[Stoves] James Hansen at Bush CEQ 2001

Sat Sep 10 12:22:42 CDT 2016

Dear Nikhil

What is surprising is how wrong so many of those introductory numbers are, only 15 years ago. The important point for stoves are the renewable nature of biofuels, and the important number is the forcing to be supplied by CO2 and non-CO2 GHG’s.

The direct combustion of coal foe (especially) space heating is much more efficient that generating electricity and send it through wires. That is why combined heat and power plants send heat, not electricity to the centres of many Asian cities.

The forcings estimated for 2050 are obviously fantasy – it would require the doubling of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere within a few decades which is literally impossible. Willem Nel places the upper limit, based on available carbon-containing resources at 540 ppm or so. In terms of what proportion would come from domestic stoves for cooking and heating the number is negligible so there should be no impediment to improving the lives of those who need are in need to use whatever fuel they have available or can afford.

For those interested in following the current mathematical explanations of the feedback effects both postulated and observed, read the attachment from Nikhil first then see Monckton’s analysis (4 articles) at WUWT showing that a feedback of more than 0.1 is unviable in a quasi-stable system. The long term risk to stove programmes for funding of carbon offsets is that as the reality of the warming from CO2 sinks in, the value of a ton of CO2 will drop as the claimed effect v.s. the claimed benefit/expense avoided renders the offset nearly worthless.

This doesn’t prevent people subsidising stoves for other reasons. One I hold will be worth the effort is the convenience factor. Creating stoves that are a heck of a lot nicer to work with delivers a lasting benefit. Fuel efficiency is obviously another. In some area, like Bishkek, the fuel savings might not be substantial, but for the poorer communities who cannot afford ‘good’ products, the fuel waste is still quite high, especially for biofuels. 

Regards

Crispin

Subject: James Hansen at Bush CEQ 2001

Within three months of George W Bush White House  (29 March 2001), James Hansen was invited to the Global Climate Change Working Group (I am pretty sure that was at the White House CEQ). 

Attached is a fax from the NASA General Counsel Office, with pages jumbled (text begins at page 4). Also see "clean text" of a Senate testimony later on (May 2001) at http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200105_senate/. Not what you would expect to hear from Hansen. 

Basically, George W. Bush parroted Hansen in June 2001. :-) Black carbon and ozone are culprits; Kyoto is fatally flawed. (Besides, causing firestorms in Afghanistan and Iraq didn't count in the IPCC inventories.) 

Hansen's primary work behind this was a paper with Sato in PNAS 2000, where they wrote, 

"rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 GHGs such as CFCs, CH4, and N2O, not by the products of fossil fuel burning, CO2 and aerosols, the positive and negative climate forcings of which are partially offsetting."

"assuming only that our estimates are approximately correct, we assert that the processes producing the non-CO2 GHGs have been the primary drive for climate change in the past century." 

Then they proposed an "alternative scenario" for the first half of the 21st century, where global warming is limited by reducing non-CO2 GHGs. "The next 50 years is the most difficult time to affect CO2 emissions, because of the inertia of global energy systems.. The essence of the strategy is to halt and even reverse the growth of non-CO2 GHGs and to reduce black carbon emissions. Such a strategy would mitigate an inevitable, even if slowing, growth of CO2." 

In turn "A key feature of this strategy is its focus on air pollution, especially aerosols and tropospheric ozone, which have human health and ecological impacts. If the World Bank were to support investments in modern technology and air quality control in India and China, for example, the reductions in tropospheric ozone and black carbon would not only improve local health and agricultural productivity but also benefit global climate and air quality." 

Anybody who has bothered to read radiative forcing graphs in IPCC reports - in particular, those with 20-year GWP - and the literature on forcing by "sectors", not just by species (before many species are coemitted), would understand this readily. 

Hansen then changed his views about CO2 as he grasped the scale of China coal power growth. Even so, I don't think he ever got to the point of calculating China's share in radiative forcing - if such calculations are possible. Because China's coal power increased CO2 emissions but also co-emissions of cooling species (SO2 and other aerosols). He wrote a paper on China power some three years ago, but his data on SO2 controls in China seemed to be shaky. I dug a little bit and gave up. 

Still, to the extent that China coal power substituted direct inefficient use of coal in all sectors of the economy, the net effect on warming as well as Chinese health was welcome. 

Why, Kirk Smith recently argued that near-term gains in north China's air quality are to be found not in further control of power sector emissions but in reducing the residential/commercial sector use of coal. (I am writing from memory; please look up Smith's website or write to me separately.) 

I happen to think BACT approach to China's solid fuel use in residential, commercial and small industrial sectors may be cheaper and quicker than electrifying all in the next 20 years. 

Let's see if President Clinton II is more enlightened that Professor Obama. 

Nikhil

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