What will it take to get a handle on global warming?

What is being called a “provocative new study“, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising carbon dioxide emissions – the major cause of global warming – cannot be stabilized unless the world’s economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day.

“It looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in carbon dioxide emission rates,” says the new paper by Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences.

The study – which is based on the concept that physics can be used to characterize the evolution of civilization – indicates:

• Energy conservation or efficiency doesn’t really save energy, but instead spurs economic growth and accelerated energy consumption.

• Throughout history, a simple physical “constant” – an unchanging mathematical value – links global energy use to the world’s accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation. So it isn’t necessary to consider population growth and standard of living in predicting society’s future energy consumption and resulting carbon dioxide emissions.

• “Stabilization of carbon dioxide emissions at current rates will require approximately 300 gigawatts of new non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power production capacity annually – approximately one new nuclear power plant (or equivalent) per day,” Garrett says. “Physically, there are no other options without killing the economy.”

By Robert Pore

With the Senate likely to postpone debate on a climate change bill until next year, studies continue to point to possible problems facing agriculture if the atmoshpere continues to warm.

For example, Kansas State University’s Joseph Craine, research assistant professor in the Division of Biology, and KC Olson, associate professor in animal sciences and industry, have teamed up with some other scientists from across the United States to look into the possible effects of climate change on cattle nutrition.

Nebraska’s cattle industry is the biggest segement of the state’s ag industry at nearly $7 billion annually.

“Owing to the complex interactions among climate, plants, cattle grazing and land management practices, the impacts of climate change on cattle have been hard to predict,” said Craine, principal investigator for the project.

The lab measured the amount of crude protein and digestible organic matter retained by cattle in the different regions, according to the research.  The pattern of forage quality observed across regions suggests that a warmer climate would limit protein availability to grazing animals, Craine said.

“This study assumes nothing about patterns of future climate change; it’s just a what if,” Olson said. “What if there was significant atmosphere enrichment of carbon dioxide? What would it likely do to plant phenology? If there is atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment, the length of time between when a plant begins to grow and when it reaches physiological maturity may be condensed.”

Currently, cattle obtain more than 80 percent of their energy from rangeland, pastureland and other sources of roughage, according to the study. With projected scenarios of climate warming, plant protein concentrations will diminish in the future, the study found. If weight gain isn’t to drop, ranchers are likely going to have to manage their herds differently or provide supplemental protein, Craine said.

Any future increases in precipitation would be unlikely to compensate for the declines in forage quality that accompany projected temperature increases, the research found. 

As a result, cattle are likely to experience greater nutritional stress in the future if these geographic patterns hold as a actual example of future climates, Craine said.

“The trickle-down to the average person is essentially thinking ahead of time of what the consequences are going to be for the climate change scenarios that we are looking at and how ranchers are going to change management practices,” Craine said.

“In my opinion these are fully manageable changes,” Olson said. “They are small, and being prepared just in case it does happen will allow us to adapt our management to what will essentially be a shorter window of high-quality grazing.”

In related news, new research found that spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States.

The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb, the research found.

“Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States,” said National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Gerald Meehl, the lead author. “The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR’s sponsor, the U.S. Department of Energy, and Climate Central.

“This intriguing study provides new evidence of climate change,” says Steve Nelson, NSF program director for NCAR. “And it’s change that’s affecting our daily lives.”

If temperatures were not warming, according to the research, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even.

Instead, the research found that for the period from January 1, 2000, to September 30, 2009, the continental United States set 291,237 record highs and 142,420 record lows, as the country experienced unusually mild winter weather and intense summer heat waves.

A record daily high means that temperatures were warmer on a given day than on that same date throughout a weather station’s history.

The authors used a quality control process to ensure the reliability of data from thousands of weather stations across the country, while looking at data over the past six decades to capture longer-term trends.

This decade’s warming was more pronounced in the western United States, where the ratio was more than two to one, than in the eastern United States, where the ratio was about one-and-a-half to one, according to the study.

