Archive for September, 2022

Inflation and interest rates

September 13, 2022

I probably do not understand economics that well, so feel free to inform me. But here we go:

The consumer price index goes up by x% mainly because of food and energy (drought, floods, sudden gas shortages, increasing energy company profits), but possibly also because of Covid lockdowns in China, or climate change in China, India and Pakistan which is knocking factories out.

The central bank claims people have too much money (there is a loose money supply), so that is why we are getting inflation. I have not seen much evidence that most people, have too much money, or that inflation is being driven by wages increasing faster than profits. Indeed quite the other way around….

Anyway, the central bank appears to assume that people in general must have too much money, therefore it increases interest rates to restrict the money supply.

As those with loans pay more for those loans, they have less money to spend… there is less demand and so prices are supposed to come down.

However, low to median wage people already have less money because its being eaten up by price rises in food and energy – which they might NEED.

Now after the interest rate rise they have even less money and may get thrown out of their homes because they also need to eat etc…. and can’t pay off the loan increases…. Some people live pretty close to the edge.

They can always starve the children I guess, but the situation is likely to get worse as small business with little capital reserve need to put up prices in general to pay off the increased interest on the loans they have taken….

So inflation increases as prices go up and therefore the central bank puts interest rates up again, to try and lower inflation, and drives more people out of their homes and, just maybe, some small businesses go out of business, because they cannot compete with those big businesses with capital reserves…. and the economy gets even more centralised, and people have even less chance of upwards social mobility.

And given small businesses are major employers, it possibly means that closing small business increases unemployment. The IMF apparently has argued that US unemployment should about double to about 7.5% (I can’t find this information, so it may not be correct.). You might wonder about a system whose solutions to problems, openly involve making ordinary people’s lives more precarious.

With less competition, big companies can put up prices, and they can easily coordinate putting up prices, and blame it on inflation. They don’t have to do this of course, but I’d be surprised if some near monopolies don’t – after all making profit for the least cost, is the point of the game. They can also argue that because of cost increases they can’t afford to put up wages – again making profit for the least cost. So the policy is likely to help the transfer of income from ordinary people to the corporate rich and shareholders.

With all the homes being sold, and high interest rates perhaps house prices fall, perhaps they don’t – they didn’t with huge interest rates some years back, where I live. I guess people with money just bought more property.

So this common anti-inflation technique, is bad for people and small business, but ok for big business and people with money to invest in property, and it protects the banks because they get more income, and more foreclosures?

Is that how it works?

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The non-commons

September 9, 2022

The non-tragedy of the commons

I assume people know about the so called “tragedy of the commons” which was later retracted by its populariser, Garrett Hardin. The theory is that naturally selfish people will seek to take personal advantage of common land, and this uninhibited usage will eventually destroy the land through over-grazing over-cropping, over-fishing, etc.

This proposal stands in contrast to the empirical fact that there are commons on the Earth, which have survived as commons or shared property for hundreds and possibly thousands of years. What we might call hunter and gather societies generally exist with common ownership of ‘country’; the people are connected with the land they roam upon. They may even share the land with other groups.

These commons are managed by the users, who also have an interest in the commons being maintained for their own, and other locals’, benefit. So they try to stop people over-exploiting the commons – just as non-commoners might try and stop other forms of theft. You can look up the work of Elinor Ostrom and her followers if you choose to see how this works.

It appears that capitalist modes of behaviour, and capitalist ‘common sense’, destroy the commons. In capitalism people’s control over non-private property which serves them all, appears to be largely unrecognised by business or State. Capitalists regularly pollute the air, rivers, fields, towns, and so on – because they have ‘defined’ and ‘enforced’, this common space as an ‘externality’ – something which is external to the regime of private property, or economic cost, and therefore does not count. The power of local people over non-private property, or even their private property that obstructs big business, is often destroyed or marginalised. Consequently, we could expect capitalists to behave disastrously towards commons in the way that Hardin described, and indeed many argue that taking away the commons was part of the transition to capitalism. Therefore his article could better be titled “The Tragedy of all commons and common resources under Capitalism.”

By saying that people cannot naturally own things in common, he also works to discourages people from working together for common production and for shared benefits. The alternative is that one person has to own property, and the others labour for the owner, in return for the common benefits. This helps establishes an authoritarian basis for common work, and gets rid of democratic voices.

This hostile attitude to commons, and the declaration that common selfishness will destroy it, is possibly one of the roots of the ecological crisis. Common and private land, and anything else, can be happily ruined by its owners. Any commons, again including the air and the climate, can be ruined if it is not privately or State owned, or if the owners don’t have comparable power to those doing the ruining. Capitalism assumes Common Property is up for defacement and destruction, and that there is no such reality as common benefit without the exchange of money. The regime assures people that state owned property (crown land etc) is always vulnerable to being sold off to people with influence.

Pro-capitalist attack on the commons and defense of the non-commons

I was recommended to read a libertarian article on the impossibility of common property, which is interesting and a bit of an illumination of how neoliberalism works as theory. The argument goes like this:

  • Liberty is bound up in individually, or corporately owned, private property and with capitalism.
  • Hence everything should be made into private property to maximise liberty.
  • Collective property of any type, other than corporately owned, leads to other people telling you what to do (what commoners might call ‘managing shared resources’), which is bad.
  • Liberty appears to be about being able to buy what you can afford and sell what you have. Nothing else.
  • Therefore collective property, or commons, which cannot be sold, should be banned to preserve liberty and taken into private hands. [People with property seem to have the right to tell other people what to do, without it being a violation of liberty]
  • Everyone who believes in the possibility of collective property or public goods, not impinging on your right to do whatever you want, is an idiot who believes in pixie dust and the virtue of officials.
  • Free Markets on the other hand, are absolutely wonderful, and have no problems at all. There are no power imbalances in free markets. Even Mother Teresa would recognise that they are morally superior to systems which have public goods, commons, or collective forms of property. Capitalism is perfect and can only be improved by destroying stupid commons and selling off collective goods to those who can afford them, so they can control them and look after them.
  • Even public institutions should be sold off. Private police, and private courts, will support everyone’s property rights, not just their owner’s interests, or the rich who can pay more for the services. There is apparently no conflict of interest, because there is competition.
  • The idea of collective property and public goods only exists to support non-libertarian state power structures. Collective and shared property does not exist without the State. There has never been collective property without a state.
  • Once you realise all of this you will be like Frodo and chuck the evil ring of collective property into a volcano and let freedom, joy and happiness rule.

