Fee & Dividend and the trees.

Australia economist John Quiggin recently added a post dealing with the political machination of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).

A LOT of debate ensued. In including some denialist noise making and some discussions on the merits of Cap & Trade vs Fee & Divided (F&D). It's part of that Fee & dividend stream I want to preserve here, as it has some of my 'back of the envelope' calculations on how F&D triggers more integrated farming practices.

Carbonsink's initial post.

How about we tax carbon at $20/tonne and repay the proceeds every quarter, split equally between all citizens?

Its simple. Its progressive. It compensates the poor, the old and the unemployed.

James Hansen is a smart cookie.

My first reply.

James Hansen doesn’t support a general carbon tax. He speciality supports a fossil fuel specific Fee & dividend system.

A fee-and-dividend system imposes a fee on the initial sale of a fossil fuel which is then redistributed to the public; the rising cost of carbon-intensive products would, it is hoped, encourage families to keep their carbon footprints low.

‘James Hansen rails against cap-and-trade plan in open letter‘ from the Guardian’s environment blog on 12 Jan ‘10

Carbonsink:

James Hansen doesn’t support a general carbon tax. He speciality supports a fossil fuel specific Fee & dividend system.

I know. That’s why he’s a smart cookie.

Wouldn’t it be funny if a non-economist came up with the best way to price carbon? I’d like to hear ProfQ’s thoughts on Hansen’s fee-and-dividend idea?

Governments must place a uniform rising price on carbon, collected at the fossil fuel source – the mine or port of entry. The fee should be given to the public in toto, as a uniform dividend, payroll tax deduction or both. Such a tax is progressive – the dividend exceeds added energy costs for 60% of the public.

Fee and dividend stimulates the economy, providing the public with the means to adjust lifestyles and energy infrastructure.

If global emissions trading is DOA, how about we give something else a try?

Me:

It’s not about taxing carbon, it’s about fossil fuels specially. ETSs miss the point in that carbon is not all the same. The natural carbon cycle is vast, it’s the relativity small ongoing injection of geologic carbon that’s throwing the whole biosphere/carbon cycle out of whack.

Back when the CPRS was being argured over in the press. A prosal was floated that becuase agriculture was too complex to figure out and that the ‘best approach’ was to simply include it by levying farmers on a per head (for livestock) or per acre (for crops) basis. Figures like $100/head for cattle were being banded about. That struck me as fundimentally ineffective as well as unfair, as it made no distinction between lot fed and grass fed cattle. It also had no way to take changes in farming method at the property level into account.

As a thought exercise I compare how you should treat a car, a lot fed animal & a grass fed animal to try to figure out a better way to include them. That when I realise that an ETS on carbon generally wouldn’t just work poorly, it won’t work at all!

Generally people will try to play with and bend the large natural flows of carbon to get the atmosphere CO2e figure down. Any thing but tackle the actual use of energy/fossil fuels & the problematic ‘new’ geologic carbon flows. Pushing carbon around in the biosphere is like pushing piss up hill. It ain’t going to stay where we put it long term.

The easy, knee jerk reaction is to try to ‘win’ by diverting big natural flows, rather than stopping the small problematic ones. An ETS in quantitative, a Fee & dividend is qualitative. Here is on example of how being quantitative gets it wrong. The cheap ETS reaction is to plant trees, lots of them, in large cheap monoculture forests. The qualitative and resilient approach is mixed forestry in a mosaic with other systems. An ETS here works away from a sustainable lower energy farming ecosystem that better suits local conditions.

Disclosure: I have family members involved in agriculture, including grass fed cattle production.

Carbonsink:

So how will fee-and-dividend discourage land clearing and encourage “mixed forestry in a mosaic with other systems” ?

Me:

Raising energy cost (Fee & Dividend) increases forestry & more diverse land use by a combination of product substitution and return on investment question/harvest frequency changes.

Cheap energy allows lots of product substitution. Steel and concrete for timber of every thing from houses to ships. Petrol & diesel fueled cars, trucks and trains for horses powered by hay. Synthetics for natural fibre. What this has done is remove a lot of demand to use our land surface for things other that food. In each case new fossil fuels replaced old solar based systems.

Cheap energy has also meant we’ve been able to substitute artificial fertility for natural fertility.

When the cost of energy is low, low return annual harvest systems make sense. When you dramatically raise the cost of energy, high return long rotation systems make more sense. We’ll always need a fair amount of annual harvest systems, our staple carbohydrate food stuffs are generally produced from them. If you harvest a system annually, the return is typically between 6% & 10%[1]. Plantation systems can return from 34% (over 6 years) to 310% (over 90 years). Harvest a natural system and you can get 1100% (over 300 years). If you have a cheap energy to drive an annual harvest, you can get more out of given area, over time. But the law of diminishing returns apply to the energy inputs.

Raise energy costs and some of these reverse. In construction I can easy see a time when steel and concrete are only used extensively in public building, where the engineering demands require them. Hoping we don’t have to go all the way down to riding and working horses, and building ships from oak again.

