The May 2 issue of C&E News has an article on CO2 capture.
The article says that carbon dioxide is related to climate change and that the rising level of atmospheric CO2 is widely regarded as one of the most pressing environmental concerns of our age. This is obviously an opinion based upon no facts that I have ever seen, and very different from what I personally believe.
Stuart Haseltine, a geoscientist at the University of Edinburgh, says that capturing and storing CO2 emitted by power plants has the potential to decrease global emissions of CO2 by some 20%. So what? Why do I want to decrease global emissions of CO2 by 20%? It doesn't do any harm. No one has ever proven scientifically that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have any significance to climate change. This is merely a game to justify grant money for additional research. It is also intended to justify additional revenue to the federal income by taxing CO2 emissions. Justin Song, a specialist in catalyst and energy related materials at Penn State, says that coal-fired power plants emit 1500 megatons of CO2 per year. Is that supposed to impress me? How much CO2 is emitted by all human beings and animals in a year? How many molecules of water in all the oceans?
CO2 is not a poison. In high concentrations, it can deprive a person of obtaining enough oxygen through breathing. This is also true of nitrogen and argon, which are present in the atmosphere. However, we are not talking about that kind of maximum concentration. We are talking about parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Eliminating that side issue, the drum beaters are really concentrating on the theory that minor concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere affect climate. It is likely true, because the CO2 is a greenhouse gas. So is nitrogen and oxygen, and argon, and water vapor. In fact, we need all of these greenhouse gases in our atmosphere to normalize Earth temperatures. Without the ability of these gases to insulate against loss of heat, nighttime temperatures on Earth could fall to almost absolute zero in the neighborhood of -200°C.
The high concentrations of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere protect us from those radical temperature changes. The very small concentration of CO2 has a minimal effect on the whole.
I'm not opposed to capture of carbon dioxide, if it is worth capturing. Oil and gas drillers are said to be using a new technique of increasing production of oil and gas by a fracturing process, which uses carbon dioxide. The cheaper the CO2 source, the better. In all likelihood, capture would be from a high concentration source or some mixture that needs purification. Natural gas normally contains some carbon dioxide, which should be removed in order to make the remaining methane and ethane more effective as fuel sources. If we can take that carbon dioxide out of the natural gas and use it in fracturing to produce more natural gas, so much the better. However, the key point is not to confuse ourselves into thinking that the major consideration is to remove carbon dioxide from the environment. It is not necessary to do that. Various living plants have been naturally engineered to do that job. In the process, those plants also produce oxygen, which we need as humans for our own metabolism.
Let's get off the kick that carbon dioxide is detrimental to climate change or anything else of practical significance. Nature has already handled that matter. If we want to do something practical, let's get on with building flood control devices. There will be a constant amount of rain falling on the Earth each year. Unfortunately, it is not evenly distributed, nor is the distribution always the same.. We need to protect ourselves against the detriment of floods. We cannot control the amount of rain or its distribution. We can build flood control devices.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Environmental Organization and White House Cooperate to Destroy American Wealth Through CO2 Taxation
In the April 11 issue of C&E News, there's an article entitled "Congress Splits on EPA CO2 bill". In this latest C&E News article, Fred Kraut, President of Environmental Defense Fund characterized the legislative efforts as an unprecedented assault on public health protections under the Clean Air Act.
What he was actually saying is that efforts of Republicans in the House and some in the Senate to limit the power of the EPA with respect to enforcing any regulation that CO2 has a pollutant should be controlled. The subterfuge in this statement is that the environmental group believes coal burning power plants should be shut down to the disadvantage of the general public with respect to availability of power and high prices of the remaining power.
This is consistent with my present understanding that environmental organizations are generally subversive in their efforts to reduce the economic and social power of the United States.
The White House supported the Democrats in the Senate for their position of not passing any regulation to reduce the power of the EPA. This is also consistent with Pres. Obama's policy of redistributing US wealth on a worldwide basis through taxation of CO2 emissions.
What he was actually saying is that efforts of Republicans in the House and some in the Senate to limit the power of the EPA with respect to enforcing any regulation that CO2 has a pollutant should be controlled. The subterfuge in this statement is that the environmental group believes coal burning power plants should be shut down to the disadvantage of the general public with respect to availability of power and high prices of the remaining power.
This is consistent with my present understanding that environmental organizations are generally subversive in their efforts to reduce the economic and social power of the United States.
The White House supported the Democrats in the Senate for their position of not passing any regulation to reduce the power of the EPA. This is also consistent with Pres. Obama's policy of redistributing US wealth on a worldwide basis through taxation of CO2 emissions.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
New Book on Global Warming
The March 28, 2011 issue of C&E News has a book review by Jovana J. Grbic. The book is entitled, "Cool It" by Bjorn Lomborg.
