Bangkok & Climate Change

[DJTX]

I'd say point to Bruce...

But, what I never really hear is - if the temp and Co2 were high 15 million years ago obviously man wasn't causing that. So, what did, and why could it not be the case now?

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html

Changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a strong candidate to explain the overall pattern of climatic change. Carbon dioxide influences the mean global temperature through the greenhouse effect. The globally averaged surface temperature for the Earth is approximately 15 degrees Celsius, and this is due largely to the greenhouse effect.

Solar radiation entering earth's atmosphere is predominantly short wave, while heat radiated from the Earth's surface is long wave. Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and other trace gases in the Earth's atmosphere absorb this long wave radiation. Because the Earth does not allow this long wave radiation to leave, the solar energy is trapped and the net effect is to warm the Earth. If not for the presence of an atmosphere, the surface temperature on earth would be well below the freezing point of water.

Through a million year period, the average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is affected by four fluxes: flux of carbon due to (1) metamorphic degassing, (2) weathering of organic carbon, (3) weathering of silicates, (4) burial of organic carbon. Degassing reactions associated with volcanic activity and the combining of organic carbon with oxygen release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Conversely, the burial of organic matter removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Kirk A. Maasch is a professor at the University of Maine, in the Department of Geological Sciences.

The Earth's warming and cooling cycles take thousands of years to effect. Where as CO2, 200 years ago was 280ppm, now it's 384ppm mostly due to human activity. me

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm

Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences

"Levels of carbon dioxide have varied only between 180 and 300 parts per million over the last 800,000 years — until recent decades, said Tripati, who is also a member of UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics."

"It has been known that modern-day levels of carbon dioxide are unprecedented over the last 800,000 years, but the finding that modern levels have not been reached in the last 15 million years is new."

Understood, but if 15 million years ago carbon dioxide was as high, something caused it to happen then. Could that same thing not be happening now?

[Bruce551]

A little history of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy in California

Don't believe EGAT'S bullshit that Thailand needs a Nuclear Plant.

Jerry Brown

Jerry Brown kicked off clean energy revolution in California once, aims to do it again

by Kate Galbraith

24 Jun 2010 6:45 AM

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-06-24-jerry-brown-clean-energy-revolution-in-california-once-and-again/

Jerry Brown, in '82 and '2010 Jerry Brown, then and nowTrivia questions for energy geeks: Which state approved the country's first energy-efficiency standards for appliances? The first green building codes? The first big wind farms? And who was governor when all those fine things happened?

The answer is California under Gov. Jerry Brown -- aka Governor Moonbeam -- who just happens to be running for the office again, some 30 years later. Last week, Brown, the Democratic nominee, unveiled a clean-energy plan to put far more solar panels on California's rooftops, in addition to appointing a renewable energy czar and strengthening those sexy appliance standards.

Of course, plenty of politicians make lofty promises about ushering in an energy transformation, to little or no result. Like the last eight presidents, for example. But there's good reason to take Brown seriously.

"He's done it before. And really if you look across the landscape in American political history, there's nobody else that can say that," said John Geesman, who was executive director of the California Energy Commission during part of Jerry Brown's first stint in the governor's mansion. "Nobody at all."

Brown then ...

When Brown took office in 1975, energy was high on everyone's agenda. Just over a year earlier, the Arab oil embargo had driven up energy prices and triggered lines at the gas pumps. California utilities were projecting a 7 percent annual growth in electric demand, and had dreams of building a string of nuclear power plants along the coast.

Brown found another way.

In the mid-1970s, at a faculty club event at the University of California at Berkeley, he sat at the same dinner table as Art Rosenfeld, then at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who was just beginning a noted career in energy efficiency.

They talked shop, and the conversation turned to a controversial proposed nuclear plant, Sundesert. Rosenfeld told Brown that just by requiring refrigerators to be more efficient, the state could save as much energy as would be produced by the Sundesert plant. Brown left around 9 p.m. to drive back to Sacramento. Twelve hours later, Rosenfeld got a call from Gene Varanini of the California Energy Commission.

"He said, 'Art, I think you'd be happy to know that Jerry Brown woke me up this morning at 8 a.m. to know if this guy Art Rosenfeld is real,'" Rosenfeld recalls. "And that was the unraveling of Sundesert."

Under Brown's leadership, California adopted Rosenfeld's refrigerator standard in 1978. And the state continues to lead the nation in appliance standards today, having approved the nation's first efficiency requirement for televisions last fall. As if to underscore Brown's achievement, several large solar projects are now planned for the old Sundesert site.

Also under Brown's watch, California became the first state to approve a strong energy-efficiency building code, called Title 24, in 1978.

In 1982, Brown's final full year in office, California pioneered the idea of "decoupling" electric utilities' revenues from how much electricity they sold -- which means, in a nutshell, that utilities had an incentive to promote energy efficiency rather than simply generating and selling as much power as they could. (A handful of other states have embraced electric decoupling since then.)

Brown's California also did renewables. In the mid-1970s, the legislature passed tax credits of a whopping 55 percent for wind, solar, geothermal, and some biomass. A 1978 federal law called the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act also helped. So California started building: In the early 1980s, a wind farm at Altamont Pass, east of the Bay Area, began operating, followed shortly by two other large wind farms. The state invested heavily in solar hot-water heaters, and also put in a number of geothermal and biomass plants, according to V. John White, the executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies.

