World Energy Outlook ‘Patently Unsustainable’

Grim news from the International Energy Agency this week. The organization’s annual World Energy Outlook reports that the earth simply can’t sustain current trends in energy supply and consumption, and that we’ve got to cut back, stat – but it won’t be easy.

Nobuo Tanaka, the IEA’s Executive Director, says rising imports of oil and gas from the increasingly concentrated production in a small number of countries puts us at even bigger risk of major disruptions. At the same time, our greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise, putting the world on track for a global temperature increase of up to 6 degrees Celsius.

From The Daily Green:

If government policies don’t change, the world will spend $1 trillion on energy — much of it fossil fuels — and demand will grow 45% by 2030, a slightly slower rate of growth than was predicted last year because of the economic crisis. China and India would account for half the growth in world energy demand, and world cities would account for three-quarters of total demand.

Demand for oil would rise nearly 25% and will remain the world’s “main source of energy” for years to come, even under the most “optimistic” alternative scenarios. But it could come at an increasing cost, as supplies dwindle, oil supplies are nationalized, sources shift to non-traditional forms like oil shale, oil sands and deep-sea deposits, and political instability disrupts supply. “The era of cheap oil is over,” Tanaka said.

Renewable energy, even under current government policies, will become the second-biggest source of electricity sometime in the next few years.

Carbon dioxide emissions will increase 45% by 2030, if current trends continue unabated. Three-quarters of the increase will come from China, India and the Middle East. Reducing emissions to prevent a 3-degree (C) rise in temperature would take a $4.1 trillion investment ($17 per person per year) by 2030 primarily in energy efficiency so that vehicles, homes and appliances demand less energy. That investment would deliver fuel-cost savings of $7 trillion or more. But to prevent a 2-degree temperature increase, the cost would rise to $9.3 trillion, as the world invested heavily in non-polluting forms of energy, and the fuel-cost savings drops to just $5.8 trillion.

Scary. I don’t know about you, but things like this make me even more grateful that we’ve at least got President Elect Obama about to take charge, instead of another Republican who’d continue the status quo. This is no time to let oil industry buddies influence how we move forward on such a pressing problem.

Link [The Daily Green]

Cow Burps Responsible for More Greenhouse Gases than Cars

A herd of cows produces more greenhouse gases than a family car just by burping, a researcher at the University of Portsmouth said this week.  Dr. Andy Thorpe explained that 200 cows belch out enough methane each year to equal the emissions produced by a car being driven 111,850 miles.

From The Independent:

He added that while CO2 emissions have increased by 31 per cent during the past 250 years, methane, which has a higher warming potential and a longer lifetime in the atmosphere, has increased by 149 per cent during the same period.

Dr Thorpe added that methane in the atmosphere was believed to be responsible for one-fifth of global warming experienced since 1750.

The main animal producers are domestic animals, particularly cows, sheep, goats and camels which have an additional stomach, he said.

I’ve got an easy solution: sell the family car and starting riding around on cows. It’ll be way more fun, if slower. Seriously though, cutting back on the amount of meat and dairy we consume would be a huge help. The reason there are so many cows on this earth at any given time is that huge numbers are raised for meat and dairy.

A single dairy cow can produce as much as 176 pounds of methane per year. If there wasn’t as much demand, factory farms wouldn’t breed so many cows. It wouldn’t just cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, it would also reduce the amount of grain needed for cattle feed (and the land, fertilizer, pesticides and water used to grow it). It’s simple. If you’re not willing to go vegetarian, at least cut back.  Having fewer meat-centered meals per week isn’t that big a sacrifice when you consider what we’re up against.

Link [The Independent]
Photo credit: Flickr user foxypar4

BlueCool: An Eco-Friendly Way to Cool Big Trucks

Anyone who’s ever been at a truck stop even for a few minutes knows how polluting these monster vehicles are, even when the drivers are sleeping.  To keep their air conditioning running so their cabs stay cool, drivers keep their engines running at all times. That makes for an awful lot of exhaust fumes. So, a company called Webasto Products began working on a solution, which has been described as ‘high-tech ice’.

From CNN:

Webasto calls the system BlueCool. The heart of the system is a 300-pound black box that’s mounted on the truck’s frame rail. As the trucker drives, the system sends refrigerant through a matrix of graphite and a water/glycol mixture inside the box, creating blocks of ice.

