Combined Cycle Power Plant

The Combined Cycle Power Plant, “Kombikraftwerk” can harness wind, sunlight, water, and biofuels to meet ALL Germany’s electric power needs, 365 days per year, regardless of weather conditions.  And if it “werks” in Germany, it will work here.

Professor Jurgen Schmid and his colleagues at the Institute for Solar Energy Supply Systems of the University of Kassel, in Germany, with funding from Enercon GmbH, SolarWorld AG and Schmack Biogas AG, have developed the Combined Cycle Power Plant, or “Kombikraftwerk” and proven that they can use wind, solar, biomass and hydro to meet ALL Germany’s electricity needs around the clock regardless of weather conditions. Schmid says.“If renewables continue to grow as they have done in the past, they’ll provide around 40% of Germany’s electricity needs by 2020. We could therefore achieve 100% by the middle of the century.” Information on the Combined Cycle Power Plant is here, and here, at “Germany’s Renewable Energy Information Platform.

The Combined Cycle Power Plant is a network of 36 installations, wind farms, solar arrays, biogas and hydro turbines. Wind and solar provide base load power. When there is too much wind, excess power is used to pump water uphill into reservoirs – essentially storing the potential energy in a water / gravity battery.  When needed the water flows, powering hydroturbines. They also use biogas for peak power.

It’s ironic that the country that almost destroyed civilization in the 1930′s and ’40′s is today leading the efforts to save it; while at the same time the country that stepped in to save civilization in the ’30′s and ’40′s seems hell-bent on destroying it today.

What is different? For the past 30 years the Germans have been listening to Hermann Scheer, an economist member of Parliament who basically said “we don’t want to buy fuel from the Arabs, the Iranians, or the Russians.  We need to be self-sufficient in terms of energy. Sunlight and the winds are free of chargs, and can be harnessed, forever, without the production of toxic wastes.”  It’s as if they were listening to Al Gore.

We, on the other hand, have been following leaders who told us we can’t trust our government. And by their actions – arms for hostages deals with Iran, arms for drugs deals in South America, the War for oil in Iraq, incompetence in response to Hurricane Katrina, an energy policy based on dependance on buying fuel from dictators that will cause more storms and floods – proven themselves true to their words. We listen to:

• Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers behind the Tea Party, who happily spend Millions so they don’t have to pay their fair share to build roads, schools, hospitals,
• Don Blankenship, who ignores mine safety laws, fires miners, and creates conditions by which disasters like Upper Big Branch have to happen,
• Glenn Beck, who’s message is populist and racist,
• Rush Limbaugh who wants to take us back to 1950,
• Newt Gingrich, who tell us we can’t trust the President, and he wants him to fail – but if Obama fails, America fails – because he is the President,
• Rupert Murdoch who with his company News Corp, provides a national platform for Beck, Limbaugh and the rest.
• Alaweed bin Tallal, Saudi Prince and second largest shareholder in News Corp.

Murdoch and bin Talal in Abu Dhabi

As we think about the events of September 11, 2001, we must think about the world we are creating for ouselves and our children.

Unlike Warren Buffett, Jeremy Grantham, chairman of Grantham Mayo van Otterloo, GMO.com, is not a “celebrity investor.” And also unlike Buffett, Grantham is an environmentalist. Jeremy and his wife, Hannelore, established the Grantham Foundation for the protection of the environment, and The Grantham Research on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. Like Buffett, Mr. Grantham talks to investors who hire him, and via his investments, charities, and other work, he talks to the world.  Mr. Grantham recently wrote “Everything you want to know about Global Warming in 5 minutes“,

Two ideas stand out:

Climate warming involves hard science. The two most prestigious bastions of hard science are the National Academy in the U.S. and the Royal Society in the U.K., to which Isaac Newton and the rest of that huge 18th century cohort of brilliant scientists belonged.  The presidents of both societies wrote a note recently, emphasizing the seriousness of the climate problem and that it was man-made. …  Both societies have also made full reports on behalf of their membership stating the same.  Do we believe the whole elite of science is in a conspiracy?  At some point in the development of a scientific truth, contrarians risk becoming flat earthers.

