Climate Solutions BS in Houston by AIChE

Subtitle: Still BS - Bad Science, No Solutions Needed

I attended a lunch presentation by Dr. Tom Rehm, 2019 Chair of STS-AIChE on October 18, 2019 on Climate Solutions, in LaPorte, Texas.   (STS is South Texas Section)

The main points are below in bold font, with my comments in parentheses.  These are based on my notes made at the time, and may not perfectly reflect what was said; any inaccuracies are due to what I believe I heard at the time. 

(Preface:  I believe that Tom Rehm is sincere in his beliefs about catastrophic, imminent global warming caused by CO2, however he has stated in public that even if it is not true, it is prudent to do something to prevent it.  (my paraphrase, probably not his exact words).  I suspect he is also sincere in his belief that nuclear power is the planet's saviour, and that all plastic production must end and rather soon.  It is disconcerting that the STS of AIChE has taken this approach, with those beliefs based on very bad science and not on the facts.  However, the chairmanship is for only one year, and Dr. Rehm will soon hand over the chair - January 1, 2010.  It seems, though, that the incoming Chair has similar views.   That is actually ok, though, since the solutions being advanced are not workable, will have outrageous impacts on all of society, require massive government support, and cannot be implemented in less than 5 decades anyway.  By then, the inevitable global cooling will be advanced and more than evident to everyone. -- End Preface) 

The main points:

UHI, urban heat island effect, is due to aerosols that cooled the air until approximately 1980, then cleaner air caused the cities to warm.  Clean air laws were enacted.  
(That is nice to see the effect of man-made aerosols mentioned, as that is one of the several causes of warmer temperatures that have nothing to do with increased CO2 in the atmosphere.  SLB has articles on the non-CO2 causes of warming, see link. )

Population decreased in a few urban areas but temperatures increased, therefore warming is not correlated to population growth. 
(This is an attempt to show that increased temperatures are not related to population growth, however I have asked Tom in the past how does he know the temperature increase in those few locations were not related to drought, El Nino, cleaner air, fewer clouds, more local humidity, and a host of other known causes of warming?   He made no answer then.)

USCRN, United States Climate Reference Network, has more than 100 pristine sites across the US, sites with no urban warming influence for the foreseeable future.   Mentioned Stovepipe Wells, CA (actually in Death Valley), and Alaska.    Showed a slight warming trend for these locations.  
(the misdirection here was to, again, make the point that warming occurs even where population is small.  As before, no mention of non-CO2 causes of warming, El Nino, droughts, etc.) 

Professor Monty Alger of Penn State called Tom to say he was fully behind the Climate Solutions initiative at AIChE.  Alger will be AIChE president for 2020. 
 (see  https://www.che.psu.edu/faculty/alger/ for a bio of Dr. Alger.  The incoming president of national AIChE is equally misguided on the bad science, BS, of man-made global warming.  However, as an academic, it is important for the national AIChE to support and assist the other academics who receive part of their grants and other funding from promoting man-made climate change.  It is obvious that more work for chemical engineers will occur in designing and building the various systems to capture CO2, remove some from the atmosphere.)

Tom said he was instrumental in getting AIChE to change their official stance on Global Warming with the 2019 statement on climate. 
(The previous statement on climate was essentially, "we don't take a position as the science is not settled," with the new, 2019 statement emphatically stating "Scientific analysis finds that non-natural climate change is occurring and has been strongly influenced by human-caused releases of greenhouse gases. . . . Adverse climate change poses threats to all of us, both individually and as a society. These threats fall squarely in the realm of the chemical engineer. . ."  It is certainly dismaying that so many in our society could be so badly fooled by the BS, the bad science.   What the current statement should say is "Some very bad scientific analysis finds that".... the causation should have mentioned the multiple known causes of warmer temperature, none of which are related to increased greenhouse gases.) 

