Carbon Dioxide Inputs & Outputs Current & Projected

[William]

China has just recently introduced a solar feed in tariff of about 15 cents a kilowatt-hour. Given the wonderfully low module prices offered by Chinese manufacturers at the moment and the low costs of installation in China this should result in much more bang per buck than a similar feed in tariff in a more developed country. I think a rapid expansion of solar PV in China is fairly likely, despite the murky air that often covers large areas of the country. I would guess the most PV would be installed in the sunny West and North and then it would slowly penetrate the dismal South East. In the margin, Solar PV would replace expensive gas and imported Australian coal, so it would not be competing against cheap local coal. At least not at first anyway.

Source for this table: See first comment this thread.

2010
% Change___% of Total World
-8.4% 1.1% Australia
8.0% 0.1% Bangladesh
17.2% 24.6% China
0.4% 0.1% China Hong Kong SAR
18.8% 6.2% India
17.4% 1.4% Indonesia
-5.8% 3.4% Japan
-4.2% 0.6% Malaysia
-11.8% 0.1% New Zealand
2.5% 0.5% Pakistan
8.1% 0.3% Philippines
10.8% 0.1% Singapore
10.6% 1.7% South Korea
2.4% 0.8% Taiwan
4.7% 0.9% Thailand
25.9% 0.5% Vietnam
-2.1% 0.4% Other Asia Pacific
12.7% 42.8%Total Asia Pacific

What is lacking is basic cost analysis and an understanding fundamental limits (i.e. physical limitation) of specific technologies. Ignoring the cost to install solar panels, new power lines, substations, and storage batteries, there are other fundamental problems with solar. Solar energy is low intensity. Vast regions of the planet would need to be covered with solar panels. Many regions of the Asia have low hours of sunlight due to cloud cover.

We need a separate thread to solar and wind power. There are basic fundamental technical problems with those energy sources that have not been discussed. I have been looking for a book that is not all hype. This is best that I have found so far.

http://www.amazon.com/Energy-Myths-R.../dp/0844743283

I will start a separate thread to discuss this issue.

China is constructing 1000 MW of new coal fired power plants every year. China produced 50% more carbon dioxide in 2010 than the US, 24.6% per cent of the world total. Coal is by far the cheap energy source. It is appears that is reason why the Chinese are constructing 1000 MW of new coal fired power plants every year.

How do you know what you read concerning the Chinese is correct? The Chinese would not agree to monitoring of their voluntary carbon dioxide "intensity" proposal. Why would they not agree to monitoring of carbon dioxide emissions that are voluntary? The Chinese proposed carbon dioxide intensity agreement is that the Chinese would continue to produce more carbon dioxide every year however the increase in carbon dioxide emission will be less per unit of GDP.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...072577680.html

Imagine a "dream" agreement emerging from Copenhagen next week: The U.S. agrees to cut greenhouse emissions 80% by 2050, as President Barack Obama has been promising. The other developed countries promise to cut emissions by 60%. China promises to reduce its CO2 intensity by 70% in 2040. Emerging economies promise that in 2040, when their wealth per capita has grown to half that of the U.S., they will cut emissions by 80% over the following 40 years. And all parties make good on their pledges.

Environmental success, right? Wrong. Even if the goals are all met, emissions will continue rising to nearly four times the current level. Total atmospheric CO2 will rise to near 700 parts per million by 2080 (the current level is 385), and—if the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models are right—global temperature will rise about six degrees Fahrenheit at mid latitudes.

Cheap green energy is not going to be easy. Coal is dirt cheap, and China has been installing a new gigawatt coal plant each week—enough to supply five completely new cities the size of New York every year.

[Trakar]

Mueller (and Jerry) also ignore the fact that China has some of the largest renewable energy programs on the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewab...ublic_of_China

This is a big problem from a competition point of view because it means that China will be a leader in the very technologies many in the west are looking toward to fund our own shifts to a new energy paradigm.