If it is not clear, I think this argument is largely glib, contradictory, unconvincing and ignorant of counter-evidence – and most of the statements could easily be reversed (“Liberty is bound with collectively owned and controlled property,” “Accumulation of private property leads to people being able to command others”) – but like most neoliberal or libertarian arguments, does help boost corporate power and control over people’s lives and freedoms. It justifies business destroying commons or stealing commons and turning them into non-commons in the name of liberty. It acts as a warning of the probable loss, and precariousness, of certain non-capitalist rights.

Tragedy of the non-commons

In some ways the article meshes with another article of Hardin’s, Lifeboat ethics, where he argues against environmentalists who say that “no single person or institution has the right to destroy, waste, or use more than a fair share of [the planet’s] resources” by suggesting we are in a lifeboat and should leave the poor (or the people in less ‘safe’ prosperity) to drown, so we can survive. Helping them simply overloads the lifeboat and we all die…. As there is no commons, and we are all thieves anyway, we don’t need to worry about those who are destroying the planet or how they do it – we just leave the poor to die and celebrate our apparent safety.

He also states: “To be generous with one’s own possessions is quite different from being generous with those of posterity.” However, that is precisely what he is doing, sacrificing posterity’s common good, for the personal present day good of the planet destroyers or the polluter elites.

We also don’t know we are safe from the planet destroyers. Self interested people, accepting this capitalist ethic, should perhaps wonder why they should assume the planet destroyers will let them use the lifeboat and not just push them away?

Commons in Practice

As stated earlier Garret Hardin in his later life recognised that the Tragedy of the Commons occurred when the commons wasn’t “well managed.” He probably realised this when, after much discussion with Elinor Ostrum, he recognised that some commons had lasted for thousands of years. (see also Buck)

For some reason his back down is nowhere near as well known as the original paper. Probably the original paper serves a more acceptable pro-capitalist ideological purpose.

So to reiterate. The forces disrupting commons tend to be:

  • Violence by the dominant classes. Generally aristocrats or capitalist, stole the commons for themselves and threw the people off, saying the land had no real ownership so it was theirs.
  • Ideologies that say everyone should exploit any situation for maximum profit as with neoliberal egotistical capitalism.

The tragedy is brought about by unequal power and capitalism, not by the human nature of the commoners.

Successfully run commons, could be considered ‘socialism’ in action.

Significant property is shared, utilised and cared for, and people who would rip it off, are ‘punished’ by the collective (reprimands, silence etc) or slowly have their rights to use commons taken away. Commons users can democratically participate in the administration (usually as a family unit) of the commons, and there is no significant inherited privilege to use force against other commoners other than to protect the commons from exploitation or appropriation, as agreed to by other participants.

The tragedy of the commons should be seen as a reason for regulating capitalists and stopping them from destroying other people’s collective property, rights and livelihood for the capitalist’s own profit, as all polluting companies do by poisoning air, water, land, ecologies and so on, to lower their costs and increase their profit. We, the people and the ecologies we live in, should not be devalued in comparison with private property or private profit.

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Umberto Eco on Fascism

September 5, 2022

From How to Spot A Fascist: “Ur-Fascism“

I’m going to move some of these points around in terms of priority and distort some of it.

Fascism springs from frustration, fear of loss, or actual loss, often loss of economic security or social status. Possibly with people who have seen prosperity being replaced by precarity, or siphoned off to some elites, and there is no solution being proposed by anyone that they know about. They rightly feel ignored, uneasy, slighted and resentful. The leader appears to recognise them and their problems and frustration, and channels it. He promises change.

  • Consequently, fascists can emerge from the middle class who fear loss of status, or fear being relegated to worker status.

Fascism promotes unity by denouncing difference and diversity. It attacks ‘intruders’ or those defined as foreign, and those who seem different. ‘We’ become valuable because we share ‘race’, religion, tradition, or nationality. These are matters of kinship.

  • People who differ from fascist views are evil or corrupt – non-kin. They need to be rooted out as they potentially destroy unity, national tradition and the advancement that is rightly ‘ours’. Dissent from fascism is betrayal.
  • Again unity is ensured by condemnation of diversity and finding scapegoats who are ‘different’ in some way, and who can be blamed for the ‘national failure’, ‘national frustration’ etc.
  • The scapegoats should be apparently strong but in reality quite socially weak; intellectuals, people of a minor religion, some kind of relatively poor minority. The enemy should be denounceable as both too strong and too weak or contemptable… certainly they should be easy to beat up, as that shows fascist masculinity in action.

To keep the fascist loyal, their belief in the movement is not abstract, it is deeply emotional and intuitive. It is sacred and beyond mere words.

  • People who cannot accept the fascist beliefs or who think those beliefs are incoherent, are too weak, and unspiritual, to apprehend fascism’s glory.
  • The different are spiritually inferior. Loathsome even. Or they are evil, trying to take faith away from the faithful.

Fascism generally supports an incoherent and imagined tradition. Italians are Romans. Germans are blond Aryans, both civilized and savage. Fascist Americans defend the constitution while ignoring it. Tradition must embrace contradiction, to point at its real glory.

  • Putting contradictory traditions together (‘Syncretism’) helps people bridge their differences, as well as hinder logical rather than symbolic thinking.
  • Tradition has to reject ‘the modern’ and the things fascism is fighting against, like difference. Differences, such as those recognised by ‘multiculturalism’, ‘gender variation,’ sexual expression, lack of artistic realism, and so on, are not considered part of the tradition that is worshiped. However, difference such as social status and command must be recognised as they express the party elite, and post-agricultural tradition always involves hierarchy.
  • The tradition usually imagines that men are the rulers and women are obedient breeders and supporters of male glory.

Fascism is expressed in action, in doing, not in thinking. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Intellectuals are effeminate and evil, unless they denounce the enemy, help action to occur, or justify the mystical strength of fascism.

  • The active principle is that life is struggle. Life is war. Peace is death. Enemies are needed, and must be overcome. The problem is what happens after total victory, after the final solution? The need is to find more enemies, more people to fight against, and that can be internal to the nation, and destroy the nation.
  • In fascism every fascist is a potential hero. Someone who will lay down their life for the party, for the nation etc. Death is the aim. Fascism is the dark side of the hero archetype in action.

The leader is the person who can express, or divine, the true spiritual will of the people, and guide the people to satisfy that spiritual will.

  • Multiple people cannot express that will. Parliaments are corrupt because they don’t express that will, they express argument, or sometimes loss for the leader.
  • The only real Parliament, for a fascist, is completely obedient to the leader and his expression of the people’s will. Everything else is illegitimate.

