The Weather Makers by Flannery
Ref: Tim Flannery (2001). The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it means for Life on Earth. Grove Press.
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Summary
A comparison of energy sources and their impact on anthropogenic climate change.
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Ecology
Reproduction
Eggs of the American alligator produce only males when hatched at higher than 89.6 F, and only females when hatched at less than 87.8F.
Trees
Widely spaced rings tell of warm and bountiful growing seasons, when the sun shone and rain fell at the right time. Compressed rings, recording little growth in the tree, tell of adversity when long, hard winters or drought- blighted summers tested life to the limits.
Transpiration of water vapor from plants is the chief source of rainfall in the Amazon.
13,000': The Tree Line.
Biodiversity Distribution
Interestingly, low levels of nutrients can promote great diversity. Consider that in regions with fertile soils and abundant rainfall, only a few plant species can dominate. They are the "weedy" ones- those that grow most rapidly given optimum sunlight, water, and nutrients- and can thus out-compete the rest. In contrast, where soils are poor, niche specialists- plants that can thrive within very narrow limits- proliferate, each of which grows best only where specific nutrients are present in specific amounts, and where rain falls at specific times.
Global Warming manifests itself as a poleward shift in species distribution of, on average, around 4 miles per decade, and an advance of spring activity of 2.3 days per decade.
Poleward shift of sea-animals by hundreds of kilometers.
There is one group of species that will benefit enormously from climate change; the parasites that cause the four strains of malaria. As rainfall increases, the mosquitoes that carry the parasite will spread, the malarial season will lengthen, and the disease will proliferate.
Agricultural Crops
Rice shows an increase in yield of only 6% in response to a doubling of CO2, while wheat yields rise by only 8%. In the future, crops will be stressed by higher temperature, more ozone at ground level, and changes in soil moisture, all of which will decrease yields.
Coral Reefs
The organisms that make up the world's reefs and atolls are in fact two living things in one. The larger partner in this ecological merger is a pale, sea anemone- like creature known as a polyp. It gains its greenish, red, or purplish hue from a lodger- a type of algae known as zooxanthellae. Under normal circumstances the relationship is a happy symbiotic one: The Coral polyp provides a home and some nourishment to the algae, while the algae provides the polyp with food from photosynthesis. As the temperature of the sea water rises, however, the algae's ability to photosynthesize is impaired, and it costs the polyp more to maintain its partner than it gets in return. As in many a failing relationship, this unequal situation leads to a split, though precisely how the polyp ejects the algae (if it does not leave under its own volition) remains a mystery. If T remains high for a month or two, without their algae the polyps starve to death, leaving a skeletal reef that will eventually become overgrown with soft corals and green algae.
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—Oceanography & Meteorology—
The Sun
The sun is a very powerful energy source, and the more powerful the source, the shorter the wavelengths of energy generated.
Light passes harmlessly through an atmosphere charged with greenhouse gases, but heat has trouble getting out.
Solar radiation warms the upper levels of the stratosphere through the UV rays that are absorbed by Ozone. Greenhouse gases, in contrast, warm the troposphere, and they warm it most at the bottom, where their concentration is greatest. At the moment, Earth is experiencing both stratospheric cooling (due to the ozone hole), and tropospheric warming (due to increased greenhouse gases).
1/3 of the sun's rays falling on Earth are reflected back to space. Ice, particularly at the Poles, is responsible for a lot of that albedo, for it reflects back into space up to 90% of the sunlight hitting it. Water, in contrast, is a poor reflector. When the sun is overhead, it reflects a mere 5-10% of light back to space.
The amount of light reflected off water increases as the sun approaches the horizon. Replacing Arctic ice with a dark ocean will result in a lot more of the sun's rays being absorbed at Earth's surface and reradiated as heat, creating local warming, which, in a classic example of a positive feedback loop, will hasten the melting of the remaining continental ice.