This is my commentary on both the review and the book. Since it is a review of the review, it is third hand and may be susceptible to some errors from lack of facts and interpretation of the original work.
Basically, Mr. Lomborg says that there is great exaggeration in attitudes concerning the effects of the global warming discussion. Some persons strongly deny the existence of anthropogenic global warming. Others strongly believe in its existence and predict dire consequences. Mr. Lomborg takes the position that anthropogenic global warming does exist but is neither inconsequential nor dire.. He does not specify how much anthropogenic global warming exists. He estimates that if the $$20 trillion, which is proposed to fight anthropogenic global warming, is actually spent, the global warming reduction would be only 0.1°F. I don't know where or how Mr. Lomborg gets his figures. Perhaps they are in his book.
I generally agree with Mr. Lomborg that there is anthropogenic global warming. Even though he acknowledges global warming at a level lower than those who have radical claims and predict dire consequences, he appears to believe that it is somewhat higher than I do. I claim it is insignificant.
I base my conclusion on laboratory results which show that the passage of infrared radiation through carbon dioxide is only slightly more impeded than passage through either nitrogen or oxygen. I further point out that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, even if doubled from its present value, would be so low as to impede heat radiation from the Earth to only a negligible extent. This procedure seems to have been ignored, even though it is standard practice in determining R values of building insulation materials.
This is my commentary on both the review and the book. Since it is a review of the review, it is third hand and may be susceptible to some errors from lack of facts and interpretation of the original work.
Basically, Mr. Lomborg says that there is great exaggeration in attitudes concerning the effects of the global warming discussion. Some persons strongly deny the existence of anthropogenic global warming. Others strongly believe in its existence and predict dire consequences. Mr. Lomborg takes the position that anthropogenic global warming does exist but is neither inconsequential nor dire.. He does not specify how much anthropogenic global warming exists. He estimates that if the $$20 trillion, which is proposed to fight anthropogenic global warming, is actually spent, the global warming reduction would be only 0.1°F. I don't know where or how Mr. Lomborg gets his figures. Perhaps they are in his book.
I generally agree with Mr. Lomborg that there is anthropogenic global warming. Even though he acknowledges global warming at a level lower than those who have radical claims and predict dire consequences, he appears to believe that it is somewhat higher than I do. I claim it is insignificant.
I base my conclusion on laboratory results which show that the passage of infrared radiation through carbon dioxide is only slightly more impeded than passage through either nitrogen or oxygen. I further point out that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, even if doubled from its present value, would be so low as to impede heat radiation from the Earth to only a negligible extent. This procedure seems to have been ignored, even though it is standard practice in determining R values of building insulation materials.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Another Questionable Condemnation of Carbon Dioxide
The January 10 Issue of C&E News had an article entitled, "Monitoring a Troubling Trend". The article is on ocean acidification and assumes acidification has been occurring and is still in progress.
The Federal Ocean Acidification Research & Monitoring (FOARAM) Act was signed into law in March 2009. The law created a program to monitor and research ocean acidification and inspire him greater investigation by federal agencies of the phenomenon's effect on ecosystems and strategies to conserve Marine life.
I was not even aware that this law was being considered, but now that we have the law I am seriously concerned about its justification. It appears to me that this is another boondoggle operation on which to spend large sums of money. The National Science Foundation, which is a major supporter of such work, announced last fall $24 million in special grants for ocean acidification research. The National Research Council report says that the key element is a broad and integrated monitoring program which would measure ocean temperature, salinity, oxygen, certain critical nutrients, dissolved inorganic carbon, pC02, total alkalinity and pH.
With that background, I am wondering how this program ever got started. Not knowing its exact origin, I can only speculate. As a scientist and a human being, I am endowed with a certain sense of curiosity. There is always something to pique one's curiosity. The C&E News article says that the present pH of the ocean is 8.1 and that it has risen from 8.2. This leads to a couple of obvious questions. How was it determined that the pH is now 8.1? Did someone have a new pH meter and ran around taking the pHs of anything he saw? When and where were these measurements of 8.1 and 8.2 made? Did someone run down to the beach and grab a sea water sample or is this a collection of pH data from samples taken at various locations in the world, including the Mississippi Delta, the Indian Ocean, the Coast of Labrador etc.,? We can also what the sensitivity of the pH determination is. Is it 1/100 of a pH unit? If so, why do we only report it to 1/10?
