There has been a lot of talk about Kevin Trenberth’s “travesty” email. 

Here is the REAL travesty:  Trenberth has selected and presented data in a way that makes the epithet “alarmist” an objective evaluation of his behavior.

The “Travesty” email

Kevin Trenberth was a lead author of the 1995, 2001, and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change.  So, he shares that Nobel Prize with Al Gore.  On his day job he is head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

One of the hacked Climate Research Unit (CRU) emails that is raising a few eyebrows is from October 12th of this year, from Kevin Trenberth to Micheal Mann (the original shamed author of the Hockey Stick).  Trenberth is talking about the cold weather the world has seen lately, and in particular, the cold weather being experienced where he and NCAR reside, in Boulder, Colorado.  He says it is a “travesty” that this “lack of warming at the moment” can’t be accounted for.

I live just down the road from Boulder, so I know what he is talking about.  It has been a cold, snowy, rough fall so far.

Here is Trenberth’s email to Mann…

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009 08:57:37 -0600
Cc: Stephen H Schneider , Myles Allen , peter stott , “Philip D. Jones” , Benjamin Santer , Tom Wigley , Thomas R Karl , Gavin Schmidt , James Hansen , Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather).

Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27, doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained from the author.)

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.

That said there is a LOT of nonsense about the PDO. People like CPC are tracking PDO on a monthly basis but it is highly correlated with ENSO. Most of what they are seeing is the change in ENSO not real PDO. It surely isn’t decadal. The PDO is already reversing with the switch to El Nino. The PDO index became positive in September for first time since Sept 2007.see[2]http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/ocean_briefing_gif/global_ocean_monitoring_c urrent.ppt

Kevin

Climate vs. Weather

Most folks are missing the real point when it comes to Trenberth’s “travesty” email.  For a typical example, see this very short Glenn Beck video…

If you are an anthropogenic global warming skeptic, like I am, then it is dangerous to gloat over cold WEATHER, because it may be warm tomorrow.  I do not think unusually cold weather for a season, or even a year, provides a very good counter-argument to global warming alarmism.  It goes back to the old weather vs. climate thing.  I accept that the recent (say, the last year) cold weather could (almost) be chalked up to weather, not climate.

The REAL travesty

Trenberth's gigantic "future hurricane" next to the real Katrina. Both are on the same size scale.

The real travesty with Trenberth has been his long-term take on climate, not weather.  Trenberth has loudly trumpeted climate alarmism by preaching hurricane panic.  See his Scientific American article from 2007.  He predicted a trend toward gigantic hurricanes which was depicted by an illustration of a “future hurricane,” which is shown at the left (click to enlarge).

Prior to that, in 2005 he wrote about the importance the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index.  This is a measure of the amount of energy dissipated by cyclones over the entire planet, or some part of the planet.  In the June 17th, 2005 issue of Science he said…

An important measure of regional storm activity is the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index…The ACE index reflects the collective intensity and duration of tropical storms and hurricanes during a given hurricane season.

At that time he used the ACE to bolster his argument that “Trends in human-influenced environmental changes are now evident in hurricane regions.”  This is what the satellite derived ACE looked like in 2005, about the time of Katrina…

Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index to 2005.

For some reason, he left the ACE data out of his 2007 Scientific American article.  Maybe because when he wrote his article in 2007 it looked something like this…

Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index to 2007.

I wonder if he includes the ACE index in his presentations today when he talks about the dangers of future hurricanes.  The Accumulated Cyclone Energy index as derived from satellite data, for both the planet and the Northern Hemisphere are at historic lows.  And that’s climate, not weather…

Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index to 2009.

The bottom line

Trenberth and the rest of the gang  are willing to sacrifice the tenets of scientific discourse and even common decency , and they are eager to evade the need for transparency, just to maintain their status as the scientific elite.  They have selected and presented data in a way that makes the epithet “alarmist” an objective evaluation of their behavior.

In the November, 2009 issue of Scientific American, Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi propose a plan to supply the world’s energy needs entirely by solar, wind and water sources by 2030. They conclude that the cost would be $100 trillion. My calculations show the cost to be more like $200 trillion.

This post dissects their comparison between the construction of the Interstate Highway System and their Energy system.

Cost

Interstate Highway System (2009 dollars):  $0.453 trillion
Jacobson’s and Delucchi’s Energy system (2009 dollars): $200 trillion

Jacobson and Delucchi say…

“Our plan calls for millions of wind turbines, water machines and solar installations. The numbers are large, but the scale is not an insurmountable hurdle; society has achieved massive transformations before… In 1956 the U.S. began building the Interstate Highway System, which after 35 years extended 47,000 miles, changing commerce and society.”

