the duchy of hetkettle trophish

drive a transition to renewable sources, it will be the first time in human history that energetic imperatives, especially the the economic advantages of higher-quality fuels, were not the principal impetus.

however, “economic advantages” and “higher-quality” are both political constructs. interpreting them how we did was one choice, now we make another.

meanwhile, george monbiot switches to cap-and-auction, after duly noting politicians imploding in the unprecedented shitstorm. “please love me.”

ho ho! the referenced not-yet-published paper — which by the way

proposes that the concentration of greenhouse gases should eventually be stabilised at 350 parts per million

— is already online. all i did was google “oliver tickell 350” and

i also found this direct exchange. which continues.

yeah it’s a whole package. i like the idea of auctioning permits to countries for their landfill and ag emissions etc. i dislike the idea of central banks doing all this. but i have no idea who would be more trustworthy.

the exchange is hard to read. here’s how i understand it.

aubrey meyer:

For those tracking the quantitative issues arising for the avoidance of dangerous rates of climate change, here is an overview chart of the three scenarios [acceptable 350ppmv, Dangerous 450 ppmv and Imposssible 550 ppmv] as in the first chapter of Mark Levene and David Cromwell’s book “Surviving Climate Change”. But here they are repeated in two forms: -

[a ] as a ‘consumers’ protocol i.e. UNFC&C and

[b ] as a ‘producer’s protocol i.e. after Colin Campbell’s ‘depletion’ data [embracing the idea of the depletion-protocol thereto] but extended to include coal [which isn't depleting] and gas and oil which are but different pressure-dynamics.
http://www.gci.org.uk/images/Poster_Oil_Coal_Gas_350_450_550.pdf

As you can quickly see, we do need to cut through known reserves of fossil fuel to keep the risk level to ‘acceptable’, though zero emissions globally by 2050 for 350 ppmv, must be read in the light of the coupled model results from the GCM proxies. These show that even with that rate of contraction for what was orignially 350 ppmv now gives us nearer a 450 ppmv: -
http://www.gci.org.uk/Animations/BENN_C&C_Animation.exe

Dealing with both consumption and production in some overall rational and international structure of consent and reconciliation is simply unavoidable if dangerous rates of climate change are yet to be avoided.

Those who argue otherwise, focusing on production/producers and eschewing the arithmetic, are looking without rationale or realism at a fight they perhaps easily can pick but certainly not win.

Just picking on ‘bad-guys’ [players - whether as a few countries or corporations] divorced the Kyoto Protocol from the UNFCCC. Doing it again, going just for producers and calling it ‘Kyoto 2′, continues, and in reality worsens this toy-story; it is even more confrontational than the story so far and for these reasons the recent developments to this end are not persuasive.

oliver tickell:

Re the “debate” between C&C and Kyoto2, I would prefer to try to identify points of agreement and build on them.

It has recently occurred to me that Kyoto2 does in fact propose, precisely, contraction and convergence at effectively zero per capita emissions by mid-century, in order to stabilise at 350ppm CO2eq before (probably) moving down further. As such, we appear to be after the same thing.

The question then is how to get there. I have proposed Kyoto2 because it is, simply, the best way I can think of to do that.

Maybe we should try to organise some kind of event at which the benefits and problems of the two approaches can be assessed and explored, and maybe ultimately reconciled?

Oliver Tickell, www.kyoto2.org/

aubrey meyer:

What Kyoto 2 needs to present is a clear plan of how ‘it’ [they/whoever is involved] is going to: -

[1] take charge of fossil fuel production globally [!]
[2] calculate the permitted production to zero globally by 2050
[3] resolve arguments by and between oil, coal and gas producers on this [!]
[3] take ownership of the production-permits that arise [!!]
[5] administrate the auction of these issue
[6] bank the proceeds [est. by k-2 in the order of "trillions of dollars"] [!!!]
[7] administrate the re-distribution of these $s in an appropriate manner [!!!!]

