Earth Day

                                                                                          written 21 April 2024

                                                                                      published 28 April 2024

            Last week was Earth Day, first celebrated in 1970.  Since that time, humanity has added almost 700 billion tons of CO₂ to the atmosphere, 36 billion tons in 2023 alone.  We have changed our atmospheric chemistry, and are now living on a planet hotter than any humans have ever experienced.  2023 was the hottest year on record, but will probably be remembered as the coolest of the rest of our lives, because 2024 started out even hotter. 

            Weather extremes are becoming more common.  Last week, in one day, Dubai experienced the amount of rain that normally falls in 2 years.  Last summer, Greece was inundated with 22" of rain in a single day.  Every week, some portion of the world is dealing with flooding, and this year the hurricane season is projected to be 50 percent above the previous normal.  Lethal heat events are increasing.

            This climate impact is finally beginning to be acknowledged by the financial world.  A recent report stated that global climate costs are increasing, and will amount to $38 trillion a year by 2050, far more expensive than estimated costs of complete decarbonization.  Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, just reported that the climate crisis is an increasing driver of inflation, raising overall insurance costs by 20 percent, much worse in selected areas.  He warned that our built infrastructure is becoming "uninsurable", risking an 80 percent drop in market value.

            One the positive side, awareness of the climate issue is increasing, especially in locations where the impact has been greatest.  We know what needs to happen: stop making it worse, and begin making it better.  This means shifting away from anything that adds more atmospheric CO₂ and start effective sequestration of what already exists.  It will be expensive, socially disruptive, and take decades, but can result in leaving a habitable planet for our descendants, surely a goal worth embracing. 

            Significant efforts to respond are already happening.  The majority of new power generation being built is non-carbon.  Real transportation alternatives are on the market, getting better, cheaper, and more varied.  Serious thinking, and planning, is happening all over the planet.  However, there is still a lot to do.  Electrical generation has to triple, the grid has to evolve to handle the larger loads, our energy infrastructure has to be retooled, and massive numbers of skilled workers are required.

            Some of the progress causes more problems.  For example, the recent jump in temperatures is partially the result of eliminating high sulfur fuels, which cause air pollution and acid rain.  But the aerosols released also cooled the planet a little, masking some of the heat increase for the added CO₂.   

            However, considering the scale and magnitude of the problem, our best efforts to date are lagging behind what is needed.  There are still folks who think this is all just a liberal fad, doubting any reality to the concerns, or distrusting governmental involvement.  In addition, those currently making trillions off the existing fossil fuels energy system act like they are immune to the consequences, and heavily fund the climate denial campaign.

            Without a doubt, all these resistances will eventually fade away as the reality of the crisis eventually touches everyone.  The question is, will it be too late to make effective changes?  Some already feel we have passed that point.

            However, I am still optimistic.  I see the climate issue as a symptom, not the core of the problem.  It is an expression of the illusion of separation, manifested as the foolish belief we can kill the planet for profit.  This is insane in a unity reality, akin to drinking your own blood to quench your thirst.  But this mindset has dominated the species for thousands of years, so baked in that we mistakenly feel it is "human nature".

            The exciting part of these days is that the climate crisis is a unifying force.  There are no national, religious, gender, or economic barriers to climate.  It is unyieldingly inclusive.  Which means that any real solution, other than extinction, will require a unified global response.  The crisis is the consequence of human activity, but all life is in this together, whether we like it or not.  Therefore, real solutions will end the constant war with life, and begin massive cooperation with our living planet, honoring the fact we are part of life, not the "rulers".  We are here to manifest that solution.

 

 

The Money Addiction

                                                                                          written 14 April 2024

                                                                                      published 21 April 2024

  

            All human suffering come from believing the illusion of separation in a world that is fundamentally unified.  Nowhere is this clearer than how money operates.

            While capitalism has always suffered from the flawed assumption of "exclusive gain", the idea of who gets included has shrunk.  A century ago, a corporation was expected to serve not only the shareholders, but the suppliers, the employees, the customers, and the larger society.  This is what was taught at the Harvard Business School when it first opened in 1924, whose graduates go on to shape businesses everywhere.

            Over time, as the economics of accounting evolved, the quantification of profit became dominant over the more qualitative social values.  Today a corporation's entire goal is defined as maximizing shareholder return.  This gets more narrowed, prioritizing short term profits over everything else.

            We saw an example locally when MAXXAM corporation used junk bond money to take over the Humboldt county Pacific Lumber company in 1985.  For over a century, this company had been economically, and relatively environmentally, harvesting redwood, but Charles Hurwitz had convinced Houston bankers to front the money for a hostile takeover.  He then raided the pension fund and doubled the rate of harvest, clearcutting as fast as possible to pay off the high interest loans.  Big money "now" was more prized than sustainability.  Two decades later, the company filed for bankruptcy.