To be sure, Brown, who is now California's attorney general, hardly deserves all the credit for such measures. The legislature passed important bills, such as the tax credits. Even Ronald Reagan, who was governor of California before Brown, signed the law in 1974 creating the powerful California Energy Commission, which crafts appliance standards and building codes and licenses large power plants. (According to Rosenfeld and Geesman, Reagan had vetoed a similar bill a year earlier, but then a little thing called the oil embargo came along.)

But Brown was a key advocate for these changes and he made the most of them. One of his big achievements was staffing up the California Energy Commission and turning it into an activist body, and he did the same with the California Public Utilities Commission. Together, those two regulatory entities fast-tracked many of the policy objectives set forth by the legislature, like appliance standards and building codes.

According to Rosenfeld, Brown even tried to recruit a young John Holdren, then a professor of energy and resources at Berkeley, to chair the California Energy Commission, but Holdren, who is now Obama's science advisor, wouldn't jump. Brown, Rosenfeld observes, has a knack "for picking future successful people."

... and Brown now

Three decades on, California remains ahead of the country in energy efficiency. Its per-capita electricity usage has barely budged since Brown's time despite the proliferation of gadgetry and a fondness for McMansions. California also continues to lead on solar, although without the emphasis on solar hot water that Brown had envisioned.

But on wind, the Golden State has become the Bronze State. Texas leads the nation in wind power production, having passed California for the top spot several years ago -- and, embarrassingly, California now also trails Iowa, a state one-third of its size. Very few wind farms -- or biomass or geothermal facilities -- have been built since Brown's time. Wind farms or other power plants can no longer be blithely sited on empty land in California -- a partial legacy of the many birds that have perished at Altamont Pass.

Brown can be proud of the changes he set in motion, but in today's California, his job will be harder. He'll need new approaches -- and he seems to get that.

His clean-energy plan [PDF] emphasizes "localized electricity generation" -- read: rooftop solar -- which doesn't face siting problems. The plan calls for more than 10 times as much of this small-scale generation as California has on its rooftops now, by 2020. That's not a cheap proposition, however.

To push through bigger projects, renewable energy advocates say Brown could help out by cutting through some of California's notorious red tape. "I think Jerry could make a difference [in] execution and planning," says White. "I think one of the problems in this area is there are so many agencies, so many jurisdictions, so many personalities, that things take longer than they should. They take longer than any other state." Brown has already called for "dramatically reduced" permitting times for transmission lines.

Brown also wants to:

* build a "solar highway" of panels along state roads

* encourage energy storage systems

* set tougher efficiency standards for new buildings and appliances

* make existing buildings more efficient, in part by helping to finance efficiency upgrades for homeowners and businesses

(This is exactly the kind of EE & RE plan that Thailand should have)

Meg Whitman, Brown's Republican opponent, has an energy and environment plan of her own, though it's less detailed. She also supports further clean-energy development and promises to "work to update the law to ensure that vital infrastructure and energy projects are not stalled due to redundant reviews and overly bureaucratic processes."

Brown, for his part, claims his clean-energy plan would create 500,000 jobs over 10 years. If he can manage that -- and that's a big "if" -- he'll live up to his campaign slogan: "Let's get California working again."

[Bruce551]

I'd say point to Bruce...

But, what I never really hear is - if the temp and Co2 were high 15 million years ago obviously man wasn't causing that. So, what did, and why could it not be the case now?

Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/chill.html

Changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a strong candidate to explain the overall pattern of climatic change. Carbon dioxide influences the mean global temperature through the greenhouse effect. The globally averaged surface temperature for the Earth is approximately 15 degrees Celsius, and this is due largely to the greenhouse effect.

Solar radiation entering earth's atmosphere is predominantly short wave, while heat radiated from the Earth's surface is long wave. Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and other trace gases in the Earth's atmosphere absorb this long wave radiation. Because the Earth does not allow this long wave radiation to leave, the solar energy is trapped and the net effect is to warm the Earth. If not for the presence of an atmosphere, the surface temperature on earth would be well below the freezing point of water.

Through a million year period, the average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is affected by four fluxes: flux of carbon due to (1) metamorphic degassing, (2) weathering of organic carbon, (3) weathering of silicates, (4) burial of organic carbon. Degassing reactions associated with volcanic activity and the combining of organic carbon with oxygen release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Conversely, the burial of organic matter removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Kirk A. Maasch is a professor at the University of Maine, in the Department of Geological Sciences.

The Earth's warming and cooling cycles take thousands of years to effect. Where as CO2, 200 years ago was 280ppm, now it's 384ppm mostly due to human activity. me

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091008152242.htm

Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences

"Levels of carbon dioxide have varied only between 180 and 300 parts per million over the last 800,000 years — until recent decades, said Tripati, who is also a member of UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics."

"It has been known that modern-day levels of carbon dioxide are unprecedented over the last 800,000 years, but the finding that modern levels have not been reached in the last 15 million years is new."

Understood, but if 15 million years ago carbon dioxide was as high, something caused it to happen then. Could that same thing not be happening now?

Mass Extinctions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event

Most widely supported explanations

Macleod (2001) summarized the relationship between mass extinctions and events which are most often cited as causes of mass extinctions, using data from Courtillot et al. (1996),[22] Hallam (1992)[23] and Grieve et al. (1996)

* Flood basalt events: 11 occurrences, all associated with significant extinctions. But Wignall (2001) concluded that only 5 of the major extinctions coincided with flood basalt eruptions and that the main phase of extinctions started before the eruptions.

* Sea-level falls: 12, of which 7 were associated with significant extinctions.

* Asteroid impacts producing craters over 100 km wide: one, associated with one mass extinction.

* Asteroid impacts producing craters less than 100 km wide: over 50, the great majority not associated with significant extinctions.