Dominant groups in society, tend to think they can support fascism, as it recognises their position in the hierarchy. Because of fascisms love of tradition, they can think fascists are conservatives, and will support their place. They also tend to think the leader can remove obstacles, and get rid of worker disobedience. They may even think they can control and placate the leader. Therefore the dominant groups will generally accept and support fascism, in an effort to protect themselves from peril.

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Biofuels: Will they work?

September 5, 2022

[Long but unfinished]

What are Modern Biofuels

The term ‘biofuel’ is usually used to refer to liquid or solid fuels manufactured from recently living organic material called ‘biomass’ (which can include plants, cooking oils, animals, microorganisms and so on), and made in relatively short human time frames. Fossil fuels also come from living material, but are made in geological time frames.

Biomass can be specially grown on farms, taken from forests (natural or cultivated) or from so called ‘marginal land’, collected from the waste from production of another crop (rather than being used as mulch, fertiliser or animal feed). Biomass can be made from organic garbage or manure, which is then usually (but not always) turned into methane (‘natural gas’) and purified. Biomass can also be made through the growth of algae in tanks or sometimes ponds. Sometimes the burning of mixed rubbish, or plastic pollution is also classified as a biofuel.

History and use

Biofuels such as collected wood, plant matter and dung have been used by humans for heating and cooking for a long time. Some of the earlier internal combustion engines were supposedly either designed or modified to run on biofuels – although I do not have documented evidence for this. Nicolaus August Otto who is usually said to have invented the first automobile engine in 1876, potentially fueled it with alcohol as well as coal gas. The diesel engine, could be run on fuel made out of peanut oil, and Ford’s model T could also run on bio-oils.

However it is usually agreed that the cheapness of petroleum products in the 1910s-20s, ended these experiments and engines were no longer built to work with bio products.

After the recognition of climate change, biofuels have sometimes been mandated by Governments to strengthen energy security, reduce GHG (through regrowth of crops), and because they can provide ways to subsidise some agriculture or other industries.

The EU issued its first biofuel directive in 2003 which recommended “tax exemption, financial assistance for the processing industry and the establishment of a compulsory rate of biofuels for oil companies”. This was so successful that by 2017 it was claimed that:

Biomass for energy (bioenergy) continues to be the main source of renewable energy in the EU, with a share of almost 60%. The heating and cooling sector is the largest end-user, using about 75% of all bioenergy (see section 1).  

European Commission’s Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy. 2019. Brief on biomass for energy in the European Union. and

The UK was lowering coal consumption but replacing the coal with wood pellets imported from the southeast United States, and providing over $1 billion in annual subsidies to help pay the costs of production and transport, mainly at the Drax power station (“the British government paid Drax the equivalent of €2.4m (£2.1m) a day in 2019”).

Drax appear to claim that wood pelleting is good for the environment and that they buy from sources which encourage tree growth:

“Over the last 25 years, the US South has not only increased its total wood supply – the surplus annual growth (compared to removals) each year has quadrupled”

Managed forests often absorb more carbon than forests that are left untouched .

(Drax 2022c)

We might wonder how biodiverse the new forestry is, and how much GHG are emitted transporting the chips across the Atlantic. We can also suggest that biofuel fit in well with European conditions of burning fuels and subsidy of agriculture. It could also increase wood chopping

According to Eurostat:

Almost a quarter (23 %) of the EU’s roundwood production in 2020 was used as fuelwood, while the remainder was industrial roundwood used for sawnwood and veneers, or for pulp and paper production…. . This represents an increase of 6 percentage points compared to 2000, when fuelwood accounted for 17 % of the total roundwood production. In some Member States, specifically the Netherlands, Cyprus and Hungary, fuelwood represented the majority of roundwood production (more than 50 %) in 2020. 

Eurostat 2021 Wood products – production and trade

Roundwood comprises all quantities of wood removed from the forest and other wooded land, or other tree felling site during a defined period of time

Eurostat: 2018 Glossary: Roundwood production

A Guardian article claims that “Between 2008 and 2018, subsidies for biomass, of which wood is the main source, among 27 European nations increased by 143%.” So the subsidies could provide an extra energy to focus on activities which are already happening.

The IEA claims:

Modern bioenergy is the largest source of renewable energy globally, accounting for 55% of renewable energy and over 6% of global energy supply. The Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario sees a rapid increase in the use of bioenergy to displace fossil fuels by 2030.

IEA Bioenergy 2021?

Clearly bioenergy is significant in the technologies which count as renewable. However, the reduction of emissions from burning biomass, might be largely theoretical. One source claims:

biomass burning power plants emit 150% the CO2 of coal, and 300 – 400% the CO2 of natural gas, per unit energy produced.

PFPI Carbon emissions from burning biomass for energy

The complexity and confusion over biofuel use, appears to be being used as a way of making EU renewable figures more respectable, and as such is enmeshed in politics rather than in ‘physical reality’. An Article in Environmental Policy and Governance stated:

We find that the commitment of EU decision-making bodies to internal guidelines on the use of expertise and the precautionary principle was questionable, despite the scientific uncertainty inherent in the biofuels debate. Imperatives located in the political space dominated scientific evidence and led to a process of ‘policy-based evidence gathering’ to justify the policy choice of a 10% renewable
energy/biofuels target.

Amelia Sharman & John Holmes 2010. Evidence-Based Policy or Policy-Based Evidence Gathering? Biofuels, the EU and the 10% Target. Environmental Policy and Governance 20: 309–321. and official site

So it can be suggested that biofuels can act as a fantasy evasion of challenges. Supposedly “responding to industry feedback”, the UK government increased its targets for biofuel, and justifies expanding airports by claiming that planes will use “sustainable” fuels, even though only a small number of planes can be provided with biofuels with current technologies. This means even more magic and fantasy, creeps into responses.

In 2005, the US Congress passed a “Renewable Fuel Standard,” which required transport fuel to include an increasing volume of biofuel. The law was expanded in 2007 and as a result, 2.8 million additional hectares of corn were grown between 2008 and 2016. 

“The Energy Policy Act of 2005 used a variety of economic incentives, including grants, income tax credits, subsidies and loans to promote biofuel research and development. It established a Renewable Fuel Standard mandating the blending of 7.5 billion gallons of  renewable fuels with gasoline annually by 2012. “The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) included similar economic incentives. EISA expanded the Renewable Fuel Standard to increase biofuel production to 36 billion gallons by 2022.” (EPA 2022).