Mentioned Hofmeister’s book “Why We Hate the Oil Companies.”  Former president, Shell Oil. 
(Not much to say here, having not read the book.  I suspect the theme is that oil companies have been hiding very bad facts for decades, have conspired to deceive the public and elected officials, the usual such things.   It is quite instructive that Shell is mentioned, as they are notorious for having lied to the Securities Exchange Commission about the extent of their oil reserves, and were fined for doing that.  Shell would do well in an era where oil is minimized in favor of natural gas consumption.  That appears to be a primary goal of those who espouse climate solutions. )

Said presenter Stephanie Thomas is a geologist.   Matthew Berg won best presentation award for SPTC in Sugar Land, 2019.
(I sat through both Thomas' and Berg's presentations at that conference.  Dr. Thomas is listed as having a PhD in Earth Sciences, not Geology.  Dr. Berg has a PhD in Hydrology.   I wrote on SLB on Dr. Thomas' presentation, see link.    I have not yet written an article on Dr. Berg's presentation, but it can be summarized as "flooding is getting worse, and global warming is the cause."  He claimed, with a straight face, that local temperatures are melting railroad rails.  Then, showed a slide of a distorted rail juncture.  I laughed at that one.)

Wants the world to be CO2-neutral by year 2030, and to do that we must make no more plastics.
(this one is quite incredible; I shook my head in disbelief.  The modern world depends far too much on plastics to stop production.  The disruption, increased costs, increased disease and illness, and increased energy consumption all are insurmountable factors that will make this one never happen.   For just a few examples, how will hospitals and medical practices function without plastic?  What will food packaging be made from, at what cost in product purity and increased discards, if not plastic?  What will sanitation piping be made from?  How will transportation vehicles maintain their current low weights (or mass) that allows excellent fuel economy?  This one is, to use the vernacular, a doozy.)

Renewables cannot do the job; 100 percent renewables is impossible.  Cited Austin, Texas as having grid stability problems at 20 percent renewables on the local grid.   Said that the local grid and amount of renewables is the critical issue.  
(on this minor point, we agree at least in part.  SLB has articles on the 100 Percent Renewables issue, I agree that the world will not likely ever be run entirely by renewables.   Where Rehm is wrong, though, is on the claim that 20 percent renewables causes instability on local grids.  The fact is that many locations in the US have much more than 20 percent renewable power that makes electricity.  The issue is not with the renewables, but with the flexibility of the other generating systems.  )

Mentioned the cost for renewables is prohibitively high, and the low capacity factor, 25 percent for solar and wind combined in Texas is a major obstacle. 
(this is a common talking point by the anti-renewables, pro-nuclear crowd.  The fact is, the renewable sources of wind and solar are very competitive in the areas where the wind is good and the solar energy is strong.  However, the economics of solar panels in high latitudes will continue to be very bad for many decades.  Solar does well, though, in sunny areas (not cloudy) in locations between 30 degrees north and south of the equator.  Wind is the most attractive generating source in many, many areas as thoroughly documented by the US Department of Energy and their annual Wind Technologies Market Reports.)

One solution is nuclear, with new designs as Professor Tsvetkov proposes.  Said nuclear has zero emissions,   New designs will not use water as the moderator.  
(Tsvetkov clarified that zero-emissions view in his earlier 2019 speech to AIChE, it is not true for the entire nuclear cycle.  see link to SLB article on Gen IV nuclear and Tsvetkov's presentation.  Gen IV nuclear plants are unproven, most have not been built, a few prototypes were abandoned as hopeless.  The increased safety and reduced costs claims are not true at all.  Nuclear is never the solution; it costs far too much and is far too dangerous. ) 

Favors a carbon tax as paramount importance. 
(A carbon tax, or tax on companies that produce CO2 in their operations, is favored by one segment and opposed by another.  Those in favor are typically oil and gas companies, the opposition are coal companies.  Burning coal produces much more CO2 per unit of energy released, typically 2 - 3 times as much as does burning natural gas.  So, a carbon tax is a perfect way to run coal companies out of business.  Is it any wonder that oil and gas companies favor that?  They get to sell more natural gas, usually as fuel to utilities.)  

Three steps to carbon neutrality: Mitigation, Adaptation, and Resiliency. 
The points on the slide for this statement included:
-Manufacturing Energy Efficiency - Mitigation
-Electricity Generation /Distribution  - Mitigation
-Transportation - Mitigation
-Urban Energy Efficiency - Mitigation
-Agricultural Practices - Mitigation
-Land Use Practices - Mitigation, Adaptation, Resiliency
-And, governmental policy solutions. 