The Atmosphere
Greenhouse gases are a class of gases that can trap heat near Earth's surface. As they increase in the atmosphere, the extra heat they trap leads to global warming. This warming in turn places pressure on Earth's climate system and can lead to climate change. These include Methane, NO2, CFCs, O3, and Water.
The cloud line is the level at which clouds sit against mountainsides, bring misty conditions, and beginning in 1976 the bottom of the cloud mass had risen until it was above the level of the forest. The change had been driven by the abrupt rise in sea surface temperatures in the central western pacific that heralded the magic gate of 1976. A hot ocean had perhaps heated the air, elevating the condensation point for moisture in it. By 1987 the rising cloud line had, on many days, forsaken the mossy forest altogether and hung about in the sky above, bringing shade but no mist.
By trapping more heat than reflecting light, high thin clouds tend to warm the planet, while low thick clouds have the reverse effect.
Tropical Storms: The first step in that transformation is the development of a tropical storm, which happens when a group of t-storm circles until it develops into a vortex. Very few t-storms develop into tropical storms, as wind shear usually destroys the vortex, or a turbulent atmosphere, or LP in the upper troposphere, combine to prevent the circulation and buildup of winds. Tropical storms intensify into hurricanes only where the surface temperature of the ocean is around 78F or greater. This is because hot seawater evaporates readily, providing the volume of fuel- water vapor- required to power a hurricane.
The Tropopause is where much of our weather is generated. With less heat produced in the stratosphere, this layer of the atmosphere has cooled and shrunk. Meanwhile in the troposphere, ever increasing levels of greenhouse gases are trapping more heat, causing it to expand. Between these two effects, the tropopause has been rapidly ascending.
Atmospheric Dusts
Dust is important stuff, because its tiny particles can scatter and absorb light, thereby lowering temperature. These particles also carry nutrients into the ocean and to distant lands, assisting the growth of plants and plankton, and thereby increasing the absorption of CO2.
Global Dimming: Due to particles spewed out into the air by coal- fired power plants, automobiles, and factories.
Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)
Escaping methane from permafrost could cause runaway warming.
Computer based modeling supports their research, indicating that as greenhouse gas concentration increase in the atmosphere, a semi-permanent El Nino like condition will result.
Ozone (O3)
Depletion of the ozone cools the stratosphere, while greenhouse gases warms the troposphere.
Aerosols of sulphate are most effective at reflecting sunlight back into space, and thus act powerfully to cool the planet.
The O that keeps your body alive consists of two atoms of O joined together, but high in the stratosphere, 5-30 miles above our heads, UV radiation occasionally forces an extra O atom to join the duo. The result is three-atom molecules of a sky-blue gas known as ozone. Ozone is unstable, for it is constantly losing its additional atom, but new trios are forever being created by sunlight, so a constant amount persists- about 10 parts per million (one of every 100,000 molecules) in an unmanaged stratosphere.
If the great aerial ocean is Earth's blood supply, then ozone is its sunscreen. Two Atom Oxygen is able to block UV radiation that comes in wavelengths shorter than .28 microns, but ozone can block UV wavelengths between .28 and .32 microns. It shields us from around 95% of the UV radiation (that is, radiation at wavelengths shorter than .4 microns) reaching Earth. Without ozone’s very high SPF, UV radiation would kill you fast, by tearing apart your DNA and breaking other chemical bonds, within your cells.
El Nino/La Nina
During the La Nina phase, which until recently seemed to be the dominant part of the cycle, winds blow westwards across the Pacific, accumulating the warm surface water off the coast of Australia and the islands lying to its north. With the warm surface waters blow westward, the cold humboldt current is able to surface off the Pacific coast of South America, carrying with it nutrients that feed the most prolific fishery in the world, the anchoveta. The El Nino part of the cycle begins with a weakening of tropical winds, allowing the warm surface water to flow back eastward, overwhelming the Humboldt and releasing humidity into the atmosphere, which brings floods to the normally arid Peruvian deserts. Cooler water than upwells in the far western Pacific, and as it does not evaporate as readily as warm water, drought strikes Australia and SE Asia. When an El Nino is extreme enough, it can afflict two thirds of the globe with droughts, floods, and other extreme weather.