This means that, having persuaded Parties to UNFCCC that: -

[a ] “asymmetric global consumptions are no longer relevant”,
[b ] the Treaty [objective and principles] is ‘kerplunk’
[c ] the politics of “asymmetric *sub-global* fossil fuel production, will now be brought into line and down by the K-2 Treaty that replaces the UNFCCC.

In a word, how K-2 is going to make, bake and then brake this pie-in-the-sky. It is a gift to the bad guys [that is the one relevant point in Tony Junioper's Guardian letter] and makes even the dreaded global governance a mere mwah of a first-date-kiss.

I have tried over nearly three years to engage the author[s] of K-2 on the problems of this. All that I was offered was avoidance with the odd we-love-you, get-well cards.

True; - time is running out and we do seem to be going over the edge, so for the record, give it your best shot [james Hansen says bulldoze the coal-fired power-stations . . . and he's big in China with this argument] but please stop presenting this K-2 as an ‘alternative to’, a ‘replacement for’, an ‘improvement on’ [etc etc] C&C.

Maybe I’ll debate this when answers to these questions have been at least attempted.

Aubrey

oliver tickell:

I began this strand by suggesting that it might be constructive to identify points of agreement. The responses so far have been to raise supposed points of disagreement. Many of the points raised as points of disagreement are in fact no such thing, and seem to be based on misconceptions about Kyoto2. To put those right I can only suggest, look at the website (www.kyoto2.org/) and read the book (due out in late July but you can pre-order on Amazon).

There is just one point which it does seem necessary to address right now. Aubrey Meyer writes: “I have tried over nearly three years to engage the author[s] of K-2 on the problems of this. All that I was offered was avoidance with the odd we-love-you, get-well cards.”

This statement is puzzling. Consider my suggestion, below, that “Maybe we should try to organise some kind of event at which the benefits and problems of the two approaches can be assessed and explored, and maybe ultimately reconciled?” This invitation to engage has been ignored by the C&C’ers. This is disappointing, but consistent with past experience.

But let me say it again - do you want to engage, or don’t you? If you do, let’s try and organise an open event where we can discuss / debate the issues with open hearts and open minds. Are you up for it?

Oliver Tickell.

aubrey meyer:

Oliver

Your response here continues the avoidance of key questions that arose with climate change; it also disingenuous about me.

FTR:

Please spell out what you call, “the misconception about K-2″ [simply referring people to the K-2 website, does not suffice]. The C&C propositions have been spelled out again here and I asked you to refer to these, when you originally asked me to engage with your proposals, and you ignored this completely.

So I ask you here again now: -

[1] “Please explain how you quantify your emissions contraction event - you now say - for 350 ppmv and then: -

[2] Relate this to the UNFCCC [objective, principles & process].

Your website suggests to me that you will go to the UNFCCC [COP-'x'] and say: -

“K-2 wishes to inform all of you Nations [Parties to the UNFCCC] that all of your attempts to negotiate emissions limitation and/or reductions have failed and will fail in future.

Consequently, K-2 requires you to limit and/or reduce your fossil fuel production forthwith and agree that: -

[1] it will be at rates that will determined by K-2
[2] permits to equivalent of this will be issued and then auctioned by K-2 to those interests who are producing the fossil fuels
[3] the proceeds of this auction will be redistributed to whoever K-2 judges to be in need.

If K-2 is/n’t this and/or does/n’t require this, please do indicate K-2’s MO.

There is no debate that I yet recognise as you apparently do not recognize [or wish to recognize?] these obviously fundamental questions are there and need answers.

Idealism is fine; anxiety is justifed; frustration with the process is more than warranted; so by all means, do say whatever you like, free-speech is fine.

But there are consequences for misleading people. So do expect me to respond as you now present K-2 as an improvement on or a replacement for C&C.