The Interstate Highway System is “largest public works program in history.” The concept was first approved by congress in 1944. But it was more than a decade until President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. The plan evolved to building 42,500 miles of “super-highway” by 1975.  40,000 miles were completed by 1980.

The expected cost in 1958 was $41 billion. By 1995 the total construction cost amounted to $329 billion (in 1996 dollars). This translates into $58.5 billion 1957 dollars. That is not too far off from the original estimate.  Converting the $329 billion 1996 dollars to 2009 dollars gives $453 billion.

So if Jacobson’s and Delucchi’s estimate for the cost of their energy system is correct, then their energy plan would cost over 200 times as much ($100 trillion / $453 billion) as the Interstate Highway System to which they like to compare it.

If my calculations for the cost of their energy system are correct, then it would cost more than 400 times as much ($200 trillion / $453 billion) as the Interstate Highway System! And since they propose building their system in just 20 years, then it would be like building 20 interstate highway systems (which took about 30 years to build) every single year for twenty years.

Required surface area

Interstate Highway System – paved area: 3,500 km²
Jacobson’s and Delucchi’s Energy system (solar portion only): 500,000 km²

Another interesting comparison is the amount of land required. The image at the left (click to enlarge) shows a spot check of interstate highway widths using Google Earth.  A liberal estimate of the average paved width of the Interstate Highway System is about 150 feet (about 45 meters, or 0.045 kilometers).  So, roughly speaking, the 47,000 mile (76,000 kilometer) Interstate Highway System paved over about 3,500 square kilometers ( 0.045 kilometers X 76,000 kilometers).

The area covered by solar panels in the Scientific American plan would be on the order of 500,000 square kilometers, or 150 times larger than the Interstate Highway System. (See calculated land required for Concentrated Solar, PV power plants, and rooftop solar, here)

Let’s rip up the Interstate Highway System and build a new one.

Jacobson and Delucchi claim that the expense of their energy system “is not money handed out by governments or consumers. It is an investment that is paid back through the sale of electricity and energy.” This is a soothing argument that overlooks an obvious fact: We already have a power energy system that pays for itself “through the sale of electricity and energy.”   

This is like pointing out that an Interstate Highway System would have great benefits for us, and then suggesting that we could reap those benefits by tearing down the system we have now and then rebuilding it.

It’s almost like swallowing poison so you can reap the benefits of good health after you recover.

The cover story of the November issue of Scientific American, A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030,” by Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi  promises a path to a “sustainable future” for the whole world in just 20 years. They define “sustainable” as a world where all energy sources are derived from water, wind and solar. Nuclear need not apply.

The article had a few words about the cost, but much was left out.  Jacobson and Delucchi conclude that their grand plan will cost about $100 trillion dollars.  I found this ridiculously large sum to be too low!  My rough calculations yields a cost of $200 trillion!

This post is an attempt to fill in a few blanks.

I will accept the authors’ mix of energy sources, apply some capacity factor estimates for each source, throw in an estimate of the land required for some sources, and estimate the installation cost per Watt for each source. Since all of these numbers are debatable, I provide references for most of them. But some of the numbers are simply my estimates. Also, I consider only installation costs.  I do not consider the additional costs of operation and maintainance, which may considerable.

Another point, the authors say that the US Energy Information Administration projects the world power requirement for 2030 would be 16.9 TW to accomodate population increase and rising living standards. By my reading, the Energy Information Administration’s estimate is actually 22.6 TW by 2030¹³.  Nevertheless, Jacobson and Delucchi base their plan on only 11.5 TW, with an assumption that a power system based entirely on electrification would be much more efficient.  I will go along with their estimate of 11.5 TW for the sake of argument.

Here are my numbers

(click on image to get larger view)…

The numbers that I have placed in the blue columns are open to debate, but I am fairly confident of the capacity factors.  The capacity factor for concentrated solar power, with energy storage, such as molten salt, can vary depending on interpretation.  If energy is drawn from storage at night, then the capacity factor could be argued to be higher.  On the other hand, it would result in greater collection area, collection equipment and expense.   Note that using my estimates for capacity factors, the “total real power” works out to 12.03 TW, close to Jacobson’s and Delucchi’s 11.5 TW.

