apply her anthropological skills to try and understand the weird "tribes" she had landed into. At the time I was managing the NZ energy R&D programme and as such had access to all the decision making in government and industry in Australasia and was doing something very similar as a social scientist (as well as being also an engineer).  The title of her paper was a wink at Malinowski's famous work on the Trobriands in 1925… She had observed that decision making in the US technostructure was indeed a weird mix of "Magic, Science and Religion" with magical and mythical quasi religious thinking predominating among people who were viewed and who viewed themselves as rational and making scientifically grounded decisions. Based on my own field work, I fully concurred.  Thirty-three years later I still observe the same dangerous decision making brew.  In fact it is much worse as in the meantime new issues have emerged that current decision-makers have next to nil experience or competencies to think through and deal with - so the recourse to mythical thinking is even more rife now than back then (re debt issues, employment, resumption of growth, energy transitions, climate change and much more).  In the main most decision-makers keep chasing dangerous mirages (to re-use John Foster's metaphor:  Foster, John, 2008, The Sustainability Mirage, Illusion and Reality in the Coming War on Climate Change, Earthscan, London, UK).

I hope the above may assist.  

Cheers

Louis

[Sam Carana]

Hi Louis and all, 

Thanks for your contributions. My conclusion is that the yield of the different forms of energy depends on the regulatory framework. Suffice to say that this regulatory framework needs to be changed. Wind energy already now is one of the most economic ways to produce energy, despite the often low yields that are all-to-often due in a large part to the regulatory burden (especially off-shore wind turbines in North America) and to the fact that utilities are not set up to work with the way wind energy supply varies with weather circumstances. The legal and regulatory burden could be eased by government using its executive powers to fast-track progress, not only in the development of wind farms, but also in areas such as the fees structure of utilities, grid interconnection, development of smart grids, electrification of transport, etc. Precisely because wind energy supply is variable and most wind blows at night, batteries of electric vehicles can be recharged through the grid economically at off-peak hours and electric vehicles can sell their surplus energy (at higher rates) to the grid at times of peak demand. Taken together, the many synergies between clean technologies, interconnection of electric grids, etc., ensure that clean energy can cater for our needs, especially when their progress is encouraged by supportive policy (including fast-tracking, local feebates, etc). In conclusion, the shift to clean energy can be accomplished very rapidly, say, within one decade, and this will also create many local jobs and investment opportunities, improve our health, and reduce perceived needs for military forces to secure global fuel supplies. Last but not least, of course, there is something that adds the greatest urgency to the need to rapidly accomplish the shift to clean energy. The risk of runaway warming is simply unacceptable and this alone calls for comprehensive and effective action as discussed at the Climate Plan blog at http://climateplan.blogspot.com 

Cheers,

Sam Carana

[Day Brown]

Climate/weather super computer models are constantly shown to be wrong
because of unrecognized important or powerful inputs. Since the
Greenland ice core shows frequent and rapid swings between warm & cold
until warming began 12,700 years ago (but for cold snaps like the
Younger Dryas & Medieval ice age), we havta ask if there's any reason
conditions could not again become so variable. We dont need to know
whether the instability is anthropocentric to expect more severe
conditions more often.

Agreed, that in a capitalistic global market there is a race to the
bottom as long as CO2 emission increases drives profits. It should also
be obvious the alternatives like solar & wind that are out in the
elements will not attract the needed venture capital to make a dent in
CO2 if any of these weather events not only disrupts output but damages
the infrastructure.

But one option, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) can be
installed in safer locations in more robust structures to be there after
a weather event in closer proximity to urban demand which poses fewer
problems with transmission lines. Furthermore, LFTR units can be
expected to produce energy at a known cost, in contrast to the fossil
fuel sector with a record of increasing prices as well as more
vulnerable infrastructure and ecological damage. Even developing
economies could attract the venture capital to install LFTR, and realize
the improved profitability of the whole economy. Which would stop the
race to the bottom.