In late 2021, The Biden Administration released plans (Whitehouse 2021) for increased biofuel production for aviation. With the aim of enabling “aviation emissions to drop 20% by 2030 when compared to business as usual” and “New and ongoing funding opportunities to support sustainable aviation fuel projects and fuel producers totaling up to $4.3 billion.” Later reports suggested that the Build Back Better Bill would include $1 billion in extra funding for normal biofuels (Neeley 2021).

In 2022, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a worldwide increase in fossil fuel prices. The Administration said (Whitehouse 2022) they were “committed to doing everything [they] can to address the pain Americans are feeling at the pump as a result of Putin’s Price Hike” and this involved spurring US biofuel production (“homegrown” to make it wholesome). This involved authorising the production of E15 in the summer months, when it is normally illegal, partly because it evaporates easily and adds GHG and particulates to the atmosphere including nitric, and nitrogen, oxides, although this is disputed (refs# AFP 2022). He also claimed to have negotiated “a historic release from petroleum reserves around the world, putting 240 million barrels of oil on the market in the next six months” (Whitehouse 2022). This is clearly not an attempt to reduce petrol consumption but the price of petrol which is likely to increase consumption over what it would have been otherwise.

The US Energy Information administration states that in 2021 “17.5 billion gallons of biofuels were produced in the United States and about 16.8 billion gallons were consumed. The United States was a net exporter of about 0.8 billion gallons of biofuels” (EIA 2022).

Biofuels are a major taxpayer supported industry, which appears to help delay change in at least some fields such as transport (automobile fuel), and are supported by that industry.

Scientific Encouragement

Biofuels have long been part of official plans for the energy transition, as a replacement for petrol or gas. The IPCC said in 2018:

Bioenergy has a significant greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential, provided that the resources are developed sustainably and that efficient bioenergy systems are used. Certain current systems and key future options including perennial cropping systems, use of biomass residues and wastes and advanced conversion systems are able to deliver 80 to 90% emission reductions compared to the fossil energy baseline….

From the expert review of available scientific literature, potential deployment levels of biomass for energy by 2050 could be in the range of 100 to 300 EJ…. The upper bound of the technical potential of biomass for energy may be as large as 500 EJ/yr by 2050….

Biomass provided about 10.2% (50.3 EJ/yr) of the annual global primary energy supply in 2008,

IPCC Chapter 2: Biofuels 215-16

Recognised Problems

Not enough biofuels

In 2011, the International Energy Agency forecast that biofuels could make up 27 percent of global transportation fuels by 2050. In 2021 the same organisation called for greater production of biofuels, but feared that (even i biofuels were less polluting and were low emissions) the necessary increase was not happening:

Transport biofuel production expanded 6% year-on-year in 2019, and 3% annual production growth is expected over the next five years. This falls short of the sustained 10% output growth per year needed until 2030 to align with the SDS.

IEA Transport Biofuels tracking report 1921 [Note IEA website addresses are often used more than once for the current report]

And:

While biofuel demand grew 5% per year on average between 2010 and 2019, the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario requires much higher average growth of 14% per year to 2030.

Despite a boost in biofuel production in Asia, Wood Mackenzie state

Our forecast shows that no Asian market can meet its biodiesel and ethanol blending targets this year. Indonesia for example, l requires 15 million hectares more palm oil plantations to reach its mandate target, and in China ethanol for biofuels started noticeably competing with food production (Wood Mackenzie (2021).

The IEA calls for more production incentive policies to make up this shortfall, but remarks:

These policies must ensure that biofuels are produced sustainably and avoid negative impacts on biodiversity, freshwater systems, food prices and food availability. Policies must also incentivise greenhouse gas reductions, not just biofuel demand

op cit.

Removal of emissions

To be useful, biofuels must replace other worse sources of emissions and pollution, rather than being used in addition to those sources of pollution. This is another case in which emissions density, the ratio of energy to emissions is an irrelevant measure, as biofuels could reduce emissions intensity, while still allowing emissions increase.

It is perhaps questionable whether sustainable production of biofuels is compatible with both reduction of fuel costs (ie they compete with fossil fuels as replacements), rapid growth of production and lowering of pollution, as pollution is often associated with making things cheap and plentiful.

Lockin

Biofuel, as an addition to petrol, may require us to keep petrol going for longer than is necessary, preserving fossil fuel company profits with only marginally lower emissions. Biofuels may also not be as efficient as fossil fuels and therefore increase overall consumption, and a Jevons effect might eventuate if the mixed fuel becomes cheaper to use, and more is consumed.

The Time Issue

It is generally much quicker to burn a plant or the fuel derived from a plant than it is to grow the volume of plants being burnt and turned into fuel. The more biofuel being burnt in a time period, the more biomass is needed to be being produced at the same time.

If it takes three days to regrow and process the amount of matter burnt in 1 day (which is excessively and unlikely quick replacement), then we need to grow and store enough biomass for days two and three and then grow it again. The greater the demand for biofuel the greater the demand for excess production. This will generally denature the soil, and make a problem for food production as it takes large quantities of land. Currently the world is expected to suffer food shortages because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is probably not sensible to bet so much on crops for biomass given the instability of the current world through politics and through climate which may affect growth and fertility.

Systemic problems

a) Biofuels may take a lot of energy, land and manufactured fertiliser to produce, refine and transport to places of consumption, so their Energy Return on Energy Input (EREI) could be extremely low while the pollution through their production could be high.

b) Using organic waste, usually for the production of biogas, may remove natural fertilisers from the soil so that the ecological cycle of recovery is broken, and has to be repaired artificially. This may increase the energy ‘consumed or ‘wasted’ in making replacement chemical fertilisers. Again the IEA states:

biofuels are increasingly produced from feedstocks such as wastes and residues, which do not compete with food crops…. [while currently] only an estimated 7% of biofuels came from wastes and residues… Accounting for just 3% of transport fuel demand – biofuels are not on track to attain the Net Zero trajectory

###

Given that used cooking oil and waste animal fats provide the majority of non-food-crop feedstocks for biofuel production, and are limited “new technologies will need to be commercialised to expand non-food-crop biofuel production”. In other words imaginary, or possible, technologies will have to rescue us again.

c) Use of biofuels increases the so called ‘metabolic rift’ which comes with industrial agriculture. Materials and nutrients are taken from the soil and dispersed into the atmosphere, or become waste in another place – where they may decay into methane, another GHG.

d) Biofuels may lead to indirect land-use change. That is when food crops in one part of the world are directed to biofuels, and farmers elsewhere try to capitalise on the potential shortage of food crops by expanding into forests, or using agriculture that released soil stored GHG.

Through the interlinked systems, biofuels have the potential to make things worse.