The dollars per installed watt is where I would expect the greatest argument.  For example, Jacobson and Delucchi call for 1.7 billion 3000 watt rooftop PV systems.  That is residential size, on the order of 300 square feet.  You can find offers for residential systems at much lower rates than $8 per watt installed.  But this is because of rebates and incentives.  Rebates and incentives only work when a small fraction of the population takes advantage of them.  If every residence must install a photovoltaic system, there is no way to pass the cost on to your neighbors.  Click on the chart on the left, from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: of all the states listed, only one comes in at under $8 per installed watt for systems under 10 kilowatts, and half of the remaining come in at over $9.

Wouldn’t prices fall as technology advances?  Not necessarily.  Look at the cost to install wind facilities – it has been increasing since the early 2000s. A large part of the installed price for wind is the cost of the wind turbine itself.  Click on this graph showing the price of wind turbines per kilowatt capacity.  This increasing trend will likely continue if demand is artificially pushed up by a grandiose plan to install millions more wind turbines beyond what are called for by the free-market.

Expect to see the same effect for photovoltaic prices.  While the cost of photovoltaic power has been slowly falling, the demand (as a fraction of the total energy market) has been miniscule.  Jacobson and Delucchi call for 17 TW of photovoltaic power (5 TW from rooftop PV and 12 TW from PV power plants) by 2030.  Compare that to the what is already installed in Europe, the world’s biggest marked for PV: 0.0095 TW.  Achieving Jacobson’s and Delucchi’s desired level would require an orders or magnitude demand increase.  This is likely to lead to higher prices, not lower.  For my calculations I am staying with today’s costs for photovoltaics.

Some perspective

We have started using the word “trillion” when talking about government expenditures.  Soon we may become numb to that word, as we have already become numb to “million” and “billion.”  My estimate for the cost of Jacobson’s and Delucchi’s system comes out to about $210 trillion.  So how much is $210 trillion dollars?

It is approximately 100 times the $2.157 trillion of the total United States government receipts of 2009 (see documentation from the Government Printing Office) . 

It is about 15 times the GDP of the United States.

$210 trillion dollars is about 11 times the yearly revenue of all the national government budgets in the world!  You can confirm this by adding all the entries in the revenue column in the Wikipedia “Government Budget by Country.”

What about just the United States?

Jacobson and Delucchi calculate that with their system the US energy demand with be 1.8 TW 2030.  Keep in mind that the demand today is already 2.8 TW.  If we accept their estimate of 1.8 TW, then that  is about 16% of their estimated world demand of 11.5 TW for 2030.  So roughly speaking, the US share of the cost would be 16% of $210 trillion, or about $34 trillion.  That is 16 times the total United States government receipts of 2009. 

Doesn’t seem to likely to work, does it?

I know that Jacobson and Delucchi don’t like nukes.  But the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor price of under $2 per installed watt sure sounds attractive to me now.  Just a thought

Notes

1) Capacity factor of wind power realized values vs. estimates, Nicolas Boccard, Energy Policy 37(2009)2679–2688
2)  http://www.oceanrenewable.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/power-and-energy-from-the-ocean-waves-and-tides.pdf
3)  Fridleifsson,, Ingvar B.,  et. al.,  The possible role and contribution of geothermal energy to the mitigation of climate change. (get copy here)
4)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity
5)  Tracking the Sun II, page 19 , Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/emp/reports/lbnl-2674e.pdf
6)  Projecting the Impact of State Portfolio Standards on Solar installations, California Energy commission, http://www.cleanenergystates.org/library/ca/CEC_wiser_solar_estimates_0205.pdf
7)  David MacKay – “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air” http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html
8).  64MW/400acres = 40MW/km2 http://www.chiefengineer.org/content/content_display.cfm/seqnumber_content/3070.htm
9)  http://www.windustry.org/how-much-do-wind-turbines-cost
10)  I have chosen a low cost because most hydroelectric has already been developed.
11) 280 MW for $1 billion, http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/related/77596
12) Based on my personal experience as a Scientist working on photovoltaics for 14 years at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.  This number varies according to insolaton, latitude, temperature, etc.
13)  The EIA predicts a need for 678 quadrillion (6.78 x 10¹⁷) BTUs of yearly world energy use by 2030.  One BTU is the same as 2.9307 x 10^-4  kiloWatt hours.   So, (6.78 x 10¹⁷ BTU) x (2.9307 x 10^-4  kWhr / BTU) = 1.98 x 10¹⁴ kWhr.    One year is 8.76 x 10³ hours.  So the required world power would be given by:  (1.98 x 10¹⁴ kWhr) / (8.76 x 10³ hr) = 2.26 x 10¹⁰ kW = 22.6  TW.