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Fossil Fuels
Fossil Fuels: Oil, Coal, and gas- are all that remain of organisms that, many millions of years ago, drew C from the atmosphere.
Coal: Huge trees topple over and sink into the quagmire, where a lack of O impedes rotting. More and more dead vegetation builds up until a thick layer of sodden plant matter is in place. Rivers then wash sand and silt into the swamp, which compresses the vegetation, driving out moisture and other impurities. As the swamp is buried deeper and deeper in the Earth, heat and time alter the chemistry of the wood, leaves, and other organic matter. First, the peat is converted to brown coal, and, after many millions of years, the brown coal becomes bituminous coal. If further pressure and heat are applied, and more impurities removed, it can finally become anthracite, and at its most exquisite anthracite- in the form of jet- is a beautifully jewel, as pure a C treat as a diamond.
Oil: the product of life in ancient oceans and estuaries. It is composed primarily of the remains of plankton- in particular, single celled plants known as phytoplankton. Most of the world's oil reserves are thought to have originated from deep, still, O-poor ocean basins in areas where upwelling bring cold, nutrient-rich bottom-waters to the sunlit surface. In such conditions, the nutrients supercharge the phytoplankton so that they bloom in enormous quantity; when they die, their remains are carried down to O-free depths, where their Organic matter can accumulate without being consumed by bacteria. The geological process for making oil. First the sediments containing the phytoplankton must be buried and compressed by other rocks. Then, the absolute right conditions are needed to squeeze the organic matter out of the source rocks and to transfer it, through cracks and crevices, into a suitable storage stratum. This stratum must be porous, but above it must lie a layer of fine-grained, impervious rock, strong enough to withstand the pressures that shot the oil and gas high into the air above Spindletop and thick enough to forbid escape. In addition, the waxes and fats that are the source of oil need to be "cooked" at 212-275F for millions of years. If the temperature ever exceeds these limits, all that will result is gas, or else the hydrocarbons will be lost entirely.
Natural Gas: It takes a house sized volume of gas to yield the same energy as a barrel of oil, so barrels- and even tankers- were never an option for its transport. Pipelines were the obvious solution, but suitable pipelines cost around a million dollars for each mile laid, which meant that until recently, investing a dollar in oil returned twice the profits of one invested in gas.
Renewables
If the renewables sector offers one lesson, it is that there is no silver bullet for decarbonizing the grid: Rather, we will see a multiplicity of technologies used wherever favorable conditions prevail.
Among those pursuing renewables, the Brazilians have the lead, for their vehicle fleet runs largely on ethanol derived from sugarcane- in the United States, ethanol is largely derived from corn, but the amount of fossil fuel put into growing the crop means that the use of corn-derived ethanol in transportation provides little in the way of C savings.
Combined-cycle plants, which burn gas to turn a turbine then capture the ultra-hot exhaust emissions to generate more electricity, are extremely efficient at converting fuel to power. If coupled to a heat-using industrial process (called cogeneration), they can achieve efficiencies of 80%.
Wind Energy
Of all the sources of intermittent power, the most mature and economically competitive is wind- to which Denmark is leading the world.
Solar Energy
Three important technologies that directly exploit the sun's power.
Solar hot water systems
Solar hot water is the simplest and, in many circumstances, the most cost-effective method of using the sun's power for household purposes, making it the best way to make large, easy savings in most household power bills. Solar hot water systems sit on a north facing roof, and trap the sun's rays, which are then used to heat water. They require no maintenance.
Solar thermal devices
Photovoltaic cells
Photovoltaic cells use sunlight that falls on them to generate e-. That e- must then be transformed into an AC of the correct voltage for your area using an inverter. If you are on the grid, all you need are these two items and a power socket, and you can generate power. The average home requires around 1.4kW of power to run, and the average size of panels is 80 or 160 W.