The most commonly suggested causes of mass extinctions are listed below.

[edit] Flood basalt events

The formation of large igneous provinces by flood basalt events could have:

* produced dust and particulate aerosols which inhibited photosynthesis and thus caused food chains to collapse both on land and at sea

* emitted sulfur oxides which were precipitated as acid rain and poisoned many organisms, contributing further to the collapse of food chains

* emitted carbon dioxide and thus possibly causing sustained global warming once the dust and particulate aerosols dissipated.

Flood basalt events occur as pulses of activity punctuated by dormant periods. As a result they are likely to cause the climate to oscillate between cooling and warming, but with an overall trend towards warming as the carbon dioxide they emit can stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.

It is speculated that Massive volcanism caused or contributed to the End-Cretaceous, End-Permian, and End Triassic extinctions.[

Clathrate gun hypothesis

Main article: Clathrate gun hypothesis

Clathrates are composites in which a lattice of one substance forms a cage round another. Methane clathrates (in which water molecules are the cage) form on continental shelves.

These clathrates are likely to break up rapidly and release the methane if the temperature rises quickly or the pressure on them drops quickly — for example in response to sudden global warming or a sudden drop in sea level or even earthquakes. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so a methane eruption ("clathrate gun") could cause rapid global warming or make it much more severe if the eruption was itself caused by global warming.

Plate tectonics

Plate tectonics is the mechanism which drives many of the possible causes of mass extinctions, especially volcanism and continental drift. So it is implicated in many extinctions, but in each case it is necessary to specify which manifestations of plate tectonics were involved.

The most likely signature of such a methane eruption would be a sudden decrease in the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 in sediments, since methane clathrates are low in carbon-13; but the change would have to be very large, as other events can also reduce the percentage of carbon-13.

It has been suggested that "clathrate gun" methane eruptions were involved in the end-Permian extinction ("the Great Dying") and in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which was associated with one of the smaller mass extinctions.

Hydrogen sulfide emissions from the seas

Kump, Pavlov and Arthur (2005) have proposed that during the Permian-Triassic extinction event the warming also upset the oceanic balance between photosynthesising plankton and deep-water sulfate-reducing bacteria, causing massive emissions of hydrogen sulfide which poisoned life on both land and sea and severely weakened the ozone layer, exposing much of the life that still remained to fatal levels of UV radiation.

Coral reefs

Main articles: Coral, Coral reef, and Zooxanthella

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae#Coral_reefs

Coral reefs are accumulated from the calcareous exoskeletons of marine invertebrates of the Scleractinia order; i.e., the Stony Corals. As animals they metabolize sugar and oxygen to obtain energy for their cell-building processes, including secretion of the exoskeleton, with water and carbon dioxide as byproducts. As the reef is the result of a favorable equilibrium between construction by the corals and destruction by marine erosion, the rate at which metabolism can proceed determines the growth or deterioration of the reef.

Algae of the Dinoflagellate phylum are often endosymbionts in the cells of marine invertebrates, where they accelerate host-cell metabolism by generating immediately available sugar and oxygen through photosynthesis using incident light and the carbon dioxide produced in the host.

Endosymbiont algae in the Stony Corals are described by the term zooxanthellae, with the host Stony Corals called on that account hermatypic corals, which although not a taxon are not in healthy condition without their endosymbionts. Zooxanthellae belong almost entirely to the genus Symbiodinium.

The loss of Symbiodinium from the host is known as coral bleaching, a condition which unless corrected leads to the deterioration and loss of the reef. Caused by seawater temperature rise related to an EL Nino event. Including a collaps of marine food chain, Algae-little fish-big fish.

The various sorts of algae play significant roles in aquatic ecology. Microscopic forms that live suspended in the water column (phytoplankton) provide the food base for most marine food chains. In very high densities (algal blooms) these algae may discolor the water and outcompete, poison, or asphyxiate other life forms.

When coral reefs die you end up with is the Ocean filled with Slime & Jellyfish. Today there are plenty of Jellyfish everywhere in Thailand waters.

[DJTX]

Understood, but if 15 million years ago carbon dioxide was as high, something caused it to happen then. Could that same thing not be happening now?

Mass Extinctions

However, there was no mass extincting 15 million years ago. Carbon Dioxide levels were supposedly this high back then, but it seems the scientists can not figure out why (for certain). Today they blame what mankind is doing, which may in part be correct, but it doesn't appear certain it's the entire cause. But then, why risk it - what would it hurt if mankind reduced the amount of pollution we produce.

[Bruce551]

EDITORIAL

Coping with the drought

* Published: 3/07/2010 at 12:00 AM

* Newspaper section: News

http://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/184676/coping-with-the-drought

Climate change scientists blame the worst El Nino phenomenon of the past 10 years for our water reserves dropping to a critical level. The army blames deforestation while others point to upstream dams and consistently low levels of water in the Mekong River. There are other factors involved, such as the lack of foresight or emergency planning and they all add up to the worst drought we have experienced in years. One that could well have economic, political and social consequences because inadequate water supplies jeopardise the harvest, doom a second crop and threaten the livelihood of farmers.

The problem is a simple one. Over the past four decades the population has greatly increased and so has the amount of land under cultivation. Farmers have tripled their crop yields but the amount of rainfall has largely stayed the same. Irrigation has not kept pace with demand and a lot of water is lost as run-off, leading to soil erosion. About 30% more water than is normally available is the amount now required by all sectors and this could jump to 50% in the next decade, emphasising the need to research and develop drought-resistant crops. Clearly we must improve water conservation techniques, stop waste and manage crops better.