Much has already been written about the recent Pew Research Center Poll on American attitudes on global warming.  It has been widely reported that there has been a large drop in the number of Americans who believe that humans are largely responsible for global warming. 

Less reported, but more important, are American’s attitudes toward cap-and-trade.   Here are the Pew numbers…

American attitudes toward Cap and Trade, from Pew.

The three columns on the left are for those who are well-informed, know a little bit, and know nothing about tap-and-trade.  The thing that should jump out at you is that the better informed people are, the more likely they are to oppose tap-and-trade.  Conversely, those who know nothing are more likely to support it. 

Remember the old adage “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing?”  The middle column shows that those who know a little bit about tap-and-trade are the most likely to support it.

Guest post from Cocoa the dog

****************************************************

I am told humans are smart, but sometimes I wonder.   I was born back in ‘02, and I have learned a trick or two in my 49 years.  But this old dog will never play the kind of trick that Brenda and Robert Vale are playing.  They are off by a factor of 20 when comparing the energy to power an SUV with the energy to power a dog.

Brenda and Robert Vale are professors at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.  They are either complete mathematical boneheads, or they have simply realized that in today’s world there is no limit to the outrageous claims that they can peddle to other completely credulous humans.  They claim in their book “Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living” that I am an energy hdogs – worse than a gas guzzling SUV.  Here is their (il)logic, as reported in the New Zealand Dominion Post…

The couple have assessed the carbon emissions created by popular pets, taking into account the ingredients of pet food and the land needed to create them.

“A lot of people worry about having SUVs but they don’t worry about having Alsatians and what we are saying is, well, maybe you should be because the environmental impact … is comparable.”

In a study published in New Scientist, they calculated a medium dog eats 164 kilograms of meat and 95kg of cereals every year. It takes 43.3 square metres of land to produce 1kg of chicken a year. This means it takes 0.84 hectares to feed Fido.

They compared this with the footprint of a Toyota Land Cruiser, driven 10,000 kilometers a year, which uses 55.1 gigajoules (the energy used to build and fuel it). One hectare of land can produce 135 gigajoules a year, which means the vehicle’s eco-footprint is 0.41ha – less than half of the dog’s.

Let me help my two-legged friends with their calculations.

Let’s compare the amount of land needed to generate enough biofuel to drive a Toyota Land Cruiser 10,000 km, to the amount of land required to feed a dog.  Let’s compare kibbles to kibbles.  In the case of the Land Cruiser grain may be converted to ethanol to power the vehicle.  Similarly, grain can be fed to animals to yield meat, which can be fed to the dog. 

Land Cruiser

My farm animal friends tell me that corn is the best grain for making ethanol.  In the US, where they grow a lot of corn, they got 371 bushels of corn per hectare in 2007.*  Each bushel of corn gives about 2.7 gallons of ethanol according to the USDA.  So that means each hectare of corn yields about 1000 gallons of ethanol.**

The humans at Toyota say that the Land Cruiser gets 13 miles (20.8 kilometers) per gallon in the city and 18 miles (28.8 kilometers) per gallon on the highway.  But that is when it runs on gasoline.  The energy content of gasoline is 115,000 BTU/gallon.  But for ethanol it is only 75,700 BTU/gallon.  So it takes about 50% more ethanol to get the same energy.***  That is, the Land Cruiser would only get 8.6 miles (13.8 kilometers) per gallon of ethanol in the city and 11.8 miles (18.9 kilometers) per gallon of ethanol on the highway.****  Let’s average it and call it 10.2 miles (16.3 kilometers) per gallon of ethanol for the Land Cruiser.