[Trakar]

...What is lacking is basic cost analysis and an understanding fundamental limits (i.e. physical limitation) of specific technologies. Ignoring the cost to install solar panels, new power lines, substations, and storage batteries, there are other fundamental problems with solar. Solar energy is low intensity. Vast regions of the planet would need to be covered with solar panels. Many regions of the Asia have low hours of sunlight due to cloud cover...

misleading if not entirely inaccurate.

couple of points:
the idea isn't to replace big oil or big coal with big solar, but rather to diversify our energy supply and disperse our energy production to local areas where we can fit the energy source to the region of its production much more easily. This isn't to say that there won't be any big Solar operations (both thermal and photovoltaic), but rather that the goal is more for networked, diversified energy production/use cells, more resistant to shocks (environmental, political and economic). The lesson of the twentieth century isn't just to move away from fossil fuels, but to move away from critical dependence on any one, centralized system heavily reliant on transport/connection to other areas.

secondly, "vast" areas is purely subjective in context.

Solar thermal and photovoltaic farms are larger in size than a coal fired power plant but certainly smaller than any solar biofuels scheme. These are generally situated in places where the area they occupy is largely irrelevent (arid scrub lands and deserts). With wind and many other alternatives there are greatly similar issues as the actual surface footprint is rather small, the main problem with these large scale centralized applications is the fact that we generally have to then transport the energy generated substantial distances to get it to locations where it is used.

[Trakar]

China has just recently introduced a solar feed in tariff of about 15 cents a kilowatt-hour. Given the wonderfully low module prices offered by Chinese manufacturers at the moment and the low costs of installation in China this should result in much more bang per buck than a similar feed in tariff in a more developed country. I think a rapid expansion of solar PV in China is fairly likely, despite the murky air that often covers large areas of the country. I would guess the most PV would be installed in the sunny West and North and then it would slowly penetrate the dismal South East. In the margin, Solar PV would replace expensive gas and imported Australian coal, so it would not be competing against cheap local coal. At least not at first anyway.

The big advantage of having rooftop/parking-lot residential and commercial solar-assist power is that even when the grid goes down, you still have residual electric at least during the day which can be used to continue low level activities and charge batteries for minimal activities after sunset. It is a liberator in many ways.

[peteshimmon]

This is reminding me of a concern I posted
in this forum some years ago. It seems that
the plankton in the sea is a major sink if
not THE major sink of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Since then I have learned this organism is
not distributed evenly in the seas but appears
as big "blooms" in its growing season. I do
not know if this makes my concern more potent.

I question whether shipping, in particular
ships propellors harm the plankton. As the
pressure pulse of the props go through the
water I would think it makes any small
organism go "pop" and the poor things
cease to do their thing! So all ships
voyages may cull a certain amount of
plankton.

It should be easy to total up all shipping
movements the past 70 years or so to
estimate any damage. And judge if this
is of concern.

[HenrikOlsen]

Plankton isn't really a sink as the CO2 is mostly released again when it dies and rots, but it may well be the major component in the seasonal variation.

[peteshimmon]

I thought there was a carbonate component
that sank to the sea bottom. Sequestered
as it were!

[HenrikOlsen]

There's the calcium carbonate from some types of plankton which does to some extent get deposited as new chalk, but it's a vanishingly small amount compared to the amount of carbon dioxide produced by combustion of fossil fuels.

It is one of the ways things will normalize in a couple of millennia once the fossil fuels have run out, but it's not nearly enough to offset the current rate of output.

[peteshimmon]

I had the impression it was quite a
big sink year by year. The estimates
must be available somewheres.

[Ronald Brak]

The ocean is the world's largest carbon sink, and this is mostly due to carbon being aborbed into the water (where it mostly hangs out in the form of the bicarbonate ion, HCO3-). Before the industrial revolution, the concentraton of CO2 in the ocean was more or less in equilibrium with CO2 in the atmosphere - that is, on average for each molecule of CO2 absorbed by the ocean one would be released. But as human activity increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere the CO2 started moving into the oceans. The oceans have a huge capacity to absorb CO2, but because the surface water becomes saturated with CO2 this limits the rate at which CO2 can be absorbed. The surface and the deep ocean waters mix very slowly, so so the oceans will continue to act as a carbon sink for thousands of years, although over time the rate of absorption will slow. One problem is that warm water holds less carbon than cool water and as the earth heats the surface waters of the ocean will absorb less carbon. Biological processes in the ocean also remove carbon from the atmosphere, but much less than the direct method.

