It does seem as though there is significant scope for energy savings.

Dany, would I be right in saying that the title ‘Acidic oceans’ is misleading, in that the oceans will always be alkaline and we should really talk about them becoming less alkaline rather than more acidic?

I can forgive Haymet for turning a log scale story into simple perentages, given his audience.

Tim that paper I found was of course only a submission.

I’ve found some stuff from the NFEE site.

Gotta go now.

� Take for example the pteropod, a free-swimming snail that lives near the surface of the ocean. It is a key food source for a number of fish and marine mammals. As ocean acidity rises, pteropods experience a double threat. Not only does the water corrode their shells, it may inhibit their ability to build shells in the first place, leaving them without an adequate protective layer.�

By and large ocean scientists do not know the consequences of increased ocean acidity due to increased atmospheric CO2 and Haymet even says so:

“We also call for a determination of the biological consequences of increasing ocean acidity and its effects on the ocean food web.�

Instead of saying that the pH of the oceans has been estimated to have decreased from 8.25 to 8.14 (which looks unimpressive to the uninitiated because it is the negative of a log scale ) he uses the big figure of 30% and has promoted it from estimation to fact :

“We have already experienced an increase in ocean acidity of nearly 30 percent compared to pre-industrial times and a doubling has been predicted by 2100.�

What I am saying is that these guys are asking for research money because they do not know what is going on and the language they use reflects this uncertainty .They should be given the money and asked to report back without hype.

Re the 30% energy savings, I can only assume that Brown is referring to the COAG paper from a few years ago, Towards a National Framework on Energy Efficiency. That excellent study demonstrated that we could cut energy use across all sectors of the Australian economy by up to 30% immediately, using off the shelf technologies with a payback of 4 years.

Again, I am happy to forward a copy of that paper that I have on my hard drive. You may be able to find it by googling, too.

In that piece he said:

International cooperation on coal use and sequestration is probably the most important action needed to stabilize atmospheric composition and climate.

You are saying we need to bypass coal CO2 sequestration. I’m thinking you could be right.

Bob Brown keeps saying we can save 30% of current energy usage but I’ve never seen any detail on how this might be done. Have you?

Nor with chemistry, which must be obvious. I can only hope that people like Haymet and those involved in the paper melaleuca linked to know their stuff – not an unreasonable expectation, but sometimes you are let down.

Speaking of which, tim, it wouldn’t surprise if Hansen knows nothing much about power stations. But you’d think someone would tell him and he’d listen. He often proclaims his absolute passion about adhering to the science.

This position typifies the key problem with geoseq (other than the simple issue of it being wrong to produce a toxic waste when it is not necessary to do so…), and that is that the timeline is way out of whack.

Even the International Coal Association, the global lobby group for big coal, has publicly accepted that that timeline is unrealistic and that no more than 10 commercial-scale coal with geoseq plants could be built anywhere in the world by 2020. See the ref here: http://www.pointcarbon.com/Home/News/All news/Energy & Emissions/article19157-478.html

[You can see the beginning of that story online, but have to subscribe to pointcarbon to see the whole thing. Worth doing, though, if you're interested in these issues.]

So, if the ICA are right, and if Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is also right and we need 80% cuts in the next 30 years http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/04/07/urgent-action-needed-reef-could-die-in-20-years/, geoseq is simply going to be bypassed. We need to concentrate on the solutions that are here now – renewables and efficiency.

I pinched the link Melaleuca provided to the USA report on acidification too – very useful.

He says only geosequestered coal power stations after 2012 in the advanced economies and after 2022 in the developing world, with dirty stations to be bulldozed 2025-2050.

I’ll try to find the Hansen link.

Publicly Stern said 60% by 2050 when he was here, but I’ve had a couple of hints that he was saying 90% in private briefings.

Have you got a link for what you say about Hansen? Gotta go now, but tonight I’ll hunt up the link where he says we need to start dismantling traditional coal power stations from 2020 or 2025, and from memory he said we should build no new ones without geoseq after 2012.

His ‘alternative scenario’ is quite explicit, to demonstrate that it’s not impossible.

550ppm, I’d remind you, is what Stern reckons is OK. Well, he says 450ppm is safest, but that it’s politically unachievable. Ooops.

However, he has made it very clear that we need to reduce emissions radically and very fast and, in this context, has pointed out that geoseq doesn’t meet that timeline.

Gore. Well, much though I respect him for raising the profile of the issue, he has been very poor on the solutions indeed. Except to explicitly reject nukes.

Coal with geosequestration is not the same technology as coal. it is a radically new technology. It’s simply not that case that the transition from traditional coal to coal geoseq would be in any way simpler than the transition from traditional coal to renewables.

Beautiful screen name, by the way, mismatching magnificently with your gravatar