Bishop Hill Kevin Anderson gets shirty
May 13, 2013 Climate: Parliament Energy: gas Greens Kevin Anderson, the Tyndall Centre's uber green worrier-in-chief has written a heated riposte to Peter Lilley's Spectator piece about shale gas. It's pretty strange stuff.
The immediate source of his ire appears to be Lilley's description of him as the "Ayatollah of the green movement". It's hardly how you'd like to be introduced to your prospective mother-in-law, but it's not exactly the most cutting insult around, particularly in the climate debate. However, Anderson seems to take considerable umbrage. In particular, the fact that his name only appears once in the article - in connection with a wish to keep shale gas in the ground - seems to have escaped him, and he leaps to the conclusion that every criticism made by Lilley is directed at him. Much huffing and puffing ensues, and on Twitter, dark accusations of "lies and half truths".
Last time an university bod went off on one like this, I wondered out loud about the lack of professionalism within the academy. It was Doug McNeall, I think, who said "welcome to academia".
Reader Comments (112)
And here is another.
Natural variation, and the capacity to adapt to ocean acidification in the keystone sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus
Morgan W. Kelly†,*,
Jacqueline L. Padilla-Gamiño†,
Gretchen E. Hofmann
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12251
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12251/abstract
A rapidly growing body of literature documents the potential negative effects of CO2-driven ocean acidification (OA) on marine organisms. However, nearly all of this work has focused on the effects of future conditions on modern populations, neglecting the role of adaptation.
Kevin
Many thanks for that reply — the more appreciated because I don't have a "day job" so can sit here and create these posts at my leisure.
What I wrote was intended, up to a point, to be a bit provocative but reflects reasonably accurately (I'm sure other posters here will either bear me out or shoot me down!) much of what is produced for public consumption by what I might call mainstream climatology.
My reason for introducing the question of world population is that, unlike Oppenheimer, I consider that we in the "developed" world have a moral obligation (at the very least) not to stop them right where they are but to encourage and assist them to develop to their full potential as we have developed to ours (some of us!).
Pointman's "People First, Planet Second" applies, and I don't believe that we are taking a major risk in continuing to use whatever cheap reliable energy (which at this stage means fossil fuel) will bring this about. All else is esoterica in my view.
May 16, 2013 at 11:09 AM | Kevin Anderson
I don't have figures for diesel engines or steam turbines but the Whittle engine technology you mentioned in an earlier post has improved in efficiency at the rate of 2.74%/annum over the 62 years between the W1 test flights in 1941 which showed a specific fuel consumption of 1.4 lb/lb thrust/hr compared with the GE90-115B test flown in the Boeing 777-300ER in 2003 which has a specific fuel consumption of 0.25 lb/lb thrust/hr.
I probably don't have to tell you that for all the technologies you mentioned the improvements cannot go on without limit since there is a thermodynamic efficiency (related the chosen cycle) which cannot be exceeded, only approached.
These hard limits are the main reason why renewables such as wind and solar PV will never economically supplant the older technologies you mentioned.
" As I noted before the principal energy technologies remain based on
designs of 80 or more years ago"
Nuclear reactors aren't based on pre 1933 designs are they?
Hi Billy,
Ta for the jet info. I don't think it is appropriate to take the 'test' figures and extrapolate those as a basis for long-run efficiency improvements of existing technologies. I suggest taking an early commercial figure and running from that.
So in the jet example, I'd suggest the earliest figures to be based on the engine performance figures for the comet as the first commercial liner. In that regards, use the Rolls Royce Avon engines - as far as I can gather from trawling the web and depending on the engine model the sfc for the RA 29 was 0.746 lb/lb thrust/hr. This would shift the improvement to around 2% p.a. - and given the GE90-115B you note has, I think, a well above average-sized fan there are additional drag and weight issues (how this plays out on overall energy use / revenue seat km I'm not sure). However, possibly more important than this is whether the SFC for the GE is for cruse, take off, or some mix. I'm a little suspicious as the GE's SFC does appear much lower than many other models - where I gather 0.5-0.6 for cruise is typical and 0.3-0.4 for take off (when power levels are higher and relative thrust efficiency better) - see discussion on http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/202752.