Food

Farming, or extracting, these fuels, can: require fertile land and increase the price of food by taking land away from food production; dispossess small farmers, forest dwellers, and dependent labour from land (increasing food problems); bring about destruction of old growth forests (increasing CO2 emissions); decrease biodiversity lowering ecological resilience; and increase systemic vulnerability to plant disease through monocropping.

A suppressed or confidential World Bank report leaked to the Guardian in 2008 stated that “Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%”. Robert Bailey a policy adviser at Oxfam, remarked at the time:

Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises… While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat.

Aditya Chakrabortty Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis. The Guardian 4 Jul 2008

Dr David King the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 to 2007 said:

It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices… All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change.”

Aditya Chakrabortty Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis. The Guardian 4 Jul 2008

In 2010 it was said that:

One-quarter of all the maize and other grain crops grown in the US now ends up as biofuel in cars rather than being used to feed people, according to new analysis which suggests that the biofuel revolution launched by former President George Bush in 2007 is impacting on world food supplies.”

John Vidal 2010 One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars – not people, new figures show. The Guardian 23 January

Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, was reported as saying:

The grain grown to produce fuel in the US [in 2009] was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels… By subsidising the production of ethanol to the tune of some $6bn each year, US taxpayers are in effect subsidising rising food bills at home and around the world

John Vidal 2010 One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars – not people, new figures show. The Guardian 23 January

Other reports which suggest even more problems. Gro Intelligence, argues that the calories in biofuel production resulting from current and future policies could feed 1.9 billion people annually. The invasion of Ukraine, and the resultant shortage of foodstock sharpened the debate and it was alleged that close to 36% of US corn may be produced for biofuel and 40% of soy went into biodiesel. Another article suggests that a 50% reduction in grain for biofuels in the US and Europe would compensate for the loss of all of Ukraine’s grain exports

But of course there are different opinions. Rob Vierhout, the secretary-general of ePURE, the association of the European renewable ethanol and related industries attacks:

the allegation that millions of people were starving due to EU biofuel policies.  Not a single scientific paper over the past two years gave credence to that theory. The Commission’s own report earlier this year on the historical and future price impacts of EU biofuels policy suggested that the impacts had been negligible, an order of magnitude below what the NGO campaigners have claimed. Major contributions to the field this year include a World Bank paper concluding that oil is responsible for two thirds of price increases…

anti-biofuels campaigners have for the past six months focused on an allegation by IISD that biofuels cost EU taxpayers €10 billion annually…. We and our members have tried for a year to have meaningful and scientifically-relevant dialogue with IISD’s biofuel researchers, and we have pointed out dozens of factual and methodological errors in their work, as well as their constant failure to secure meaningful peer review…. They give the results that their clients order and then try to justify those results through manipulation of data and highly selective use of facts.

Rob Vierhout 2013. Take an honest look at ethanol! Euractiv 2 September

Vierhout adds:

Seventy thousand people owe their jobs to the EU renewable ethanol industry. European biofuels industry now contribute more than €20 billion annually to Europe’s GDP. They are a product made in and for Europe. Every litre of biofuel sold in Europe is a litre of reduced fossil fuel demand.

Rob Vierhout 2013. Take an honest look at ethanol! Euractiv 2 September

The number of jobs is irrelevant if the industry is harmful. Tom Buis, the chief executive of Growth Energy (Supporting American Ethanol) said:

Continued innovation in ethanol production and agricultural technology means that we don’t have to make a false choice between food and fuel. We can more than meet the demand for food and livestock feed while reducing our dependence on foreign oil through the production of homegrown renewable ethanol

John Vidal 2010 One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars – not people, new figures show. The Guardian 23 January

Water is also consumed at all stages of biofuel production: in agriculture in manufacture and in the fuel itself. It may be possible to conserve or recycle water, but it may not without adding more energy consumption to the process. Likewise if forests are felled to provide land for growing biofuels, then the local hydrological cycle may be disrupted, and water flow off the land, helping to produce floods, rather than being absorbed.

The problem here is that the systemic logic of the problem is fairly high. Biofuel crops require land and water to grow. There is limited land and water available. Consequently, this land and water either comes from existing agricultural (food producing) land, which lowers food production and thus puts the price of food up, occupies new land and produces lack of biodiversity, or produces food shortages (unless there is massive food over-production). If the land comes from areas which are cheap and supports local farmers, grazers in commoning, then those people may be dispossessed by mass cropping and forced into wage labour, or have to move elsewhere, and again the local price of food, and the amount of human suffering, is likely to increase along with declines in biodiversity and resilience. If the new land comes from forests, or previously unfarmed land then the loss of a carbon sink my eradicate any emissions lowering from using the fuels. If it comes from previously marginal land, then that may generate systemic problems, such as vulnerability to drought, soil loss and so on. The land was probably not being farmed for some reason or other. Yet there is a clear financial incentive for biofuels to continue.

For what it is worth Exxon remarks:

Many peer-reviewed papers in the scientific literature suggest that the direct life cycle GHG emissions are lower than fossil fuels but that indirect consequences of first generation biofuel development, including changes in forest and agricultural land use change, may result in higher total GHG emissions than petroleum-derived fuels

Exxon Newsroom 2018 Advanced biofuels and algae research: targeting the technical capability to produce 10,000 barrels per day by 2025. 17 September

EU response

The latest Climate negotiations from the EU, Fit for 55, seems to take note of some of these issues. The section on the transport sector does not seem to mention subsidised ethanol production for automobiles but plentiful charging stations and the deployment of a gaseous hydrogen refueling infrastructure. (The infographic refers to “liquified methane” which seems an odd choice for emissions reduction). It does refers to shipping and stimulating “demand for the most environmentally friendly sustainable fuels, particularly renewable fuels of non-biological origin” presumably hydrogen, although whether this is green hydrogen or not is unclear. The main section on biofuels is almost entirely about air transport, so we could perhaps expect that is where the subsidies will go. The discussion says they want to extend “the scope of eligible sustainable aviation fuels and synthetic aviation fuels. For biofuels, the scope is extended to other certified biofuels complying with the RED sustainability and emissions saving criteria, up to a maximum of 3%, and with the exception of biofuels from food and feed crops, which are excluded.”

It might also be useful to make sure transport emissions are low, and that energy efficiency is high so that transport needs less fuel.

Types of Biofuel

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA 2022 another web page which gets updated regularly), remarks that “The terminology for different types of biofuels used in government legislation and incentive programs and in industry branding and marketing efforts varies,” and that “definitions for these biofuels may also differ depending on the language in government legislation and programs that require or promote their use and among industry and other organizations.” This makes it hard to be definitive.