So it takes 613 gallons of ethanol to drive the Land Cruiser 10,000 kilometers.  That translates into 0.61 hectares of corn land. *****

Feeding a dog

Remember, a hectare of corn gave 371 bushels of corn in 2007.  A bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds (25.5 kilograms).  That is 20,776 pounds (9,441 kilograms) of corn per hectare.⁺

If you want to convert that corn into chicken meat, as the professors suggest, then according to the Agricultural branch of the Australia’s Department of Primary Industries, the conversion factor is about two kilograms of chicken feed to one kilogram of chicken liveweight.   That means that a hectare of corn would give about 10,388 pounds (4,722 kilograms) of chicken liveweight.  Dogs are not as fussy as humans, but even we don’t eat the feathers. We would only eat about 2/3 of the bird liveweight.  That fetches 6925 pounds (3147 kilograms) of edible meat per hectare.⁺⁺

According to the boneheaded professors, a typical dog eats 164 kilograms of meat per year.  (I have a pretty good life – but I can tell you I don’t eat nearly that much. But I’ll play along anyway.)  That would require 0.052 hectares to produce.⁺⁺⁺  They say that we also eat another 95 kilograms of cereals each year – or another 0.01 hectares worth of corn.⁺⁺⁺⁺  That sniffs out to 0.062 hectares worth of land to feed an overfed dog.

Conclusion

0.61 hectares to feed the soulless Toyota Land Cruiser.

0.062 hectares to feed your best friend.

That’s 10 times as much for the Land Cruiser than for me.  I could have sworn the professors said the dog required twice as much land as the Land Cruiser.  They were only off by a factor of 20.

Bad professors, BAD.  Don’t make me rub your nose in it.

 *******************************************************

* (151.1 bushels / hectare) x (2.46 acres / hectare) = 371 bushels per hectare.

** (371 bushels)  x  (2.7 gallons/bushel) = 1006 gallons

*** 115,000 BTU  /  75,700 BTU  =  1.52

**** (13 miles / gallon) / 1.52  =  8.6 miles / gallon = 13.8 kilometers / gallon
**** (18 miles / gallon) / 1.52  =  11.8 miles / gallon = 18.9 kilometers / gallon

***** 10,000 kilometers / (16.3 kilometers / gallon) / (1002 gallons/ hectare) = 0.61 hectares

⁺ (371 bushels/hectare) x (56 pounds/bushel) = (20,776 pounds/hectare) = (9443 kilograms/hectare)

⁺⁺ (20,776 pounds/hectare) x (1/2)  x  (2/3) = (6925 pounds/hectare) = (3147 kilograms/hectare)

⁺⁺⁺ (164 kg of meat/dog) / (3147 kg of meat/hectare) = (0.052 hectares/dog)

⁺⁺⁺⁺ (95 kg of corn/dog) / (9,441 kg of corn/hectare) = (0.01 hectares/dog)

Click on image to enlarge.

1.  Atmospheric CO2 levels in parts per million (ppm).
Data is from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.html

 
2.  Global Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE).
Data is from Florida State University
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
Data has been smoothed with a one year FWHM Gaussian Filter.

 
3.  Sea Level Rise Rate (mm/year)
Original data is from the University of Colorado.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/results.php
This graph is the time derivative of the original sea level data after it was smoothed with a one year FWHM Gaussian filter.

 
4.  Global temperature anomaly from satellites (°C).
Data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Data has been smoothed with a one year FWHM Gaussian Filter.

I have noticed a surprising (to me) correlation between the global average sea level and the global temperature.  It appears to me that the sea level rise rate leads the temperature.  The following plot shows sea level rise rate from the Jason and TOPEX satellites (from the University of Colorado web site) and the global temperature (from UAH) with a 1.1 year offset added to the temperature data to align it with the sea level rise data. 

This data shows that the sea level rise rate leads the temperature – just the opposite of what I expected.  Perhaps this is already obvious to other people and there is some simple, well understood explanation.  I don’t know.

I started out looking at this data for an entirely different reason: to show that in today’s world a temperature increase followed by constant (or nearly constant) temperature will result in an initial sea level rise rate increase, and a subsequent dropping sea level rise rate.  In other words, the equilibrium time is short.  This is in contrast to Stefan Rahmstorf’s claim that a temperature increase, followed by a constant temperature will result in increased sea level rise rate that will last a millenium.   I have been critical of Rahmstorf’s claim for over two years.  I will deal more with this issue in a later post.

Here is how the data for this post is reduced:

First, here is the raw sea level data from CU and temperature data from UAH…

Next, both sets of data were smoothed using a 1 year FWHM Gaussian filter  and the sea level data was interpolated to 1 month intervals…

Then the sea level rise rate (mm/year)  (time derivative of the sea level) was calculated…

The first thing that jumps out is that the temperature peak at 1998 came about one year after the corresponding sea level rise peak,  and three major temperature troughs occur about one year after sea level rise rate troughs.

News Flash!!

Clear signs of climate doom in the Southern Hemisphere!!