            ENRON corporation was formed in the mid 80's, and rapidly grew to become a significant player in energy commodities.  By 2001, it was the darling of Wall Street, held up as an example for all.  However, in October, 2001, it was revealed as a massive fraud, using questionable accounting techniques to make their profits look good each quarter, while hiding significant losses off book.  The stock crashed with the largest bankruptcy due to fraud on record, impoverishing all their employees, and some company officers went to jail.  

            But fraud and bankruptcy are not the only ways companies are damaged by exclusive focus on money.  Boeing corporation began building airplanes in 1917, becoming a major manufacturer during WW2, and continued to grow as domestic airlines expanded after the war, with a corporate ethic of excellence, safety, and ingenuity. 

            In 1997, facing increased global competition, Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, which had a corporate focus on Wall Street.  The merged company chose stock value over excellence, ignoring that making a product safe and well produced takes time.  The result was decreased worker satisfaction, and loss of production quality.  The recent news of parts falling off Boeing planes has hurt the company economically.

            Last year a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, creating a hazardous material fire that burned for days, forcing evacuation of the local community of 4,800 people, with unknown impact on the local environment and water supplies.  This is the result of corporate decisions to make trains longer (1.75 miles in this case), while cutting safety inspectors and train staff, all to save money.  This is typical of the entire railroad industry.  

            Exclusive focus on money has other adverse social impact as well.  In 2004, a second year Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, created the foundation for Facebook, originally a program for comparing which college women were "hotter".  This typically sophomoric, culturally misogynistic goal might fit into a college venue, but Facebook now has almost 3 billon daily users around the world, many of whom get all their news from this source.  Online advertisers, and platform algorithms, keep a viewer locked into their screen time, creating a $500 billion dollar company.  Combined with the explosive growth of smartphones, now almost 5 billion globally, we have seen a significant rise in online bullying, depression, and suicide among teenagers.  

            Closer to home, the drama around the Palace Hotel in Ukiah results from one man buying a derelict property at a discount, expecting to make a profit by doing nothing, rejecting serious bids to restore the building, while holding out for maximum return on his investment, expecting millions of dollars of tax payer funds to make that happen.  Each day the building deteriorates further.

            Money is only a concept, totally elastic when manipulated by those in control, able to be created out of nothing, and disconnected from reality for long periods of time.  However, the experience of life is much more than that.  As long as we sacrifice life for money, we all lose eventually.

 

 

 

Geoengineering

                                                                                            written 7 April 2024

                                                                                      published 14 April 2024

            Humanity has added 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to the atmosphere in the last two centuries, increasing the atmospheric content for 280ppm to 425ppm, a level not experienced on Earth for millions of years.  This change in atmospheric chemistry, at a rate 25 times faster than the end of the last ice age, traps more heat, raising average temperatures about 1.5°C so far.  Not only are we living in a world never before inhabited by humans, threatening our civilization, the rate of change is disrupting all other life forms as well, risking possible human extinction.  Despite the well-funded denial by the fossil fuel industry, more people are beginning to understand that there is no economy if the society crashes.

            We see increased discussion of geoengineered solutions as a way out of our situation.  Most common are proposals which reduce the amount of sun reaching the surface of the Earth.  Such as, orbital solutions of a sunshade (similar to putting sunglasses on the planet), or inflatable silicon bubbles (acting like a cloud), or using mirrors to reflect sunlight away from the planet.  Closer to Earth, there are plans to inject sulphates, salt particles, or water droplets, into the upper atmosphere, to induce a cooling effect.

            All these high-tech engineering solutions raise serious concerns.  They would have to be ongoing, regularly replenished, for if application was disrupted, abrupt heat spikes could occur.  Questions of financing and control are unresolved.  Unintended consequences, such as disrupted rainfall patterns or crop production, are possible.

            In addition, these "solutions" only treat the symptom, increased heat, not the cause, increased atmospheric CO₂.  Much of this CO₂ is absorbed into the ocean, which increases acidity, stressing oceanic life forms, increasing their extinction rates, which threatens the livelihood of more than a third of humanity.  Clearly, to actually deal with this issue we must address atmospheric CO₂: stop adding more (decarbonization) and begin reducing what is already there (sequestration).  

            Last year humanity added another 36 billion tons of CO₂.  Efforts have begun to decarbonize the economy, but progress is slowed by vested interests, focused only on their own short-term profit.  Further, this will be a huge change in our energy infrastructure, which frightens people who demand certainty.  However, the increasing destruction caused by the climate crisis, and the growing economic impact of "peak oil", will build further support for decarbonization.

            But sequestering the existing CO₂ is still relatively unaddressed.  We need to return to a climate we know can sustain humans for millennium, the sooner the better, because there are irreversible tipping points that can make the situation much worse quite rapidly.  Last year, I wrote several articles inspired by "Climate Restoration", a book by Fiekowsky and Douglis, which details several viable paths for carbon sequestration.  The goal is to remove 50 billion tons a year above what we are adding each year, for 20 years.  Solutions require using existing processes, as we can't afford to wait.  They need to be affordable, with very low costs, or producing valuable by-products already used in the economy.  They need to be scalable to a magnitude relevant to the problem.     