Of course, fossil fuel sector control of governments and media prevents
them from saying anything about that. But that's what this screen is
for; to tell people LFTR does both, reduces or even eliminates CO2
emissions while at the same time saving them money.

[Day Brown]

He'll do about as well as any computer model.

Thing is, the Arctic ice is shrinking, so each season starts with a new
base line of ice & water temps that are different. Given the current
economic instability of the global market, a megastorm or other weather
event could start mass panic at any time. therefore, its no longer a
case of saving civilization as we know it, but determining what portion,
what technologies, and social organization, could be saved.

Its time to start planning for a New Age Ark. But keeping a steady eye
on the Arctic. At least to see if the rate of change matches
predictions. What will we need to take with, and what do we blow off?

[Day Brown]

On 01/31/2014 10:22 PM, Christopher Masiero wrote:
> I'm not so convinced about this 'Methane Man' stuff at all.
>
> Used as an energy source, methane is much cleaner and cheaper than any
> alternative than can be ramped up quickly.
>

Priorities may have changed. Watch the precipitation outcome in
California. If agribusiness there is forced to shut down, the effect on
the CBOT will make the 1929 market crash look like a fenderbender.

We can measure how much they get, and have a good idea what that'll do
to the economy as the harvest comes in, or would fail to. We dont need
to know the effect of CO2 or methane in theory; we have situation coming
in the next 6 months we can actually count in a computer.

If it were upta me, I'd install a massive Liquid Fluoride Thorium
Reactor program (LFTR); without needing to be hooked to the grid or the
turbines to make electricity, LFTR could power desalinization to save
their, and our, economy. From an engineering program, I dont see an
alternative.

If it works we can consider the contribution of methane. There's another
new weather problem however; the pipeline engineering didnt account for
the greater thermal expansion as the ground heats up and then cools down
in faster more extreme cycles. Its already made pipelines burst.

[Day Brown]

US weather right now makes Global Warming hard to sell. But that's the
wrong product. what is irrefutable is that the era of reasonable weather
variation is over; that realization has already driven up crop
insurance. But it also begs questions of how reliable computer climate
models are. Its hard to prove that the weather, and hence agricultural
output, will be reasonable because it will be hotter, colder, wetter, or
drier. But easy to prove that whatever it has been, it will be different.

Crop insurers dont need to know why a crop failed, only whether the
harvest was good or not. If not, the whole global market enterprise is
at risk, and knowing you were right in venues like this wont be enuf to
save you and those you care about.

Kingsworth here, is onto something...
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7277/ which is
because people do not want information, but confirmation. Then too,
there's an example in his example. The choice is not only between the
hand held scythe or the agribusiness tractor with a sickle bar burning
diesel; there's also the Amish horse drawn sickle bar which can mow hay
just as fast, but do it with a completely sustainable system.... if the
weather is reasonable. which from Arctic News, we know is doubtful. In
like manner the ROI calculations of solar & wind dont cover the cost of
insurance if weather is unreasonable and damages investments.

Kingsworth brings other options to environmentalists, but notes they are
not well received. The same old "Not invented here" syndrome, which is
also partly why Kingsworth himself does not know of LFTR. What he
senses, but does not spell out, is that people want issues to get the
ego feed of attention, not real solutions, because that would let us all
move on.

[Dr Louis Arnoux]

Hello Sam and All,

Regulatory frameworks are indeed very important.  However, it seems that we are not quite on the same page yet.  Climate science make intensive use of  thermodynamics to understand heat transfers between sun, atmosphere, ground and oceans.  Similarly considering power generation and how to substitute fossil fuels with other sustainable technologies thermodynamics is key. So I have to insist again, no given technology is a priori good or bad.  Even if on the surface it may appear economical for transient reasons, it does not necessarily mean that it is a "good thing" and that if used on a very large scale it will get us out of trouble.  