Moreover, by all means claim here and now that you [finally] do want to talk and debate. However, do not say here that you are ‘puzzled by’ the points I am making back to you, since they are the essentially the same points that were made to you when you originally asked me to endorse what you were doing [October 2006] points you simply [as was your right] ignored.

If K-2 was more robust, you could carry on ignoring these questions. But flogging your book and your website is not an argument, it is a marketing strategy; it is not a climate strategy.

Aubrey

oliver tickell:

I’m not going to venture into detailed answers here to all the points raised. I don’t have the time, most members of the list probably don’t have the interest, and in any case it’s all in the book.

1. K-2 represents a means of delivering on the UNFCCC purpose and principles, which so far remain unfulfilled.

2. The UNFCCC is the sovereign body, not K-2.

3. To implement either K-2 or C&C would involve telling the UNFCCC/member states that they have got it wrong to date and that a new approach is needed, which is clearly the case and we are not the only people saying it. Not much difference there.

But the real point here is that I asked a clear question: “do you want to engage, or don’t you? If you do, let’s try and organise an open event where we can discuss/debate the issues with open hearts and open minds. Are you up for it?”

Nowhere do I see the answer “YES”, so I can only presume the answer is “NO”. That’s your privilege. Let me know if you change your mind.

Oliver Tickell,

aubrey meyer:

Oliver

Your comments miss the point. You say: -

“To implement either K2 or C&C would involve telling the UNFCCC / member states that they have got it wrong to date and that a new approach is needed, which is clearly the case and we are not the only people saying it. Not much difference there.”

The politics of producers [fossil fuel] is not the same as the politics of its consumers.

C&C doesn’t tell the UNFCCC they’ve got it right or wrong. It says: -

* the agreed UNFCCC objective is ppmv safe and stable at ‘x’;

* this requires a complete contraction and convergence event - at least of ghg emissions;

* since the UNFCCC articles [in the section called 'commitments'] and its processes have defined the control of atmospheric ghg concentrations in terms of QELROS [quantifying emission limitation and/or reduction options] it is, for better or worse consumption ahead of [rather than?] production, that is the point of engagement with the consequential structure of the Treaty and its negotiations;

* C&C covers all QELRO options arising in that context, within a syntax [a hierarchy of argument] which says the 100% contraction integral by weight, is pre-distributed to everyone in a non-random manner consistent with the objective of the Treaty while not saying ‘no’ to the tradability of emissions entitlements created that way;

C&C simply focuses what’s already in play.

Contraction & Convergence simply and transparently quantifies and structures that theoretical [but necessary] ‘contraction-event’ as a ‘path-integral’ by weight i.e. as a whole specifically indexed to the objective of the UNFCCC.

In other words it is saying to UNFCCC Parties/negotiators, if you want to go on doing what you’re doing, do it but that [C&C] is what it comes down to.

GCI is not telling the UN or its Climate Convention to deconstruct/go away/proceed in different way . . . . it is simply saying the above with the caveat; - use C&C to guide doing enough soon enough, i.e. consciously indexed to achieve the objective of the UNFCCC, because doing it randomly [as so far] yields too little too late and - particularly because of growing sink failure - renders the whole situation hopeless - nothing more.

C&C/GCI is not asking them to change the Convention or even for that matter the Kyoto Protocol. For better or worse, C&C accepts the status quo Modus Operandi of the UNFCCC saying simply, do what you do better/faster - much better/faster - or we’re toast: here are the numbers.

K-2 - With some truly gob-smacking and erratic assumptions about institutional behaviour and power politics [re-read the past few emails where I spelled these out] you/K-2 are asking UNFCCC Parties to abandon the UNFCCC and that whole approach and just target - or let you/K-2 - target producers.

If K-2/you want to target that producer’s sub-global special interest group [think Gulf States, think coal-producers India/China/USA/Canada etc] and bring the full weight of an Oxford pressure group to bear on the most powerful political nexus in history, that’s fine. This requires that they as a group will uni-laterally and voluntarily detumesce and accept the full agenda of K-2 and its MO and inventory because why - because Oxford’s as good as on the Greenwich Meridian?