(He did not discuss these points in detail, except for the next paragraph on Regenerative Agriculture.  My own experience over 40 years of engineering consulting and energy work as an employee in chemical manufacturing shows that none of the above are cost-effective, except for Transportation with electric battery-powered vehicles.  If one favors the Efficient Market Theory, radical changes must make any market more inefficient and thus more costly to operate.  The prospects of increased energy efficiency due to another world energy price shock, like the 1970s had, is virtually zero.  Oil is no longer subject to price increases, and in fact OPEC is in disarray and oil prices are decreasing.  There is a world-wide glut of natural gas, driving its prices down, and coal is on the decline except in a few isolated countries (India, China).  That leaves only a government-mandated carbon tax to force such decreased energy usage.  )

Favors Regenerative Agriculture – soil must increase carbon content to remove CO2 from the air. 
(with farming already a very slim profit endeavor, the costs to include carbon sequestration in soil must be subsidized to prevent bankruptcies.  This may be where the carbon tax comes in; a wealth transfer from CO2 producers to the farmers.  More on Regen Ag will be published shortly on SLB.  For now, it's just another scheme to transfer wealth and run the oil companies out of business.)

Electricity generation options he favors are nuclear and biomass.   Said nuclear has the best safety record of all types when calculated on fatalities per TWh/y produced.   
(I wonder if that includes the entire uranium mining and fuel preparation cycle, plant construction, generation, decommissioning, and spent fuel storage for centuries.  SLB has articles on the dubious safety record of nuclear power plants, see link to "Nuclear Radiation Injures People and Other Living Things,"  and link to "Near Misses on Meltdowns Occur Every 3 Weeks," and link to "US NRC Stops Study of Cancer Risks near Reactors."  As to biomass for power generation, there is too much power needed and not nearly enough biomass to burn.  These facts have been known for decades.  And, it gets worse.  No more biomass is produced each decade, but the power generation needed keeps increasing.)

(Next, Rehm really pushed nuclear, to end the talk) Nuclear is not presently used much due to unjustified public fear.    Said advanced nuclear plants are much safer 
("Unjustified fear" is a buzzword from nuclear proponents.  One must wonder how much fear was justified among the Russians, Europeans, and others when Chernobyl exploded and sent radiation around the planet?  How much fear was justified in Pennsylvania when Three Mile Island melted down and spewed radioactive steam into the skies?  Were the evacuated pregnant women supposed to remain calm, cool, and collected during those horrible few days?  How much fear was justified in Japan during and after the triple reactor meltdowns and explosions at Fukushima?   How much fear is justified among the entire population, now that nuclear plants are being built in third-world countries with earthquakes and other serious threats to the plants' integrity?   How much fear is justified now that cyber-security is a serious threat?  As to advanced nuclear plants being much safer, how could he possibly know?   None have been built except for a few tiny proof-of-concept plants.  SLB has articles on the safety of new nuclear designs, see link to "Thorium MSR No Better Than Uranium Process,"  and link to "High Temperature Gas Reactor Still A Dream" )

Advanced nuclear will recycle existing spent fuel and generate power from the recycled material, reducing toxic radioactive waste by a large amount. 
(Why bother?  Fuel is not the expensive part of running a nuclear plant.  Safety is not improved, either, as a previous article on SLB shows, see link to "Reprocessing Spent Fuel Is Not Safe."  )

Said SMR, small modular reactors, are the answer since they will be very low-cost to build in factories.  
(This is one of the same points made by Tsvetkov in his Gen IV speech to AIChE, and the same rebuttal applies: any cost reduction due to volume production requires millions of units, not hundreds as SMR would have.  Economy of scale overwhelms any production cost reductions.  NB, the wind energy business for WTG (wind turbine generators) has the same issue for blade manufacturing.  The US industry builds and installs approximately 8 GW per year, at an average of 2.4 MW per WTG, thus the average number of WTG installed was 3,333.  Number of blades made was 10,000 for 2018.  Even that 10,000 items does not give low cost, so the industry strives for cost reductions via economy of scale with ever-larger WTG per unit.  Offshore, size went from 2 to 4 to 8 and now 12 MW.   Onshore, size from 1 to 3 and now 5 MW per WTG.  See link to SLB article on SMR and all the many drawbacks, "No Benefits From Smaller Modular Nuclear Plants." )

End of speech.  

In the Q&A portion, I asked this Question:  how much will electricity prices increase if the proposed solutions are implemented?  He admitted it will be a big increase but did not give a number. 