The study also found that the two-to-one ratio across the country as a whole could be attributed more to a comparatively small number of record lows than to a large number of record highs.

According to the study, much of the nation’s warming is occurring at night, when temperatures are dipping less often to record lows.

This finding, according to the research, is consistent with years of climate model research showing that higher overnight lows should be expected with climate change.

According to the study, if nations continue to increase their emissions of greenhouse gases in a “business as usual” scenario, the U.S. ratio of daily record high to record low temperatures would increase to about 20-to-1 by mid-century and 50-to-1 by 2100.

The mid-century ratio could be much higher if emissions rose at an even greater pace, or it could be about 8-to-1 if emissions were reduced significantly, the model showed.

The authors caution that such predictions are, by their nature, inexact.

Researchers said that climate models are not designed to capture record daily highs and lows with precision, and it remains impossible to know future human actions that will determine the level of future greenhouse gas emissions.

Researchers said the model used for the study, the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, correctly captured the trend toward warmer average temperatures and the greater warming in the West, but overstated the ratio of record highs to record lows in recent years.

However, researchers said the model results are important because they show that, in all likely scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, record daily highs should increasingly outpace record lows over time.

“If the climate weren’t changing, you would expect the number of temperature records to diminish significantly over time,” says Claudia Tebaldi, a statistician with Climate Central who is one of the paper’s co-authors.

“As you measure the high and low daily temperatures each year, it normally becomes more difficult to break a record after a number of years. But as the average temperatures continue to rise this century, we will keep setting more record highs.”

The study team focused on weather stations that have been operating since 1950. They found that the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures slightly exceeded one to one in the 1950s, dipped below that level in the 1960s and 1970s, and has risen since the 1980s.

The results reflect changes in U.S. average temperatures, which rose in the 1950s, stabilized in the 1960s, and then began a warming trend in the late 1970s, according to the study.

Even in the first nine months of this year, when the United States cooled somewhat after a string of unusually warm years, the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures was more than three to two, the study found.

Despite the increasing number of record highs, there will still be occasional periods of record cold, Meehl said.

“One of the messages of this study is, you still get cold days,” Meehl says. “Winter still comes. Even in a much warmer climate, we’re setting record low minimum temperatures on a few days each year. But the odds are shifting so there’s a much better chance of daily record highs instead of lows.”

The study team analyzed several million daily high and low temperature readings taken over the span of six decades at about 1,800 weather stations across the country, thereby ensuring ample data for statistically significant results.

The readings, collected at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, undergo a quality control process at the data center that looks for such potential problems as missing data as well as inconsistent readings caused by changes in thermometers, station locations, or other factors.

Meehl and his colleagues then used temperature simulations from the Community Climate System Model to compute daily record highs and lows under current and future atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

 

By Robert Pore

In a recent commentary Nebraska Farm Bureau President Keith Olsen, he said that despite the state’s and the University of Nebraska’s need to cut the budget because of projected declines in revenue receipts to the state, the Global Water for Food Institute, announced by NU this spring, deserves to go forward.

Olsen, in his commentary, said that while it’s always tempting to delay new initiatives to preserve resources for existing, valued programs, it should not stop innovative ideas that carry clear promise of returning benefits for Nebraska, Nebraskans and the university.

“Nebraskans need it to go forward — because of the importance of water in our state, the water issues we’re facing, and emerging global water issues we are only beginning to learn about,” he said.

Olsen said agriculture uses 75 percent of the world’s freshwater resources. By 2050, he said the world population is projected to increase by 40 percent and the demand for food will double.

“We obviously cannot double available water to meet this need,” he said. “The International Food Policy Research Institute projects that if current consumption trends continue, the ag sector will experience serious water shortages by 2025, only 15 years from now.”

How irrigation is managed, Olsen said, will be key to whether future farmers have enough water to grow enough food.