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?

The full text is below:

1) The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, after at least several hundred thousand years of remaining within a constant range, started to rise with the advent of the Industrial Revolution.  It has increased by almost 40% and is rising each year.  This is certain and straightforward.

2) One of the properties of CO2 is that it creates a greenhouse effect and, all other things being equal, an increase in its concentration in the atmosphere causes the Earth’s temperature to rise.  This is just physics.  (The amount of other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as methane, has also risen steeply since industrialization, which has added to the impact of higher CO2 levels.)

3) Several other factors, like changes in solar output, have major influences on climate over millennia, but these effects have been observed and measured.  They alone cannot explain the rise in the global temperature over the past 50 years.

4) The uncertainties arise when it comes to the interaction between greenhouse gases and other factors in the complicated climate system.  It is impossible to be sure exactly how quickly or how much the temperature will rise.  But, the past can be measured.  The temperature has indeed steadily risen over the past century while greenhouse gas levels have increased.  But the forecasts still range very widely for what will happen in the future, ranging from a small but still potentially harmful rise of 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit to a potentially disastrous level of +6 to +10 degrees Fahrenheit within this century.  A warmer atmosphere melts glaciers and ice sheets, and causes global sea levels to rise. A warmer atmosphere also contains more energy and holds more water, changing the global occurrences of storms, floods, and other extreme weather events.

5) Skeptics argue that this wide range of uncertainty about future temperature changes lowers the need to act: “Why spend money when you’re not certain?”  But since the penalties can rise at an accelerating rate at the tail, a wider range implies a greater risk (and a greater expected value of the costs.)  This is logically and mathematically rigorous and yet is still argued.

6) Pascal asks the question: What is the expected value of a very small chance of an inf nite loss?  And, he answers, “Infinite.”  In this example, what is the cost of lowering CO2 output and having the long-term effect of increasing CO2 turn out to be nominal?  The cost appears to be equal to foregoing, once in your life, six months’ to one year’s global growth – 2% to 4% or less.  The benefits, even with no warming, include: energy independence from the Middle East; more jobs, since wind and solar power and increased efficiency are more labor-intensive than another coal-fired power plant; less pollution of streams and air; and an early leadership role for the U.S. in industries that will inevitably become important.  Conversely, what are the costs of not acting on prevention when the results turn out to be serious:  costs that may dwarf those for prevention; and probable political destabilization from droughts, famine, mass migrations, and even war.  And, to Pascal’s real point, what might be the cost at the very extreme end of the distribution: Definitely life changing, possibly life threatening.?

7) The biggest cost of all from global warming is likely to be the accumulated loss of biodiversity.  This features nowhere in economic cost-benefit analysis because, not surprisingly, it is hard to put a price on that which is priceless.
A special word on the right-leaning think tanks:  As libertarians, they abhor the need for government spending or even governmental leadership, which in their opinion is best left to private enterprise.  In general, this may be an excellent idea. But global warming is a classic tragedy of the commons – seeking your own individual advantage, for once, does not lead to the common good, and the problem desperately needs government leadership and regulation.  Sensing this, these think tanks have allowed their drive for desirable policy to trump science.  Not a good idea.

9) Also, I should make a brief note to my own group – die hard contrarians.  Dear fellow contrarians, I know the majority is usually wrong in the behavioral jungle of the stock market.  And Heaven knows I have seen the soft scientists who lead ?nance theory attempt to bully their way to a uniform acceptance of the bankrupt theory of rational expectations and market efficiency. But climate warming involves hard science. The two most prestigious bastions of hard science are the National Academy in the U.S. and the Royal Society in the U.K., to which Isaac Newton and the rest of that huge 18th century cohort of brilliant scientists belonged.  The presidents of both societies wrote a note recently, emphasizing the seriousness of the climate problem and that it was man-made.  (See the attachment to last quarter’s Letter.)  Both societies have also made full reports on behalf of their membership stating the same.  Do we believe the whole elite of science is in a conspiracy?  At some point in the development of a scientific truth, contrarians risk becoming flat earthers.

10) Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for … what?  Being needled by nonscienti?c newspaper reports, by blogs, and by right-wing politicians and think tanks?  Most hard scientists hate themselves or their colleagues for being in the news.  Being a climate scientist spokesman has already become a hindrance to an academic career, including tenure.  I have a much simpler but plausible “conspiracy theory”: that fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profi ts, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results.

11) Why are we arguing the issue?  Challenging vested interests as powerful as the oil and coal lobbies was never going to be easy.  Scientists are not naturally aggressive defenders of arguments.  In short, they are conservatives by training:  never, ever risk overstating your ideas.  The skeptics are far, far more determined and expert propagandists to boot.  They are also well funded.  That smoking caused cancer was obfuscated deliberately and effectively for 20 years at a cost of hundreds of thousands of extra deaths.

We know that for certain now, yet those who caused this fatal delay have never been held accountable.  The pro? ts of the oil and coal industry make tobacco’s resources look like a rounding error.  In some notable cases, the obfuscators of global warming actually use the same “experts” as the tobacco industry did!  The obfuscators’ simple and direct motivation –  making money in the near term, which anyone can relate to – combined with their resources and, as it turns out, propaganda talents, have meant that we are arguing the science long after it has been nailed down.  I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?”

12) Almost no one wants to change.  The long-established status quo is very comfortable, and we are used to its de?ciencies.  But for this problem we must change.  This is never easy.

13) Almost everyone wants to hear good news.  They want to believe that dangerous global warming is a hoax.  They, therefore, desperately want to believe the skeptics.  This is a problem for all of us.

Postscript
Global warming will be the most important investment issue for the foreseeable future.  But how to make money around this issue in the next few years is not yet clear to me.  In a fast-moving field rife with treacherous politics, there will be many failures.  Marketing a “climate” fund would be much easier than outperforming with it.

Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense

This article presents and debunks myths about climate change.

Evidence for human interference with Earth’s climate continues to accumulate

By John Rennie, Scientific American, November 30, 2009

“On November 18, U.S. Sen. James R. Inhofe (R–Okla.) took the floor of the Senate and proclaimed 2009 to be “The Year of the Skeptic.” Had the senator’s speech marked a new commitment to dispassionate, rational inquiry, a respect for scientific thought and a well-grounded doubt in ghosts, astrology, creationism and homeopathy, it might have been cause for cheer. But Inhofe had a more narrow definition of skeptic in mind: he meant “standing up and exposing … the costs and the hysteria behind global warming alarmism.”

“Within the community of scientists and others concerned about anthropogenic climate change, those whom Inhofe calls skeptics are more commonly termed contrarians, naysayers and denialists. Not everyone who questions climate change science fits that description, of course—some people are genuinely unaware of the facts or honestly disagree about their interpretation. What distinguishes the true naysayers is an unwavering dedication to denying the need for action on the problem, often with weak and long-disproved arguments about supposed weaknesses in the science behind global warming.

“What follows is only a partial list of the contrarians’ bad arguments and some brief rebuttals of them.

“Claim 1: Anthropogenic CO2 can’t be changing climate, because CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere and the amount produced by humans is dwarfed by the amount from volcanoes and other natural sources.

“Although CO2 makes up only 0.04 percent of the atmosphere, that says nothing about its significance in climate dynamics. Even at that low concentration, CO2 absorbs infrared radiation and acts as a greenhouse gas … Svante Arrhenius … in 1896 … /estimated/ the impact of CO2 on the climate … concluded that doubling its concentration might cause almost 6 degrees Celsius of warming.