The transition period will require decades, Shell says 50 years, he stated BP and ExxonMobil have similar time frames.  
(how does this square with the earlier statement of carbon-neutral by 2030?  That’s only 11 years away)

Q:  how will SMR reduce costs, when economy of scale is the major factor in nuclear plant costs?  He had no answer for that, either.  

Q:  On USCRN slides that showed a warming, how much of the measured warming was due to CO2 increase, and how much to other factors like cleaner air – he mentioned pollution laws cleaned the air around 1980 and temperatures immediately increased in those locations.   His response was to show a graph purporting to show IR gap in Earth’s radiated energy out to space, with CO2 responsible for the gap.   My rebuttal was, the gap is also exactly where water vapor H2O absorbs, so how do they know it is due to 300 – 400 ppm of CO2, and not due to several percent of water vapor? 

Conclusion

The points made in this speech are typical of the misinformation and Bad Science (BS) of many in the climate alarmism camp.   So much of what they know, just isn't so. (a quote from Ronald Reagan).   The good news is, almost none of this is ever going to happen.  Plastics are here to stay.  Nuclear plants are a dying breed, and the sober review process and high standards at the NRC will prohibit the approval of the Gen IV reactors.   Economics alone will kill off any other reactor designs, such as the NuScale small modular reactor system that is presently undergoing safety review at the NRC.  Low-price wind electricity and natural gas power have doomed nuclear power, which is a very good thing.   Wind energy is a booming business, and is here to stay.  Solar is also booming in those areas of the world, as stated above, not far from the Equator where the sunshine is strong.   The AIChE will likely see the Climate Solutions division, or initiative, whatever it is called, wither away in just a few short years.  

This website will have articles and updates on that, as they occur. 

Roger E. Sowell

Houston, Texas
copyright (c) 2019 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here
Climate Change................here, here,  and here
Fresh Water......................here
Engineering......................here  and here
Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here  

If I Were King of Climate Science

This is a post that I have been composing for quite some time.  It originated years ago, when I first became interested and then concerned about global warming.  The more I looked into what was done, and the way it was done, the more concerned I became.  

First, what am I not so concerned about.  I'm not that concerned that the United Nations' sub-body, the International Panel on Climate Change, was charged with chasing down how much the planet would warm due to man's emissions of carbon dioxide (and a few other gases) mainly from burning fossil fuels.  Surely there was a better direction for the UN to give its panel, perhaps to determine first, if there is any warming due to man's activities, then if that answer turned out to be Yes, then move on to how big is the problem.   I am also not that concerned that UN IPCC summary reports for policy makers are written from a political perspective and gloss over much of the science.  I am also not that concerned that the funding from various governments is controlled so that it is fairly difficult to obtain funding if one is researching into issues that might refute the IPCC findings.   Those are a concern, but those are not what this post is about. 

This post is about the very beginning, in how various measurements are or were taken and the use of those measurements. 

To explain, three measurements are discussed.  First is carbon dioxide, CO2, concentration in the atmosphere.   Second is global average temperature, and last is average sealevel.  

It is generally agreed that CO2 concentration is measured at one location, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, USA.  The results of that measurement are reported frequently, I believe weekly and certainly monthly.  A chart is produced and widely distributed.    I find it very interesting that one data point, from the entire planet, is accepted as the official concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.   It seems the climate scientists are very comfortable with the fact that CO2 is measured at one location, supposedly because it is high in the atmosphere and far from industrial activities.  The idea is that the air is well-mixed by the time the winds bring the air to Hawaii.  As long as the volcano nearby does not spew forth, things should be pretty representative.   Also, there is not much change going on around the Mauna Loa site, so that what we measured in 1960 can be compared to measurements in 2014.   So, to summarize, scientists have accepted a measurement from one site, believed to be essentially unchanged, and providing a decent result to use for the entire world. 

Contrast that to the global average temperature, which is computed from literally thousands of measuring sites from around the world.   see link  Much has been written about how the global average is computed, how data from the past is adjusted for various things, how the adjusted data is subtracted from a baseline to produce temperature anomalies, and how missing data from the past is created or handled in another way.  I have written a bit about this myself here on SLB. ( see link to Warmists are Wrong, Cooling is Coming.)