“Nebraska leads the nation in number of irrigated acres and we rank fourth in food production among all states,” he said. “Because irrigation is central to Nebraska’s agriculture and economy and because of its political implications, we have a clear interest in learning about innovations worldwide that will help our farmers use water more efficiently. At the same time, our water resources, our expertise in center pivot irrigation and the existing UNL Water Center combine to make Nebraska an effective home for the Global Water for Food Institute.”

According to Olsen, the institute will draw on resources throughout the university to conduct research, provide education, and explore policy implications that affect water and food production worldwide. It will also host experts from around the world as visiting scholars to share what international researchers have learned about water use efficiency, political and economic effects of water decisions, developments in water law, and more, he said.

It will also host symposia and conferences, open to the public, where scientists, economists, politicians and futurists discuss, debate and collaborate. NU’s goal is for the institute to be the place where much of the world’s discussion on water and food takes place, Olsen said.

He said serving as home for the institute will enable Nebraska to be at the “cutting edge of both research and thinking about water and how it is used.”

For example, Olsen said international researchers and policy makers are beginning to speak in terms of the “water footprint” of food — the quantity of water that is used in producing everything that goes into growing food, from water itself to water consumed in producing crop inputs and farm machinery.

“Implications of this view are profound and we in Nebraska have not been part of this discussion. We very much need to be, and the Global Water for Food Institute will give us the opportunity,” Olsen said.

“When we talk about water for food, it’s important to remember that we are also talking about poverty and peace,” he continued. “Water shortages and food insufficiency are the root of many of the world’s armed conflicts. We in Nebraska have the opportunity to play a vital role in creating a more peaceful world by moving forward with the Global Water for Food Institute. We must do this, even when our own financial resources are stretched.”

Olsen hit the nail on the head when he said water for food production is key in helping eliminate poverty and promote peace. As Gov. Dave Heineman has pointed out, water will be the defining issue of the 21th century.

A new analysis by researchers at Oregon State University also emphasizes what Olsen and Heineman have said about water availability in the 21th century as the report said that “some of the worst battles of the next century may be over groundwater.”

According to the report, aquifers are being depleted much faster than they are being replenished in many places, wells are drying up, massive lawsuits are already erupting and the problems have barely begun.

“Aquifers that took thousands of years to fill are being drained in decades, placing both agricultural and urban uses in peril,” the report said. “Groundwater that supplies drinking water for half the world’s population is now in jeopardy.”

In dealing with future water problems, the report borrowed “heavily from lessons learned the hard way by the oil industry.”

“It’s been said that groundwater is the oil of this century,” said Todd Jarvis, associate director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at OSU. “Part of the issue is it’s running out, meaning we’re now facing ‘peak water’ just the way the U.S. encountered ‘peak oil’ production in the 1970s. But there are also some techniques developed by the oil industry to help manage this crisis, and we could learn a lot from them.”

Jarvis, as an example, points to problems facing the Umatilla Basin of eastern Oregon, calling it a classic case of declining groundwater problems.

“In the northern half of Oregon from Pendleton to the Willamette Valley, an aquifer that took 20,000 years to fill is going down fast,” Jarvis said. “Some places near Hermiston have seen water levels drop as much as 500 feet in the past 50-60 years, one of the largest and fastest declines in the world.

“I know of a well in Utah that lost its original capacity after a couple years,” he said. “In Idaho people drawing groundwater are being ordered to work with other holders of stream water rights as the streams begin to dwindle. Mississippi has filed a $1-billion lawsuit against the City of Memphis because of declining groundwater. You’re seeing land subsiding from Houston to the Imperial Valley of California. This issue is real and getting worse.”

In the process, Jarvis said, underground aquifers can be irrevocably damaged – not unlike what happened to oil reservoirs when that industry pumped them too rapidly. Tiny fractures in rock that can store water, he said, sometimes collapse when it’s rapidly withdrawn, and then even if the aquifer had water to recharge it, there’s no place for it to go.