When the truck is stopped, the driver turns on an air handler that circulates coolant around the ice and blows cold air from the unit into the bunk area of the cab. The fan and circulation pump use only 3.5 to 10 amps from the truck’s battery — which means there’s no danger of draining the battery, Webasto says.

“When it’s running it doesn’t have any emissions or use any fuel,” said Thomas. He said BlueCool can maintain a comfortable bunk temperature for up to ten hours.

The EPA has estimated that idling trucks consume nearly a gallon of fuel per hour, while emitting nitrogen oxides and particulates, which contribute to smog.  This problem incited Webasto to launch a campaign to raise awareness of the issue, called Make a Leap.  As part of the campaign, a trucker took a BlueCool-equipped truck on a summer-long publicity tour of truck stops across the nation.  Truckers are excited about the prospect of using less diesel, and the system would pay for itself within a year.

Link [CNN]

Arctic Sea ‘Foaming with Methane’ as Permafrost Melts

Scientists have discovered the first evidence that millions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, are being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed.  It’s not yet confirmed, but if it turns out to be true, it could be an extremely bad sign for the future of every living thing on earth.  Scientists believe that underground stores of methane, when suddenly released into the atmosphere, cause rapid increases in global temperatures.

From The Independent:

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through “methane chimneys” rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a “lid” to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.

Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

The area where the methane was discovered covers thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

So, basically, the damage we’ve already done has led to the permafrost melting.  The permafrost had been keeping all of this methane from escaping.  As the methane escapes, it will accelerate global warming at such a dramatic pace that there might not be anything we can do to counteract the effects.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we should stop all of our efforts to fight global warming – the opposite is true.  This news, if it’s confirmed, should light a fire under our collective asses and force us to get serious about the things that are causing global warming.  It might be too late, but isn’t fighting better than sitting around waiting for Mother Nature to squash us like ants?

Link [The Independent] via [WorldChanging]

White House Buries Report on Possible Climate Change Death Toll

My, my. Will wonders never cease? The Bush administration has once again stepped in to keep important information out of public hands because of their own selfish needs. Information that could save thousands of lives and keep catastrophic damage from occurring to the planet. Is anyone surprised?

US government scientists wrote a report detailing the harmful impact that climate change could have upon the human population, which included a high death toll from heat waves, fires, disease and smog. The 149-page report was prepared as part of a response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling under the Clean Air Act, which found that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gases unless there was not a scientific reason to do so. The Bush Administration stifled the report, and environmental activists believe it’s because they don’t want to regulate greenhouse gases.

From The Telegraph:

The report lays out for the first time the scientific case for the grave risks that global warming poses to people, and to the food, energy and water on which society depends.

“Risk (to human health, society and the environment) increases with increases in both the rate and magnitude of climate change,” scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency said. Global warming, they wrote, is “unequivocal,” and humans are to blame.

It suggests that extreme weather events and diseases carried by ticks and other organisms could kill more people as temperatures rise and allergies could worsen because climate change could produce more pollen. Smog, a leading cause of respiratory illness and lung disease, could become more severe in many parts of the country. At the same time, global warming could mean fewer illnesses and deaths due to cold.

The Bush Administration has worked to discourage a connection between public health and climate change, because it would compel them to regulate greenhouse gases. Lawmakers are persistently lobbied by corporations who fear that emissions regulations would hurt their business.

The bottom line is, we can’t trust the Bush camp to do anything right, so we’ve just got to wait for them to leave. Only 5 months left!

Link [The Telegraph]
Photo credit: Eric Gay

Researchers Collecting Cow Flatulence in Plastic Tanks to Study Global Warming

10 cows in Argentina are wearing fashionable pink ‘balloon backpacks’ that collect methane directly from their stomachs. Researchers in Argentina are studying the effects of methane on the environment, and they’ve discovered that methane from cows accounts for more than 30 percent of Argentina’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

From The Telegraph:

As one of the world’s biggest beef producers, Argentina has more than 55 million cows grazing in its famed Pampas grasslands.
Guillermo Berra, a researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology, said every cow produces between 8000 to 1,000 litres of emissions every day.