All this adds up to my suspicion that no one was ever significantly concerned about the pH of the ocean, until someone decided to relate it to carbon dioxide, which was part of the ideology of the present Obama Administration. In other words, the Administration may have questioned whether carbon carbon dioxide could be condemned for some atrocities other than just global warming. How about ocean acidification? Power plants burning coal have previously been shown to contribute significant quantities of sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere, which is later later oxidized to sulfur trioxide and forms sulfuric acid when mixed with rain. Acidification of lakes and ponds and possibly rivers has been noticed from this affect. Surface waters routinely drain into the ocean. Would this be enough to affect pH of ocean waters? Since that thought does not do anything to condemn carbon dioxide, perhaps the Administration has ignored it.
We can also consider motivations for actual investigative work in this area. Again, it is a matter of federal funds being used for research and particularly in private grants, wherein one is obligated to come up with an answer which fits the ideology of the search background.
I'm also critical of C&E News with the title "Monitoring A Troubling Trend". Is the "Troubling Trend" a matter of the pH apparently dropping from 8.2 to 8.1? It does trouble me that C&E News could leap to this conclusion, especially without considering the obvious questions concerning pH determination accuracy and water samples from various locations.
My bottom line is a suggestion that Congress take another look at that law, in these times of budget tightening, and consider whether it should be eliminated.
The Federal Ocean Acidification Research & Monitoring (FOARAM) Act was signed into law in March 2009. The law created a program to monitor and research ocean acidification and inspire him greater investigation by federal agencies of the phenomenon's effect on ecosystems and strategies to conserve Marine life.
I was not even aware that this law was being considered, but now that we have the law I am seriously concerned about its justification. It appears to me that this is another boondoggle operation on which to spend large sums of money. The National Science Foundation, which is a major supporter of such work, announced last fall $24 million in special grants for ocean acidification research. The National Research Council report says that the key element is a broad and integrated monitoring program which would measure ocean temperature, salinity, oxygen, certain critical nutrients, dissolved inorganic carbon, pC02, total alkalinity and pH.
With that background, I am wondering how this program ever got started. Not knowing its exact origin, I can only speculate. As a scientist and a human being, I am endowed with a certain sense of curiosity. There is always something to pique one's curiosity. The C&E News article says that the present pH of the ocean is 8.1 and that it has risen from 8.2. This leads to a couple of obvious questions. How was it determined that the pH is now 8.1? Did someone have a new pH meter and ran around taking the pHs of anything he saw? When and where were these measurements of 8.1 and 8.2 made? Did someone run down to the beach and grab a sea water sample or is this a collection of pH data from samples taken at various locations in the world, including the Mississippi Delta, the Indian Ocean, the Coast of Labrador etc.,? We can also what the sensitivity of the pH determination is. Is it 1/100 of a pH unit? If so, why do we only report it to 1/10?
All this adds up to my suspicion that no one was ever significantly concerned about the pH of the ocean, until someone decided to relate it to carbon dioxide, which was part of the ideology of the present Obama Administration. In other words, the Administration may have questioned whether carbon carbon dioxide could be condemned for some atrocities other than just global warming. How about ocean acidification? Power plants burning coal have previously been shown to contribute significant quantities of sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere, which is later later oxidized to sulfur trioxide and forms sulfuric acid when mixed with rain. Acidification of lakes and ponds and possibly rivers has been noticed from this affect. Surface waters routinely drain into the ocean. Would this be enough to affect pH of ocean waters? Since that thought does not do anything to condemn carbon dioxide, perhaps the Administration has ignored it.
We can also consider motivations for actual investigative work in this area. Again, it is a matter of federal funds being used for research and particularly in private grants, wherein one is obligated to come up with an answer which fits the ideology of the search background.
I'm also critical of C&E News with the title "Monitoring A Troubling Trend". Is the "Troubling Trend" a matter of the pH apparently dropping from 8.2 to 8.1? It does trouble me that C&E News could leap to this conclusion, especially without considering the obvious questions concerning pH determination accuracy and water samples from various locations.
My bottom line is a suggestion that Congress take another look at that law, in these times of budget tightening, and consider whether it should be eliminated.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Merchants of Doubt
The January 17 Issue of C&EN has a book review by Gavin Schmidt. His review is entitled, "Sowing Seeds of Doubt". The book he reviewed is entitled, "Merchants of Doubt".
In his review, Gavin Schmidt says, "Scientists such as ourselves are not immune to self-delusion, and even the brightest among us can fall prey to the substitution of wishful thinking for rigorous logic when the science points to conclusions that uncomfortably conflict with our world view". This caught my attention and possible relevancy to the topic of "Climate Change", which previously was called "Global Warming". I read Gavin's whole article, but I did not read the original "Merchants Of Doubt".