There are ‘problems’ and you’ll say they’ve been from go – so, K-2. But you are seeking to de-link and isolate production from whatever extent of integration and reciprocity exists in the process and just get the bad guys.

You are not just going up against that heart of the Military Industrial Complex. “Cannon to the left of you cannon to the right”, you’ve Gordon Brown etc to contend with who have been commandeering [sickening but successfully] more cannon-fire, asking OPEC/Saudi to produce more oil.

Into that Valley of Death, you also have the oil-majors about to sign for an increase of production in Iraq. You are saying to all of them and the others not mentioned here - “cease fire! Fossil fuel production will be reversed forthwith and the new [K-2] central body will auction off declining oil-coal-gas production permits, issue receipts and globally redistribute the revenues to . . .?”

Forgive me - its not the dog that’s barking here.

By all means be heroically ambitious, politically awesome, and propose K-2 as a replacement for K-1 indeed the UNFCCC itself and win.

But - What you are proposing is a replacement, not for Kyoto, but for the UNFCCC itself. What you are not proposing is ‘a replacement for or an improvement on C&C’. Rooted in the UNFCCC, C&C is what it says it is and, as Mayer Hillman once noted, “a modest proposal”.

That’s it. You ride with 600; this conversation is over.

Aubrey

watching the end of suburbia. “peak oil fossil” documentary. writing and thinking. the review on grist got the filmmakers involved and went some places. actually that reviewed the sequel but the perspective helps.

people expect me to visit this summer, across the country. feeling like, getting out. seeing. i’ve been figuring the options. figure, by car, new vehicle trip, all gas burned is new gas. oh the many ways the trains don’t go. bus, gah, flexible though. plane’s already flying. more time with the peeps that way and still cheaper. thinkin’.

felt like, “yep, exurbs, pretty screwed. lots of tears to weep into the sea before all’s said and done.” innit.

ps. mebbe it’s, no matter what, always saying, “neighborly.” keep that in mind. just keep it there. where it’s ready.

when a writer i respect throws sustainability on a far back “later” burner i email them a few links and a short heads-up. also lately i’ve been throwing in a postscript detailing some good things to do. that’s probably not good persuasion but it makes me feel better and maybe it helps them sort it to the trash faster. customer satisfaction is job one!

and professional ethicistician, except that he went to immense personal trouble to become a heroic contrarian to the great green swindle — goofy scientists, treehugging zealots — and here’s this great critique from jurassic park, from 1993, spoken by what i took at the time to be the voice of the author in book and movie.

so, michael, what do you think of taking great risks with the biosphere?

MALCOLM: The lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here staggers me.

GENNARO: Thank you, Dr. Malcolm, but I think things are a little different than you and I had feared.

MALCOLM: Yeah, I know. They’re a lot worse.

GENNARO: Now, wait a second, we haven’t even see the park yet—

HAMMOND: Alright Donald, alright, let him talk. I want to hear every viewpoint. I really do.

MALCOLM: Don’t you see the danger, John, inherent in what you’re doing here? Genetic power Industrial machinery is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen. But you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun.

GENNARO: It is hardly appropriate to start hurling generalizations—

MALCOLM: If I may.

I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power sources of energy that you’re using here. It didn’t require any discipline to attain it them. You read saw what others had done had worked in the past and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, slapped in on a plastic lunch box, and now you’re selling it, you want to sell it.

HAMMOND: I don’t think you’re giving us our due credit. Our scientists engineers have done things which nobody’d ever done before.