[HenrikOlsen]

I wouldn't call that a sink, I'd call it a buffer. Sink implies that once it enters it's gone for good.

[Ari Jokimaki]

Sink is commonly used terminology in this subject even in scientific literature.

[peteshimmon]

Incidentally I am sure I read of proposals
to "seed" some areas of ocean so as to make
more plankton grow. This further made me think
of this as a major sink as the objective was
reducing CO2.

[Ronald Brak]

Unfortunately seeding the oceans doesn't appear to be a very cost effective way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But it might still be used in the future if the method can be improved.

[Trakar]

Unfortunately seeding the oceans doesn't appear to be a very cost effective way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But it might still be used in the future if the method can be improved.

The issues with ocean fertilization go beyond mere cost inefficiencies.

[HenrikOlsen]

Unfortunately seeding the oceans doesn't appear to be a very cost effective way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But it might still be used in the future if the method can be improved.

The main problem here is that thinking you can foresee all consequences of dumping massive amounts of fertilizer in the ocean is just plain insane.

[Ronald Brak]

The main problem here is that thinking you can foresee all consequences of dumping massive amounts of fertilizer in the ocean is just plain insane.

Australia frequently does it unintentionally: http://www.news.discovery.com/earth/...australia.html

And it's been done eperimentally on a small scale. It has been found that neither large natural events or small experiments are much good at removing CO2 from the atmosphere. That's why no one's doing it on a large scale. That and the fact it's hard to get funding for something that doesn't make money and doesn't work. What might work is fertilizing the oceans to improve fish stocks, and there are people who want to try this out slowly and carefully on a small scale to see how it goes. Actually there is already a lot of data on this. For example, there is a lot of data on people unintentionally dumping fertilizer into oceans and creating dead zones. The dose maketh the poison.

[William]

The largest emitter of carbon dioxide is China. China currently emits 25% of the world total, 50% more than the US. China’s carbon dioxide emissions are projected to significantly increase in the future, as China is putting one new large coal fired power plant into service every week. The yearly growth of electrical production in China is sufficient to power five cities the size of New York.

http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....87#post1956987

Currently atmospheric CO2 is increasing at 0.002% per year. Atmospheric CO2 was 0.028% prior to human industrialization. It is now 0.039%.

In 2 1/2 days, representatives from 200 countries will be meeting in Durban South Africa for COP-17 (Conference of the Parties (COP)) to discuss carbon dioxide emissions and “climate change”. The conference is entitled COP-17 as this is the seventieth conference. I will update this thread with the results of the conference in terms of how any agreements would potentially affect future carbon dioxide emissions.

http://www.cop17-cmp7durban.com/

http://www.cop17-cmp7durban.com/en/a...op17-cmp7.html

2008 to
2010
% Change___% of Total World
-3.2% 16.4% US
-4.7% 1.5% Canada
-2.0% 1.4% Mexico
-3.2% 19.3%Total North America

2008 to
2010
% Change___% of Total World
-1.3% 0.6% Argentina
6.7% 1.3% Brazil
-6.4% 0.2% Chile
11.3% 0.2% Colombia

9.1% 0.1% Ecuador
13.3% 0.1% Peru
0.2% 0.1% Trinidad and Tobago
3.2% 0.5% Venezuela
-2.1% 0.5% Other S. & Cent. America
3.1% 3.6% Total S. & Cent. America