Methane, which is also released from landfills, coal mines and leaking gas pipes, is 23 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

Scientists are now carrying out trials of new diets designed to improve cows’s digestion and hopefully reduce global warming. Silvia Valtorta, of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigations, said that by feeding cows clover and alfalfa instead of grain “you can reduce methane emissions by 25 percent”.

So, these big balloon-like bags collect the methane that would otherwise come out of the cow at both ends and end up in the atmosphere, and when they’re full the scientists take them off and hang them up in the corral for analysis. Gross. Can you imagine accidentally getting a whiff of methane straight from a cow’s stomach? Though, I guess it may be milder than it would be after traveling through… okay, I’m thinking way too much about cow flatulence first thing in the morning.

Link [The Telegraph] via [Robotzilla]
Photo credit: Reuters

White House Suppressed EPA Report on Car Emissions

At this point, I think the question is, can the Bush administration do anything right, or are they really all just a bunch of corrupt assholes? Last December, White House officials tried to stop the EPA from submitting a proposal that would limit greenhouse-gas emissions, supposedly because they ‘threatened public welfare’. Once they found out that the EPA had sent out the email only minutes before, they wanted the email ‘recalled’.

From The Washington Post:

The EPA official who forwarded the e-mail, Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett, refused, said the sources, who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.

The proposed rule was EPA’s response to an April 2007 Supreme Court ruling that the agency had violated the Clean Air Act by refusing to take up the issue of regulating automobile emissions that contribute to global warming.

Burnett, who resigned from the agency this month, sent the e-mail to the White House Office of Management and Budget at 2:17 p.m. Dec. 5 and received the call warning him to hold off at 2:25 p.m., the sources said. The EPA is expected to release a watered-down version of its original proposal within a week, highlighting the extent to which Bush administration officials continue to resist mandatory federal limits on emissions linked to global warming.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that White House officials never opened EPA’s e-mail. In March, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee disclosed documents showing that the White House had overruled EPA’s findings on the impact of vehicle emissions on climate change.

Burnett refused to comment on the White House calls but said in an interview, “In early December, I sent an e-mail with the formal finding that action must be taken to address the risk of climate change,” adding that he resigned his political appointment because the agency had been stymied in its efforts to respond to the Supreme Court. “The White House made it clear they did not want to address the ramifications of that finding and have decided to leave the challenge to the next administration. Some [at the White House] thought that EPA had mistakenly concluded that climate change endangers the public. It was no mistake.”

WTF – does the White House know how email works? They wanted it ‘recalled’? They never opened the email so the EPA rewrote it? Amazing. What a bunch of partisan rightwing hack pussies.

Apparently, the revised version that the EPA is preparing to put out no longer states that climate change is a direct threat to public welfare, is far shorter and no longer includes alternative approaches to regulate greenhouse emissions from vehicles and power plants. The White House stood on the EPA’s balls and the EPA gave in.

Is it 2009 yet?

Link [The Washington Post]

Photo credit: Flickr user KRSPO

Seven Years and Tons of Lost Credibility Later: Bush Decides Greenhouses Gasses Need to Be Curbed, Color Us Unimpressed

Am I the only one who could give two shits about Bush’s new plan (just announced today) to curb Greenhouse Gases? That’ll be left to the next President, this guy is just riding out the clock after what will go down as the worst Presidency in history. George Bush is an asshole and we can’t wait for him to move back onto the Ranch and let Obama get to work fixing all his mistakes. Global Warming will be one of them, we don’t need that douche nozzle chiming in now on how important it is to go green. I’d rather hear what Paris Hilton has planned to fight rising CO2 emissions.

The AP has it:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Revising his stance on global warming, President Bush on Wednesday proposed a new target for stopping the growth of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

The president also called for putting the brakes on greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants within 10 to 15 years.

“To reach our 2025 goal, we will need to more rapidly slow the growth of power sector greenhouse gas emissions so that they peak within 10 to 15 years, and decline thereafter,” Bush said in excerpts of the speech released early by the White House.

“By doing so, we will reduce emission levels in the power sector well below where they were projected to be when we first announced our climate strategy in 2002. There are a number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies.”

Bush was not to outline a specific proposal, but he’ll lay out a strategy for “realistic” emission reduction targets and “principles” he thinks Congress should follow in crafting global warming legislation.

Link [Breitbart]

Photo: Flickr user Tootsfontaine