I’ve done some ‘back of the envelope’ calculations. They are based on EMERGY figures; Corn yielding at a 1.10 ratio and Radiate pine yielding at a 2.10 ratio, over 24 years. The figures also assume no cost to moving energy use between years and no yield from unused land.

Say it taken 1000 unit of energy to grow and harvest corn. The harvested corn yields 1100 units of energy. Over 24 years that’s a net gain of 2400 units of energy, for 24000 units in.

Now double the cost on energy. The farmer can now only afford 500 unit/year or 12000 in total.

If the farmer just plants corn, he can only use half the land. That 500 units of energy in and yields 550 units of energy. Over 24 years that’s a net gain of 1200 units of energy, for 12000 units in.

But if the farmer plants 47% to corn each year and plants 53% to Radiate pine in the first year, here’s what the farmer gets. 530 units are used to plant & harvest the pines plus 24 times 470 units to grow the corn each year. Total energy in is 11810 units (11280 units for corn + 530 unit for pines). The net gain over 24 years is 1711 unit (1128 from corn, 583 from pine).

By using a corn pine mix, the drop in production expected with a halving in energy usage can be reduced from a 50% drop to a 29% drop.

[1] David Holmgren, Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability, p 65-7

Ultimately what my 'back of the envelope' calculation show is the when you start taking energy out of a farming system, the Law of Diminishing Returns can be used to work with you.

As energy prices go up and usage falls, the more land goes to trees, all thing being equal. Don't you love that last phrase.

In the developed world, that 'all things being equal' included only 3% (or less) of the population being involved on Agriculture, Horticulture, Forestry & Fishing.

So in a really low energy system you could end up with 1ha of market garden & orchards, 9ha of grain & 490ha of mixed trees! How to boost the system? Add labour. Go to ten families, 10ha of market garden & orchards, 90ha of grain & 400ha of mixed trees.

Ten families farming 10ha of gardens & 90ha of grains. What does that tell us? It tells us that food as a percentage of earnings is not going to stay cheap. It's that standard of living thing again. If you can't have standard of living, you gotta work on quality of life. Be happy!

Global Warming: Why 'Go Veg' and cattle miss the point!

Yesterday, Cameron Reilly (@cameronreilly) posted a 'Go Veg' link on twitter. John Johnston (@jjprojects) and I commented on it. This is a topic where 140 character just isn't enough. Here are the relevant parts of the Twitter stream and me considered ramblings about the topic.

The stream

@cameronreilly: "Eat less meat and dairy: official recipe to help health of consumers – and the planet" ( http://bit.ly/68BdWt )

Me: @cameronreilly "Eat less meat" http://bit.ly/68BdWt still misses the point. Use no fossil fuel, end of cheap fuel will fix any meat problems

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly In Tim Flannery's latest essay, Now or Never, he calls for farming practices to change dramatically, rather than going veg...

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly There seems to be a bit of a debate about what is sustainable in terms of eating meat or veg and how it's grown.

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly Great essay btw, if you haven't read. He got my attention, that's for sure.

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly That would be good. There's also a great chapter about his vision for Oz cleantech, including a new, sustainable city.

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly ...for Oz to lead cleantech on R&D and innovation and export the results. Bold vision. Well worth reading.

Me: @cameronreilly re cattle. The real issues is the source of the flow. 'Cattle carbon' is part of C cycle, in one end out the other.

Me: @cameronreilly natural flows of carbon dwarf the added fossil fuel flows, in size. But the 'new' carbon throws the whole system out of wack

Me: @cameronreilly Cattle don't eat fossil fuel and are natural. But cheap fossil fuel has lead to greatly increase number.

Me: @cameronreilly So cutting cattle numbers is treating a symptom of cheap fossil fuels, not the cause.

@cameronreilly: @gnoll110 so you're saying if we make transport more expensive, people will eat less meat?

Me: @cameronreilly There are lots of fossil fuel input in beef. Transport is one, think about input to grain used in lot feeding...

Me: @cameronreilly ... and in supermarkets, in the home. Increased energy cost ripple across the whole economy...

Me: @cameronreilly ...everyone changes their ways, that how carbon taxes work too. Expect dearer beef that grass fed and produced closer to home

My ramblings

There are so many angle to this. Think I'll try a top down one.

People are talking about 'what the atmosphere sees' in regard to greenhouse gases. I think this is way to simplistic, where a holistic system view is what is really required.

Why is this too simplistic?

Firstly, the interchange between the atmosphere and the other major components (the oceans, soil and biomass) of the bioshere is both dynamic and large, to just measure and pay attention to the atmosphere alone. Of the extra carbon added to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning each year, about half has moved to other components within a year.

Secondly, all the carbon is being treated the same regardless of whether it's part of a natural or artificial flows.

How can we view it more holistically?

I'm going for borrow an analogue from peak-oiler Richard Heinberg: a bottle of wine. How do you make wine. You put yeast in sugary water (grape juice) and let them do what come naturally. Reproduce, consuming their wonderful abundant source of easy energy. In the process, they produce a toxic pollutant, alcohol. What you end up with is water with most of the sugar gone, lots of alcohol and the detritus of the yeast population collapse at the bottom.