I came away somewhat confused. Who are the merchants of doubt? Gavin refers to an example in the original work whereby a handful of scientists obscured the truth on health issues of tobacco smoke. Are these supposed to be the "Merchants of Doubt"? By my logic, they are not. They were supporting a myth that there were no health issues related to tobacco smoking.
Contrarily, I am a "Merchant of Doubt". Although I never gave it much thought during the period I was smoking, I never was a merchant of doubt on the health issue. Anyone else who opposed smoking as a possible health problem, was in my judgment a merchant of doubt at that time. In other words, anyone who goes against a generally accepted viewpoint is more logically consider a merchant of doubt.
I also read recently in the Retort a very-well written article by Amanda Strickland on the life of Lavoisier. Lavoisier was an old-time French nobleman, who engaged in scientific work among other things. During his era, there was a generally accepted theory that when things burned, they gave off a material called phlogiston. Apparently, Lavoisier did not initially contradict the phlogiston theory, but in his work he found that when he burned phosphorus, the weight actually increased. How could that be? The phlogiston theory said that after burning, the weight should be decreased. While it took many years, the phlogiston idea was finally debunked as a product of imagination.
We now return to climate change. Several scientists developed some time ago the theory that carbon dioxide emissions, from burning fossil fuels such as coal, was causing global warming. While this situation was somewhat similar to the phlogiston theory, it is much more complex. During the phlogiston era, the idea just sat there. There was no financial support from government or private individuals to perpetuate it. Contrarily, the CO2/climate change gained power because of its economic importance. The federal government saw an immediate opportunity to gain new revenue by taxing the CO2 bad guy. To build on this and ultimately convince the American public of the need for CO2 control and the related aspect of tax revenue, various departments of the federal government issued grants to scientists to perform additional supporting "scientific" work.
As Gavin Schmidt has said, "even the highest among us can fall prey to the substitution of wishful thinking". In this case, the motivation to support global warming was to gain federal money for laboratory development, salaries, etc.. The way that persons fall prey to wishful thinking is through motivations, such as money. This is not to say that all scientists have been deceptive when they work in this area. It only means that they have been duped into scientific prostitution by federal funds.
With all of the subsequent "scientific" work performed by these climatologists, I have not seen one shred of evidence to support the notion that carbon dioxide is an atmospheric pollutant, which is radically changing our environment. I continue to be open to receiving such data, which would legitimize the claim but have received nothing to date. Scanning various reports from climatologists have made one thing clear. None ever face the direct problem, but skirt the edges with a load of gobbledygook, presumably intended to confuse news reporters, congressional officials, and the public at large.
Returning more directly to "Sowing Seeds of Doubt" and "Merchant of Doubt", we need such merchants in our society. Without them, we will all fall off the cliff like lemmings into the sea. There is already talk of ecological engineering, of how we can change climate through variously induced procedures involving distributing certain chemicals in the atmosphere. These are ridiculous notions which would cost untold billions of dollars in waste, on top of what is already being wasted on ridiculous "scientific research" supported by taxpayer dollars.
At one time, the general consensus of the public was that the earth was flat. This view was held for a long time, but eventually was displaced by scientific evidence of an independent nature. How would it have been if the US government had decided to spend billions of dollars maintaining the myth and then subsequently adding other billions of dollars in futile efforts to make the earth round? There were merchants of doubt at that time, among which was Galileo. We still need merchants of doubt.
In his review, Gavin Schmidt says, "Scientists such as ourselves are not immune to self-delusion, and even the brightest among us can fall prey to the substitution of wishful thinking for rigorous logic when the science points to conclusions that uncomfortably conflict with our world view". This caught my attention and possible relevancy to the topic of "Climate Change", which previously was called "Global Warming". I read Gavin's whole article, but I did not read the original "Merchants Of Doubt".
I came away somewhat confused. Who are the merchants of doubt? Gavin refers to an example in the original work whereby a handful of scientists obscured the truth on health issues of tobacco smoke. Are these supposed to be the "Merchants of Doubt"? By my logic, they are not. They were supporting a myth that there were no health issues related to tobacco smoking.
Contrarily, I am a "Merchant of Doubt". Although I never gave it much thought during the period I was smoking, I never was a merchant of doubt on the health issue. Anyone else who opposed smoking as a possible health problem, was in my judgment a merchant of doubt at that time. In other words, anyone who goes against a generally accepted viewpoint is more logically consider a merchant of doubt.