Satellite data used to measure the seasonal growing and shrinking of sea ice area in the Southern Hemisphere make a stark realization clear: Five of the six most extreme yearly sea ice extents ever measured in the Southern Hemisphere have occurred in just the last 10 years.   As a planet and global community, we need to prepare for the worst.  The time to dither and argue is over – the time to act is now.

I call on the leading governments of the world, the United Nations, NGOs, environmental activists, and uber-informed stars of popular culture to meet in a central location (I suggest Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi) to deal with this crisis.  They must develop an innovative plan to shepherd the other 6 billion people of the Earth to more environmentally sensitive life styles – before it’s too late. 

People must be taught to temper their greedy desire for luxuries such as electricity, safe shelter, food and clean water, and long life expectancies.  People need to learn how to overcome the archaic ambition of working to make a better life for their children.  Better yet, they should just stop having children.

If you do not understand the treacherous environmental precipice upon which we are poised, let the unalloyed data speak for itself.  Brace yourself – five of the six years with the greatest Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent have occurred in just the last decade!  If this historically unprecedented* trend continues, we are doomed.  See the graph below.

Southern hemisphere maximum sea ice area. The data is real, but Tom Moriarty takes complete blame for all satirical content.

The modern version of the weekly reader, TIME for Kids, published by the same folks who bring you TIME magazine, heralded the news of the very first ships to sail the legendary “Northeast Passage” in an article titled ”An Arctic Passage.”   This route links Europe to the Pacific Ocean, while avoiding the much longer route through the Suez canal and Indian Ocean.  But the reality is that this route was travelled on a regular basis by the Russians from the 1930s to the 1990s.  Read on to see how bogus this propaganda, that was spoon fed to your children, really was.

Northeast passage

This is new, the kids are told, because normally it is “impassable, even in summer, because of packed ice.  But melting ice caps are making it easier for ships to navigate the Arctic.” 

But the real purpose of this article is to keep the drumbeat of global warming fear pounding in the heads of our children.  “Scientists say global warming is responsible for the arctic thaw, which is causing many frozen channels to thaw” they are told.

The Truth about the Northeast Passage from Russia’s  Gubernskaya Academy

As exciting as the above story sounds, it is essentially untrue.  You can read much about the history and exploration of the Northeast Passage as compiled by the Russian Gubernskaya Academy and presented for the International Polar Year.  Here are some of the highlights…

In 1934 the ice-cutter “Litke” made the voyage from Vladivostok to Murmansk without failure by the Northern Sea Route. “Litke” captain was N.M. Nikolaev, research manager V.Yu. Vize. In 1935 four cargo motor ships passed through the Route during a single navigation season.

During the 1930s the Soviets started regular navigated the waters of  the Northeast Passage.  Gubernskaya Academy documents remind us that…

Before the Great Patriotic War [WWII] the Soviet Union gained big experience of carriers navigation in the Arctic. The ports of Dickson, Dudinka, Tiksi, Pevek and Provideniya were under construction. During the war apart from supply of the Arctic construction sites and research stations it was necessary to ensure supply of garrisons and warships and to receive goods delivered from the USA and Canada.

Soviet ships would ply the Northeast passage regularly for the next six decades.  Shipping via the Northeast Passage peaked in 1993, but declined after that - not because of ice, but rather cold economic and political winds for the dissolved Soviet Union.

Dissolution of the Soviet Union followed by social and economic crisis of the post-Soviet space in the early 1990’s had a negative influence upon the condition of the Northern Sea Route. The supply system was destroyed due to dissolution of centralized maintenance supply of the Russian North. Due to price liberalization and credit system reconstruction most enterprises in the framework of the Northern Sea Route operation were in a difficult financial state….By 2003 the volume of freight decreased 5 times (1,7 million tons) in comparison with the golden age of the Soviet era.

The two German ships that TIME for Kids referred to are really just the beginning of what the Russians hope will be a revival of trade between Europe, Siberia and Pacific region of Asia:

At present, practical steps are made in Russia to overcome the crisis and to continue development of the Northern Sea Route. This proves high strategic significance of this unique Arctic itinerary. In the first place this high importance is connected with forthcoming development of immense Arctic offshore oil and gas fields. Transit functions of the Northern Sea Route are also of high importance, mainly for development of regions located in the Extreme North and the Far East. Nowadays, many countries of the world are interested in cargo transportation by the Northern Sea Route. This is mainly due to the growing commodity turnover between Europe and the countries of Asian and Pacific regions. Possibly the XXIst century may become an era of intensive development of the Northern Sea Route as of an important arctic transportation passage of national and international importance.