“The unitization concept the oil industry developed is built around people unifying their rights and their goals, and working cooperatively to make a resource last as long as possible and not damaging it,” Jarvis said. “That’s similar to what we could do with groundwater, although it takes foresight and cooperation.”

Water laws, Jarvis said, are often part of the problem instead of the solution.

A “rule of capture” that dates to Roman times, he said, often gives people the right to pump and use anything beneath their land, whether it’s oil or water. That’s somewhat addressed by the “first in time, first in right” concept that forms the basis of most water law in the West, but he said proving that someone’s well many miles away interferes with your aquifer or stream flow is often difficult or impossible. And there are 14 million wells just in the United States, tapping aquifers that routinely cross state and even national boundaries.

Regardless of what else takes place, Jarvis said, groundwater users must embrace one concept the oil industry learned years ago – the “race to the pump” serves no one’s best interest, whether the concern is depleted resources, rising costs of pumping or damaged aquifers.

One possible way out of the conundrum, experts say, is maximizing the economic value of the water and using it for its highest value purpose. But even that will take new perspectives and levels of cooperation that have not often been evident in these disputes, Jarvis said. Government mandates, he said, may be necessary if some of the “unitization” concepts are to be implemented. Existing boundaries may need to be blurred, and ways to share the value of the remaining water identified.

“Like we did with peak oil, everyone knows were running out, and yet we’re just now getting more commitment to alternative energy sources,” Jarvis said. “Soon we’ll be facing peak water, the only thing to really argue over is the date when that happens. So we will need new solutions, one way or the other.”

 

By Robert Pore

The nation’s meat and food industry is coming out with both fist flailing as Congress, under Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., leadership, is seriously considering increasing the amount of ethanol allowed in motor fuel from 10 percent to 15 percent.

Nelson had introduced legislation encouraging Congress to make that move to 15 percent ethanol blend.

But meat and poultry trade groups are telling the EPA that changes to Renewable Fuel Standard could substantially effect commodity prices and hurt animal agriculture.

And in Nebraska, we are right in the middle of this debate of the state is the nation’s second leading ethanol producer behind Iowa, one of the top five states in cattle production, one of the top 10 states in pork production and the leading state in red meat production.

Opposing Nelson’s amendment are the American Meat Institute (AMI), National Turkey Federation, National Chicken Council and FarmEcon LLC. They have sharply criticized EPA’s proposed changes to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), citing inadequate analysis of the proposed rule’s impact on agricultural commodity prices.

What the meat industry is saying is that EPA’s proposed regulations have not considered the risks associated with variability of grain crop or other biomass production, which would have serious consequences on food and fuel production costs in years of reduced crop production.

“Increasing the level of biofuel production in the current RFS has already resulted in a strong link between energy prices and agriculture prices,” the groups said in their correspondence with EPA. “Energy prices are highly volatile, and the link between that volatility and increased volatility of agriculture commodity prices has become a major issue facing commodity producers and users.”

According to the meat industry, that volatility has very real consequences for food producers that go beyond the increased cost levels already seen. The said that until EPA performs a risk assessment that takes into account not only average prices, but also variations around average prices, the real costs of the RFS are unknown.

AMI’s President and CEO J. Patrick Boyle said that increasing the RFS would divert even more animal feed into this nation’s fuel tanks and put continued upward pressure on corn prices.

“Further increasing the RFS will have a direct impact on the ability of livestock and poultry producers to effectively predict future annual budgets and costs due to volatility in the markets because feed is the largest single input cost associated with raising food producing animals,” said Boyle. “The net result is further disruption in the meat and poultry business and higher food prices for consumers.”

According to Farm Econ LLC, if the RFS is increased to 20 billion gallons of grain-based ethanol per year, consumers could see almost a 5 percent increase in average food costs. This estimate is based on $3,778 in food spending per capita. The impact on retail food costs as a result of higher farm commodity prices was clearly evident in 2008. Last year, one of substantial increases in grain and soybean prices, the Consumer Price Index for food increased by 5.9 percent.