In the absence of a more detailed understanding of SFC issues and numbers, combined with shifting from a test jet to a commercial and more mature engine model, I think the improvements likely remain in the normal 0.5-1.5% p.a. category (with an outside chance of 2%).
Please note - there will always be exceptions to historical improvement rates - but the 0.5 -1.5% is a good and fairly robust guide.
Rob,
Nuclear is just the heat source providing electricity through the normal steam turbine cycle.
In addition nuclear designs are not radically different from the earlier versions. Calder Hall (1954) was a magnox design, as is Oldbury that only stopped generating last year; and as is Wylfa that, as far as I know, is still generating. Sizewell B is a pwr - originally designed for submarines and for the US army as isolated electricity supply - back in the 50s and 60s.
Regards
Kevin
Dear Professor Anderson, I hope you have read my posts on the benign/beneficial effects of evelated CO2 in the biological world?
May 17, 2013 at 4:07 PM | Kevin Anderson
So successful Fusion could be lumped in as just a generator of steam for a turbine? so therefore ancient technology. Do you have projected Nuclear energy generation projections/predictions from the early 20th century?
May 17, 2013 at 4:07 PM | Kevin Anderson
I've just seen where I vaguely recognised your name from. You and Paul Valdes are both directors of Greenstone Carbon Management and Paul was my PhD supervisor at Reading. Say Hi from me at your next board meeting....
Hi Kevin
You're right that CO2 fertilization is included in climate models - I worked on that area of the Met Office Hadley Centre model in the 1990s. I see Don cites a paper with Graham Farquhar as a co-author - we use Farquhar's formulation in our model. While photosynthesis does indeed increase as CO2 concentrations rise, this saturates at higher concentrations. i.e.: the benefit does not go on indefinitely. You know the implications of this, but for the benefit of other readers, this means that the resulting carbon sink (which has been partly offsetting anthropogenic emissions in the past) probably won't continue at its current rate. The airborne fraction of CO2 emissions, which is currently about 50%, is therefore expected to become larger. This should be taken into account in translating emissions scenarios to concentration scenarios.
Cheers
Richard
PS. Rob Burton: Paul Valdes was also my PhD supervisor at Reading.
@Richard, I too have used Farquhar's model when putting together software to measure photosynthesis and calculate A/Ci curves.
Whilst you are correct that photosynthesis saturates at higher concentrations, this is true of any enzyme-mediated biological reaction.
The point is that photosynthesis is not going to saturate any time soon :-)
This paper may help you
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167880910003154
Plant biomass is known to increase in response to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration (pCO2); however, no experiments have quantified the trajectory of crop fertilization across the full range of pCO2 levels estimated for the next 300 years. Here we quantify the above- and below-ground biomass response of Raphanus sativus (common radish) across eight pCO2 levels ranging from 348 to 1791 ppmv. We observed a large net biomass increase of 58% above ground and 279% below ground. A large part of the net increase (38% of the above-ground and 53% of the below-ground) represented biomass fertilization at the high levels of pCO2 (700–1791 ppmv) predicted if fossil fuel emissions continue unabated. The trajectory of below-ground fertilization in R. sativus greatly exceeded a trajectory based on extrapolation of previous experiments for plants grown at pCO2 < 800 ppmv. Based on the experimental parameters used to grow these plants, we hypothesize that these experiments represent the maximum CO2 fertilization that can be achieved for this plant growing under low light levels.
Note photosynthesis saturates at higher light intensities the higher the [CO2]. If anything this paper underestimates the upper limits for CO2 saturation.
And even when CO2 does saturate, plants will still gain benefit from lowered transpiration- thus allowing then to grow with less water/live in more arid places from which they are currently excluded.
Regards,
Don
So, I'll start with the natural processes of CO2 in perfect equilibrium and just work on the growth of the 3% produced by man....do I need to use 50% uptake of ACO2 versus 100% uptake of natural CO2?