Ethanol

Biofuels are generally made from specially grown biomass, as implied above and burnt releasing GHG emissions which are hopefully absorbed over time by regrowth.  The currently most common biofuel involves ethanol Ethanol is a fermentation product made from plants such as corn, sugarcane, sugar beets etc. with a high sugar content. Fermentation to make ethanol also releases CO2, whether it is possible to lower this release is possibly likely, but still difficult to predict. It is added to petrol to dilute the amount of petrol being used, but as stated previously still produces emissions.

If fermentation is not used, as in ethanol production, then the plant material has to be broken down. One family of methods involves high temperatures, which of course takes energy. If this energy is provided by fossil fuels or further biofuels, then there will be added emissions.

  • Pyrolysis: biomass rapidly heated in an Oxygen free environment at 500-700 degrees Centigrade. The char then needs to be removed.
  • Gasification uses higher temperatures still >700 degrees. It produces ‘syngas’ a mixture of CO and hydrogen.
  • Hyrdothermal liquefaction for wet biomass like algae uses water at 200-350 degrees C and high pressure.

The resultant product needs purification and upgrading.

Ethanol is usually less efficient for petrol engines than petrol, it has less energy density, and in Australia the fuel is lower octane than usual petrol. Some research has suggested that cars use ethanol diluted fuel require more refuelling than those which do not, which may lead to extra fuel burning, and hence reduce the emissions reduction. As far as I can see more research is needed.

Cellulosic ethanol

This kind of ethanol is made from the cellulose and hemicelluloses which are found in plant cell walls, and the fuel tends to be made from agricultural waste, or non-edible remnants of crops. It is considerably harder to ferment the glucose in cellulose than to ferment the sugar rich seeds of corn etc. A story from 2016 states

no company is currently selling microorganisms capable of fermenting sugars contained in hemicellulose to corn ethanol refiners.  Therefore, such ‘cellulosic ethanol’ originates from the cellulose sugars in the fiber or [in] the starch which adheres to it.

Almuth Ernsting Cashing in on Cellulosic Ethanol: Subsidy Loophole Set to Rescue Corn Biofuel Profits

Cellulosic fuels are sometimes called second generation biofuels. This biomass should be able to come from more marginal land or from waste (EPA 2022). However, there is still a risk of soil depletion from the plant material not being returned to the soil, and it appears the energy consumption in making it is high.

Biodiesel [unclear]

Biodiesel tends to be made from vegetable oils, and animal fats, both new and used. Some diesel engines appear to be able to run on pure biodiesel, but in most cases the vegetable oils have too high a viscosity and the oils require heating before they can be used, so they are temperature vulnerable. The NSW department of primary industry claims: “the Australian diesel fuel standard allows up to 5% biodiesel in pump fuel. Higher concentrations of conventional biodiesel can cause issues with current infrastructure and engines.”

When I began writing this, the US Office of Energy Efficiency stated that “Currently one commercial scale facility (World Energy in Paramount, California) is producing renewable diesel from waste fats, oils, and greases.” Presumably more companies have appeared.

One of the possible techniques used is hydrocracking which uses hydrogen to break carbon to carbon bonds, but it is not clear to me what this technique is applied to, or what kind of energy and chemical processes are involved.

Biodiesel is often distinguished from Renewable diesel. The NSW government states:

Renewable diesel is produced from a wider variety of feedstocks than conventional biodiesel including non-food biomass and feedstock such as straw, cotton trash and urban waste streams. It can also use purpose-grown crops such as grass, woody biomass or algae. [Or sewage vegetable oils and animal fats] Renewable diesel is compatible with existing infrastructure and vehicles, but commercial scale production has yet to occur in Australia, though some pilot scale plants are in operation.

NSW Department of Primary Industries Biodiesel, renewable diesel and bioethanol 7 June 2022

Again we have the problem of the pollution through manufacturing and agricultural processes. It also appears that the NSW government at least is currently more interested in Hydrogen power than in biodiesel, but hydrogen production requires excess green energy to produce clear hydrogen, or working Carbon Capture and Storage to make from methane.

Wood

Wood has better have better energy density and higher EREI than most other plant materials but it is less energy dense and has higher moisture levels than fossil fuels and produces more particulate pollution. As said previously deforestation or monoculture trees tend not to be good for resilient ecologies.

Algae

Algae is essentially an experimental venture, even though it has been worked with since the oil crisis of the 1970s. Often called the third generation of biofuels. In theory algae should be wonderful. It is much quicker growing than other biomass (even when compared to burning time). It is rich in lipids and this, and growth rates, could possibly be boosted even further by genetic engineering. However, the record does not match the enthusiasm.

From 2005 to 2012, dozens of companies managed to extract hundreds of millions in cash from VCs in hopes of ultimately extracting fuel oil from algae [and failed]

 In 2015, EnAlgae, an EU-funded coalition of 19 research bodies, concluded (p2) that “it now looks highly unlikely that algae can contribute significantly to Europe’s need for sustainable energy,” although the research had helped algae be useful for “food, nutraceuticals, etc.” and help cut back fishing.

Similarly, in 2017, the International Energy Agency made the ambiguous comment that:

• The single biggest barrier to market deployment of algae remains the high cost of
cultivating and harvesting the algal biomass feedstocks, currently a factor of 10-20
too high for commodity fuel production…

• Algae-based production to produce bioenergy products like liquid or gaseous fuels
as primary products is not foreseen to be economically viable in the near to
intermediate term and the technical, cost and sustainability barriers are reviewed
• Macroalgae have significant potential as a biogas, chemicals and biofuels crop in
temperate oceanic climates in coastal areas. Their commercial exploitation also
remains limited by cost and scalability challenges

IEA 2017 State of Technology Review – Algae Bioenergy

By 2012, Shell had ended its algae biofuel research and development program, news had dried up of BP’s $10 million deal with bioscience firm Martek, and Chevron’s five-year partnership with the government-funded National Renewable Energy Laboratory had produced no significant breakthroughs. By early 2018, Chevron’s website had gone from promising that algae biofuel development was “still in the research stage” to openly admitting its work was unsuccessful.

Joseph Winters 2020 The Myth of Algae Biofuels. Harvard Political Review 26 January

Apparently Exxon are still interested in algal fuels and genetic modification as the solution.

Genetically engineered high reproduction rate algae is ecologically risky, as the chances are high, that some will escape, and if they can breed in the wild, which given the reproduction rates and lack of predators that often lead to algal blooms is likely, they could produce massive damage. Other problems include co-products, waste, nutrients, harvesting, drying and conversion technology.