What is curious, though, is the disparity between the CO2 measurement and the global average temperature measurement.   Why do scientists use thousands of temperature sites, many with very serious issues that call into question the validity of the data?  Why did they not find and use a "Mauna Loa Equivalent" station, known to be pristine and untouched by human activities, probably in a remote location, with a long record of temperature measurements?   I advocated for just that, probably in a remote location in a National Park here in the US, or one of the thousands of state parks.    

If one wanted to determine how much warming, if any, the world has experienced, it must be a better method to not have to make any adjustments to the data.   If I were King, only a very few old records from pristine locations would be used.    Presumably, scientists looked into this and determined that no warming occurred, or very little warming occurred using the pristine locations.  That would, of course, put them out of business so that could not be the answer. 

Instead, a huge amount of temperature data was taken, gravely examined and even more gravely adjusted.  The claim then is that the temperature record represents almost the entire planet.  This, supposedly, gives the data more validity.  To use a polite term, that is Bad Science (BS).  

Update: If I were King, this would be my choice for temperature measurement for the global trend: Abilene, Texas; a small town at the southern end of the Great Plains, far from big cities, with a temperature record starting in about 1884 and continuous until today.   Abilene shows no warming over for almost 120 years.  The linear trend is essentially zero, but very slightly negative, at minus 0.0019 degrees C per year.   This data required no adjustments, to the best of my belief and information.   (end update 4/7/2014)

Monthly Average Temperature Trend, Degrees C
for Abilene, Texas from HadCRUT3 series
graph created by R.E. Sowell, Esq.

Finally, turning to sealevel, once again the scientists use a global average for mean sealevel, not a single point from a known pristine location over a long period.   Even worse, they draw a trend line through the average and make all sorts of dire pronouncements about pending coastal inundations and population migrations away from the coast.   The trend is 3.2 mm per year, or roughly 12 inches per century.  The sealevel measurements are adjusted for various issues, including but not limited to glacial rebound, land subsidence due to groundwater removal, land subsidence for other reasons, land uplifting due to tectonic plate movements, and apparently, bay siltation from rivers.   If one were to examine sealevel trends from various locations, some are increasing, some are decreasing, and some are fairly constant over long periods.  What to use, then?  If I were King, I would require that a very few locations would be used that are known to have none of the adjustment issue just listed.   

Sealevel trend, from colorado.edu
Blue is decreasing, greens/yellow/red increasing

What prompted me to discuss the sealevel issue is the world map published by colorado.edu, which shows most of the oceans have zero or perhaps a slight increase of 1 mm per year.  There are a very few locations that show a substantial increase, such as a Galveston, Texas on the pier.  Galveston has sealevel rise of a bit more than 6 mm per year.  In a century, that equates to 24 inches higher sealevel.  However, the Texas Gulf Coast is known to be subsiding both from mineral extraction and naturally.  see link  That would make Galveston off the list, if I were King.  It would not be included in any average.  Similarly, but opposite in direction, some Scandinavian seacoasts show a decreasing sealevel.  That is due to the land slowly rebounding upward after the last round of ice caps melted around 12,000 years ago.   Those locations would also be excluded from the average. 

Finally, a very few locations show an alarming rise of 12 mm per year or a bit more, near the Philippines.  It is not entirely clear to me why that water is rising so much more than the rest of the world, but it is suspect in my book.  For example, that rate should have increased the sealevel by 36 inches (3 feet or just under one meter) in the 70 years since General MacArthur landed and waded ashore on the beach.   It appears to me that the beach is still there, though.  

It would seem that the oldest ports in the world, in geologically stable regions, would be the ideal candidates for true sealevel rise without adjustments.   Perhaps the port at Durban, South Africa, or even Cape Town are good candidates.  Perhaps one of the ports in Hawaii, too.  Another in Australia might be good.  Perhaps one of the US east coast harbors would be a good fit.   And, the bay at Buenos Aires in Argentina.   

Conclusion

Scientists in the climate field have a dual nature in choosing measurements for determining the state of the world's climate and making dire predictions for the future.  On the one hand, it is apparently acceptable to use one location for CO2.  Yet, scientists use hundreds and thousands of locations for sealeve and air temperature.  The multiple locations for sealevel and temperature require many adjustments, which make the results highly questionable.  It would be far better to use a very few pristine sites that require no adjustments for measuring and reporting sealevel, and temperature. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California