The Agriculture Ministry has put the cost of the drought at an alarming 13.98 billion baht, with annual income per family working in the sector falling by an average of 2,450 baht from the 130,000 baht they would normally expect annually. Those affected are mainly rice farmers who want to cultivate a second crop and fruit growers.

If there is any good news it is that the El Nino effect is likely to dissipate soon and that could be followed by sustained heavier than average rainfall in the provinces, possibly by early next month. If this rain falls in the right place it will bring relief, but will not resolve the problems caused by decades of poor water resource management and reliance on huge dams that are at the mercy of shifting weather patterns. The last quarter of this year could then bring floods and next year a return of the drought cycle. These are not conditions under which sustainable economic policies thrive.

An army study correctly points to rampant deforestation as a major factor behind prolonged dry spells. Forest cover plays a vital role in maintaining land stability, both by absorbing the rain that can cause it to slip, and by securing soil and other vegetable matter to the bedrock with deep tree roots.

Encroachment and illegal logging have been responsible for a decline in national forest cover to 32.6% of the country's total area, according to the National Park, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department. Environmentalists have challenged this figure, saying it is unrealistic and the actual amount is more like 30%.

Imagine a nightmare scenario in which water shortages became so bad that hydropower generation was impossible; water for consumption became scarce; insufficient raw water existed to produce tap water for Bangkok and other cities; dams could not release water to repel seawater incursions; no water was available for second rice crops and rice cultivation areas had to be reduced leading to major cutbacks in rice exports. None of us would want such a future.

We have to face up to the truth that one day there will just not be enough water to go around. Even now, conservationists say that fresh water only accounts for 3% of all the water available on our planet. And yet we selfishly continue to pollute our rivers, gobble up resources, tear down trees and leave the consequences for future generations to deal with. That is hardly fair.

IMHO, setting a price on Carbon for electrical sector would provide a steady source funding for restoring environment in Thailand. And help to more fairly distribute the wealth between Bangkok and the provinces. While also providing consistant Feed-in Tariff for Solar PV power, so everyone could afford PV on their house rooftop, eliminating need to consider electrical generation from coal.

[Bruce551]

Following fast on the heels of the hottest Jan-May — and spring — in the temperature record, it’s also the hottest Jan-June on record in the NASA dataset [click on figure to enlarge].

It’s all the more powerful evidence of human-caused warming “because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance is having its maximum cooling effect,†as a recent NASA paper notes.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/10/nasa-hottest-year-solar-minimum/#more-29524

[Bruce551]

Thai Renewable Energy Website

ÃÙŹԸԾÅѧ§Ò¹à¾×èÃÊÔè§áÇ´ÅéÃà Energy For Environment Foundation

http://www.efe.or.th/home.php

The latest on Solar PV projects in Thailand

Hasty and Unfair Deferral of Purchase of Power Generated from Wind and Solar Energy

by Suwaporn Sirikoon, Chief Executive Director, Energy for Environment Foundation

A string of queries about hastiness in the development of Thailand Power Development Plant, or the so-called "PDP 2010," had not yet dissolved when the Ministry of Energy presented the PDP 2010, approved by the National Energy Policy Council (NEPC), to the cabinet for acknowledgement and hence considered as a cabinet resolution on 22 March 2010. This led to another issue that was hastily implemented by the Ministry of Energy, i.e. postponement or discontinuation of purchase of power generated from wind and solar energy, which greatly affects renewable energy project investment and development. Even more disheartening, the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), which is supposed to regulate the energy industry operation to be fair to all parties, could merely respond to the given policy by taking prompt action, without due consideration of the impact on investors.

http://www.efe.or.th/home.php?ds=preview&back=content&mid=AqtygQpBXbNw7vZJ&doc=Np8d9ZJLkaBKIEMy

Bottom line, rename the MOE, NEPC, & ERC "THE LOVE CARBON & NUKE CLUB"

PLEASE PAY 10 MILLION BAHT AT THE DOOR JUST TO TALK TO US.

Thailand already the Lowest Feed-in Tariff for Solar PV electric power compared to the EU. It takes 9 years to break even on investment in a Solar PV farm built in Thailand.

[Bruce551]

We’re Gonna Be Sorry

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

July 24, 2010, N.Y. Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25friedman.html?_r=1&hp

When I first heard on Thursday that Senate Democrats were abandoning the effort to pass an energy/climate bill that would begin to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming and promote renewable energy that could diminish our addiction to oil, I remembered something that Joe Romm, the climateprogress.org blogger, once said: The best thing about improvements in health care is that all the climate-change deniers are now going to live long enough to see how wrong they were.

Alas, so are the rest of us. I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it.

We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be benign — even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will not be so. Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.â€

You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,†says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing.