“Contrary to the contrarians, human activity is by far the largest contributor to the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, anthropogenic CO2 amounts to about 30 billion tons annually—more than 130 times as much as volcanoes produce. True, 95 percent of the releases of CO2 to the atmosphere are natural, but natural processes such as plant growth and absorption into the oceans pull the gas back out of the atmosphere and almost precisely offset them, leaving the human additions as a net surplus.

“Claim 2: The alleged “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the past 1,600 years has been disproved. It doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of a “medieval warm period” around 1000 A.D. that was hotter than today is. Therefore, global warming is a myth.

“It is hard to know which is greater: contrarians’ overstatement of the flaws in the historical temperature reconstruction from 1998 by Michael E. Mann and his colleagues, or the ultimate insignificance of their argument to the case for climate change.

“There is not simply one hockey-stick reconstruction of historical temperatures using one set of proxy data. Similar evidence for sharply increasing temperatures over the past couple of centuries has turned up independently while looking at ice cores, tree rings and other proxies for direct measurements, from many locations. Notwithstanding their differences, they corroborate that the earth has been getting sharply warmer. (italics mine)

“A 2006 National Research Council review of the evidence concluded ‘with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries’…

“But hypothetically, even if the hockey stick was busted… what of it? The case for anthropogenic global warming originally came from studies of climate mechanics, not from reconstructions of past temperatures seeking a cause. Warnings about current warming trends came out years before Mann’s hockey stick graph. Even if the world were incontrovertibly warmer 1,000 years ago, it would not change the fact that the recent rapid rise in CO2 explains the current episode of warming more credibly than any natural factor does—and that no natural factor seems poised to offset further warming in the years ahead.”

“Claim 3: Global warming stopped a decade ago; the earth has been cooling since then.

Anyone with even a glancing familiarity with statistics should be able to spot the weaknesses of that argument. Given the extended duration of the warming trend, the expected (and observed) variations in the rate of increase and the range of uncertainties in the temperature measurements and forecasts, a decade’s worth of mild interruption is too small a deviation to prove a break in the pattern.

“Claim 4: The sun or cosmic rays are much more likely to be the real causes of global warming. After all, Mars is warming up, too.

“Astronomical phenomena are obvious natural factors to consider when trying to understand climate … Climatologists, therefore, do take them into account in their models. But in defiance of the naysayers who want to chalk the recent warming up to natural cycles, there is insufficient evidence that enough extra solar energy is reaching our planet to account for the observed rise in global temperatures.

“The IPCC notes that between 1750 and 2005, the radiative forcing from the sun increased by 0.12 watts/square-meter—less than a tenth of the net … from human activities.

“Claim 5: Climatologists conspire to hide the truth about global warming by locking away their data. Their so-called “consensus” on global warming is scientifically irrelevant because science isn’t settled by popularity.

“It is virtually impossible to disprove accusations of giant global conspiracies to those already convinced of them (can anyone prove that the Freemasons and the Roswell aliens aren’t involved, too?). /However/ the magnitude of this hypothetical conspiracy would need to encompass many thousands of uncontroversial publications and respected scientists from around the world, stretching back through Arrhenius and Tyndall for almost 150 years. (See this feature on “Carbon Dioxide and Climate,” by Gilbert N. Plass, from Scientific American in July 1959.) It is also one so powerful that it has co-opted the official positions of dozens of scientific organizations including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Physics and the American Meteorological Society.

“Claim 6: Climatologists have a vested interest in raising the alarm because it brings them money and prestige.

“If climate scientists are angling for more money by hyping fears of climate change, they are not doing so very effectively. According to a 2006 Government Accountability Office study, between 1993 and 2004, U.S. federal spending on climate change rose from $3.3 billion to $5.1 billion—a 55 percent increase. (Total federal nondefense spending on research in 2004 exceeded $50 billion.) However, the research share of that money fell from 56 percent to 39 percent: most of it went to energy conservation projects and other technology programs. Climatologists’ funding therefore stayed almost flat while others, including those in industry, benefited handsomely.