Lets do some substitution.
yeast = humans
sugary water = fossil fuels (both coal & oil)
alcohol = greenhouse gases

Now lets generalise in terms of the universal ecological dilemma.
Humans are population pressure
Fossil fuels use is resource depletion
Greenhouse gases are habitat destruction

We, as a species, have used the last 250 years of fossil fuel to grow our population, both in shear size and in consumption per capita. It looks like habitat destruction is going to be an issue before resource depletion, just.

How do we undo this habitat destruction,

Remove the input of 'new' fossil fuel carbon! That by itself is likely to be enough. Just hope we haven't triggered for run away feedback in the mean time.

Why is cutting cattle number just fiddling? There is an annual photosynthesis cycle. In the spring & summer plants remove net CO2 from the atmosphere and in the autumn & winter it's released back to the atmosphere in net term. Because most land is in the northern hemisphere, this annual cycle clearly shows up in atmospheric CO2 graphs. In the graph, note how the annual peak to trough movement is considerably larger that the annual peak to peak change of the underlying trend. This shows that the natural seasonal carbon flows are larger that the 'new' artificial flow that is the result of fossil fuel burning, as I noted in my twitter update above. Cattle carbon is part of this flow of carbon from biomass back to the atmosphere.

Cut cattle number and what happens? The vegetation will be eaten by other domestic animals (and back to the atmosphere), lamb anyone? In places where there is no domestic animal, a combination of two things can happen. It will be eaten be native and feral animal or it won't be. If it's eaten, back to the atmosphere. What happens to uneaten vegetation? In temperate climate it rots in a year or two, releasing the carbon back to the atmosphere. In dry climate, in a health ecology, its gets eaten (and back to the atmosphere). If the ecology is unhealthy (near death) and thus lacks the grazers, is just sits there. Occasionally fire might burn it (again releasing carbon back to the atmosphere), but without the stomach of the grazers to fore fill the role played be temperate rains, the ecology remains near death. Imagine the great savannahs of Africa without their great herds.

So in any healthy ecology, the grazers do their thing. Remove cattle and the carbon just flows back to the atmosphere via other species (or maybe fire).

Cattle are problematic for two reasons. Their emit a higher ratio of their carbon as methane, a shorter livid, but a 'hotter' gas. Modern cattle production has become fossil fuel intense, by maximising cheap inputs (fossil fuel) & minimising expensive inputs, especially labour. I haven't read Tim Flannery's latest essay, Now or Never. I suspect his call for farming practices to change dramatically will match mine.

I'm sure big oil & coal are delighted be this simplistic push to 'go veg'. Like simplistic carbon accounting, it's a distraction from the underlying fossil fuel cause.

I've already said the real solution is cutting fossil fuel use, preferably to only non energy uses like plastics. That means the end of cheap energy, that's a fundamental change to the whole economy. Doing it would create an inflationary period like that of the 1970's. That inflationary period was partly caused by the first oil shock. This inflation would not be constant across the economy, high energy application would be worst hit. This inflation would change how business is done and what people consume.

How to cause this inflation? An emission trading system (ETS) is just shifting deck chairs. A carbon tax would have an effect, but doesn't target fossil fuel specifically. I would incrementally raise petroleum fuel (liquid & gas) excises and coal royalties based on carbon content. That is what helps bank rolls the required restructuring both domestic & internationally.

Cattle production would move back to traditional grass feed systems and shirk as people cut their consumption to meet their reduced buying power. Transport & refrigeration costs would change the way beef is consumed. More local, less big box, more eat-the-day-you-buy for most of our food stuffs. Not just 'make transport more expensive, people will eat less meat?'. A fundamental change to business as usual.


Gnoll110

Why Kyoto mean nothing, personally what to do next?

During the Internet chatter about the recent Eastern Australia Dust Storm. Some overseas people quipped about Australia not being a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. Others returned fire, saying that Australia had (two years ago). Some even then went on to figure point at the US.

Here is my thoughts about why Kyoto was always irrelevant.

Most countries that 'signed up' don't have any commitments (that was the only way to get them to sign). Most (All?) of those that did sign with commitments look like they won't meet their commitments.

The nature of the problem class (Tragedy of the Commons) means that everyone need to sign up to an agreed system of determining commitments. So they know what level of development will trigger commitments and what those commitments will be. The nature of the problem also meaning any action now (before global agreement) is only political manoeuvring and tokenism, and has no effect on the actual atmospheric carbon levels & climate. For every 'cow' you take off the commons, someone else will putting another 'cow' on (in China and India most likely).

As I've always said, there is no chance of global agreement until China & India fear civil unrest due to global warming (famine etc) more that they fear civil unrest due to poverty (staving because you're jobless). Don't think they are there yet, so I don't think anything will come from Copenhagen. Mind you the rhetoric from India in New York this last week in encouraging.

How best to spend your limited resources?

Building low carbon systems and building for resilience. What kinda low carbon systems to build now?

