A roadmap for “the only practical way to preserve the planet”

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://portal.acs.org/portal/PublicWebSite/pressroom/newsreleases/CNBP_024716

A roadmap for “the only practical way to preserve the planet”

WASHINGTON, April 30, 2010 — The United States could completely stop emissions of carbon dioxide from coal-fired electric power plants a crucial step for controlling global warming within 20 years by using technology that already exists or could be commercially available within a decade. That’s the conclusion of an article published online today, along with a news article on the topic, in the American Chemical Society’s semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T). Both are scheduled for the June 1 print edition of ES&T.

Pushker Kharecha and colleagues say that the global climate change problem becomes manageable only if society deals quickly with emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal in electric power plants. “The only practical way to preserve a planet resembling that of the Holocene (today’s world) with reasonably stable shorelines and preservation of species, is to rapidly phase out coal emissions and prohibit emissions from unconventional fossil fuels such as oil shale and tar sands,” they state.

The authors outline strategies to make that phase-out possible. They include elimination of subsidies for fossil fuels; putting rising prices on carbon emissions; major improvements in electricity transmission and the energy efficiency of homes, commercial buildings, and appliances; replacing coal power with biomass, geothermal, wind, solar, and third-generation nuclear power; and after successful demonstration at commercial scales, deployment of advanced (fourth-generation) nuclear power plants; and carbon capture and storage at remaining coal plants.

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[h9socialist]

1. How about an "economy of permance"

Like E. F. Schumacher described in "SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL" 40 years ago. My guess is that it would be a "steady state economy" in terms of material consumption, but offer more free time and non-material pursuits.

[azul]

2. Seems an intelligent plan, but

why isn't it "practical" also to drastically reduce our animal production industry? It's methane waste accounts for more global warming than CO2. People could easily switch over to alternative diet fuel -because we are omnivores and don't require any infrastructure changes -we have the choice.

Why isn't this choice practical also? The meat industry is even more powerful than big oil?

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. "It's methane waste accounts for more global warming than CO2."

No. I don't believe it does.

[FBaggins]

5. I'm not sure that that's correct.

Looking at your pie charts, it looks (and I admit that I have done no research on the topic) that "natural" sources are not included. For instance, they appear to take biomass burning into account, but not the normal degredation of biomass across the country (not involved in any industry). I'd bet that the methane figure there is that which is produced by some man-made process, and would exclude digestive products of animals.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. I believe that falls under the rubric of "Agricultural by-products."

(Accounting for roughly 40% of methane production.)


Here's a graph of radiative forcing of various "Greenhouse Gases"
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/

Figure 4. Radiative forcing, relative to 1750, of all the long-lived greenhouse gases. The NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), which is indexed to 1 for the year 1990, is shown on the right axis.

Total atmospheric Methane forcing does not rival total atmospheric CO₂

[FBaggins]

8. Oh I buy that CO2 has the greater impact

my error was in looking at "million metric tons" (of which I assume there's much more than 1/8th as much methane as CO2) and not seeing "CO2 equivalent" - but that does comingle the issues of "how much of the stuff" and "what's the relative impact". There being far more debate about the later.

Thanks!

[FBaggins]

4. No... it's because people care more about what they eat

than which fuel is burned to create their electricity.

[BeFree]

7. I got one...!!!!

Reduce your use of electricity and all non-renewable, polluting fuels.

Reduce it by 50% and the problem is immediately half what it was.

Wait...!!! That's not a sustainable capitalist idea. Nevermind.

[ladjf]

9. Good , constructive post, as usual. nt