understanding climate change on earth day

It’s earth day so I thought today might be a good day to post this.  I’ve been sitting on a set of tabs in my browser for a long time now – months I think – and I think that it’s enough to be able to share with people.

Over the last few months I’ve been working hard to wrap my head around the issues of climate change and what it might take to be able to deal with it.  As of late I’ve become a pretty data-driven person.  That is, I want to have a decent amount of information about how to measure a problem, but also what it’s going to take to solve it.  I thought that I might share what I’ve seen out there that’s really put things into perspective for me.

The Size of the Problem

I’m going to share three links here that I think underscore the scope and scale of the problem.  The first two are from Stewart Brand, the last is quoted by Michael Parekh but is from another article.  The assumptions that underlie this set are that:

1. That fossil fuels, and our increasing use of them, is contributing to a rise in the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.
2. That rising concentrations will eventually cause us to reach tipping points where we will start to do serious damage to the ecosystem that supports the lives we lead.  The very scary tipping points to me include rising sea levels, melting of the permafrost, the destruction of the rain forest and its ecosystem and last but not least the acidification and warming of the oceans.  Each of these are likely to result in vast quantities of otherwise stored carbon to be released accelerating the process to where we can’t stop it.
3. That the effects from those changes will cause a huge amount of damage to the planet but will also result in damage to humanity as well.  A sudden scarcity of resources might result in us doing some terrible things to each other – more than what we see today.  It’s a pretty terrifying thought.

So that being said, here are some links that I’ve used to understand the problem.

1. Bruce Sterling: Renewistan

Quoting Stewart Brand:

The world currently runs on about 16 terawatts (trillion watts) of energy, most of it burning fossil fuels.  To level off at 450 ppm of carbon dioxide, we will have to reduce the fossil fuel burning to 3 terawatts and produce all the rest with renewable energy, and we have to do it in 25 years or it’s too late.  Currently about half a terrawatt comes from clean hydropower and one terrawatt from clean nuclear.  That leaves 11.5 terawatts to generate from new clean sources.

…

“Two terawatts of photovoltaic would require installing 100 square meters of 15-percent-efficient solar cells every second, second after second, for the next 25 years.  (That’s about 1,200 square miles of solar cells a year, times 25 equals 30,000 square miles of photovoltaic cells.)  Two terawatts of solar thermal?  If it’s 30 percent efficient all told, we’ll need 50 square meters of highly reflective mirrors every second.  (Some 600 square miles a year, times 25.)  Half a terawatt of biofuels?  Something like one Olympic swimming pools of genetically engineered algae, installed every second.  (About 15,250 square miles a year, times 25.)  Two terawatts of wind?  That’s a 300-foot-diameter wind turbine every 5 minutes.  (Install 105,000 turbines a year in good wind locations, times 25.)  Two terawatts of geothermal?  Build 3 100-megawatt steam turbines every day-1,095 a year, times 25.  Three terawatts of new nuclear?  That’s a 3-reactor, 3-gigawatt plant every week-52 a year, times 25.”

In other words, the land area dedicated to renewable energy (“Renewistan”) would occupy a space about the size of Australia to keep the carbon dioxide level at 450 ppm.  To get to Hanson’s goal of 350 ppm of carbon dioxide, fossil fuel burning would have to be cut to ZERO, which means another 3 terawatts would have to come from renewables, expanding the size of Renewistan further by 26 percent.

Reading the whole mail is important and eye-opening.  You should do it.  I think that this message alone puts into perspective the sheer mind-numbing amount of work that has to happen to be able to effectively protect our planet from ourselves.  When I hear about eight or even fifty billion dollars aside to help with these problems I chuckle.  Because it’s only a small portion of the amount of our own efforts that’s required to be able to make steady progress against this growing problem.  More on that in the “Making it Personal” section below.

2. Climate Change, Recalculated

This is a pretty long presentation, but thumbing through it is worth your time. He goes into talking about the basics of energy, what a “watt” is, etc. It’s a pretty important concept for everyone to understand – not just because they need to be able to measure their own energy footprint, but also how various technologies offset that footprint.

He also takes the time to talk about the scale required to solve the problem. Talking about the US industrial output, what it was during WWII and how that might relate to us starting down the path to fix it. You should take the time to thumb through this – slowly. It will really alter your perspective.

3. Michael Parekh on “The Hummer of Food”

The livestock sector is estimated to account for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and beef is the biggest culprit.

Even though beef only accounts for 30 percent of meat consumption in the developed world it’s responsible for 78 percent of the emissions, Pelletier said Sunday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

That’s because a single kilogram of beef produces 16 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalent emissions: four times higher than pork and more than ten times as much as a kilogram of poultry, Pelletier said.

So yeah, I guess the lesson here is eat less beef. It’s a pretty simple idea, too. I just thought that pointing out that even small changes in lifestyle can still have a pretty big impact on the world – if we all do it.

Making it Personal

So by now you’ve spent the time to read through this and you have a better sense of both what it’s going to take to fix the problem but you don’t have a sense of what it takes to start making a difference in your daily life. My suggestion? Wander over to WattzOn and start building your own energy profile.

They have compiled a huge database of products, services and personal action and how those things translate into your energy footprint. For example, building a car requires a huge amount of energy so if you own one that should be counted in your energy footprint. If you replace your car every 6 years instead of every 3, that saves energy. Where you live and how you get to work affects it. And of course, the stuff that’s pretty easy to measure – home heating and electricity. All of that is collected together and you can create a profile. I did this and it was pretty eye-opening.

Here’s my profile as an example:

As you can see it turns out that since I work at home I have almost no commuting cost but it turns out that my flying around the world lifestyle accounts for nearly half of my wattage. Also it turns out that heat and electricity only make up a small amount of my footprint. I was not expecting this when I started the process, which is why I encourage everyone to do it themselves. It also means that I understand how much turning off a lightbulb means in the grant scheme of things and what an incandescent (100W) vs. an energy-saving bulb (20W) really means – not much, but enough to encourage me to do it anyway.

So how much would it cost to offset that footprint with clean energy?

So let’s talk about that roughly 10,000 watt lifestyle – what does it mean? What would it take for me to offset it? I sat down and figured out that I would have to purchase a whopping $275,000 in solar panels (installation not included!) to offset 10,000 watts. Not a small amount of money.

Yes, it’s a strange way to measure it and it doesn’t map to things like air travel but it puts a dollar value on clean generation to drive my daily life. But it takes my personal footprint and makes me understand the amount that I would have to invest to offset it. And it lets me put a dollar value in my head on the value of saving energy through lifestyle changes.

So it’s earth day. Why not sit down and figure out what it’s going to take for you to make the earth a better place?