Hydrogen Energy
The power source of the H economy is the H fuel cell, which is basically a box with no moving parts that takes in H and O and puts out water and electricity.
The fuel cell type best suited for transport purposes is known as a proton-exchange membrane fuel cell and operates at around 150F. These cells require very pure H. In current prototypes this is supplied from a built-in "reformer" that converts natural gas or gasoline to H, which again means that, from a climate perspective, we would be better off burning these fuels directly to drive the engine. The best energy efficiency obtained by proton-exchange membrane fuel cells is 35-40%- about the same as a standard internal combustion engine. Vehicle manufacturers hope to do away with the one board reformer required by the prototypes and envisage fueling the vehicles from H pumps at fuel stations.
The ideal way to transport H is in tanker- trucks carrying liquefied H, but, because liquefaction occurs at -423F, refrigerating the gas sufficiently to achieve this is an economic nightmare. Using H energy to liquefy a gallon of H consumes 40% of the value of the fuel. Using the US power grid to do so takes 12-15 kW hours of electricity, and this would release almost 22 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. Around a gallon of gasoline holds the equivalent energy of one kg of H. Burning it releases around the same amount of CO2 as using the grid to liquefy the H, so the climate change consequences of using liquefied H are as bad as driving a standard car.
Further problems arise when you store the fuel in your car. A special fuel tank carrying H at 5,000 psi (near the current upper limit for pressurized vehicles) would need to be constructed and be 10x the size of a gas tank. Even with the best tanks, around 4% of fuel is likely to be lost to boil-off every day. A good example of the rate of evaporative loss of H occurs whenever NASA fuels the space shuttle. Its main tank takes 26,500 gallon of H, but an extra 12,000 gallons must be delivered at each refueling just to account for the evaporation rate.
Perhaps H could be produced from natural gas at the gas station. This would do away with the difficulties of transporting it, but this process would produce 50% more CO2 than using the gas to fuel the vehicle in the first place.
H gas is odorless, leak Prone, and highly combustible, and it burns with an invisible flame.
The only way that the H economy can help combat climate change is if the e grid is powered entirely from C-free sources.
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear Power already provides 18% of the world's e-, with no CO2 emissions.
Nuclear Power Plants are nothing more than complicated and potentially hazardous machines for boiling water, which creates steam used to drive turbines.
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Climate Change
There are three main "tipping points" that scientists are aware of for Earth's climate: a slowing or collapse of the Gulf Stream; the demise of Amazon Rain Forests; and the release of gas hydrates from the sea floor.
Among the most important and best supported of these models predictions are that the Poles will warm more rapidly than the rest of the Earth; temperatures over the land will rise more rapidly than the rest of the Earth; temperatures over the land will rise more rapidly than the global average; there will be more rain; and extreme weather events will increase in both frequency and intensity.
Blair stated "The emission of greenhouse gases…is causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long term. And by long term I do not mean centuries ahead. I mean within the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own. And by unsustainable, I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of adjustment. I mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence… There is no doubt that the time to act is now.
One of the key decisions in our war on climate change is whether to focus our efforts on transport or the e grid. But when it comes to the really big effort required to stop C emissions from one or the other, decarbonizing the power grid wins hands down. For with that achieved, we can use the renewable power thus generated to decarbonize transport.
Climate Change & Transportation
Prius: Instead, when slowing or stopped in traffic, the 1.5 qt gas engine shuts down and doesn't commence operations again until speed has been built up. The silent e motor takes over, which is powered by energy generated in part from braking- energy wasted in an ordinary vehicle. The prius has taken the market by storm, with a tank that needs refueling every 600 miles.
Climate Change & Water
Freshwater disrupts the Gulf Stream because it dilutes its saltiness, preventing it from sinking and thus disrupting the circulation of the oceans worldwide. In other words, at all depths the tropical Atlantic is becoming saltier, while the North and South Polar Atlantic are becoming fresher. The change, the researchers reasoned was due to increased evaporation near the equator and enhanced rainfall near the poles. The increasing tropical saltiness, the researchers suggest, will lead to a temporary quickening of the Gulf Stream that will paradoxically herald its abrupt shutdown. This will occur because of the extra heat transferred to the Poles, which will melt more ice and thus freshen the North Atlantic until the required Sverdrups flow into it, collapsing the system altogether.