What matters absolutely is a technology's thermodynamic performance.  The best summary way of assessing this is EROI (how much energy return per unit of energy invested), taking account of the whole system.  In the case of wind this means wind turbines + grid (especially when off shore) + storage.  Answer: EROIs in most cases are way too low to enable a large scale use big enough to get us out of trouble.  We do require large network systems with EROIs substantially above 30:1, most wind is below 18:1.  

There is another side about wind that is still largely ignored: used on a very large scale it would have very large detrimental ecological effect, including warming is some areas.  Overall it would shrink the total amount of energy we can viably harvest from the sun.  Axel Kleidon has demonstrated this in a very didactic paper:  How does the earth system generate and maintain thermodynamic disequilibrium and what does it imply for the future of the planet?, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry published in Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society A,  370, doi: 10.1098/rsta.2011.0316.  I attach a simple slide that summarises his conclusion re wind.  Wind turbines are huge entropy generating machines, i.e. beside harvesting a wee bit of electricity they do release in the ecosystems a huge amount of entropy, here is the problem (look at the contrails on the attached picture - one looses access to the low grade energy in the generated turbulences; only the first row of turbines operates normally - massive design failures).

Please do understand.  The above is not a matter of opinion.  It's a matter of physics.  Harvesting free energy from the wind the way it's done presently simply does not cut it.  There are other ways that may be used to address climate change efficiently but they are extremely expensive, i.e. do require huge investments in energy before they can generate results and we do not have the first joule to build them.  Please look at Ming, Tingzhen, de_Richter, Renaud, Liu, Wei, Caillol, Sylvain, 2014, “Fighting global warming by climate engineering: Is the Earth radiation management and the solar radiation management any option for fighting climate change?” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 31 (2014) 792–834, Elsevier.

So people can wiggle each ever way they like, eventually they will end up where thermodynamics say they have to go, i.e.  very low cost, non-hierarchically networked, forms of sustainable direct solar harvesting, highly distributed at or near the points of use - the latter simply because over 90% of energy use in any country takes place as units below 1MW, and in the mains units below 10kW and that operating directly there is the only way to achieve the very high total energy efficiencies required to get us out of trouble. Recall: current global energy efficiency is only 12% (that of the US is around 13%).  We need to go above 80%.  This means recycling most waste heat (currently 88%): can't do this in large power station and refineries.  We can't do it either with current photovoltaics (efficiencies between 12% and 15%, i.e. far too low).

The good added side of what thermodynamic dictates is that it takes place at people's homes and places of business and work: No government regulates the use of washing machines, cooking appliances, PCs, and other such gear (so long as they are electrically safe, etc.).  You want one, you go to a shop and buy one.  Ditto here.  We now know how to make direct solar power generating appliances in sizes between 3kW and 1MW generating power directly at the point of use for less than US 4cent/kWh.  I.e. there are ways of addressing climate change by passing all these matters of regulation, of getting governments to move, etc…  There are ways directly open to all of us to directly take the initiative.  This is how the Internet took off globally: thanks to myriad little ISPs.  

What I am stressing here is also important in terms of what you say: accomplishing a rapid shift in one decade.  This is simply not feasible.  Thermodynamics say no again ;-))  The deployment of new energy infrastructures globally takes between 30 to 50 years and follow a logistic trajectory - can't help that.  The deployment of the Internet has been the fastest ever at around 25-30 years.  This is due to the very specific way its deployment took place: viral involvement of myriad small local entrepreneurs. This is the lesson to emulate to be fast; very small, waste heat recycling, solar units, networked into real intelligent grids, by myriad local entrepreneurs.    

So as far as I can see the main choice we all face is (1) stay on present course with or without use of tech mirages that can't deliver, and suffer the very dire consequences, just for the survivors to finally end up where global thermodynamics dictates; or (2) stop thinking in myths (with reference to my earlier email about Laura Nader), look at what is actually feasible and falls within the viable space delineated by thermodynamics and go there as rapidly and smoothly as possible. 

I hope this helps,

Cheers

Louis