Like in the cap and trade argument, that wildly inflates the cost of energy to agriculture, the argument that increasing the amount of ethanol in the fuel mix will dramatically increase the cost of food doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

The example of the increase in grain and soybean prices in 2008 was more of a result of wildly inflated commodity prices all up and down the board from food to precious metals to oil.

Oil prices were approaching $140 per barrel at the time and consumers were paying more than $4 per gallon for gasoline. It had very little to do with the amount of corn being used for ethanol production as there was no dramatic shortage of corn to drive prices up as high as they were last year when a bushel of corn hovered around $7 per bushel.

It all revolved around the cost of a barrel of oil. The whole food production industry, from agriculture to food processing to transportation, is heavily reliant of fossil fuel. That’s why food prices were so high.

The same is true with the exaggerated modeling example for cap and trade. What’s more of a danger for rising energy costs is the world’s dependence on fossil fuel not its efforts to combat greenhouse gases, which the United States contribute 25 percent of the greenhouse gas load to the atmosphere annually.

Here’s why cap and trade will make a difference in actually lowering energy costs in the long run. Less dependent we become on fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, and the more we rely on a diversified mix of energy sources, such as wind, biofuel, solar and even natural gas and nuclear energy, the cheaper energy becomes.

Same logic for ethanol, which is a transitional fuel between gasoline and future energy sources of vehicles, such as a diversified mix of biofuel, hydrogen fuel, natural gas, electrical and the list goes on. Diversify the fuel mix and increase the competition and prices will go down. That’s what the critics are saying about health insurance isn’t it. Cap and trade will increase the competition between alternative energy sources and more traditional energy sources, such as oil and coal.

Here’s the good news: According to the latest issue of the “Monthly Energy Review” by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), renewable energy sources (i.e., biofuels, biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar, wind) provided 11.37 percent of domestic U.S. energy production in June 2009 – the latest month for which data has been published.

And according to EIA’s latest “Electric Power Monthly,” renewable energy sources provided 11.18 percent of net U.S. electrical generation for the first six months of 2009.

That’s according to Ken Bossong, Executive Director of the SUN DAY Campaign.

He said this continues the steady growth trend for renewable energy. Renewable energy sources accounted for 9.89 percent of domestic energy production during the first half of 2007. That increased to 10.20 percent for the first half of 2008. For the first six months of 2009, Bossong said renewables totaled 10.67 percent of domestic energy production, rising to 11.32 percent for the second quarter of this year, and edging up to 11.37 percent in June 2009.

Likewise, he said, the 11.18 percent share of net U.S. electrical generation provided by renewable energy sources for the first six months of 2009 represents a significant increase over the 9.90 percent share provided during the first half of 2008.

Moreover, Bossong said renewable energy’s contribution to the nation’s energy production is now almost equal to that provided by nuclear power, which has been holding steady in recent years at about 11 percent (11.38 percent for the first half of 2009, 11.24 percent for the first half of 2008, and 11.66 percent for the first half of 2007).

And here’s a prediction: Cap and trade will not only continue that trend, but it will accelerate it.

“As Congress debates energy funding priorities and climate legislation, it would do well to take note of the clear trends in the nation’s changing energy mix,” Bossong said. “Renewable energy has become a major player – growing rapidly and nipping at the heels of nuclear power – while fossil fuel use continues to drop.”

The unintended consequences of those fighting against increasing ethanol use and cap and trade is the fact we will become even more dependent on fossil fuels, which will dramatically increase of the price of those finite fuels, and continue to increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere accelerating global warming and climate change.

And guess what, increasing the amount of ethanol in the nation’s fuel mix and a reasonable designed cap and trade bill will only keep that alternative fuel momentum going strong and, in the long run, lower energy cost and make the U.S. more economically sound and defensively strong.