hyland,+heat

Frontline: Heat Year: 2008 Producer, writer, and correspondent: Martin Smith This is a look at what it would take to roll back global climate change. The program is set against the backdrop of the 2008 Obama – McCain race. Various comments, positions (and position changes) of the candidates are featured. If the political “climate” in 2008 was not one in which Washington could stand up against the forces of climate change – which it was not – the current political climate heading into 2011 is even worse.

The program is broken into chapters that each take a brief look at the major contributors to, or results of climate change. This is quite ambitious. I did not find the overall message to be clear, although it was thoroughly disheartening. The program started in the Himalayas —a dry part of the world that relies on glaciers to quench the thirst of the people below. The featured glacier has lost up to 40% of its ice over the past few decades. Brief comments were made about people who live in drought-stricken areas.

Deniers and apologists like to point out that the earth has gone through natural climate change in the past. However, the program points out, never with 6.5 billion people — many of whom are reaching for the American way of energy-consuming life. Millions of people in China will suffer with the disappearing water from the Himalayan glaciers. They divert water and heighten tension with India. Wars over water may be greater than any fought over oil in the past.

Melting glaciers are one problem. Others are raising sea levels, expanding deserts, failing fish habitats more severe storms and more common wildfires. The program warns that we may cross a threshold and collapse. At that point, changes are irreversible. One thing I learned is that scientists have been aware of the potential impacts of increased CO2 levels since at least 1958. Catastrophic effects have been predicted since then, but no one has paid much attention until the 1990s — when it became clear that billions of people on earth could someday consume energy at the same rate as Americans.

I was not surprised to hear that the history of the US is the history of cheap energy: coal and energy. In 2008, coal shipments made up more than 50% of all train traffic in the US. The average American household uses 9.5 tons of coal annually. 52% of electricity comes from coal. Coal is indispensible. It is always available unlike solar or wind — or so the advocates of fossil fuel claim. In a case of history repeating itself, China now builds two new coal plants every week.

Treaties like Kyoto would put developed nations at a disadvantage compared to the exempt developing nations, so it was not popular in the US.

If we’re nervous about the energy thirst of China, consider that India will surpass China as the world’s largest population by 2030. If every Indian lives like an American, humanity and a large portion of other life on earth is doomed forever as the aforementioned irbreversibility threshold will be reached in no time.

In addition to direct coal use, the program points out that few products have as large of a carbon footprint as the cement these countries are literally building their brave new nations on. (Cement-making is the 3rd largest contributor to greenhouse gases.) This program is not a history lesson and not really even a look into the future — the way //An// //Inconvenient Truth// is. It is a snapshot of the situation between 2006 and 2008. In 2006, with democrats newly able to flex their muscle in Washington, a group of corporations saw the writing on the wall and felt compelled to call for carbon regulations through their newly formed US Climate Action Partnership. But by the time of the 2008 campaigns, the economy and millions of individual Americans were suffering and most major politicians (including the presidential candidates) were willing to do anything thing that could in effect raise the already relatively high price (by American standards). Existing tax subsidies to oil companies and ethanol farmers were okay, even expected, but proposing tax breaks to newer alternative energy companies were consider politically stupid.


 * Coal companies and utilities**

Clean coal seems like a myth, given the technical, geographic, and cost obstacles. Carbon capture is in all honesty a big unknown. The former rosy optimism is gone. It will not be a silver bullet. It’s too complicated. But both presidential candidates continued to promote it in 2008. You have to be for clean coal. You can’t campaign on a platform of doing away with coal. It’s too important to too many swing states.


 * Automobile companies**

Car companies lobby relentlessly to make sure that higher emissions standards are not adopted and that the federal government stops the adoption of stronger standards in California where the political will exists despite the car companies’ efforts. Car companies have been under pressure on and off to raise fuel efficiency. But no one told the Japanese that this has primarily been a ruse. The Japanese scrambled to develop hybrids because they thought they would be left behind — not realizing that Detroit felt under no real pressure to develop them. Unlike Detroit, the Japanese were willing to lose money for a while on hybrids, because of marketplace prestige. Down the American auto manufacturers are once again scrambling to keep up.