MALCOLM: Yeah, but your scientists engineers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

as you see, it took very little editing to make crichton’s choice to stand with the hydrocarbon business make him look like a monkey.

ps. i didn’t make a joke about fossil fuels. did i.

pps. a monkey — with goldilocks issues.

ppps. spoiler: pelicans.

pppps. trouble is the bears won’t stop with eating him.…

to scale, the actual thickness of the world as we experience it, a few miles up and down from sea level, is about the same as the thickness of the paper. what looks like internal light is tricks with water like pulp bleached and glossed. we see the blue planet in photos, looking round, but we’re painted on.

hire me, i make a lot.

ps. for a little extra i can also leave a bad taste in your mouth.

yesterday’s call for escalation was in fashion with tel aviv and washington.

Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians.… Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.

but i’m afraid. i’m afraid of being left out. i have a reputation to consider.

There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.

well that’s true. and of course it turned out the “enduring” bases were meant to be permanent. “no one could have guessed.”

and what is afghanistan now? an ongoing punishment? an effort to demonstrate the practicality of installing american-allied troops on russian borders?

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering [continent]; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.

oh yeah there’s that too.

1 july. zing!

power spain and germany to the eurocup championship?

if so will spain’s record 40% of electricity by wind be the difference in the game?

update: yes!

post game report. yawn. modern german team again the beastly second best. i try not to root against them but they make it hard. in this case though the spanish team was so lovely, in all the games i saw them, i would have said they won either way.

a few days ago i went looking for past games — world level — to download. someone somewhere remembered being riveted by brazil-france in 1986. the whole thing’s grabbable. here’re highlights.

FIFA’s list of great past world men’s matches includes lengthy game reports.

what the hell do i care? treat the whole thing like a fucking accounting error, all the numbers and concessions. have afghanis suffered enough? no. they’re still complaining. they still have some fight left. kick their asses.

who else wants some! come on! i’m right fucking here!

i’ll take you all out. every single one of you is a fucking terrorist who hates me and wants to kill my family. i know you. i know you. i know what you want. i see you looking at me. i see you watching my women yes my women and i know what you think when i turn away from you. fuck you. fuck you!

a million cripples? a hundred thousand brain-damaged sons and daughters can’t sleep or live right lives. what the fuck is that my business no. can you see how much i have left here. you took it. no i don’t care who took it. i’m gonna kill you hard and then i’m gonna get drunk and forget you.

die. i see the pictures. die. more. let me see the proof.

word for word, with suggested corrections, of this comment.

it is in reaction to the lame-dick presidency banning solar development on public lands because of newfound environmental concerns (while simultaneously approving new on- and offshore drilling and digging).

Take a step back and look deeply

This Bush administration announcement is one in a long series of efforts to get enviros to fight each other. When this happens, the Bush administration and fossil fuel interests achieve their objectives. So, um, like don’t fight or bad-mouth each other. We will always have differences in values, but that doesn’t mean that these differences cannot be respected and accommodated. Self-righteousness on any side will not help.

I see two primary tools for resolving differences: planning and local ownership / control.

There are many disturbed lands in the desert, but there are also many beautiful places. Likewise, there are more and less appropriate places for wind turbines. The rate of solar and wind deployment is limited by scarcity of equipment and crappy US incentive programs, not by a lack of appropriate sites. In light of the overall situation, Cape Wind always struck me as a silly fight. So what if a particular place doesn’t want wind energy now? There are hundreds and hundreds of communities around the US that will welcome it with open arms. Especially from a global warming perspective, it really doesn’t matter where renewable energy generators are installed as long as they are in fact installed. Yes, there are local sustainability concerns, but if the energy poured into Cape Wind had been put into an upfront process in the context of local ownership (see below), New England might be a lot further along than it is.

The rollout of wind energy will be far more rapid and efficient if we limit how much energy is wasted in controversial locations. Communities where renewable energy is controversial can initiate their own planning processes and come up with whatever decision they want about the best and worst places and how and when, and in the meantime the rest of us can move on to more receptive locations. If some places don’t want it that should be their decision. Why beat one’s head against this wall? A lack of planning and prioritization of sites is sure to spawn numerous energy-wasting battles that hurt us politically. Perhaps greens should take it upon themselves to research and propose appropriate locations rather than beat the crap out of each other. We should trust local communities and understand that there are many, many fish in the sea.