Since I don’t have anything else to say, I will just fill out this column with a few news stories and e-mails that came across my desk in the past few days:

•

Just as the U.S. Senate was abandoning plans for a U.S. cap-and-trade system, this article ran in The China Daily: “BEIJING — The country is set to begin domestic carbon trading programs during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) to help it meet its 2020 carbon intensity target. The decision was made at a closed-door meeting chaired by Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission ... Putting a price on carbon is a crucial step for the country to employ the market to reduce its carbon emissions and genuinely shift to a low-carbon economy, industry analysts said.â€

•

As we East Coasters know, it’s been extremely hot here this summer, with records broken. But, hey, you could be living in Russia, where ABC News recently reported that a “heat wave, which has lasted for weeks, has Russia suffering its worst drought in 130 years. In some parts of the country, temperatures have reached 105 degrees.†Moscow’s high the other day was 93 degrees. The average temperature in July for the city is 76 degrees. The BBC reported that to keep cool “at lakes and rivers around Moscow, groups of revelers can be seen knocking back vodka and then plunging into the water. The result is predictable — 233 people have drowned in the last week alone.â€

•

A day before the climate bill went down, Lew Hay, the C.E.O. of NextEra Energy, which owns Florida Power & Light, one of the nation’s biggest utilities, e-mailed to say that if the Senate would set a price on carbon and requirements for renewal energy, utilities like his would have the price certainty they need to make the big next-generation investments, including nuclear. “If we invest an additional $3 billion a year or so on clean energy, that’s roughly 50,000 jobs over the next five years,†said Hay. (Say goodbye to that.)

•

Making our country more energy efficient is not some green feel-good thing. Retired Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson, who was Gen. David Petraeus’s senior logistician in Iraq, e-mailed to say that “over 1,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan hauling fuel to air-condition tents and buildings. If our military would simply insulate their structures, it would save billions of dollars and, more importantly, save lives of truck drivers and escorts. ... And will take lots of big fuel trucks (a k a Taliban Targets) off the road, expediting the end of the conflict.â€

•

The last word goes to the contrarian hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham, who in his July letter to investors, noted: “Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for ... what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs and by right-wing politicians and think tanks?

I have a much simpler but plausible ‘conspiracy theory’: the fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?â€

[Bruce551]

Phytoplankton Population Drops 40 Percent Since 1950

July 29, 2010

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=phytoplankton-population

Researchers find trouble among phytoplankton, the base of the food chain, which has implications for the marine food web and the world's carbon cycle.

By Lauren Morello and ClimateWire

The microscopic plants that form the foundation of the ocean's food web are declining, reports a study published July 29 in Nature.

The tiny organisms, known as phytoplankton, also gobble up carbon dioxide to produce half the world's oxygen output—equaling that of trees and plants on land.

But their numbers have dwindled since the dawn of the 20th century, with unknown consequences for ocean ecosystems and the planet's carbon cycle.

Researchers at Canada's Dalhousie University say the global population of phytoplankton has fallen about 40 percent since 1950. That translates to an annual drop of about 1 percent of the average plankton population between 1899 and 2008.

The scientists believe that rising sea surface temperatures are to blame.

"It's very disturbing to think about the potential implications of a century-long decline of the base of the food chain," said lead author Daniel Boyce, a marine ecologist.

They include disruption to the marine food web and effects on the world's carbon cycle. In addition to consuming CO2, phytoplankton can influence how much heat is absorbed by the world's oceans, and some species emit sulfate molecules that promote cloud formation.

A continuing mystery story

"In some respect, these findings are the beginning of the story, not the end," Boyce said. "The first question is what will happen in the future. We looked at these trends over the past century but don't know what will happen 10 years down the road."

The study "makes a sorely needed contribution to our knowledge of historical changes in the ocean biosphere," said David Siegel of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Bryan Franz of NASA in an essay, also published in Nature.

"Their identification of a connection between long-term global declines in phytoplankton biomass and increasing ocean temperatures does not portend well for [ocean] ecosystems in a world that is likely to be warmer," they wrote. "Phytoplankton productivity is the base of the food web, and all life in the sea depends on it."

Boyce said he and his co-authors began their study in an attempt to get a clearer picture of how phytoplankton were faring, given that earlier studies that relied on satellite measurements produced conflicting results.

Biggest declines at the poles

The scientists dug back into the historical record, well past 1997, the year continuous satellite measurements began. They examined a half-million data points collected using a tool called a Secchi disk, as well as measurements of chlorophyll—a pigment produced by the plankton.

The Secchi disk was developed in the 19th century by a Jesuit astronomer, Father Pietro Angelo Secchi, when the Papal navy asked him to map the transparency of the Mediterranean Sea.

What Secchi produced was a dinner plate-sized white disk that is lowered into ocean water until it cannot be seen anymore. The depth it reaches before disappearing gives a measure of water clarity.

That can be used as a proxy for phytoplankton population in a given area, since the tiny organisms live close to the ocean's surface, where they are exposed to sunlight they use to produce energy.

Data gathered with a Secchi disk are roughly as accurate as observations collected by satellites, Boyce said, although satellites have greater global reach.

The researchers found the most notable phytoplankton declines in waters near the poles and in the tropics, as well as the open ocean.

They believe that rising sea temperatures are driving the decline. As surface water warms, it tends to form a distinct layer that does not mix well with cooler, nutrient-rich water below, depriving phytoplankton of some of the materials they need to turn CO2 and sunlight into energy.

[eagle]

Thats been known for some time and all the oil spills and pollution aren't going to help.

[Bruce551]

http://thainews.prd.go.th/newsenglish/global/TheRestOfThailand.html

Mr. Smith Thammasaroj, a former director-general of Thai Meteorological Department revealed about the United Nations (UN)’s 2nd global warming study indicating that the possibility of having massive natural disasters is high due to catastrophic climate change causing water crises, thunderstorms, flooding, famines, diseases, plants and animals distinction, and sea-level rising. The crises expected to occur within this decade especially in Asia while Thailand would probably be suffering from such disasters over the next 15-20 years.

Bangkok’s outskirt areas locating nearby the sea, for instance Samut Prakan and Samut Sakhon provinces will be among the first areas of Thailand that will be affected from global warming crisis as these areas are below sea-level. It will adversely affect economy, tourism, agriculture, and local transportation.