 * Oil companies**

No one has resisted change more than big oil. They sell carbon for a living. ExxonMobil invests less than ½ of 1% in renewable energy. If they invested more, it would be like admitting there is something wrong with their fossil fuels. They are still oil companies. No oil company is “beyond petroleum.” Oil companies are large contributors to climate change deniers group.

Major shareholders at the 2008 ExxonMobil annual meeting demanded that they invest more in climate change issues. They are actual shareholders (owners), not activists. However, even an action by 26% of shareholders (a huge number for this issues) is going to change what ExxonMobil does — which is “run around the world pulling oil of the ground.”


 * Canada's dirty secret**

Oil from Canadian tar sands has a carbon footprint 2 – 3 times that of other oil — because it is difficult to get the oil out of the sand. Heat is required. Canada is not greener than the U.S. in this critical regard.


 * Ethanol**

Ethanol is highly subsidized. Its carbon footprint compared to oil is debatable. Corn is different than sugar. Corn-based ethanol may actually have a higher carbon footprint because of fertilizer used to grow the corn. Obviously it is also water-intensive to grow. It is not a good feedstock for bio-fuels. But it also is grown in swing states. Ethanol is not readily available outside of the Midwest. A big energy folly!

Using more land to grow fuel is a bad idea in total. Food is even more important than fuel.


 * Wind**

Oil man T. Boone Pickens is committing to $2,000,000,000 in wind turbines. He is investing in a north-south wind corridor from Texas to the Dakotas, with solar farms west toward California. He says he can deliver energy independence. He wants government tax credits and subsidies.


 * Nuclear**

As calls for carbon-free power grow, people are looking at nuclear energy again. The French have had cost-effective nuclear energy (80% of their energy is from nuclear). The French government imposed a policy and followed through with it —despite objections of the population. Even if you think nuclear energy could be safe, the massive push and governmental support needed to overcome objections would not be forthcoming.


 * Me, me, me**

West Virginia coal miners, Michigan auto companies, Midwest corn farmers all put themselves about the greater good. While this is predictable, it is not sustainable. Tackling climate change will require the will of a government that represent all Americans, but that is not forthcoming.


 * Europe and Japan**

Europe and Japan do not produce as many greenhouse gases per person because they never had much oil. They were always aware of their national security vulnerability if they relied on oil produced outside of their borders. In addition, Europeans are not as skeptical in national investments for such things as alternative energy as Americans are. Americans invest in the military instead to protect oil interests.

Wind provides 7% of energy in Germany, yet Germany is not very windy! There is more wind available in North Dakota than in Germany.


 * The political will to change is diminishing even more**

Ultimately in 2008 the debate the Warner, Liebermann, Boxer bill was buried legislatively because of the relatively high price of gas and lack of skills the creators of the bill had to debate it. The candidates were “hiding” — afraid to support a big government spending bill.

This NPR story after the election explains how Cap and Trade is even “deader” than it was: “The coffin is nailed shut.” []

What do the people who were frustrated about the lack of climate change reforms think now? My home state of Wisconsin just elected a self-proclaimed climate change denier — industrialist Ron Johnson. In the meantime, the pace of melting glaciers and severity of wildfires and drought accelerates faster than most had predicted a decade ago.

This Frontline show was not uplifting. So I did research on the Meadow Lake wind farm on i-65 in Indiana. (near Rensselaer, IN!) I drive through it for about 10 miles when visiting my brother in Indianapolis. It turns out that since 2008, Indiana has become a world leader in utility-scale wind energy. []

The Frontline program site includes a link to these “global-warming basics. I was surprised to learn that black carbon is almost as destructive as CO2 []