2006-02-14
I promised to explain what these widgets are on the left column of the page (beyond their self-explanatory nature). The first one displays the current carbon dioxide (CO2) level in the atmosphere, as measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This is a pristine area from where the data is likely to be a reliable regional indicator of CO2 levels in the lower atmosphere.
The data, put together by U.S. government scientists, have been calculated since 1958, then averaged for the year. “The Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 measurements constitute the longest continuous record of atmospheric CO2 concentrations available in the world,” according to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
My page's CO2 data begins in 1959, which was the first year an annual average concentration was available. Suffice it to say, the CO2 levels have been going up steadily since that period.
To check the level at any other year, choose the year in the pop-up button. According to the Scripps Institution, “Air samples at Mauna Loa are collected continuously from air intakes at the top of four 7-meter towers and one 27-meter tower.” If you want to look at monthly data, go here.
The reason I am displaying them is that they are a compelling reminder of a measurement that must come down, if we humans care about the viability of our own life-support system. It is similar to monitoring a person's fever; at some point if it continues to increase, the fever represents mortal danger for its host. Indeed, a group of researchers representing the U.K., the U.S., Australia, and others, have pegged 400 ppm as a possible “tipping point” that could unleash nonlinear effects, as in global warming amplifying itself. An example of the end result of nonlinear effects is the melting of the polar ice caps. See page 77 of Jeremy Leggett's book The Empty Tank.
Oil Doodad
The next little data region is the current crude oil price per barrel. This is another important number to watch, because while it fluctuates up and down in response to “market volatility,” it is mostly on the way up due, among other reasons such as demand increase, to almost certain worldwide oil depletion or peak.
This piece of data is scraped from a web page at the U.S. Energy Information Agency, whose data is in the public domain. The displayed price changes about once per week, which suits our purpose as an Energy & Environment information page (we're not oil futures traders after all!).
I am also displaying the current price of regular gas (which is also affected by the crude oil price), and the current price of residential propane. The propane price is likely to be another barometer of the big changes ahead for us energy users and buyers, as natural gas also approaches peak production and becomes scarcer and more expensive. In the future, I plan on adding some indicators of the relative costs of solar and wind energy.
Monitor your numbers
What about that stuff about bike riding and using gas? Those are mostly reminders to myself; the cliche is what gets measured gets managed. Ultimately, if you keep track of how many miles you're using a bike to do errands, for instance, that number will probably go up at a faster rate than if you ignored this behavior.
Displaying these numbers isn't meant as bragging; as of this writing, I'm only up to 76 miles or about 125 kilometers of errands riding in 2006. A bike commuter typically rides over 100 miles per week on her or his errands.
The same is true for gas usage in my car; I want to keep that number as low as possible. Since I bought a hybrid car, I'll burn at least 150 gallons less of petroleum this year compared with 2005. Thanks for reading to this point.
2006-02-07
President George Bush's state of the union speech in which he said that “Americans are addicted to oil” must have been greeted by howls of laughter throughout the world, given the “put the pedal to the metal” philosophy typically espoused by this president. The Bush family certainly is dialed in tightly to the oil industry. The President's statement was correct, but came about 20 years too late in terms of effective policy emanating from the White House (yes, that includes you Clinton and Gore).
Bush's call for renewable energy is in all likelihood empty. At the moment, he is firing people at the National Renewable Energy Lab. Also, the Congress must appropriate funds for his “initiatives” on issues such as ethanol from switchgrass (I'll get to that later), which is unlikely given that the U.S. government is spending roughly $10 billion a month on Middle Eastern wars, and tens of billions of dollars more on rebuilding the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
In addition, NASA climatologist James Hansen, a leading global-warming researcher, says that this unusually secretive administration has tried to suppress his warnings to the American people about global-warming hazards. These dangers are tightly linked to our oil addiction.
Energy and global warming are not viewed as compelling national security issues (although they certainly are); therefore, they do not receive very much federal spending.
Ethanol
Although small, ambitious biofuels projects throughout the United States have substituted renewables for conventional petroleum in vehicles, this country is several years away from being able to replace its typical petroleum usage with alternatives. This delay causes the alternative-fuels efforts to run head on into the oil-depletion issue.
The U.S. uses 20 million barrels of oil per day, roughly nine million barrels per day for transportation. Even if we grabbed a large chunk of Brazil's ethanol exports (they make it from sugar cane), say 40,000 barrels per day, that represents only 0.4 percent of our daily demand for transportation-related oil. Brazil shipped roughly the equivalent of 45,000 barrels (a barrel of oil has 42 gallons) of ethanol per day, or a total of 2.6 billion liters, in 2004. The U.S. was its largest importer.
Chicken and the Egg
The problem with manufacturing ethanol from corn husks in any giant quantity that would be necessary to make a dent in oil use, is that large amounts of fossil fuels, such as natural gas, are used to make fertilizers and pesticides, which are necessary for industrial farming. Certainly the farm machinery itself depends on a lot of oil. As natural gas and oil are both expensive and in gradual (or even accelerated) depletion, the net energy gain from ethanol is diminished.
Switchgrass
That's where the prairie or switchgrass comes in. Switchgrass is the kind of tall grass found on the Great Plains of North America. The idea is to use huge amounts of switchgrass, as well as various wood wastes, to generate ethanol. It is doubtful that ethanol makers could find enough grass and wood to generate ethanol in great enough quantities to compensate for our profligate oil use. In all probability, ethanol production in the U.S. will not be able to scale to the level of millions of barrels per day.
CO2 Emissions
Finally, removing another carbon sink from the ecosystem (things that grow such as grass and wood generally remove CO2 from the air) on a large scale to make ethanol does not make much sense given the compelling issue of global warming. A recent study out of UC Berkeley, however, is more upbeat about ethanol's future. Summarized, it states that energy inputs are lower for producing ethanol compared with gasoline. Still, burning ethanol still produces CO2 emissions, perhaps lower than burning petroleum. Conservation remains the key ingredient to saving the planet and dealing with an impending energy crisis.