Profound insight from the National Research Council

The National Research Council has released a hard-hitting report about global sea level, and in particular, sea level along the western coast of the United States.  Yup, they really nailed it down.  They predict the sea level along California’s coast to rise somewhere between 4 and 30 cm (between 1.5 and 12 inches) between 2000 and 2030 (see page 5).

Their report is hundreds of pages long because they are very smart people.  But if you want to save some time, you can get an idea of what is really happening by looking at the following three images.  Click on each image to put it in animation mode in its own window.  There is one animation for each of the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington state. 

Be sure to notice the sea level rise rate centered above each graph.  Keep in mind that a 30 cm sea level rise in 30 years requires an average of 10 mm per year.

California sea level data.  Click image to start animation in a new window.

Washington sea level data. Click image to start animation in new window.

Washington sea level data. Click image to start animation in a new window.

We are already 12 years into the 30 from 2000 to 2030.  As you can see from the above animated plots, there appears to have been a distinct lack of acceleration in the last 100 years or so.  Roughly speaking, the sea level along the coast of California is rising at about 2 mm/year.  So it looks like there will be  a net rise surpassing the National Research Council’s lower limit of 4 cm in 30 years.  On the other hand, it would require an extraordinary, nearly impossible acceleration to get to 15 cm, just half the NRC’s upper estimate of 30 cm, by 2030.  But you can still pray to Gaia for a miracle.

A sure sign of poor scholarship

Here is a little hint for my obvious betters at the NRC: When you rely on the models of Stefan Rahmstorf to make your sea level rise predictions, one of two things will have happened by 2030.  If you are lucky your report will have been forgotten.  If you are unlucky people will simply be laughing at you.

Well, I suppose you can hope for that big earthquake that your report says (page 7) could cause the sea level to rise by an additional meter.  You’d have it made if you could blame atmospheric CO2 for earthquakes.  Your elite thinkers should start working on that paper now.

Nobel Prize winning biochemist says ALL biofuels are “nonsense.”

Similar posts from ClimateSanity
Taking Measure of Biofuel Limits 9/24/2009
Biofuels Leading to Disasters 12/28/2011

Hartmut Michel

Hartmut Michel won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on photosynthesis.  So, it is fair to say that he knows a thing or two about energy transport and storage in plants.  Today he is director of the Molecular Membrane Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics.

He recently penned an editorial in Angewandte Chemie International Edition in which he hammered the use of biofuels for alternative energy.  Note that Angewandte Chemie International Edition has the world’s highest impact factor of all chemistry journals.  His simple but pointed criticism condemns all varieties of biofuels and supports my previous posts on this subject.^{1, 2}

The problem is the inherent inefficiency of photosynthesis.  He points out…

“The photosynthetic pigments of plants can only absorb and use 47%(related to energy) of the light of the sun (“photosynthetic active radiation”). Green light, UV, and IR irradiation are not used…

Photosynthesis is most efficient at low light intensities. It is already saturated at 20% of full sunlight and 80% of the light is not used…In addition, high light intensities lead to photodamage of a central protein subunit of the photosynthetic apparatus…3.5 billion years of evolution have not been long enough to develop a mechanism for preventing the photodamage….

The dark reactions are limited by an insufficient discrimination between CO2 and O2 by the enzyme RuBisCO, which inserts CO2 into ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate. One third of the energy of the absorbed photons is believed to be required to remove the product of the O2 insertion…[and] photosynthesis depends on the availability of sufficient amounts of water, a condition that is not met during much of the day.”

Current biofuel technologies

Taken as a whole, conversion efficiency of sunlight to usable chemical energy in biofuels for commonly used technologies is extremely low.

“For German “biodiesel” which is based on rapeseed, it is less than 0.1%, for bioethanol less than 0.2%, and for biogas around 0.3%.”

But is it actually much worse than that when you consider

“… these values even do not take into account that more than 50% of the energy stored in the biofuel had to be invested in order to obtain the biomass (for producing fertilizers and pesticides, for ploughing the fields, for transport) and the chemical conversion into the respective biofuel.”

Michel confirms what I have pointed out before, biofuels of all stripes put a great burden on arable land.  He says…

“Taken together, the production of biofuels constitutes an extremely inefficient land use. This statement is true also for the production of bioethanol from sugar cane in Brazil.”

“Second Generation” biofuels

Some people hold out hope for “second generation” biofuels where the whole plant is utilized.  Michel explains that this is an illusion because the energy input for these types of processes in ever greater than for first generation processes.  For example…

“in the production of biodiesel by the Fischer–Tropsch process, hydrogen has to be added because syngas obtained from biomass contains insufficient amounts of hydrogen.”

