Perpetual Innovation

Category: greenhouse gasses

  • The Keeling Curve | How Much CO2 Can The Oceans Take Up?

    The Keeling Curve | How Much CO2 Can The Oceans Take Up?: “Recent estimates have calculated that 26 percent of all the carbon released as CO2 from fossil fuel burning, cement manufacture, and land-use changes over the decade 2002–2011 was absorbed by the oceans. (About 28 percent went to plants and roughly 46 percent to the atmosphere.) During this time, the average annual total release of was 9.3 billion tons of carbon per year, thus on average 2.5 billion tons went into the ocean annually.”

    So… of the 9.3 billion in CO2 emissions, the oceans have been absorbing about 26%. But, as in all things that reach saturation, this cannot be expected to continue.

    We do know that CO2 will go into the air, since the atmosphere gets first go at fossil fuel emissions. So the Greenhouse gasses might start to rise much, much faster.

    This certainly looks like a no-win.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Sea levels set for a ‘continuing rise’ for generations…The Daily Climate … Like baking a cake.

    Sea levels set for a ‘continuing rise’ for generations — The Daily Climate:

    So here’s the story. It’s already baked into the cake.

    The current setting has sea levels rising for decades. Even if we all went to carbon neutral tomorrow.

    The basics are that greenhouse gasses will persist in the atmosphere for decades, even centuries. The most prevalent is Carbon Dioxide (CO2) which will stay in the atmosphere for 70 years, maybe 100.

    So, we can expect temperatures to rise 2, 3, maybe 4 or 5 degrees C. And, as the ocean waters warm, the water expands (thermal expansion). If the oceans are about 2 miles deep, on average, the heat expansion really makes a difference. We’re talking yards here, not feet.

    Some estimates seem to show only the top, maybe the top 10% of the oceans heating and expanding. But that’s because they are using a short planning horizon. If you wait another 50 to 100 years, you should expect far more of the oceans to warm, and expand.

    That is, the heating is already “baked into the cake”… Or in our case, baked into the atmosphere, which will eventually bake into the oceans, which will eventually…

    Well, you get the picture.

    Make no doubt, I’m looking and hoping that this scenario is not the most likely to play forward.

    We do have lower solar and volcanic activities which should serve as a cooling damper for the atmosphere.

    But we appear to be overshadowing that offset. At least from all I can see.

    As always, the best and first place to start is conservation and efficiency.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • Energy and Ecology: Comparison of global CO2 emissions estimates by GCP, IEA, BP, EDGAR, and US EIA (1990-2012)

    Energy and Ecology: Comparison of global CO2 emissions estimates by GCP, IEA, BP, EDGAR, and US EIA (1990-2012):

    Here is a cool chart of the estimates for global carbon emissions.

    It shows the estimates from various sources and proves an interesting view as to high and low estimates.

    So we are probably at about 35B tonnes per year. The increase doesn’t look like it is planing off any time soon though, no matter which way you measure it.

    ‘via Blog this’

  • AP IMPACT: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low – Yahoo! News

    AP IMPACT: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low – Yahoo! News:

    CO2 from the US is down. WOW!. See the full EIA report on CO2 Emissions.

    The last time we had that was in 2009, we all assumed that was mainly because of the economic slowdown. But apparently, even then, part of it was because of the switching to NatGas.

    “[T]he U.S. Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said this month that energy related U.S. CO2 emissions for the first four months of this year fell to about 1992 levels. Energy emissions make up about 98 percent of the total.“

     So the big reasons for the CO2 emissions reduction is primarily because of the switch to NatGas from coal in energy generation! … The slowing of economic growth down to 1.8% is another reason. 

     What’s amazing about this is that the switch to natgas is primarily driven by market forces. The power industry has been wining endlessly about the big food of the EPA on the juggler veins of the power industry… and of course the US economy. Yet, the move happened way ahead of schedule. 

     Low prices of nat gas make it, well, irresponsible, not to switch to clean gas away from dirty coal.

    Health benefits (fewer deaths and injuries in mining). Massive improvement in air and water quality. No coal ash to deal with.

     This would all be a good thing, if it weren’t for the massive increase in coal consumption from China and India. Where, exactly, is the benefit of us cutting back on coal when we simply ship it to China and they burn it. And they don’t worry about scrubbing it as much as we.

    China now burns half the coal in the world, and rising quickly.

     Sorry for looking good news in the eye and sounding skeptical. We sometimes simply need a little good news here and there and just to enjoy it.

     Ahhhh, NatGas, A cleaner addiction to a unsustainable problem.

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