The last ice-cold hard facts

So, these two German ships simply were not the first to make this trip.  In 2000 the Minister of Transportation of the Russian Federation, Sergey Frank, planning for a revival of the trade route, pointed out…

“In 1993 – 1997 the volume of sea cargo along the Northern Sea Route was already 150 – 200 thousand tons a year. Cargo traffic peaked in 1993, during the Arctic’s summer shipping season. During that period, 15 Russian ships with 210 thousand tons of transit goods passed along the Route. Also, 8 ships carrying metals, fertilizers and timber traveled from ports in Russia, Latvia, Sweden and Finland to China, Japan, and Thailand. 7 ships from China carried oilcake, bauxite, magnetite and other operating supplies to Holland, England, Ireland, Germany, and Spain.”

Oh, by the way, TIME for Kids somehow forgot to mention that the two German cargo ships that made the Northwest Passage trip this year were accompanied by a NUCLEAR POWERED ICE_BREAKER!!!  The UK’s Independent,  like TIME for Kids, somehow overlooked the previous 70 years of shipping along the route.  But in the midst of their panic-stricken, end of the world report on this global warming disaster story, they let slip…

The voyage of the two [German] vessels was certainly no picnic. Although not thoroughbred ice-breakers themselves, both ships were designed to cope with ice-strewn waters and were accompanied by at least one Russian nuclear ice-breaker during the whole of the trip. The two ships encountered snow, fog, ice floes, and treacherous icebergs which showed only about one meter of their huge underwater volume on the sea’s surface.

The most challenging stretch of the voyage came at its northernmost point, the Vilkizi Strait on the tip of Siberia. Half of the sea’s surface was covered with pack ice and the captains of both vessels had to call Russian ice pilots on board to shepherd them through. Vlarey Durov, captain of the Beluga Foresight spoke of the stress he experienced from having to keep a constant lookout for ice and the time spent waiting for the seas to clear. (emphasis added)

The current edition of American Scientist has a very good article on the fundamental biological limits of governing the production of biofuels.  Taking the Measure of Biofuel limits, by Thomas Sinclair addresses the two obvious limiting factors, light and water, and the perhaps less obvious limiting factor of nitrogen availability in the soil.

Thomas R. Sinclair is a professor in crop science at North Carolina State University with a Ph.D. from Cornell.  He specializes in the relationships between plant physiology, the environment, and crop yields.  He has edited several books as a Ballard Fellow at Harvard University.

Sinclair sets the stage by pointing out..

The U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act calls for 144 billion liters of ethanol per year in the U.S. transportation  fuel pool by 2022.  That equals 25 percent of the U.S. gasoline consumption today.  No more than about 4o percent is to be produced with maize, an important food and export crop.  Non-grain feedstock is supposed to provide the rest.

Before nations pin big hopes on biofuels, they must face some stark realities, however.  Crop physiology research has documented multiple limits to plant production on Earth.  To ramp up biofuel crop production, growers must adapt to those limits or find ways around them.  Such advances may not be as simple a some predict.  Plants and their evolutionary ancestors had hundreds of millions of years to optimize their biological machinery.  If further improvements were easy, they would probably already exist….

Plants cannot be grown without three crucial resource inputs: light, water, and nitrogen.  Each of these inputs is needed in substantial quantities, yet their availability in the field is limited…[T]he close relationship between the available amounts of these resources and the amount of plant mass they can produce – not human demand – will determine how much biofuel the world can produce.

Light

Sinclair considers the conversion efficiency of sunlight  and CO2 to sugars, which ultimately fuel the building of starch, cellulose, protein and lipids, for C3 plants (95% of all of Earth’s plants, but not highly CO2 fixation efficient) and the more efficient sugar-making C4 plants (corn, sugar cane and sorghum, for example).  He points out that “After hundreds of millions of years of evolution, these systems [for converting solar energy into the chemical energy of sugars] are highly efficient within the physical and thermodynamic constraints of photosynthesis and plant growth.”  Not much room has been left for improvement.

Bio-engineering advances may increase yields a little, but they cannot overcome the limits of the sunlight to sugar conversion ratios.  After the numbers are crunched he reveals that if the U.S. is to reach its biofuel goal of 58 billion liters of ethanol grown from corn (40 percent of 144 billion liters), it would require an additional 15 million hectares planted.  Similarly, the remaining 86 billion liters made from non-corn C4 grasses, which are not nearly as efficient as corn for this purpose,  would require at least an additional 48 million hectares.