Resilience simply mean to do things to lessen the effect of global warning on you. Learn to grow you own food, add a rain water tank, renovate your house to be more solar passive, that kinda thing.

By all means build low carbon power sources, but remember what is important is only emissions during operations. You can emit all the carbon you want building it, you're only replacing coal fired power station carbon, in the race to get to China & India's climate pain threshold. Who know where the actual thresholds are? Guess we'll only know after we get there and everyone comes to a meaningful agreement!

Gnoll110

Algae Farming and it's Carbon

A few days ago, David Rush, @EcoEngineering over at Twitter, tweeted about Aquentium buying a New Mexico site for an Algae farm.

I responded with a comment about one line in the press release that looked funny to me. Here our conversation.

@EcoEngineering: Aquentium Announces 475 Acre Algae BioFuel Production Project - World Stock Wire (press release) http://bit.ly/mQWf1

Me: @EcoEngineering "Aquentium’s algae-based fuels will emit approximately two-thirds less CO2..." ??? shouldn't an algae system be GHG neutral?

Me: @EcoEngineering CO2 in at pond = CO2 out when it's burnt to product power/motion?

@EcoEngineering: Thx @gnoll110 So your saying more efficient algea system=more fuels to burn=more GHG. Good point!

Me: @EcoEngineering No, that if they don't feed the algae with coal/oil & make the setup using algae fuel, how can it not be GHG neutral?

Me: @EcoEngineering that is, as long as the setup is made using algae fuel, how could if be GHG positive? (all C from the air to start with)

Me: @EcoEngineering isn't the Atlantic Conveyor sinking and depositing huge amount of C (dead algae) of ocean floor how bioshere get ride of C?

Me: Carbon accounting strike me as simplistic, quantitative (at the expense of qualitative) and proven to creative accounting. Very spinable.

@EcoEngineering: Sorry @gnoll110 I think we're on different pages.

@EcoEngineering: @gnoll110 Send me a little more info so I can formulate a response please.

The above comments where made in reference to on-going operations. In a reply I've included the 'build' carbon too. I think a working Algae farm should be greenhouse gas (GHG) negative to start with and over time become slightly GHG positive once all fossils fuel usage (as a fuel) is replaced.

My reply to David and anyone who's interested.

Second attempt at a response. First one was turning into Ben-Hur.

Here is how I see it.

All the carbon in algae come from the atmosphere in the first place, so any burning process no matter how efficient or inefficient should be neutral at worst. Indeed an inefficient burn that produced an algae-char replacement for bio-char (charcoal) could make the process helpfully GHG negative.

Now lets switch to the energy front.

I going to assume that the total energy production over the life of the algae farm & associated processing chain is greater than the total energy consumption involved in building and operation said algae farm & processing chain. (if this is not true what we really got is most likely a coal to oil plant, and a different ball game).

Given the algae farm is a net energy producer, I'm going to assume these guys eat their own dog food and this means:
* they built the farm & chain using energy from the last one they built and
* that operational energy will be drawn from the farm & chain's previous operations

If the above is true, the carbon footprint is the physical carbon embedded in making the steel and other manufactures (ie coking coal needed to make the steel).

In reality this is likely not to be true. I.e. the bio-mass oil produced is likely to be used for transport, while the chain is operated by gas fired electricity (or some other non transport grade energy source). I'm not including this in my logic because this factor is highly situational.

Back to the carbon front.

Assuming that the net energy produced is going to replace the 'worst carbon energy source'. Isn't this what emission trading systems (ETSs) do? Act as a pricing mechanism to transfer resources between players. (I'm not including net changes to total human energy demand, that shouldn't effect the carbon & energy budget of individual artefacts).

Shouldn't any carbon cost of building and operating the farm & chain be far less than the carbon cost of building/continued operation of the low cost 'worst carbon energy source' that it replaces.

Granted the shut down of the low cost 'worst carbon energy source' won't happen on the day the algae farm & processing chain go operational. But the low cost high carbon alternative won't start either. Over time (and assuming governments don't corrupt the working of an international ETS system that includes an escalating carbon cost) the 'worst carbon energy source' will get replaced.

*** A working International Climate Change Agreement that a working International ETS system would be based on is a PRE-CONDITION to successfully fighting Global Warming (what the Australian Labor Party (ALP) is pushing atm does not meet these conditions and thus is a waste of current effort and may have big opportunity costs) ***

If the above happens, isn't an algae farm going to be GHG negative. The better the gross energy production:gross energy cost ratio (for the total life cycle), the more GHG negative the algae farm should be.

At some future date.

Repeating the no build/closures of 'worst carbon energy source' cycle over time would get you to the situation where the next algae farm itself becomes a 'worst carbon energy source'. One would hope that the base carbon cost is building an algae farm without the 'worst carbon energy source' offsets (offset = 0), is low enough that at that mythical future date when the human world as run by algae farm, the carbon load will be well within the Earth's ability to absorb (on an annual basis).

Update: If you get metal recycle percentages increasing, the net energy production would drop. but fossil fuel usage (as a feed stock, not a fuel) would drop too. This would close the introduction of fossil fuel (new) carbon into the carbon cycle down even more. More new carbon now (before the peak carbon), less new carbon later (at and after peak carbon): a good thing.