2008 to
2010
% Change___% of Total World
-6.5% 0.2% Austria
-14.8% 0.1% Azerbaijan
-6.4% 0.2% Belarus
-2.8% 0.3% Belgium & Luxembourg
-18.2% 0.1% Bulgaria
-6.4% 0.3% Czech Republic
-4.9% 0.1% Denmark
12.1% 0.2% Finland
-3.8% 1.1% France
-3.1% 2.3% Germany
-6.8% 0.3% Greece
-8.6% 0.1% Hungary
-6.3% 0.1% Republic of Ireland
-8.3% 1.2% Italy
1.3% 0.7% Kazakhstan
-8.1% 0.0% Lithuania
4.0% 0.5% Netherlands
1.4% 0.2% Norway
-1.9% 0.9% Poland
-1.4% 0.2% Portugal
-17.2% 0.2% Romania
-1.2% 5.0% Russian Federation
-16.0% 0.1% Slovakia
-16.6% 0.8% Spain
-2.1% 0.1% Sweden
-3.4% 0.1% Switzerland
4.0% 0.9% Turkey
8.6% 0.2% Turkmenistan
-13.5% 0.8% Ukraine
-5.7% 1.5% United Kingdom
-5.2% 0.4% Uzbekistan
-6.7% 0.6% Other Europe & Eurasia
-4.2% 20.0% Total Europe & Eurasia

2008 to
2010
% Change___% of Total World
6.7% 1.7% Iran
-2.3% 0.2% Israel
9.6% 0.3% Kuwait
9.4% 0.2% Qatar
13.9% 1.5% Saudi Arabia
3.9% 0.5% United Arab Emirates
11.6% 1.0% Other Middle East
9.1% 5.4% Total Middle East

7.3% 0.4% Algeria
10.9% 0.7% Egypt
3.7% 1.3% South Africa
1.8% 1.2% Other Africa
4.7% 3.6% Total Africa

2008 to
2010
% Change___% of Total World
-8.4% 1.1% Australia
8.0% 0.1% Bangladesh
17.2% 24.6% China
0.4% 0.1% China Hong Kong SAR
18.8% 6.2% India
17.4% 1.4% Indonesia
-5.8% 3.4% Japan
-4.2% 0.6% Malaysia
-11.8% 0.1% New Zealand
2.5% 0.5% Pakistan
8.1% 0.3% Philippines
10.8% 0.1% Singapore
10.6% 1.7% South Korea
2.4% 0.8% Taiwan
4.7% 0.9% Thailand
25.9% 0.5% Vietnam
-2.1% 0.4% Other Asia Pacific
12.7% 42.8%Total Asia Pacific

2008 to
2010
% Change___% of Total World
4.4% 94.6% sum of above
4.5% 100.0%TOTAL WORLD

[Trakar]

The largest emitter of carbon dioxide is China. China currently emits 25% of the world total, 50% more than the US. China’s carbon dioxide emissions are projected to significantly increase in the future, as China is putting one new large coal fired power plant into service every week. The yearly growth of electrical production in China is sufficient to power five cities the size of New York.

http://www.bautforum.com/showthread....87#post1956987

Currently atmospheric CO2 is increasing at 0.002% per year. Atmospheric CO2 was 0.028% prior to human industrialization. It is now 0.039%.

Why are you only assessing 2008-2010 when most western nations have been struggling through the worst economic depression of the last 80 years?

What are each of these nation's contributions to the change of Atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to 390ppm?

[William]

Why are you only assessing 2008-2010 when most western nations have been struggling through the worst economic depression of the last 80 years?

What are each of these nation's contributions to the change of Atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to 390ppm?

Trakar,

It is only possible to change the future. What happened in the past cannot be changed.

The following is a graph that shows how total world emissions of carbon dioxide would change if the US and the other developed countries were to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 80% while the developing countries were to develop their economies using carbon based fuels.

http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/i...1213163459.gif

US reduction in carbon dioxide emission has no significant effect on the outcome.

The Chinese are placing a new large coal fired power planet into service roughly every week.

[lomiller1]

The largest emitter of carbon dioxide is China. China currently emits 25% of the world total, 50% more than the US. China’s carbon dioxide emissions are projected to significantly increase in the future, as China is putting one new large coal fired power plant into service every week. The yearly growth of electrical production in China is sufficient to power five cities the size of New York.