If the problems cannot be solved, Thailand will be in trouble with farmers who live in Nonthaburi province, Bang Phli district, and Bang Bo district will be unable to cultivate agricultural products while Bangkok residences will have no tap water to consume because of rising of sea-level and will spill into canal supplying water. Suvarnabhumi International Airport will be inundated, economy, tourism industry and transportation will be affected. Damage cost will be unpredictable and astronomical.

[Bruce551]

This post by physicist John Cook was first published in Skeptical Science .

The NOAA State of the Climate 2009 [4] report is an excellent summary of the many lines of evidence that global warming is happening. Acknowledging the fact that the planet is warming leads to the all important question: What’s causing global warming? To answer this, here is a summary of the empirical evidence that answer this question. Many different observations find a distinct human fingerprint on climate change:

1. Humans are currently emitting around 30 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere (CDIAC [5]). Of course, it could be coincidence that CO2 levels are rising so sharply at the same time so let’s look at more evidence that we’re responsible for the rise in CO2 levels.

2. When we measure the type of carbon accumulating in the atmosphere, we observe more of the type of carbon that comes from fossil fuels (Manning 2006 [6]).

3. This is corroborated by measurements of oxygen in the atmosphere. Oxygen levels are falling in line with the amount of carbon dioxide rising, just as you’d expect from fossil fuel burning which takes oxygen out of the air to create carbon dioxide (Manning 2006 [6]).

4. Further independent evidence that humans are raising CO2 levels comes from measurements of carbon found in coral records going back several centuries. These find a recent sharp rise in the type of carbon that comes from fossil fuels (Pelejero 2005 [7]).

5. So we know humans are raising CO2 levels. What’s the effect? Satellites measure less heat escaping out to space, at the particular wavelengths that CO2 absorbs heat, thus finding “direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effectâ€. (Harries 2001 [8], Griggs 2004 [9], Chen 2007 [10]).

6. If less heat is escaping to space, where is it going? Back to the Earth’s surface. Surface measurements confirm this, observing more downward infrared radiation (Philipona 2004 [11], Wang 2009 [12]). A closer look at the downward radiation finds more heat returning at CO2 wavelengths, leading to the conclusion that “this experimental data should effectively end the argument by skeptics that no experimental evidence exists for the connection between greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere and global warming.†(Evans 2006 [13]).

7. If an increased greenhouse effect is causing global warming, we should see certain patterns in the warming. For example, the planet should warm faster at night than during the day. This is indeed being observed (Braganza 2004 [14], Alexander 2006 [15]).

8. Another distinctive pattern of greenhouse warming is cooling in the upper atmosphere, otherwise known as the stratosphere. This is exactly what’s happening (Jones 2003 [16]).

9. With the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) warming and the upper atmosphere (the stratophere) cooling, another consequence is the boundary between the troposphere and stratophere, otherwise known as the tropopause, should rise as a consequence of greenhouse warming. This has been observed (Santer 2003 [17]).

10. An even higher layer of the atmosphere, the ionosphere, is expected to cool and contract in response to greenhouse warming. This has been observed by satellites (Laštovi?ka 2006 [18]).

Science isn’t a house of cards, ready to topple if you remove one line of evidence. Instead, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle. As the body of evidence builds, we get a clearer picture of what’s driving our climate. We now have many lines of evidence all pointing to a single, consistent answer – the main driver of global warming is rising carbon dioxide levels from our fossil fuel burning.

– John Cook, Skeptical Science [3].

JR: I would add that, as science adviser John Holdren often points out, in order to refute the theory of human-caused global warming, you would not merely have to come up with an alternate explanation for all of the above observed changes. You would have to figure out what unknown factor was blocking or negating greenhouse gases from causing them.

Also see this video:

The biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History

http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml

[Bruce551]

http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/12/nasa-hottest-year-on-record-what-global-warming-looks-like/#more-31582

WMO: "Unprecedented sequence of extreme weather events ... matches IPCC projections of more frequent and more intense extreme weather events due to global warming."

August 12, 2010

Both NASA and the World Meteorological Organization both have excellent posts I’m going to excerpt at length. The first, from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies website, is titled

July 2010 — What Global Warming Looks Like

The July 2010 global map of surface temperature anomalies (Figure 1), relative to the average July in the 1951-1980 period of climatology, provides a useful picture of current climate. It was more than 5C (about 10F) warmer than climatology in the eastern European region including Moscow. There was an area in eastern Asia that was similarly unusually hot. The eastern part of the United States was unusually warm, although not to the degree of the hot spots in Eurasia.

Note: La Nina (blue) off West coast of South America

Fig 1: Map showing July 2010 global temperature anomaly

What we can say is that global warming has an effect on the probability and intensity of extreme events. This is true for precipitation as well as temperature, because the amount of water vapor that the air carries is a strong function of temperature. So the frequency of extremely heavy rain and floods increases as global warming increases. But at times and places of drought, global warming can increase the extremity of temperature and associated events such as forest fires.

I recall 2005 summer in Chiang Mai was very hot (El Nino) and we had a flood in October (La Nina) so be prepared for extreme rain and flooding this year

[Karnie]

so the 2012 movie will become true..innit? :cry:

[Bruce551]

Robert R.M. Verchick, the director of Loyola University’s Center for Environmental Law and Land Use.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/building-resilience-on-a-turbulent-planet/

Why is Nature so mad all of a sudden? The truth is, a lot of this is our fault. The population is expanding, and we are building where we shouldn’t — in flood plains, on fragile beaches, in valleys, and on muddy hillsides. As we develop, we are destroying much of our protective “natural infrastructure,†too — the marshes and swamps that protect New Orleans, the mangroves that protect Myanmar from cyclone surge, the forests that prevent mudslides in the Himalaya.