Cold drinks hold their fizz longer, and what is true for your can of soft drink is also true for the oceans. Cold sea water can hold more C than warm sea water; so as the ocean warms, it becomes less able to absorb the gas.
One of the most ambitious programs proposed to rid the world of excess CO2 involves fertilizing the Southern Ocean with iron fillings. The rationale is that Fe is the limiting nutrient in Seawater, and it's in particularly short supply in the Southern Ocean. Small-scale experiments show that a dusting of iron fillings can stimulate spectacular growth in plankton, which captures CO2 from the surface waters and, when it dies, is carried into the ocean depths.
Pumping compressed CO2 directly into the ocean depths causes severe side effects. High rates of death among organisms in the vicinity of the plume, which seems to have occurred due to the sea water turning acidic (its pH increasing by half to one unit). Given that humans are releasing 13,000,000,000 tons (13 gigatons) of C per year, the disposal of a paltry 900 tons through this tedious and expensive process is a poor result indeed.
As the oceans warm, they become more stratified, and as a result water mixing from the surface to the depths is impeded, so that it takes a long time for the heat to find its way to the abyssal plain miles below. This means that when Earth is on a cooling trend, there is little lag between the reduction of greenhouse gases and the changed climate they entail. When our planet is heating, however, it takes the surface layers of the ocean about three decades to absorb heat from the atmosphere, and a thousand years or more for this heat to reach the ocean depths.
Thermal Expansion of the oceans is expected to raise sea levels by 20-80" over the next 500 years.
Climate Change & Carbon
Because C causes climate change, the more C rich a fuel is, the more danger it presents to humanity's future.
The best black coal is almost pure C. Burn a ton of it, and you create 4 tons of CO2. The fields derived from oil are less C rich, containing two H atoms for every 1 C in their structure. Because H is a source of energy that produces more heat when burned than C (and in doing so produces only water) burning oil releases less CO2 per unit used than coal.
CO2 acts as a trigger for that potent greenhouse gas, water vapor. It does this by heating the atmosphere just a little, allowing it to take up and retain more moisture, which then warms the atmosphere further. So a positive feedback loop is created, forcing our planet's temperature to ever higher levels.
Coal Gasification: Water and O are mixed with the coal to create CO and H. The H is used as a fuel source, while the CO is converted to a concentrated stream of CO2. These plants are not cheap to run: around 1/4 of the energy they produce is consumed just in keeping them operating.
Climate Change and Temperature
Air at 104F can hold 470x as much water vapor as air at -104F.
For every degree of warming we create, our world will experience an average 1% increase in rainfall.
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Chronology
1974: Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) banned in the United States.
CFC's evaporate easily, and once released into the great aerial ocean it takes about 5 years for air currents to waft them into the stratosphere, where UV radiation slowly breaks them down, causing the release of the chlorine atom. It is the chlorine in CFCs that is so destructive to ozone- just a single atom can destroy 100,000 ozone molecules- and its destructive capacities are maximized at temperature below -45F. This is why the ozone hole first emerged over the South Pole, where the stratosphere is a frigid -80F.-Weather Makers by Flannery.
10,000- 4,000 BCE: A slight shift in the Earth's orbit brought between 7 and 8% more sunlight to the northern hemisphere. This enhanced the rainfall of Mesopotamia by 25-20%, markedly altering the ratio of rainfall to evaporation and increasing the overall moisture available to plants sevenfold. What was once a desert was transformed into a verdant plain that supported dense farming communities. After 3800 BC, however, Earth's orbit reverted to its former Pattern and rainfall dropped off, forcing many farmers to abandon their fields and wander in search of food.-Weather Makers by Flannery.
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