In 2017 Exxon announced that:

Using advanced cell engineering technologies at Synthetic Genomics, the ExxonMobil-Synthetic Genomics research team modified an algae strain to enhance the algae’s oil content from 20 percent to more than 40 percent.

Exxon Newsroom 2017 ExxonMobil and Synthetic Genomics report breakthrough in algae biofuel research 19 June

Later they moved to outdoor testing of.

naturally occurring algae in several contained ponds in California…

ExxonMobil anticipates that 10,000 barrels of algae biofuel per day could be produced by 2025 based on research conducted to date and emerging technical capability.

Exxon Newsroom 2018 ExxonMobil and Synthetic Genomics algae biofuels program targets 10,000 barrels per day by 2025 6 March

Finally in late 2018 they declared:

algal biofuels will have about 50 percent lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum-derived fuel…

producing algae does not compete with sources of food, rendering the food-vs.-fuel quandary a moot point

Because algae can be produced in brackish water, including seawater, its production will not strain freshwater resources the way ethanol does.

Algae consume CO2, and on a life-cycle basis have a much lower emissions profile than corn ethanol given the energy used to make fertilizer, distill the ethanol, and to farm and transport the latter.

Algae can yield more biofuel per acre than plant-based biofuels

Exxon Newsroom 2018 Advanced biofuels and algae research: targeting the technical capability to produce 10,000 barrels per day by 2025. 17 September

There seems to be no record of progress since then. The US EPA simply remarks in 2022: “algae biofuels are not yet produced commercially”. However the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) states it is “working to build the algae bioeconomy of the future, where fossil fuels could be replaced with a renewable, abundant, and flexible source of energy.” It is offering awards to students for advances in algal tech.

Biogas

The decay of much biomass produces methane, or ‘natural gas’. The idea is that it is possible to capture or generate methane from waste, and rather than release it to the atmosphere, burn it to produce energy and presumably some GHG. The point here is not that no GHG is released, but it is used as it is released.

China has more than 100,000 biogas plants, and a large number of household biogas units, followed by Germany with over 10,000 plants.

Methanol is another form of biogas made from biomass at extremely high temperatures and in the presence of a catalyst

Plastics

It is also possible that plastics could be converted to biofuels  – exchanging one form of pollution for another less noticeable form. Australian energy startup Licella was funded by Renewable Chemical Technologies Ltd (RCTL) and Armstrong Energy (£5m) to convert plastics to oil suitable to blend in with hydrocarbon fuels. It can work with broken and mixed plastics, and paper. However, the production of plastics locks away carbon, while conversion and burning releases it, so you get rid of the plastic from landfill or oceans but put it in the air, – along with any other pollutants. This is the case even if the production process is lower in emissions than usual. Given plastics are usually made from fossil fuels, fuel made from plastic should probably be classified as processed fossil fuels.

Waste

Waste or rubbish is one of the more confusing categories. It can include biogas but also high temperature burning of rubbish such as plastics and other materials which might be otherwise put into landfill. It may add to transport emissions if trucks carry the waste from the landfill area to the incinerator. The heat is usually used to produce steam and drive turbines to produce electricity. (A commercial description can be found here). It is dubious that burning mixed materials will have low emissions, or low particulate pollution, and the ash left behind is likely contaminated with heavy metals, salts, and persistent organic pollutants. Modern incinerators also have air pollution control equipment, which adds to the energy and cost of operation. The US EPA claims:

A typical waste to energy plant generates about 550 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy per ton of waste. At an average price of four cents per kWh, revenues per ton of solid waste are often 20 to 30 dollars… [another] stream of revenue for the facilities comes from the sale of both ferrous (iron) and non-ferrous scrap metal collected from the post-combusted ash stream.

The United States combusted over 34 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste [MSW] with energy recovery in 2017…

 The ash that remains from the MSW combustion process is sent to landfills. 

EPA Energy Recovery from the Combustion of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)

A medical survey of evidence concluded that:

A range of adverse health effects were identified, including significant associations with some neoplasia, congenital anomalies, infant deaths and miscarriage, but not for other diseases. Ingestion was the dominant exposure pathway for the public.

More recent incinerators have fewer reported ill effects, perhaps because of inadequate time for adverse effects to emerge. A precautionary approach is required.

Peter W Tait et al. 2020. The health impacts of waste incineration: a systematic review. Aust N Z J Public Health 44(1):40-48.

Another article on the same topic claimed:

We found a dearth of health studies related to the impacts of exposure to WtE emissions. The limited evidence suggests that well-designed and operated WtE facilities using sorted feedstock (RDF) are critical to reduce potential adverse health (cancer and non-cancer) impacts, due to lower hazardous combustion-related emissions, compared to landfill or unsorted incineration. Poorly fed WtE facilities may emit concentrated toxins with serious potential health risks, such as dioxins/furans and heavy metals; these toxins may remain problematic in bottom ash as a combustion by-product. 

Tom Cole-Hunter 2020 The health impacts of waste-to-energy emissions: a systematic review of the literature. Environmental Research Letters,15: 123006

Not unreasonably they call for further research before expanding the industry.

In the US, The Department of Energy announced:

$46 million for 22 projects that will create biofuel energy to help decarbonize the transportation and power generation sectors.

Turning waste and carbon pollution into clean energy at scale would be a double win—cleaning up waste streams that disproportionately burden low-income communities and turning it into essential energy,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.

Unusually, they try to sell the waste burning, as removing waste streams from low-income communities, and lowering pollution, both of which seem dubious.

In Australia, the government has also seen incineration ‘renewable energy’ and as creating revenue streams for industry, and then allowing industry to apply for grant programs, through people such as the renewable energy agency Arena and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Promotion of rubbish for energy also came about shortly after China refused to take more Australian rubbish exports, and this allows recycling centres to sell on otherwise unwanted recycling materials.

Burning rubbish would seem to be a way of not having to lower rubbish-pollution, increase recycling, or find new ways of recycling. In other words it allows freeloading polluters to continue to freeload and rubbish-collectors to make extra profits. It may even encourage more plastic manufacture. to provide feedstock.

Sustainable Aviation fuel

Aviation fuel is a major cause of GHG. By 2019, the total annual world-wide passenger count was 4.56 billion people.

passenger air travel was producing the highest and fastest growth of individual emissions before the pandemic, despite a significant improvement in efficiency of aircraft and flight operations over the last 60 years…

if global commercial aviation had been a country in the 2019 national GHG emissions standings, the industry would rank number six in the world between Japan and Germany.