These happen everywhere, but the problems are most acute in poor countries. Did I mention climate change? You can’t attribute any single weather-related event to a hotter planet. But climate change is almost certain to lead to more frequent and/or more intense extreme events like fires, floods, and storms. It’s not R.E.M.’s “end of the world as we know it†— not yet — but we had better shape up and get with the program.

That's it no more farting!!!!!

[Bruce551]

Jeff Masters on “Pakistan’s Katrina“:

http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/12/hell-and-high-water-finally-gets-medias-attention-but-are-moscows-1000-year-heat-wave-and-pakistans-katrina-linked/#more-31547

The monsoon season of 2010 continues to generate havoc in Asia, as lingering rains from the latest monsoon low continue to affect hard-hit Pakistan, China, and India. At least 702 are now reported dead and 1,042 are missing in China’s Gansu province, due to torrential monsoon rains that triggered a deadly landslide and extreme flooding on Sunday. At least 137 died in floods and landslides in the neighboring Indian state of Kashmir over the weekend, with 500 people missing. Monsoon flooding and landslides have also killed at least 65 people in Afghanistan in the past two weeks. But no country has suffered more than Pakistan, where monsoon floods have destroyed huge portions of the nation’s infrastructure and killed at least 1600 people. The number of people affected or needing assistance has been estimated to be as high as 13 million people–8% of the nation’s population. The disaster is the worst natural disaster in Pakistan’s history, and is rightfully being called “Pakistan’s Katrina.â€

Monsoons: a primer

In summer, the sun warms up land areas more strongly than ocean areas. This occurs because wind and ocean turbulence mix the ocean’s absorbed heat into a “mixed layer†approximately 50 meters deep, whereas on land, the sun’s heat penetrates at a slow rate to a limited depth. Furthermore, due to its molecular properties, water has the ability to absorb more heat than the solid materials that make up land. As a result of this summertime differential heating of land and ocean, a low pressure region featuring rising air develops over land areas.

Moisture-laden ocean winds blow towards the low pressure region and are drawn upwards once over land. The rising air expands and cools, condensing its moisture into some of the heaviest rains on Earth–the monsoon. Monsoons operate via the same principle as the familiar summer afternoon sea breeze, but on a grand scale. Each summer, monsoons affect every continent on Earth except Antarctica, and are responsible for life-giving rains that sustain the lives of billions of people.

In India, home for over 1.1 billion people, the monsoon provides 80% of the annual rainfall. However, monsoons have their dark side as well–hundreds of people in India and surrounding nations die in an average year in floods and landslides triggered by heavy monsoon rains. The most deadly flooding events usually come from monsoon depressions (also known as monsoon lows.) A monsoon depression is similar to (but larger than) a tropical depression. Both are spinning storms hundreds of kilometers in diameter with sustained winds of 50 – 55 kph (30 – 35 mph), nearly calm winds at their center, and generate very heavy rains. Each summer, approximately 6 – 7 monsoon depressions form over the Bay of Bengal and track westwards across India. Four monsoon depressions originated in the Bay of Bengal in the El Niño-weakened monsoon season of 2009.

This year’s first monsoon depression formed on July 24, crossed over India, and reached Pakistan on July 27. The rains increased in intensity over the next two days, peaking on July 29 and 30, when a low pressure system that moved across Pakistan from the west enhanced rainfall from the monsoon depression. Over the 3-day period July 28 – 30, torrential rains in excess of 8 inches (203 mm) fell in many regions of northwest Pakistan Rainfall amounts at two stations in the catchment basins of the Jhelum River and Indus River reached 19.4 in. (495 mm) for the month of July, and 7.5 in. (192 mm) fell in a single day, July 30, at Tarbela. A second monsoon depression arrived in Pakistan on August 3, and has brought additional heavy rains.

Are the this year’s monsoon floods due to global warming?

No single weather event can be attributed to climate change, but a warming climate does load the dice in favor of heavier extreme precipitation events. This occurs because more water vapor can evaporate into a warmer atmosphere, increasing the chances of record heavy downpours. In a study published in Science in 2006, Goswami et al. found that the level of heavy rainfall activity in the monsoon over India had more than doubled in the 50 years since the 1950s, leading to an increased disaster potential from heavy flooding. Moderate and weak rain events decreased over the past 50 years, leaving the total amount of rain deposited by the monsoon roughly constant. The authors commented, “These findings are in tune with model projections and some observations that indicate an increase in heavy rain events and a decrease in weak events under global warming scenarios.†We should expect to see an increased number of disastrous monsoon floods in coming decades if the climate continues to warm as expected. Since the population continues to increase at a rapid rate in the region, death tolls from monsoon flooding disasters are likely to climb dramatically in coming decades.

References

Goswami, et al., 2006, †Increasing Trend of Extreme Rain Events Over India in a Warming Environmentâ€, Science, 1 December 2006:Vol. 314. no. 5804, pp. 1442 – 1445 DOI: 10.1126/science.113202

[Bruce551]

http://www.bangkokpost.com/print/193297/

Activists press for power plant ban

* Published: 28/08/2010 at 03:04 AM

* Online news: Economics

One hundred environmental activists from Nakhon Si Thammarat and Prachuap Khiri Khan yesterday demanded a formal written declaration from the government not to build power plants in their provinces.

