Many environmentalists are claiming that climate change is an existential threat. Organizations like the Extinction Rebellion scream that global warming will end civilization. It’s fine to raise awareness, but better to analyze problems and propose workable solutions. “Renewables” are a bandwagon slogan for wind and solar energy sources to replace CO2-emissions from burning fossil fuels. Global investment in renewable energy reached $282 billion in 2019 alone, hopeful that future energy storage technology can solve the intermittency issue.
Does CO2 in the atmosphere warm the earth? CO2 is definitely increasing every year, reaching over 410 parts per million. Note this plot of NOAA data does not start at zero. These measurements are taken in the Northern hemisphere, where CO2 goes up and down as green vegetation grows up and dies off as the seasons change.
Climate scientist James Hansen and Columbia University publish this account of Earth’s surface temperature, which is clearly rising at ~ 0.18°C per decade. Is CO2 the cause? Physics implies that more atmospheric CO2 does absorb more infrared radiation from the earth.
Many scientific organizations have developed computational models of the earth climate, taking into account factors such as the precession of the earth’s rotational axis, sunspot cycles, etc. The effect of CO2 is included in the models that fall in the blue band. Removing the CO2 effect gives the modeling results in the green band. James Hansen explains this in his Nutshell paper.
The earth absorbs radiation from the Sun. The incoming photons have a range of wavelengths, and the strongest radiation is in the range of visible light. (Evolution chose this.) The dotted line represents how the intensity of the infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light that a uniform hot 5785°K Sun would radiate. However the Sun has intensive flares and sunspots that create the observed intensity spectrum in the blue line. The similarly shaped green line represents the intensity spectrum at the surface, after much radiation has been absorbed by the atmosphere.
The right hand plot dotted line shows the expected radiation from a uniform body at the average temperature of the Earth, 295°K (22°C). The red line is the observed radiation from Earth escaping the top of the atmosphere as measured by a satellite above. The dips in the observed infrared radiation at 10 microns and 15 microns confirm that outbound energy is being selectively absorbed. This confirms the mechanism predicted by physics.
The left hand plot shows the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere now and under four future scenarios. The odd names (eg RCP 8.5) are from UN IPCC models (pathways). The RCP 8.5 pathway projects business as usual, continuing to increase energy use generated in the same manner as today, mostly by burning fossil fuels. Note that the vertical axis does not start at zero. The mass of Earth’s atmosphere is about 5 million gigatonnes, so the RCP 8.5 pathway will add about 1000 pcm to today’s 410 ppm in the air, or ~ 5000 Gt.
The right hand plot illustrates some of the effects of the four modeled pathways. The average global surface temperatures will rise under all scenarios, but RCP 2.6 (with the lowest CO2 emissions) will level off after 2050. The color coding of the four models differs on the two plots. The vertical bars on the right plot indicate the uncertainty in the models.
Other atmospheric gasses besides CO2 affect climate, but CO2 is the most influential, so this scroll presentation simply uses “CO2” rather than CO2-equivalent or greenhouse-gas nomenclature.
Numbers presented in these scrolls are rounded for simplicity, to highlight concepts. Displaying many significant digits distracts from learning.
This slide is based on the UN gap report. “Gap” refers to the difference from what was pledged at the Paris climate conference and what is needed to check global warming. It’s a nicer way of saying the CO2 reductions needed are ten times too small, but unfortunately this fact is not widely known.
Five scenarios are illustrated and labeled by the gigatonnes of CO2 annually added to the atmosphere in 2030, assuming a near linear ramp-up or ramp-down fo emissions. At the IPCC Cancn meeting nations had already pledged to reduce emissions from 65 to 59 Gt/year. The much ballyhooed Paris pledges, if carried out, would reduce emissions by only 3 Gt/year more.
Note that the vertical axis does not start at zero. The CO2 emissions are not just energy related, but include agriculture and land use changes.
The US rejoining the Paris agreement will have no discernible effect; fulfilling the Paris pledges will have no discernible effect.