More distant possibilities

“Hydrogen production by photosystem II would reduce the number of photons required by more than 50%.  However, this protein engineering task appears to be insurmountable at present.”

and

“Microalgae have been advertised as the ideal candidates for biofuel production. There are many unsupported claims about their efficiency, some even exceeding the theoretical limits of photosynthetic efficiency…the existence of photoinhibition and a poor RuBisCO will limit the advantages of microalgae together with the demands for growing and harvesting them.”

But biofuels will save us from CO2

Sorry, no.

“The production and use of biofuels therefore is not CO2-neutral. In particular, the energy input is very large for the production of bioethanol from wheat or maize, and some scientists doubt that there is a net gain of energy. Certainly the reduction of CO2 release is marginal.”

And

“Clearing rainforests in the tropics and converting them into oil palm plantations is highly dangerous because the underlying layers of peat are oxidized and much more CO2 is released by the oxidation of organic soil material than can be fixed by the oil palms…it would be even much better to reforest the land used to grow energy plants, because at a 1% photosynthetic efficiency, growing trees would fix around 2.7 kg of CO2 per square meter, whereas biofuels produced with a net efficiency of 0.1% would only replace fossil fuels which would release about 0.31 kg CO2 per m2 upon combustion!”

His conclusion

“Because of the low photosynthetic efficiency and the competition of energy plants with food plants for agricultural land, we should not grow plants for biofuel production. The growth of such energy plants will undoubtedly lead to an increase in food prices, which will predominantly hit poorer people.”

Read the entire editorial in context here (The Nonsense of Biofuels, Hartmut Michel, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51, 2–4)

Here is a video of Michel making the same point.

His Noble Prize was for the determination of the three-dimensional structure of a photosynthetic reaction centre, as seen here

Modern Luddites

A friend of yours

Suppose a friend of yours believes that the world is facing a dire future because of too much CO2 in the atmosphere.  The problem seems clear to him, he says, and so does the best course of action.  The fossil fuel powering of the world must come to an end.

He knows that bringing that end about is very difficult, but he perseveres.  It will be very expensive.   Many of the worlds assets will be consumed replacing a thriving fossil fuel based economy with a new “cleaner” economy.

The entire world must be convinced to cooperate, so he cajoles and he scolds.  The standard of living of the wealthy nations must be reduced.  The rest who are embracing the benefits of an energy rich society for the first time will have to wait.

Huge administrative changes will be needed, so he manuevers for control.  Great swathes of the planets landscape will have to be altered to accommodate some combination of wind power, solar power and biofuel production.

But he also has faith that the hardships of his solution will be offset by other (perhaps vague) benefits beyond the reduction of CO2.

A new idea

Now suppose along comes somebody who has another idea to solve the problem: an idea that might not result in a huge disruption of the economy. It’s an idea that might not result in all the hardships.  It is only an idea, in its infancy.  He would like your friend to take a look at it.

What does your friend say?  Does he say “Let’s see this new idea, look at the pros and cons.  Let’s run some simple tests.”  Or does he say “Go away!” and stick his fingers in his ears and say “NANANANANA - I can’t hear you – NANANANANA.”

Would you doubt your friends sincerity, or even his sanity, if he chose the latter response?

Suppose the idea was this…

The Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) study, which considers the possibility spraying sulphur particles into the stratosphere, like a volcano, to force global cooling.  This is a big idea and it would be no simple feat to accomplish. What are the advantages and disadvantages?  Who knows?

The stratosphere is 20 km above the surface of the Earth.  The amount of material that would be required is enormous.  The idea is that huge balloons would pull hoses up into the stratosphere and particulate material would be pumped up from the ground.   

It is worth at least thinking about.  A small-scale project to test of the concept was planned in the UK for this fall.  A balloon would hoist a hose only one kilometer and water would be pumped into the atmosphere. 

Image is from "Good governance for geoengineering," Nature, 479, November 2011

Modern Luddites

Alas, this experiment may never take place because a lot of people like your friend may have killed it.  In effect, they said “Go away!” and stuck their fingers in their ears and chanted “NANANANANA - I can’t hear you – NANANANANA.”

According to Nature  (the journal where every environmentalist is a saint),

“the EPSRC [UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council], one of the study’s main funders… received a letter and open petition, also sent to UK energy and climate-change secretary Chris Huhne and signed by more than 50 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil-society organizations, demanding that the project be cancelled.”

The source of the letter and petition?  An organization called “Hands Off Mother Earth.”  The 75 or so signatory organizations to the petition include the following organizations: Amigos da Terra Brasil, Earthpeoples, Gaia Foundation, and my favorite, the Gender Climate Caucus.

Their letter states…

We believe the experiment planned to test equipment for injecting particles into the stratosphere with the aim of counteracting global warming through solar radiation management (SRM) should be cancelled…We believe that such research is a dangerous distraction from the real need: immediate and deep emissions cuts.

In other words, they do not want a simple test of an alternative idea.  I believe that makes them anti-science and anti-reason, modern luddites.