Senator Rosana Tositrakul (left) has an exchange at yesterday's hearing with Sriwan Eamrungroj, a PTT Plc executive vice- president for strategic planning for exploration and production and the gas business group. Ms Siriwan had asked for time to clarify some facts after Mrs Rosana criticised the company's business practices.

"We want to see a document issued by the government saying you will not build any power plants in our homes.

Otherwise, we'll ask for local activists nationwide to join us in protests," said Kornuma Pongnoi, the group leader, who successfully led protests to scrap the Hin Krut and Bo Nok power projects in those two provinces in 2002.

"If you think it is essential to build new power plants, let's do it in your backyard, or do it in your headquarters, but here in our hometowns no one wants them," Ms Kornuma told a public hearing in Bangkok on power plant development.

"If you still want to build the plants, I will ask other activists in other provinces who have similar views to join us. I would say none of the provinces in this country want power plants in their neighbourhoods."

The protesters also demand the government scrap all plans for nuclear and coal-fired power plant development and emphasise renewable energy instead.

"We chose to join this seminar because we want to announce to the public that the current power development plan should be reviewed," said Ms Kornuma.

"We want the government to remove coal-fired and nuclear power plants from the 2010 PDP (power development plan), particularly in the South of Thailand," said Prayuth Wannaprom, another leader of the group.

The seminar organised by Srinakharinwirot University ended abruptly after three hours after the protesters continued to insist on speaking out.

Speakers at the event included senior officials from the Energy Ministry, the Energy Planning and Policy Office (Eppo) and the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat), along with activist Senator Rosana Tositrakul.

"The government has not put enough effort into demand-side management.

If they encourage people to consume less power, there's no reason to build new power capacity," said Mrs Rosana.

She also criticised PTT Plc, the majority state-owned energy conglomerate, saying it did not want to operate its sixth gas separation plant because of the cheap fixed selling prices of liquefied petroleum gas, resulting in the need for huge amounts of imported LPG.

She also reiterated a claim she has made frequently that petrol in Thailand is too expensive because market leader PTT dictates pricing.

Egat has tentatively selected areas for nuclear and coal-fired power plants and started to narrow down its site selection process, with two provinces included on the list.

Mr Prayuth said after the seminar ended that his group needed to protest before any related contracts could be signed.

"Renewable energy is the best choice in the development of the power sector.

Even though renewable power is costly, I'd rather pay a higher power bill than use cheap fossil fuel," he said.

Eppo's coal and nuclear power plants would be subject to environmental - and health - impact assessments under Section 67 of the Constitution.

"If Thai people don't want power plants, [economic] development could not be possible either. The law gives our rights protection," said Samerjai Suksumek, the director of Eppo's power policy bureau.

He said energy policymakers had put a lot of effort into developing renewable energy in parallel with extensive energy-saving campaigns.

"The power sector is at high risk in relying too much on natural gas, as we have limited gas resources, so we need to balance resources for energy security.

But if you don't want it, who dares to force you [to accept power plants]?"

A rare sneak peak into Thailand's energy politics. There are good Thais who want a clean energy future for Thailand. They need your support to fight EGAT's plans to build dirty power plants & nukes.

[Bruce551]

700,000 lives at risk from floods, study finds

* Published: 17/12/2010 at 12:00 AM

* Newspaper section: News

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/211700/700000-lives-at-risk-from-floods-study-finds

The lives of about 700,000 people and 1.16 million buildings in Bangkok will be seriously affected by floods caused by more rainfall and rising sea levels as a result of climate change in the next 40 years, a study has found.

The managing director of Phetchaburi-based Sirindhorn International Environmental Park, Seeree Supratid, said yesterday the projections were based on a study his team had been conducting to determine the impact of global warming on the capital and its vicinity.

The study, which used statistics from 2008 as a basis, predicts that western Bangkok will be partly covered by water due to a rise in the sea level.

The eastern part would be affected more often by flooding caused by increasing rainfall.

It is believed the higher sea level could result in a sea surge as far as 1.8 kilometres inland.

The water level in affected areas would vary depending on their distance from the shore.

Mr Seeree said as many as 700,000 people were expected to be affected. About 250,000 of these would be in Don Muang, Nong Chok, Bang Kho Laem and Yannawa districts, and the country's main business hubs of Silom and Sathon.

The study team predicts 1.16 million buildings would be affected by floods of at least 10 centimetres in depth including 900,000 residential buildings.

Mr Seeree said a third of the affected buildings would be in Bang Khun Thian, Bang Bon and Bang Khae districts in Bangkok and in Phra Samut Chedi district in Samut Prakan.

The economic loss is estimated at 150 billion baht.

"Without any prevention plan, we may have to use our ground floors for keeping boats," Mr Seeree said.

"We have not yet seen any serious plan to prepare people to cope with the situation. The impact will be severe if we do not try to prevent it."

Mr Seeree said rainfall in Bangkok had increased by about 15% over the past 30 years, with the sea level rising by an average of 1.3cm each year.

The reduction in water retention and green areas that absorb water had put the capital more at risk of being submerged.

Bangkok has only 400 square kilometres of green areas, half of what it had 30 years ago.

"We are lucky that rainfall and the excessive amount of water have been absorbed by upper provinces. Without the so-called 'monkey cheek' or water retention areas, floods in the capital could be worse," Mr Seeree said.

"However, it doesn't mean that Bangkok is now safe. If the water volume released by the Chao Phraya Dam reaches 4,000 cubic metres per second, Bangkok won't be able to escape from floods."

Mr Seeree urged the government to build a five-metre-high sea wall along 80km of the coast to protect the capital.

Som Nam Na....