I also read recently in the Retort a very-well written article by Amanda Strickland on the life of Lavoisier. Lavoisier was an old-time French nobleman, who engaged in scientific work among other things. During his era, there was a generally accepted theory that when things burned, they gave off a material called phlogiston. Apparently, Lavoisier did not initially contradict the phlogiston theory, but in his work he found that when he burned phosphorus, the weight actually increased. How could that be? The phlogiston theory said that after burning, the weight should be decreased. While it took many years, the phlogiston idea was finally debunked as a product of imagination.
We now return to climate change. Several scientists developed some time ago the theory that carbon dioxide emissions, from burning fossil fuels such as coal, was causing global warming. While this situation was somewhat similar to the phlogiston theory, it is much more complex. During the phlogiston era, the idea just sat there. There was no financial support from government or private individuals to perpetuate it. Contrarily, the CO2/climate change gained power because of its economic importance. The federal government saw an immediate opportunity to gain new revenue by taxing the CO2 bad guy. To build on this and ultimately convince the American public of the need for CO2 control and the related aspect of tax revenue, various departments of the federal government issued grants to scientists to perform additional supporting "scientific" work.
As Gavin Schmidt has said, "even the highest among us can fall prey to the substitution of wishful thinking". In this case, the motivation to support global warming was to gain federal money for laboratory development, salaries, etc.. The way that persons fall prey to wishful thinking is through motivations, such as money. This is not to say that all scientists have been deceptive when they work in this area. It only means that they have been duped into scientific prostitution by federal funds.
With all of the subsequent "scientific" work performed by these climatologists, I have not seen one shred of evidence to support the notion that carbon dioxide is an atmospheric pollutant, which is radically changing our environment. I continue to be open to receiving such data, which would legitimize the claim but have received nothing to date. Scanning various reports from climatologists have made one thing clear. None ever face the direct problem, but skirt the edges with a load of gobbledygook, presumably intended to confuse news reporters, congressional officials, and the public at large.
Returning more directly to "Sowing Seeds of Doubt" and "Merchant of Doubt", we need such merchants in our society. Without them, we will all fall off the cliff like lemmings into the sea. There is already talk of ecological engineering, of how we can change climate through variously induced procedures involving distributing certain chemicals in the atmosphere. These are ridiculous notions which would cost untold billions of dollars in waste, on top of what is already being wasted on ridiculous "scientific research" supported by taxpayer dollars.
At one time, the general consensus of the public was that the earth was flat. This view was held for a long time, but eventually was displaced by scientific evidence of an independent nature. How would it have been if the US government had decided to spend billions of dollars maintaining the myth and then subsequently adding other billions of dollars in futile efforts to make the earth round? There were merchants of doubt at that time, among which was Galileo. We still need merchants of doubt.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Global Warming is Here!
The Washington Post
The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen , Norway . Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.
Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.
Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
(keep reading)
Oops! Never mind. This report was from November 2, 1922, as reported by the Associated Press and published in the Washington Post - 88 years ago!
The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen , Norway . Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.
Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared.
Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
(keep reading)
Oops! Never mind. This report was from November 2, 1922, as reported by the Associated Press and published in the Washington Post - 88 years ago!
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Valuable Carbon Dioxide
EIN News says, "Carbon Dioxide, the Bane of Environmentalists, Is in Demand in the Oil Industry. The Obama administration views carbon dioxide as a pollutant that warms the earth, and it imposed new regulations at the beginning of the year to begin to control CO2 emissions. But to Texas oilmen, carbon dioxide is a useful - and scarce - commodity that is vital to extracting hard-to-reach oil reserves. (nytimes.com)".
Water is more of a pollutant than carbon dioxide. We can see the damage that water does through flooding and drowning deaths. However, it can be useful.
No one has yet shown that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. There is no obvious damage to the environment, such as with water, and about everything related to it and climate change is pure fantasy.
I am pleased that oilmen have found a good use for large quantities of carbon dioxide in oil production. It takes some effort and cost to extract it as a component from natural gas, and there may be some reasonable justification for capture from coal-burning power plants. Both of these might satisfy the fantasies of fear-mongering carbon dioxide climate-change enthusiasts.
Water is more of a pollutant than carbon dioxide. We can see the damage that water does through flooding and drowning deaths. However, it can be useful.
No one has yet shown that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. There is no obvious damage to the environment, such as with water, and about everything related to it and climate change is pure fantasy.
I am pleased that oilmen have found a good use for large quantities of carbon dioxide in oil production. It takes some effort and cost to extract it as a component from natural gas, and there may be some reasonable justification for capture from coal-burning power plants. Both of these might satisfy the fantasies of fear-mongering carbon dioxide climate-change enthusiasts.
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