            While several direct air carbon capture installations have made news recently, these are all inadequate to the task.  Costs are more than $1,000 per ton of CO₂ removed, without mentioning where the energy comes from, while capturing only a few ten thousand tons a year.  

            My favorite Climate Restoration solution is ocean iron fertilization.  In much of the ocean, plankton life is limited by the lack of trace amounts of iron.  When this is strategically added, massive plankton blooms happen immediately, rapidly followed by all kind of higher oceanic lifeforms.  This pulls CO₂ from the atmosphere, and what isn't eaten falls to the ocean floor. 

            This is relatively low tech, powered by sunlight, working with life to enhance more life.  A few small trials have already been accomplished, showing proof of concept.  As with any new large-scale process, there could be unintended consequences, but this is essentially a natural phenomenon.  Iron dust from the land has historically fed the oceans, but has been reduced by man made changes to the environment.  In depth assessments have been made, indicating costs as little as $24-$94/ton of CO₂ captured, including costs of verifying what is actually happening. 

            As the reality of our situation grows, the push for action will increase.  Do we have the political will to act?

The Other Oil Problem

                                                                                        written 31 March 2024

                                                                                        published 7 April 2024

     

            Everything we take for granted in society is the result of abundant affordable energy.  Over the last century, that has primarily been oil.

            Beginning from nothing in 1900, US production grew to 4 million barrels per day (mb/d) by the end of WW2.  At that time, the US produced about half the global oil, all from the lower 48 states.  Since oil is more energy dense and versatile than the coal which had powered the British Empire, US oil powered the explosion of post war economic growth.

            But oil is a finite resource.  In 1950, a typical well would produce 200,000 barrels per day.  Twenty years later, the average well produced only 1/10 that amount.  US domestic production, called conventional oil, peaked in 1972 at 8mb/d, and the US lost control of the price of oil, which produced a decade of extreme domestic inflation.  Conventional US oil production declined to 3mb/d in 2000, and is now about 2mb/d.

            In an effort to replace lost US production, new reserves were developed in Alaska and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.  But both these sources were more expensive to produce.  Alaskan oil peaked in 1985 at about 2mb/d, and has now declined almost to nothing.  Offshore oil still produces about 2mb/d, but as individual wells deplete, drilling moves into much deeper water, and becomes more expensive yet.

            In 2005, global production of conventional oil peaked, spiking the price of oil, which helped crash the global economy in 2008.  At that point, US production was 5mb/d, but the increased value of oil spurred massive investment in tight oil (fracking shale oil), which grew from .5mb/d to 9mb/d, and is now 69 percent of US production.  In 2023, US oil production was 12.9mb/d, 16 percent of the global total, the most of any country.

            Hydraulic fracking uses great pressure to split the rock, and injected sand to keep the rock open, allowing recovery of very small reserves of oil.  But well production declines 80 percent in three years, so the expensive process has to be continually repeated.  The fracking industry lost billions of dollars since 2005.  In addition, seven of the eight most productive U.S. shale basins are already past their peak.   

            Furthermore, fracked oil has a high percentage of light hydrocarbons, with significantly less energy content than conventional crude, which can't be refined into diesel.  Global diesel production peaked in 2015, which is why diesel is now more expensive that premium gasoline.  Global oil production of any kind peaked in 2018.

            As oil becomes scarcer, and more expensive, it makes the rest of life more unaffordable.  But price is only one way of evaluating energy.  To produce energy, it takes energy, so we can look at the "energy returned on energy invested" (EROEI).  Average conventional oil well used to produce 40 units of energy for each energy unit expended, giving an EROEI of 40.  Our technological society needs an EROEI of at least 10, in order to have sufficient energy available to power all the rest of our infrastructure. 

            Global EROEI for new conventional oil is now 17 and declining, wind is 20, solar is 12, deep water oil is less than 10, tight oil is less than 5 (the same as using animal labor), and human labor is 3.  As reserves continue to deplete, it is estimated oil production EROEI will be 2 by 2050.  Oil will be around for decades, but it may not be affordable for long, or energetically relevant.  This is being referred to as the "energy cliff".   

            This isn't a problem that "drill, baby, drill" can solve, any more than politics can bring back old growth redwoods, the historic economic foundation of our local economy.  The oil industry knows this, which is why they are using current profits to enrich stockholders with buybacks, rather than funding exploration. 

            The energy cliff issue, independent of the growing climate crisis, is a consequence of explosive population growth and depleting finite resources, amplified by the consumptive economic concept that the winner is "one who dies with the most broken toys".   

            Our species is at a cross roads, demanding an evolution to a completely new way of doing business, if we want a sustaining civilization and a habitable planet for our descendants.  I am still optimistic, and believe we have yet to explore the full capacity of what it means to be human.