Jeff Overton 2022 Issue Brief | The Growth in Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Commercial Aviation. Environmental and Energy Study Institute 9 June


In 2017 the aviation industry promised carbon neutral growth by 2020.  The “green jet fuel” plan, promised and increase use of biofuels to 5m tonnes a year by 2025, and 285m tonnes by 2050, which is about half the overall demand, assuming it remains stable, and stops growing. This is also about three times the amount of biofuels currently produced, and that suggests that the blowback would be considerable. Nearly 100 environmental groups protested against the proposal. Klaus Schenk of Rainforest Rescue said: “The vast use of palm oil for aviation biofuels would destroy the world’s rainforests” and Biofuel watch estimate it would take an amount of land more than three times the size of the UK.

British Airways abandoned a £340m scheme to make jet fuel from rubbish in January 2016, while Qantas managed a 15 hour flight from the US to Australia using a fuel with a 10% blend of a mustard seed fallow crop. The flight reportedly reduced the normal emissions of the flight by 7% which suggests a long way to go. At the time it was reported that Qantas aimed to set up an Australian biorefinery in the near future in partnership with Canadian company Agrisoma Biosciences. I do not know if this has happened, but they claimed that in Jan 2022 they became the first Australian airline to purchase Sustainable Aviation fuel out of Heathrow in London. It “will represent up to 15 per cent of our annual fuel purchased out of London…. and reduce carbon emissions by around 10 per cent on this route.” The fuel was said to be produced with certified bio feedstock from used cooking oil and/or other waste products. This is then blended with normal jet fuel. Qantas Group Chief Sustainability Officer Andrew Parker said “Aviation biofuels typically deliver around an 80 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions on a lifecycle basis”. This seems unlikely while it is blended with jet fuel, and does not really compare with the 7 to 10 percent reduction they were previously claiming.

Reuters states that “Only around 33 million gallons of SAF were produced last year globally, or 0.5% of the jet fuel pool”. Stuff from the Biden bill

 

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Climate change in 1965

September 4, 2022

The 1965 Report Restoring the quality of our environment presented to US President Johnson gives some ideas of knowledge and approach to climate change. They took it as likely and serious. Here are some paragraphs with a few comments in [ ]s:

President Johnson wrote:

the technology that has permitted our affluence spews out vast quantities of wastes and spent products that pollute our air, poison our waters, and even impair our ability to feed ourselves…. Pollution now is one of the most pervasive problems of our society.

Johnson points out that pollution is a general and serious problem resulting from the way societies have gained affluence. The Report, itself, opens with some history of the knowledge of CO2 Pollution, climate change, and its consequences:

The possibility of climatic change resulting from changes in the quantity of atmospheric carbon dioxide was proposed independently by the American geologist, T. C. Chamberlain (1899) and the Swedish chemist, S. Arrhenius (1903), at the beginning of this century.

They point to some existing evidence of climate change.

One might suppose that the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past 100 years should have already brought about significant climatic changes, and indeed some scientists have suggested this is so. The English meteorologist, G. S. Callendar (1938, 1940, 1949), writing in the late 1930’s and the 1940’s on the basis of the crude data then available, believed that the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 1850 to 1940 was at least 10%. He thought this increase could account quantitatively for the observed warming of northern Europe and northern North America that began in the 1880’s….

As Mitchel (1961, 1963) has shown, atmospheric warming between 1885 and 1940 was a world-wide phenomenon.

The authors point to the difficulties of prediction of climate….

Even today, we cannot make a useful prediction concerning the magnitude or nature of the possible climatic effects.

Although clearly they recognise that climate change is a problem. They also recognise that sea level rise is a likely result.

It has sometimes been suggested that atmospheric warming due to an increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere may result in a catastrophically rapid melting of the Antarctic ice cap, with an accompanying rise in sea level…. But such melting must occur relatively slowly on a human scale…. The melting of the Antarctic ice cap would raise sea level by 400 feet. If 1,000 years were required to melt the ice cap, the sea level would rise about 4 feet every 10 years [They add that this is not yet happening]

They think CO2 increase is induced by the actions of a particular social formation, and is therefore humanly induced.

Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years. The CO2 produced by this combustion is being injected into the atmosphere; about half of it remains there.

We can conclude with fair assurance that at the present time, fossil fuels are the only source of CO2 being added to the ocean-atmosphere-biosphere system.

By the year 2000 the increase in atmospheric CO2 will be close to 25%. [They were wrong, the increase was much bigger than they thought] This may be sufficient to produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate, and will almost certainly cause significant changes in the temperature and other properties of the stratosphere. At present it is impossible to predict these effects quantitatively…

Again, they suggest that humanly induced climate change could be bad for humanity

The climatic changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings. The possibilities of deliberately bringing about countervailing climatic changes therefore need to be thoroughly explored.

The solution they propose, appears to involve an early suggestion of geoengineering, rather than a cutback in fossil fuel consumption.

A change in the radiation balance in the opposite direction to that which might result from the increase of atmospheric CO2 could be produced by raising the albedo, or reflectivity, of the earth.

So, the Report could warn that global heating and climate change was likely to occur because of human burning of fossil fuels, but made no suggestion of cutting back consumption of those fossil fuels.

Sounds pretty contemporary.

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Optimism and Pessimism

September 1, 2022

Optimism

From a study of research on the possibility of going to 100% renewables

“The main conclusion of the vast majority of 100% renewable energy systems studies, is that such systems can power all energy in all regions of the world at low cost”

Pessimism

However we can also read that is appears that tax payers all over the world, are still subsidising their own destruction.

An analysis of 51 countries responsible for 86% of electricity coonsumption, showed that global public subsidies for fossil fuels almost doubled to $700bn in 2021 largely through government subsidies of electricity prices.

Fatih Birol Director of the International Energy Agency remarked “Fossil fuel subsidies are a roadblock to a more sustainable future, but the difficulty that governments face in removing them is underscored at times of high and volatile fuel prices,”

And Mathias Cormann, the OECD secretary general (!!!well known for collaborating with climate/ecological damage denial governments in Australia) said “Significant increases in fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, while not necessarily reaching low-income households… We need to adopt measures which protect consumers [and] help keep us on track to carbon neutrality, as well as energy security and affordability”

Estimates including implicit subsidies, ie the cost of the climate and air pollution damage caused by fossil fuels, are far higher. These amounted to $5.9tn in 2020, according to the International Monetary Fund, or $11m a minute

I guess this is naked power in action

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