The end.

David, peer review to you hearts content. This in just a thought experiment on my part. Hope people find it helpful.

Gnoll110

Can Capitalism save the Rain forests?

Tonight, ABC’s Foreign Correspondent is showing a programs entitled 'Amazon Rainforest - Can Money Grow on Trees?'. Without see the program, I going to say yes.

Why? For me it’s a matter of first principles of economics and ecology. The very words themselves point to the way forward. Both are derived from the Greek ‘eco’ (oikos), meaning 'house'.

I will argue the economics is the ecology of human societies. Money is a token measure of energy and materiel. Ecology is a study of the measure and flows of energy and materiel in the wider biosphere. Classical economics is the study competition between individual and organisation. There is cooperation and other behaviors that are seen in ecology. Lots of strategies and tactics are displayed by organisms. Taking these and applying them to economics problems and situation should be the main source for developing viable global warning measures.

Gnoll110

DNC, Biden and The Oil Drum on Trains and Peak Oil

It Democratic Nation Convention time in the US at the moment. I'm going to pull a few thread together and point at some goodness that could follow.

The Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden is a well know rail champion. He could be a major factor in taking some major peak oil/global warming action in the US (if elected).

Last year I blog on what we should be doing in Queensland and Australia generally.

Last month, TheOilDrum a peak oil site, ran a great article about railway electrification in the US. Lots of debate and chatter persued, all good value :)

Here are wikipedia's notes on railway electrification (root page), and pages related to the UK and the US.

If Joe Biden does choose to pursue this and succeeds, it will likely be his greatest contribution to his country. It would be what he's remembered for, short of getting himself enpeached. So Joe, no late night expedition to the Republican Party Nation Headquarters!


Gnoll110

Cycle, it's all cycles!

We’ve all seen the Atmospherics CO2 graph for the last few decades. It’s an upward trending line with an annual fluctuation. The uptrend is largely the result of the burning of coal & petroleum over the last 250 years. The annual fluctuation is caused by the photosynthesis/respiration/decay cycle of vegetation, the bulk of which is in the northern hemisphere.

Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide

Ok, to stop the up trend, it pretty obvious what we need to do. Stop burn coal & petroleum! We need to shoehorn ourselves back into the annuals solar/geothermal energy budgets of the planet.

For some reason that’s beyond me, the knee jerk reaction seem to be to try to ‘freeze’ carbon out of the atmosphere using whatever mean is available. To shoehorn ourselves back into the annuals energy budgets of the planet we need to work with the carbom cycle, even accelerate it, not freeze within parts of it. This topic will be an assay in its own right, for the future. Stay tuned.


Gnoll110

Carbon & its history

You didn't realise how basic peoples understanding of a well known problem can be at times.

Yes, not all carbon was created equal. History counts!

Here is part of a thread on the subject.

My initial post, part of a wider thread.

> One issue is how much GH gases you release, but more important is where the carbon (including embody energy) came from in the first place. Is a fire better that an electric light? Would the depend of if the electricity is solar or gas or oil or coal fired. Is the fire a wood fire or brickettes?
>
> I always ask, "where was that energy a year ago, 10 years ago, a hundred years and a thousand years ago?" Ultimately you're going to end up in one of four places. The sun, heat in the crust or below, the moon (tidal) or in a since mined crust deposit (I use this wording to cover exhaustible fossil fuels & radioactives).
>
> I'll leave you to work out witch 3 are exceptable and witch one isn't!

The initial response.

Hi there I'm still a newbie with lots to learn. So correct me if I am wrong you are saying condensed burning a 10 year old tree is more acceptable than condensed burning a 10 million year old tree and of the same ammount ?

I think the question was is the release greater at the power station than if every household was burning ?. There is simply no space on standard household blocks to have a huge array to produce their own solar energy to meet the same loads, that would also be the argument that appliances not just lights are just as inefficient as current solar technology :)

My reply, on why I think carbon is not all equal. History (source) counts.

The carbon in the tree is carbon that is in the carbon cycle. It moves through different parts of the biosphere over time. Moving between plants, animals, the atmosphere, the oceans and soils. Each of these five can be though of as a 'pool'. This carbon is constantly on the move. Part of the ongoing cycle of the biosphere and life. This carbon has fuelled human societies since we could rub two sticks together and this movement is generally fuelled by the sun.

Fossil carbon has been out of the above pools for ten if not hundreds of millions of years. When you burn fossil fuel you’re releasing 'new' carbon on the biosphere, and it usually ends up in the atmospheric or oceanic pools.

So when you burn carbon to make light (or movement or heat etc), it’s the history of that carbon that is important.

When it comes to removing carbon, it don't matter which carbon you remove.

How we farm, graze, forest and fish is important, but to a lesser degree. These processes determine how carbon is distributed between the five 'pools'. We need to move carbon to the plants, animals and the soils 'pools' from the atmospheric and oceanic 'pools'. The atmosphere and the oceans are so closely coupled in some ways they are just one 'pool'.