Water

It may be obvious that in areas of limited water supply, plant growth will be limited by the amount of water available.  As plants transpire water out through their leaves, the rate of transpiration is:

T = G x VPD/k

where T is the transpiration (g/m2)
G is the plant growth (g/m2)
VPD is the Vapor Pressure Deficit, or the difference in the saturated water vapor pressure of air inside the plant leaves and the water vapor pressure of the outside atmosphere
k is a plant specific constant

The difference in the vapor pressure inside and outside a leaf (VPD) is what controls the rate of water loss through the stomata.  The VPD is large in arid regions because the vapor pressure of the water in the atmosphere is low. 

For a given environment  the VPD cannot be controlled – it is what it is.  So the only way for a plant to affect the transpiration, and thus prevent itself from drying out and dying in a arid environment, is to close down its stomata to reduce water loss.  But this also reduces the flow of CO2 into the leaves and O2 out, and consequently reduces or stops the plant’s growth.  There is no magic to get around this.  Sinclair  says…

“Despite claims that crop yields will be substantially increased by the application of biotechnology, the physical linkage between growth and transpiration imposes a barrier that is not amenable to genetic alteration.”

Under these circumstances the plant mass growth is nearly linear with water transpired.  So as more arid regions are put into crop use either crop yields per hectare will be lower, or the amount of irrigation will be higher.  This leads to the production of biofuels at the expense of aquifer depletion.

Nitrogen

Sinclair repeatedly points out that to be economically viable, biofuel crops must yeild at least 9 tonnes of plant mass per hectare of crop.  For C3 and C4 type plants this 9 tonne minimum requires the removal of 166 kg and 118 kg or nitrogen per hectare, respectively.  But, “Expectations for cellulosic yields are sometimes double or triple the 9-tonne-per-hectare yield” required for economic viability.  So, nitrogen removal from the soil will sometimes be double or triple also.   Some of this nitrogen is replaced by plant debris that is left behind and some comes from thunderstorms and some from organisms that fix atmospheric nitrogen.  But these sources are not enough to replace all the nitrogen that is removed with every harvest, and the available nitrogen will be less every year.  Sinclair explains…

“Although this decrease rate is usually small when compared to all the original organic matter in the soil, a cropping practice dependent on a continuous withdrawal clearly is not sustainable…  Nitrogen fertilizer of annual biofuel crops will inevitably be needed once soil organic matter decreases to levels limiting plant growth.”

Sinclair’s conclusion

Taking the limits of light, water and nitrogen in to account, for corn he concludes…

“The equivalent of 40 percent of today’s U.S. maize crop will be required to ethanol production while other domestic and export demands for maize also must be met.”

And for cellulosic derived ethanol he concludes that up to…

“50 million hectares of new land must be brought into high and sustainable agricultural production to achieve the required yields… it would be the most extensive and rapid land transformation in U.S. history… [L]and used for cellulosic feedstock must be in regions with sufficient rainfall to achieve needed yields.  The amount of water transpired by those crops could be large enough to influence the hydrologic balance of farming regions.”

and for in general…

“I]ncreased nitrogen supplementation required for the new crops will result in more nitrogen leaching into natural waterways…”

My final words

Sinclair indicates that between corn and other plants for ethanol, the U.S. may have to put as much as an additional 65 million hectares into crop production (15 million hectares for corn and 50 million hectares for other biofuel crops) to  generate 144 billion liters of ethanol.  This would replace only 25% of our gasoline usage.

How big is 65 million hectares?  It is the same as 650,000 square kilometers, and about the same as 160 million acres.  To put this in perspective, this is more than 10 times the acreage of corn planted in Iowa in 2007.   It is more than 150% of the corn acrage planted in the entire United States in 2007.

Look at the figures below.  The first image is from the USDA Census of Agriculture for 2002, and it shows the acreage planted in corn for grain in the United States that year.  Each dot on the map represents 10,000 acres.  To achieve 144 billion liters of ethanol we could need an additional 160 million acres of of corn and other crops, or more than 10 times the amount of corn acreage planted in Iowa.  The second figure shows the corn acreage of Iowa multiplied ten fold and added to the map of the United States.  This should give you some idea of the unprecedented agricultural multiplication that would be needed to satisfy the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act.