"The New World War II" below comes from Patrick
Mazza of Climate Solutions, the Pacific Northwest
think-tank. It's a provocative response to the
just-published climate report from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

"Sustainability and Energy" after that provides
one of the most original perspectives on ways of
thinking about different energy sources, It's by
Dr. Ulf Bossell, Director of the Swiss-based
European Fuel Cell Forum http://www.efcf.com ,
whom we met when we both spoke the "Driving
Sustainability" conference in Reykjavik, Iceland
in September
http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/861.html .
After you read through that, read a bonus insight you may find useful.


THE NEW WORLD WAR II
19 November 07
http://climatesolutions.org/?s=journal&aid=21

The alarm bell is gonging. The world's climate
scientists have now sounded a call to general
quarters - The world must now level off global
warming pollution, begin to reduce it within
seven years, and cut it up to 85 percent by 2050,
or set off the greatest catastrophes in the
history of the human race, and some of the
greatest in the Earth's geological record.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
the world's leading scientific body on global
warming and climate change, released its latest
scientific synthesis report over the weekend
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
. It came as the firmest statement yet that the
climate crisis is now upon us and immediate
action to dramatically reduce the fossil fuel
pollution causing global warming is crucial.

"Warming of the climate system is now
unequivocal," the scientists report. New heat
records continue to be made, sea level rise is
accelerating and tropical storms are
intensifying. If humanity does not quickly gain
control of its global warming emissions, a
quarter of more of the Earth's species are
threatened with extinction. Our own species is
threatened with water stress and accompanying
disruptions in food supplies. This Washington
Post article presents a good summary of the findings.

It appears global warming and its effects are
accelerating faster than expected, and even the
harsh new IPCC report might be too optimistic.
This Der Spiegel commentary notes details that
did not make it into the synthesis:
* Since 2000 carbon dioxide concentrations in the
atmosphere have been growing over twice as fast as the average in the 1990s.
* The Arctic ice pack surface reached a record
low in 2007, 23 percent below the previous record
in 2007. These images reveals the extent of ice loss.
* While Earth's oceans and plants have been
absorbing half of human CO2 emissions, it appears
their capacity to do so is declining.

The goal now is to hold temperature increases
below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond which loss
of rainforests and polar ice becomes virtually
inevitable. And when rainforests release their
massive carbon stores into the atmosphere, while
sunlight-reflecting icecaps turn into solar
energy-absorbing blue oceans, climate change
begins to feed on itself. Ultimately, these
natural feedbacks could easily dwarf the effects
of human global warming emissions, creating an
utterly horrifying reality for our children's
generation and those that come after.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,
addressing the IPCC meeting in Spain where the
findings were announced, said, "These things are
as frightening as science-fiction movies. But
they are even more terrifying, because they are real."

It is clear that we humans have already committed
our planet to a level of climate damage. Even if
we stay below the 3.6 degree threshold, the Post
article notes, "… the seas will continue to swell
for centuries from thermal expansion and
meltwater from ice caps and glaciers; the oceans
will turn more acidic; most coral reefs will
become lifeless expanses; floods and storms will
increase; and millions of people will be short of
the water they need, the report said."

As a climate activist now going into my tenth
year working on this issue, I have often pondered
why it is so hard for people to wrap their heads
around it. My conclusion is that it is so large
and encompassing it is out of scale with
virtually anything else we can
comprehend. Nuclear war or an asteroid strike
are comparable, but neither of those are everyday
affairs. Global warming is happening all around
us, as a result of the most mundane of our
activities - driving a car, turning on the
lights, buying stuff made and transported with
fossil energy. It's hard for us to see what's
happening because we are so enmeshed in it.

This sets up a great deal of cognitive
dissonance. We go about our everyday business,
head to work, take care of the kids, do the
shopping, while all the time our world plunges
towards catastrophe. In some ways we seem like a
global RMS Titanic, where the passengers danced
to the band while the captain ordered the boilers
stoked with more coal, trying to set a new
trans-Atlantic speed record - All the time, headed toward the iceberg.

Rather than playing out the voyage of those
unfortunate souls, let us be inspired by another
historic parallel, World War II and the people
who won it. Faced with deadly peril they rose to
the challenge with full commitment and
dedication. Individually they planted victory
gardens. Together they built the ships and
planes, and fought the fights needed to win. In
just the same way, we now must do all we can
personally to reduce our own emissions, while we
join together to make fundamental changes in our energy and economic systems.