When I use the term solar, I'm referring to all sun powered systems, photovoltaic, thermal (dish & rheostat systems), biomass, wind and waves. Remember waves are driven by the wind. Wind in turn is driven by differential heating of the earth by the sun. You’re right, photovoltaic are still so poor on a system lifetime basis, that they are still effectively at the research & prototype stage. We got to start somewhere. Edison is said to have tested 10,000 configurations to get an appreciable one.

The reply about my thoughts

Thanks knoll. I never saw it that way, but oil has been referred to as

ancient sun energy or something like that. I would see it worse off
though if everyone started mass polluting from their homes don't you
think ? Thats why incinerators were banned, wasn't it. If incinerators

were banned that is a double standard for the industries then heh :)

Sorry i send this offlist so I don't bore the list with my ranting so
people don't get the wrong idea of me as i'm new :\

My second reply. Here I try to tease carbon out of other pollution issues. This case local ones.

Yep, oil has been referred to as ancient sun energy (coal too), the operative word is ancient. What this means is that the carbon is not in one of the biospheric carbon ‘pools’, but is in the geologic carbon ‘pool’.

There is normally very little movement between the biospheric carbon ‘pools’ and the geologic carbon ‘pool’. Some oil tars seeps to the surface here, some dead vegetation and animals sink to the bottom of a swamp, lake or sea and is buried there. The last 250 years ain’t normal.

The bans on incinerators, leaf burning etc are spot bans to stop local pollution hot spots. As with any activity, there are likely to be GH effects. There are two ways to look at leaf burning. You’re just releasing back to the air, carbon that was taken out last spring & summer. The other was is that you’re diverting carbon. You’re releasing carbon back to the air via near instant combustion instead of via slow decay, absorption into plants etc. You’re changing the distribution between the ‘pools’, at least in the short term.

I posted the comment, hoping they help people understand the cycle of life (particularly carbon) better.


Gnoll110

New Governement

Was an election here last weekend.

Change of government, after a 'me too' election campaign. Both sides trying to look like to other in areas where it thinks it is weaker!

Three things happened this week:

At the start of the week, two states announced they plan to let their genetically modified (GM) release moratoriums lapse early next year. Other states are reconsidering. Two have said the are opposed to any releases. No comments from the fed Labor. Soon get to see if Monsanto etal has them in their pockets too.

The 'Agriculture' and 'Forestry and Fisheries' are to be combined under on minister.

Due to a poor performace of the shadow minister, 'environment, water & chimate change' are being split. Peter Garrett (of Midnight Oil's fame) keep environmanet.

The week that was.


Gnoll110

Sustainable House Day

Sustainable House Day is on the 9th Sept, 2007. That’s this weekend.

House locations are on the site, grouped by state.

This Ainslie house look very interesting. The TV grab says it’s water independent and grid connected. It aims to be energy positive in the summer and have some energy drawdown in the winter.

In Canberra, the open houses are on Sunday. On Saturday, there will be open days at several schools and an office building.

Gong to go to a few, armed with a camera.


Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
global+warming peak+oil water energy carbon building+design permaculture global warming global warming

Peak Oil: Wheat prices & media spin

This just can through my news aggregator from Energy Bulletin.

BBC News
Wheat prices have hit record highs on global commodity markets, bringing the threat of rising bread prices.

Bad weather in key grain growing areas such as Canada and parts of Europe has limited supplies as demand has risen, sparking fears of a supply shortfall.

Surging prices are also expected to have widespread fallout for consumers.

While it will mean higher bread prices, it could also trigger an increase in meat and dairy prices as farmers battle to pass on rising feed costs.

Global wheat stockpiles will slip to their lowest levels in 26 years as a result, official US figures predicted earlier this month.
(24 Aug 2007)

It’s spin. In money terms this may be true, and it’s headline grabbing. But is it really true. In terms of hours at medium wage rates, how long would it take to buy a tonne of wheat? How much gold would it take to buy a tonne? Any measure got to be better than fiat paper money!

There are all kinds of rules of thumb. Some measures can be personal, measured in relation to your own experience. I’ve heard of one farmer who uses house prices as a measure. He built a home (average 3 bedroom at the time) in the 60’s and he uses the amount of wheat he would have to grow to build an average 3 bedroom home as his measure. He thinks wheat is about a quarter of the price it was 45 years ago.


Gnoll110

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global+warming peak+oil wheat media+spin

Trains and peak oil

A few weeks ago, at the start of the Difference of Opinion program titled 'Are We Running On Empty?', one of the panelist Professor Peter Newman commented about rural rail line closures.

Here is the whole transcript

PROFESSOR PETER NEWMAN:

…But we are still building suburbs as though cheap oil is going to be around for the next 50 years. We're still - we're about to close down the wheat lines, the rail lines that go out to our wheat-belt areas, as though trucking will be able to use fuel that's as cheap as it was in the last 50 years. These stupid things have got to stop. We have to face up to a future that is much more constrained. It's not going to run out, right, but it will be seriously more expensive and we're not all going to be able to have access to it. A lot of poorer people will really suffer.