“Claim 7: Technological fixes, such as inventing energy sources that don’t produce CO2 or geoengineering the climate, would be more affordable, prudent ways to address climate change than reducing our carbon footprint.

“… critics of standard policy responses to climate change often seem to imply that environmentalists are obsessed with regulatory reductions in CO2 emissions and uninterested in technological solutions. That interpretation is at best bizarre: technological innovations in energy efficiency, conservation and production are exactly what caps or levies on CO2 are meant to encourage.”

What killed nuclear power was not Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, or the demonstrations of public opposition such as at Seabrook, NH in the late 1970′s or the Musicians United for Safe Energy concerts in New York, Sept. 19-23, 1979, (both of which I attended).

What killed nuclear power was the realization by the bankers on Wall St. that after an event like Three Mile Island their multi-billion investment very quickly became a multi-billion pile of junk with virtually zero salvage value and a tremendously negative return on investment.

And coal today?

According to the National Energy Technology Laboratory “Historically, actual capacity has been seen to be significantly less than proposed capacity. For example, the 2002 report /of the National Energy Technology Lab, NETL, of the Department of Energy, DOE/ listed 36,161 MW of proposed /coal/ capacity by the year 2007 when actually only 4,478 MW (12%) were constructed.” Tracking New Coal-Fired Power Plants, NETL, Office of Systems Analyses and Planning, by Erik Shuster, Feb. 18, 2008, pg, 4, 5.

Housley Carr, writing in McGraw Hill’s Engineering News-Record

, reported on the impending demise of  “King Coal” Uncertainty Over Carbon has Coal Plants Stymied

with public, regulatory and lender concern growing, many proposed plants are being cancelled. Permits issued for others require offsets for their carbon emissions, while the ones that remain in permitting are being intensely challenged. The U. S. Envrionmental Protection Agency must regulate carbon-dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act, the Supreme Court ruled last year, but Congress has failed to give EPA guidelines for a national policy. Three investment banks last month announced guidelines they would use to assess the risks of investment in coal-fired generation in the absense of a national policy. Further, the largest electric utility in Kansas, citing “seismic shifts in the assumptions shaping our industry,” issued a strategic plan that knocks the crown from King Coal’s head.”

(Via Inhabitat) Which may, in fact, exceed FEMA’s exertions – despite the fact that, as Paul Villinski

, a

New York-based artist has demonstrated, it’s entirely possible to construct livable/usable emergency structures which rely on solar and wind power. From Bridget Steffen at Inhabitat, Solar Powered Mobile Emergency Response Studio:

Better yet, make sure you read the whole piece and see the images – the one above the jump, taken alone, doesn’t do it justice.NB: as of this writing – October 30th – Villinski’s bandwidth limit had been exceeded. Waiting and checking back later will, we think, be worth it.

Villinski – main site.

Emergency Response Studio

.

Other coverage.

Via Ron Fournier of the Associated Press, Gore sets ‘moon shot’ goal on climate change, dated today (16 July 2008). An excerpt:

Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president said fellow Democrat Barack Obama and Republican rival John McCain are “way ahead” of most politicians in the fight against global climate change.

[We haven't examined either candidates' positions on these issues carefully - but we take Senator Gore's implicit  point - that the necessity will be present whoever wins the election - Eds.]

-  snip -

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that he chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money. But he says it would cost about as much to build ozone-killing coal plants to satisfy current demand.

“This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over,” Gore said. “It’s an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels.”

Excerpted from Gore sets ‘moon shot’ goal on climate change. By Ron Fournier of The Associated Press.

We understand – or believe – that the AP has been concerned about excessive use of their reports. We believe the above excerpt complies with the “fair use” doctrine. Also – Fournier’s lead – the comparison to the space program – is particulary apt, and should be useful in public discussion.