It’s already been pointed out that The US produces ~ 3X as much CO2 per person as China does. You notion that China should be the one cutting back CO2 emissions is absurd. China may need to cut back their emissions as well at some point, but right now simply getting US per capita emissions down to where China’s are would be a major accomplishment in terms of reducing global CO2 emissions.

[Ronald Brak]

I was a bit short of cash the other day, so I robbed a bank. I don't do this very often, just when I'm caught short. Since there are other people who rob banks far more than I do, there is no point in me stopping, as it would have an insignificant effect on the number of banks robbed.

[William]

It’s already been pointed out that The US produces ~ 3X as much CO2 per person as China does. You notion that China should be the one cutting back CO2 emissions is absurd. China may need to cut back their emissions as well at some point, but right now simply getting US per capita emissions down to where China’s are would be a major accomplishment in terms of reducing global CO2 emissions.

Lomiller,

You are confusing facts with fairy wishes. In your paradigm carbon dioxide is a dangerous gas. You appear to not understand your own paradigm. The dangerous problem in your paradigm, which will melt ice sheets, cause droughts, floods, high winds, and so on is the total level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The Chinese heat their homes with coal. They lack natural gas distribution infrastructure. Chinese CO2 emission is currently 50% greater than the US and growing by one major coal fired power plant per week. What do you want to happen? What will happen?

We will not change the dangerous situation in your paradigm even if we had sufficient money and a magic wand to convince people to do what would be necessary to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80% in the Western countries.

The solutions proposed to reduce carbon emissions by 80% in the Western Countries are ludicrous, preposterous, within the logic of your paradigm. CO2 emissions will increase by a factor of 3 even if all of the Western Countries reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 80%. What is the point? This is an example of the madness of crowds. As everyone is busy defending the paradigm, the obvious is ignored.

Setting aside the fact that carbon dioxide emissions will increase by a factor of three due to the Chinese, Indians, other Asian countries constructing coal fired power plants, refiners, purchasing autos, televisions, refrigerators, air conditioning, automatic washing machines, and so on, there is the real problem of where is the money going to come from to reduce the Western countries carbon dioxide emissions by 80%.

The cost of what is proposed to reduce Western Countries carbon dioxide emissions by 80% would cost trillions dollars to construct, four or five times more expensive than coal fired plants, if one includes the cost for electrical storage, massive power line construction, and so on. Nuclear power has been ruled out. Biofuel does not work. What is left?

It is interesting there is no scope and estimated cost for what is specifically required to reduce carbon dioxide emission by 80%.

The fact is Western countries spending trillions of dollars to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions will not result in a significant slowing in the increase in carbon dioxide emissions.

The obvious conclusion is that the dangerous paradigm of carbon dioxide gas will not be solved by Western Countries reducing their carbon dioxide emissions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...072577680.html

Imagine a "dream" agreement emerging from Copenhagen next week: The U.S. agrees to cut greenhouse emissions 80% by 2050, as President Barack Obama has been promising. The other developed countries promise to cut emissions by 60%. China promises to reduce its CO2 intensity by 70% in 2040. Emerging economies promise that in 2040, when their wealth per capita has grown to half that of the U.S., they will cut emissions by 80% over the following 40 years. And all parties make good on their pledges.

Environmental success, right? Wrong. Even if the goals are all met, emissions will continue rising to nearly four times the current level. Total atmospheric CO2 will rise to near 700 parts per million by 2080 (the current level is 385), and—if the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models are right—global temperature will rise about six degrees Fahrenheit at mid latitudes.

Cheap green energy is not going to be easy. Coal is dirt cheap, and China has been installing a new gigawatt coal plant each week—enough to supply five completely new cities the size of New York every year.

[Tensor]

Trakar,

It is only possible to change the future. What happened in the past cannot be changed.

Then why do you repeatedly post what happened from 2008-2010?

The following is a graph that shows how total world emissions of carbon dioxide would change if the US and the other developed countries were to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 80% while the developing countries were to develop their economies using carbon based fuels.

http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/i...1213163459.gif

Useless. Where is the raw data used in the graph? Where is another authenticating source? Your history of cherry-picking data (coupled with Mueller's well known denialist stance) doesn't give me confidence that this graph has any relation to reality.