My family have always tried to use rail first. It safer. Less people die in rail related accidents the road accidents. The big trucks used to carry wheat are dangerous and they damage the roads far more that cars.

These line closures are an ongoing process. At home they have been fighting a local closure since the Goss labor government.

Labor just don’t seem to understand that the last section of a rail line will generate the least money. That the freight carried will generate usage and money for all sections of line between there and its destination (usually Brisbane). The removal of a tributary means less flow at the mouth of a river.

So with peak oil and global warming, I think we need to go a step further. Once you decide to not close a line, you should be thinking of electofication. Current most country trains still use fossil fuels (diesel). We are still omitting new fossil carbon into the carbon cycle. With electricity, currently, you would still be powering trains with fossil fuels, either coal or petroleum gas. But, electricity is an energy transportation system, not an energy generation system. You can always convert the ultimate power sources over to alternative energy sources on an incremental basis.

An electrified rail system can ultimately be turned into a non fossil carbon emitting system!


Gnoll110

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The Romans: Water engineers

There is a scene from Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ that I really love. It’s the "what have the Romans ever given us" scene.

Reg     And what have they ever given us in return?
Rebel2  The aqueduct?
Reg     What?
Rebel2  The aqueduct.
Reg     Oh yeah, yeah. They did give us that. That's true, yeah.
Rebel3  And sanitation.
Loretta Oh yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like.
Reg     Yeah, all right, I'll grant you the aqueduct , the sanitation are two
        things the Romans have done...
Mathias And the roads.
Reg     Well, yeah. Obviously the roads, I mean the roads go without saying,
        don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the
        roads...
Rebel4  Irrigation.
Rebel2  Medicine.
Rebel5  Education.
Reg     Yeah, yeah, all right. Fair enough...
Rebel1  And the wine.
Rebels  Oh, yeah 
Francis Yeah. Yeah, That's something that we'd really miss, Reg, if the   
        Romans left, huh.
Rebel6  Public baths.
Loretta And it's safe to walk the in streets at night now Reg.
Francis Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it, the only
        ones who could in a place like this.
PFJ     Huhuhuh. Huhuhuhuhuh.
Reg     All right. But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education,
        wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and
        public health... What have the Romans ever done for us?
Rebel2  Brought peace?
Reg     Oh, peace. Shaddup.

I want to focus on a group of the related systems: the fresh water system, irrigation, the aqueducts and sanitation.

SBS TV have just shown a 3 episode of documentary titled ‘The Roman Empire’.

The second episode includes a study/poke around the World Heritage listed ruins of the Roman city of Timgad in North Africa.

2: Timgad: Roman Africa – 1 July

The city of Timgad in North Africa is a perfect illustration of the Empire’s impressive system of expansion. It is testimony to the Roman method of cultural domination and assimilation. The program takes a look at this showpiece city, whose purpose was to instill in the natives of Mauritania the desire to become, and remain, Roman citizens. Every stone bears witness to an intense, exhilarating lifestyle, like the traces left by games of hopscotch or marbles, or the telling anonymous graffiti which reads: “Hunting, bathing, gaming, jesting – this is the life”.

The part of the episode covers the city’s water systems.

The city had a water collection and conservation system which provided water for its 15,000 people, plus numerous public fountains and baths. This included 27 public and numerous private baths. The city also had an extensive sewerage system, of a standard only surpassed in the last 250 years.

The city’s primary supply was via aqueducts from springs 3 miles away. Rainfall within the city was captured for drinking and other uses. Storm water run off was also harvested and filtered for reuse.

Other aqueducts carried water greater distances for irrigation of wider farmland areas. Some parts of these aqueducts are still in use today.

These local water systems were integrated into the fibre of the city. The city included house site up to several hundred metres square. This means, site large enough to include permaculture zones one, two and three. Site plan from the 'House of the ship Europa'(named for the wall drawing of a ship) in Pompeii, confirm the use of grape vines, fruit trees, olives, nuts, vegetables, cisterns (water tanks), terraces and plant nurseries (presence of grafting pots & crushed lava together) within a townhouse compound[i].

In a world with cheap energy (oil & coal), the cheapest/easiest way has been to use the low material/high energy solution of building big dams and pumping the water over distances.

In a world where the labour energy cost ratio have reverted to a pre 1750 balance. Material intensive solutions like those used by the Romans make sense again.

In a post peak oil/global warming world, permaculture mean embodying large amount of labour and materials in long lived infrastructure.


Gnoll110

[i] Kevin Green, Archaeology of the Roman Economy, Batsford, London, 1986, p. 97 via G.H. Leigh, The World's Greatest Fix - A History of Nitrogen and Agriculture, Oxford UP, New York, 2004, p. 48.

Technorati tags:
global warming peak+oil permaculture roman+city+design timgad pompeii irrigation aqueduct sanitation

Permaculture: A Crude Awakening - peak oil

Last week, At the Movies on ABC, did a review of A Crude Awakening.