A complicating factor is that electricity use is already increasing. People can afford more air conditioning as developing nations prosper. The internet, the cloud, computers, smart phones, and new tech apps all raise demand for reliable, cheap electricity. Electric vehicles consuming 1 kWh every 6 kilometers may be the least of the new demand.
The UN efforts to eliminate abject poverty are progressing. We expect that nearly a billion powerless people will be provided with some electricity. Average per capita power use in US and Europe is about 1000 watts. If a billion new consumers are connected to ample, reliable, cheap power from the grid, even at 100 watts, we’ll need 100 GW of new power sources.
Author Robert Bryce has produced a movie about the value of electricity, especially to those who lack it. This movie trailer summarizes what’s happening in several nations.
As our world population increases, more people demand more of Earth’s resources, including fossil fuels which are burned for energy. Checking population growth reduces demand for crops, seafood, energy, and mined natural resources.
In this plot each dot represents one nation. Clearly the poorest people have the most children. Improving the quality of life can reduce birthrates. (The outlier is Saudi Arabia.)
Adequate energy can free women from many subsistence chores, such as gathering firewood and dung, cooking, and washing clothes in streams. Freed women have time to study, learn, and develop skills that can let them earn income. With income-enabled independence, women make personal choices about bearing children. As raw birthrates drop below the replacement rate of about 2.3 children per woman, population decreases.
The prosperity level to achieve stable populations appears to be about $7,500/year per capita.
This plot illustrates how prosperity is associated with electric power. 2000 kWh/year is about 250 watts power consumption per person. Later on we’ll see that the slope of that line is about $5 per kWh.
About $7,500 per year was the prosperity level associated with population stability. Explore more at the CIA’s public information site.
A friend annotated this amazing illustration of the importance of mining.
The red bar on the left represents electric power demand in North America. The height is the per-capita average power use. The width is proportionate to population. The area thus represents the average power consumption in North America. All the world’s regions and people are represented horizontally.
If all the world used as much electricity, the total demand would be 1500 W times 7600 million people, or 11,400 GW, four times current use. Just bringing the developing nations’ use to China’s level would require almost 2,000 GW.
In this chart, each dot represents one nation. From the slope of the line you see the ratio of per-capita GDP to kWh(e) is about 5. The leaders of developing nations are perfectly aware of the essential role of electric power to improving the incomes of their citizens. A new 1-GW power plant can increase GDP by $32 billion per year.
This website of environmental organizations including Greenpeace lists coal-fired power plant projects. There are 2015 GW of coal plants in operation (not full time), and 574 GW in active development. Developing nations choose coal power plants because the technology is mature and the costs are low enough. The electricity generated is ample, reliable, and cheap. The ongoing coal fuel costs are affordable.
This graph of coal consumption displays how rapidly coal consumption is rising through 2019 in the developing nations. Western environmentalists take pride in shuttering coal plants and replacing them with less polluting natural gas plants, but many fail to notice the developing nations roles. This graph doesn’t represent the 4 gigatonnes per year of added CO2 the forthcoming 574 GW of new coal-fired plants might add to the atmosphere. That’s about as much as the total claimed Paris agreement reductions.
Robert Rapier writes frequent energy articles at OilPrice and Forbes.
France illustrates its successful experience in eliminating most CO2 emissions from power generation. Sweden and Ontario had similar successs. Can this be done with wind and solar energy sources?
The world atmosphere already contains 5,000 gigatonnes of CO2, increasing by about 50 gigatonnes each year.
CO2 in the atmosphere is nearly transparent to incoming light, but partially absorbs outgoing infrared radiation.
In the Paris agreement nations volunteered to reduce CO2 emissions on various schedules, but they are 10X too small to matter. The parties expect to meet every 5 years to decrease emissions further.
Developing nations are intent on providing their citizens with more electricity to improve people’s prosperity.
We saw that 1 kWh increases GDP/year by $4-6. Leaders in developing nations know this.
Coal-fired electricity generation technology is relatively inexpensive, with many competing suppliers, delivering full-time, ample, power at ~5 cents/kWh, depending on SOx, NOx, PM2.5 pollution control requirements.
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