Those broader changes will require a combination
of private sector innovation and public policy
leadership. Most crucially we need to set firm
legal limits on our global warming emissions with
targets and timetables to progressively reduce
levels. They must achieve or even better exceed
the targets laid out by the IPCC scientists. We
can no longer treat the atmosphere as a free dumping ground.

The changes required to meet the climate
challenge are truly as large as anything we have
undertaken since World War II. The scale can
seem overwhelming without taking into account a
hugely important and hope-inspiring fact - Since
the challenge originates from everywhere, we can
take significant actions to address the challenge
anywhere. Today, led by Seattle, U.S. cities
representing a quarter of the American population
have committed to try to reach Kyoto climate
treaty goals. States representing half the U.S.
population are at some stage of setting limits on
their own global warming emissions, including
economic giants such as California, New York and Illinois.

Northwest states including Washington and Oregon
are engaged in this process, with some
significant gains already booked. Arguably,
Northwest states and cities are several years
ahead of the curve as a result, already beginning
to level off global warming pollution. Each state
has made moves such as adopting standards for
auto tailpipe emissions, appliance and building
efficiency, and use of renewable electricity and
fuels. Now the challenge will be to continue
leading by enacting legal limits on pollution
that push the pollution curve downwards. A
Climate Action bill to advance this process will
reach the Washington Legislature in 2008.

The people of our parents' and grandparents'
"greatest generation" who won World War II, when
presented with a clear threat, rose in response
with an unprecedented devotion of resources, as
well as courage and commitment. As the climate
threat becomes just as clear, it is time for us
to rise to our generation's great challenge,
reduce global warming pollution, build clean,
prosperous economies, and leave a legacy to our
children and theirs of a habitable world in which
they too can prosper and thrive. It's up to us
to lay claim to our own generation's greatness. The time is absolutely now.


SUSTAINABILITY AND ENERGY
by Ulf Bossel, European Fuel Cell Forum forum@...

The words "sustainable" and "sustainability" have
become fashionable. Investments are called
"sustainable" if profit is guaranteed for a
number of years. Paper mills receive
"sustainability" awards for recycling waste water
and natural gas is claimed to become
"sustainable" when it is converted to hydrogen by
steam reforming. These examples show that the
true meaning of the word is not properly
understood. "Sustainability" needs to be defined.
Things as such cannot be sustainable. Only
processes can be organized in a sustainable way.

In simple terms, sustainability is living forever
from nature without hurting it. Long-term, our
chosen energy options must be sustainable,
because energy is essential for services such as
warmth (in buildings), mobility (for transport)
and mechanical power, lighting and electronics
(from electricity). It is also essential for
obtaining materials, by mining and refining, synthesis, and recycling.

Sustainability has two requirements. The first
concerns the harvesting of energy and materials
from nature. The concept of sustainability
(German: "Nachhaltigkeit") was first postulated
in 1713 by Hans Carl von Carlowitz, the
Supervisor of Mining for Saxony [PDF at
http://www.efcf.com/reports/E23.pdf includes
cover page of the original "Anweisungen zur
Wilden Baum-Zucht" (Instructions for the Natural
Tree Growth)]. He stated that avoiding future
shortages of timber and firewood requires
harvesting only the natural growth of wood, not
the tree stock itself. His rule has since been
adopted by prudent forest managers in Europe and
elsewhere. It amounts simply to living on the
interest from an investment, not on the capital itself.

The second concerns the return to nature of
products and wastes arising from the use of
energy and materials. These can arise anywhere in
the chain between the source and the sink. For
example, power plants lie between coal mines and
electricity users. However, the carbon dioxide
they emit is harmful for nature. Hence the second
sustainability criterion is violated in this case.

The reserves of coal, oil, natural gas and
uranium are limited. In our time scale, they do
not regenerate. Hence we can use them only as
long as they last. In addition, their emissions
-- carbon dioxide and radioactive waste -- cannot
be absorbed by nature. Consequently, none of
these energy sources can satisfy both
sustainability criteria. In fact, sustainable
energy solutions cannot be based on any of the "below-ground" energy deposits.