Included in the takes, was part of an interview with Dr Colin Campbell. Seeing this, especially with his accent, reminded me that I have some podcasts that include one presentation by Colin.

These were recorded at the Fuelling the Future Conference (link to podcasts) held at Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland on 18 & 19 June 2005.

There are a number of great podcasts from this conference, including from Richard Heinberg (peak oil author) and David Holmgren (co-originator of permaculture)

A Crude Awakening is on staggered release in Australia, so people are going to have to keep an eye on the papers/net and wait.

If they have got an interview with Colin Campbell, I expect it to be good, detailed coverage of the subject.


Gnoll110

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Fined for using home made fuel

The following story just hit Slashdot.

It’s titled ”NC Man Fined For Using Vegetable Oil As Fuel”.

"The News and Observer reports on an Charlotte, NC driver who has been fined $1000 for not paying a fuel tax when he fills his tank with vegetable oil. Perhaps the funniest quote is this one: '"With the high cost of fuel right now, the department does recognize that a lot of people are looking for relief," said Reggie Little, assistant director of the motor fuel taxes division. "We're not here to hurt the small guy, we're just trying to make sure that the playing field is level."' Sure, since the field is so plainly tilted against Arab oil interests.”

Now it may look funny from this side of the pond, but…

A few years ago, there was a situation here (au), where a government backbencher commented the ‘small’ farmers/hobbyist who brewed their own bio-fuels for their own use shouldn't/wouldn't be subject to fuel excise. The federal treasure rebuked the backbencher, saying the all fuel would remain subject to excise no matter who the producers & consumers are or how it was made.

Can't find the story on the net, darn pay walls!


Gnoll110

Technorati tags:
bio+fuel fuel+excise peak+oil global+warming alternate+energy

Carbon Offsets

In this quarter’s issue of the Alternate Technology Association’s (ATA) ReNew magazine, there is an article about carbon offsets.

The article deals with a number of factors and points. It defines the difference between the two main types of certification. These are the Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) and the New South Wales Gas Abatement Certificate (NGAC).
A REC equates to one MWh of renewable energy. A NGAC equates to one tonne of carbon dioxide ‘stored’ for a hundred years.

Carbon Abatement to me is cheating and consumes a different limit resource, land. Putting land under forest to tie up carbon is silly. You shouldn’t be paid to plant trees. You should be paid when you burn timber instead of burning oil, coal or gas.

For me buying RECs is much better. With that in mind, I looked at the article’s table of offset providers.

The two I would recommend is Climate Friendly and Neco (wind renewables), who are both private companies.

http://www.climatefriendly.com
http://www.neco.com.au


Gnoll110

Why Planting Trees for Carbon Neutrality is a Problem, not a Solution.

Australian PC Authority magazine’s cover story for this month’s (April) edition is ‘Green Computing’. In the article’s ‘Before you buy your PC’ section, there is a picture of trees with the caption ‘Planting trees allows manufacturers to claim their products, on balance, don’t create CO2’.

The article criticizes the base assumptions the chip makers use to argue the manufactures are Carbon Neutral.

The more general problem with this kind of Carbon Neutrality is that it is not sustainable. It consumes a different, very finite resource; land. Land that we are going to need as we move away from using mined fuels (coal, petroleum and radioactives).

It is okay to use trees that are harvested to produce energy or fibre. These trees are not a carbon sink. They are being used as a pool in the ongoing carbon cycle. Carbon goes in as trees are planted and grow, carbon comes out as trees are felled for timber or to be burned as fuel.

The carbon neutrality described in the article mentioned above is fraudulent. There is no substitute for not burning coal & petroleum for energy.


Gnoll110

Sustainability within a Generation:A new vision for Australia

David is currently speaking on the ABC, at the National Press Club in Canberra.

David Suzuki has been talking to the ACF about an Australia version of this Canadaian document.

We need to be creating submissions for each on the following area like:
Food
Transport
Energy
Air
Water
Waste
etc

Towards the goals of

GENERATING GENUINE WEALTH: Supplementing the narrow goal of economic growth with the objective of genuine wealth

IMPROVING EFFICIENCY: Increasing the efficiency of energy and resource use by a factor of four to 10 times

SHIFTING TO CLEAN ENERGY: Replacing fossil fuels with clean, low-impact renewable sources of energy

REDUCING WASTE AND POLLUTION: Moving from a linear "throw-away" economy to a cyclical "reduce, re-use, and recycle" economy

PROTECTING AND CONSERVING WATER: Recognizing and respecting the value of water in our laws, policies, and actions

PRODUCING HEALTHY FOOD: Ensuring Australian food is healthy, and produced in ways that do not compromise our land, water, or biodiversity

CONSERVING, PROTECTING AND RESTORING AUSTRALIAN NATURE: Taking effective steps to stop the decline of biodiversity and revive the health of ecosystems

BUILDING SUSTAINABLE CITIES: Avoiding urban sprawl in order to protect agricultural land and wild places, and improve our quality of life

PROMOTING GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY: Increasing Australia’s contribution to sustainable development in poor countries


Gnoll110

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permaculture global+warming peak+oil food transport energy air water waste