US reduction in carbon dioxide emission has no significant effect on the outcome.

Yes it will, or do you consider a decrease of more than four time insignificant? Or, as I asked you before, is your plan to simply ignore the capability of reducing our and the other developed countries' emissions and let the emissions increase by more than four times? Great plan. Just sit here without doing anything. Sorta like saying the leak isn't on our end of the boat, right?

The Chinese are placing a new large coal fired power planet into service roughly every week.

And so? Again, you think we should do nothing to stop the input of CO2 in the atmosphere when we have the capability of actually lowering our inputs? You don't think the US, as one of the highest per capita emitters of CO2, shouldn't reduce our per capita emissions and set an example to show China and other users who are just recently increasing their per capita emissions how to reduce their emissions?

[Ronald Brak]

I'm all for reducing CO2 emissions, but not until the 50% of the people in the world who produce greater than average emissions cut theirs.

[Swift]

I will update this thread with the results of the conference in terms of how any agreements would potentially affect future carbon dioxide emissions.

William and everyone else,

Please make sure you confine your posts to the technical aspects of all of this and please keep politics out of the discussion. The comparisons between Chinese and Western policy on this are already pushing the line. BAUT has no exception to the "no politics" rule for Climate Change.

Thank you.

[Tensor]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...072577680.html

You know, you'll have to find us another source. That article from Mueller was in 2009 and you do know that he recently (10/21/11) has had a Change of heart in this matter. From one of those articles:

Still, Muller said it makes sense to reduce the carbon dioxide created by fossil fuels. "Greenhouse gases could have a disastrous impact on the world," he said.

Now, you want to refute Mueller for us?

[William]

You know, you'll have to find us another source. That article from Mueller was in 2009 and you do know that he recently (10/21/11) has had a Change of heart in this matter. From one of those articles:


Now, you want to refute Mueller for us?

Tensor,
Whether CO2 could be a "dangerous" greenhouse gas from the standpoint of planetary temperature is determined by the planet's sensitivity to a change in forcing. That is, however, a subject for a different thread. See the thread in this forum for a new paper concerning that subject. We should in a few years have sufficient data to determine what is the sign and magnitude of the feedback response.

The point of this thread is it appears carbon dioxide emissions will continue to increase based on what we know now.

[Trakar]

...
The Chinese are placing a new large coal fired power planet into service roughly every week.

And the US has been doing so for decades, though we are now down to about one new plant every 2 weeks or so.

The point being, you don't lead by waiting for others to act first.

Let's produce a rational, functional and practical path forward, then we can promote it to the rest of the world with our success as our evidence. While China is building a new coal fired power plant each week, they are also the world's largest producer of wind turbines and the world's largest manufacturer of solar panels.

These dynamics are going to have much more significance over the next century.

I believe China has already announced future energy policy objectives and plans, addressing their recent energy sector expansions and growth and their plans for the future, and they appear to be making the investments and capitalizations that support the policy plans and predictions. China has invested $34.6 billion in clean energy in 2009, an amount ranked No. 1 among G20 countries, almost twice of the number of the U.S. investment following it.

The key isn't in who did what when, so much as it is in how do we move forward.

to paraphrase myself, you have to be competitive before you can lead

[Trakar]

Tensor,
Whether CO2 could be a "dangerous" greenhouse gas from the standpoint of planetary temperature is determined by the planet's sensitivity to a change in forcing. That is, however, a subject for a different thread. See the thread in this forum for a new paper concerning that subject. We should in a few years have sufficient data to determine what is the sign and magnitude of the feedback response.

The point of this thread is it appears carbon dioxide emissions will continue to increase based on what we know now.

If you have any doubts about the sign of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 increases, I'd love to discuss the details of such with you in the appropriate forum!


If you are speaking of the recent Science paper discussing the lower-end estimate of paleoclimate sensitivities, I'd be interested in seeing what you have to say about it!