Another characteristic of "below-ground" energy
is often overlooked. More and more energy is
needed for recovering energy from sources of
deteriorating quality, for transporting the crude
materials over longer distances and for refining
lower-grade crude to obtain high-grade fuels for
market needs. Even for a constant net energy
demand, the gross primary energy requirement must
increase exponentially. The price of energy from
such sources, and their carbon dioxide emissions,
follow this exponential trend. Eventually, the
"energy cost of energy" exceeds the "energy
return" -- and what was an energy source becomes
an energy sink. At some point, neither increased
prices nor increased energy conversion efficiency can overcome this.

Therefore, sustainable energy can never be
achieved with "below-ground" fossil or uranium
sources. The character of the original coal fuel
does not change if it is converted to hydrogen.
Even "clean coal" can never be a sustainable
energy option because of the dwindling coal
supplies. In the event CCS (carbon capture and
sequestration) becomes commercially feasible, it
is likely to suffer from similar exponential
increases in the energy fraction used and in cost
as the easier locations to store CO2 become filled.

In contrast, renewable energy sources exhibit no
such exponential increase, because no energy is
required to make the sun shine or the wind blow.
After the initial energy investment in a
renewable energy plant, the "energy return" is
always positive and, averaged over time, remains
the same. The fuels generate no harmful
emissions; the only emissions come from
constructing the generating, storage and
distribution facilities. For energy supply, only
renewable sources can satisfy the sustainability
criteria. However, even some renewables are not
always harvested sustainably. Ethanol from corn
is not sustainable -- the total fossil energy
input from plowing the fields to distilling the
mash may exceed that of the end-product, and
large quantities of water are required. Silt
deposits in water reservoirs may gradually reduce
the hydroelectric power production. Arable land
may be spoiled by intensive farming. Geothermal
wells may be exhausted as they are cooled by heat extraction.

The sustainability criteria are best satisfied by
solar, wind, wave and most hydropower options.
This renewable energy is available "above ground"
in our biosphere -- installations for harvesting
renewables from sun, wind, and waves are all
visible. Land for energy production is occupied
by installations, but not consumed. Although
there may be some visual impacts, all
"above-ground" renewable energy installations
satisfy the sustainability criteria.

Other options that can help to meet the
sustainability goals are energy savings and
increased energy efficiency. The first reduces
the energy consumption by responsible use of
energy -- e.g., turn off lights when leaving a
room. The second reduces energy losses of energy
conversion processes -- e.g. use more efficient
lamps for the conversion of electricity to light.
Together, energy saving and energy efficiency can
reduce the demand for fuels and any resulting emissions.

Today, significant losses result when
"below-ground" energy resources are converted to
motion and electricity. This also applies to
hydrogen produced inefficiently by electrolysis,
or with CO2 emissions from natural gas. In a
sustainable future, energy services will be
supplied at the highest efficiency by electricity
from renewable sources. Except for biofuels and
solar heat, most energy from renewable sources is
harvested as electricity. This may be obtained
from wind turbines, photo-voltaic arrays, and
thermal power plants "fueled" by concentrated
solar, municipal waste, biomass and geothermal
heat. Clean electricity will become the "lead
currency" of a sustainably organized energy
"electron economy." It can produce warmth via
heat pumps and motion in electric cars with high
efficiency. For long distance land, sea and air
transport, requiring high-density portable fuels,
the remaining oil or biofuels will be preferred.

The difference between "below-ground" and
"above-ground" sources is not just a matter of
definition, or a reflection of ideology or
wishful thinking. Only the "below-ground" sources
are subject to the exponential growth of primary
energy requirements, carbon dioxide emissions and
energy prices. Mankind must escape from these
exponentially increasing constraints, the sooner
the better. Achieving a sustainable energy future
can become a common political goal, with all
regions, countries and continents effecting the
necessary transition. Some countries have already
accepted this requirement while others hesitate
even to recognize the problem. A swift and
determined switch to energy savings, increased
energy efficiency and renewable energy supplies
would increase the level of sustainable energy
service. Why are we so reluctant to start the transition?


POST-SCRIPT
Inspired by this distinction, Rochelle Lefkowitz,
President, Pro-Media Communications of NY and CA
http://www.pro-mediacommunications.com (my
wife), turned the distinction "below ground and
above ground" fuels into a catchy distinction that might become a "meme":

FUELS FROM HELL: extractive: oil, coal, nuclear
FUELS FROM HEAVEN: renewable: solar/wind/hydropower/tidal
(geothermal, which shares the characteristics of
heavenly fuels, is the exception that proves the rule)

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Felix Kramer fkramer@...
Founder California Cars Initiative
http://www.calcars.org
http://www.calcars.org/news-archive.html
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