Another important tool is local ownership. As the Europeans say, one’s own pigs don’t stink. The European countries that have been successful in rolling out renewable energy understand that this process goes far more smoothly when local residents have an ownership interest in renewable energy and a say — as owners — about where it goes (not the “thanks for sharing” BS of modern American governance). If anything, Europe is a harder place to site wind turbines and other renewable energy technologies due to its long history, density of population and active communities. Yet the countries most successful in deploying renewable energy manage to avoid many of the fights common in the US and UK, and the determining factor seems to be local ownership and control.

Many people oppose renewable energy projects not because they oppose renewable energy per se but because they don’t like having outsiders ram anything down their throats. That’s an aspect of human nature that many Europeans seem to understand.

Central station solar is big business and it seems unrealistic to think that it shouldn’t be planned. And yes, a new administration can set up a faster, better process, but if urban greens try to ram it down the throats of desert activists, both sides will be pathetic losers. Fortunately, we have many options for other kinds of solar. There’s so much unused potential in urban areas that we could spend most of our resources for years in these areas while we figure out the more complicated situations.

Finally, as a cautionary tale I suggest you learn something about Stirling Energy Systems, a concentrating solar technology proposed for southern California. The first big splash for this technology was when President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which he did in front of the prototype units for this technology. They certainly look cool. The PR value of this technology was not lost on the White House.

This technology has unfortunately found itself in the middle of a swirling controversy related to a transmission line called the Sunrise Powerlink, formally proposed by Sempra Energy and it subsidiary, SDG&E in 2005. The problem is that Sempra Energy justified the line as a renewable energy line using this technology, probably knowing that it was and is not ready for commercial deployment. An April 2008 DOE research proposal assumes that this technology still has a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of only 200 hours. To be commercially viable the DOE has said that it should have a MTBF of over 4,000 hours, but they say to do this that a brand new prototype needs to be designed, built and tested, and that will take years more time (assuming funding is available), and even then there are no guarantees it will work. Moreover, there are only 6 prototype units at Sandia National Labs, yet the developer said they could install 12,000 units in 4 years. It’s good to optimistic, but as a renewable energy professional this schedule strikes me as being extremely unrealistic. So, why would Sempra Energy, who’s CEO said he doesn’t believe in global warming, and which was listed by CERES as one of the worst utilities in terms of global warming, and whose subsidiary, SDG&E. which has the worst record of complying with the California RPS, decide to use an experimental technology to attempt to meet its RPS obligations, rather than solar trough (which I worked on back in the early ’90s) or other proven technologies? Perhaps because they hoped to build the transmission line and then use it to transmit fossil fuel-fired energy, using, say, the imported LNG from Sempra’s facility in Baja, Mexico.

Those who oppose the Powerlink are strongly in favor of a variety of in-basin renewable energy technologies, especially PV, because if PV is NOT given a home in temperate and sunny San Diego we’ve got troubles. They are NOT NIMBY’s because they want the generation capacity in their backyards. And besides, PV is cheaper than Stirling dish, even not considering the cost of transmission, and Stirling dish can’t operate as baseload because it doesn’t collect heat in a central location so there’s no advantage there. Sempra really is the NIMBY here, because they don’t want anybody else to have a significant ownership in renewable energy in Sempra’s backyard.

That Sempra proposed that the line would go through the middle of the biggest state park in California certain set up the environmental community for a dandy internal brawl, but fortunately, all of the local enviros (land conservationist and renewable energy supporters alike) came together and proposed a 158 page plan that will allow San Diego to achieve its RPS obligation faster and less expensively than would happen with the Powerlink. People along the proposed route are learning about and actually installing renewable energy. The people’s plan allows local people to own and control the process rather than having Sempra be in the driver’s seat, which Sempra is kind of not into (BTW, Sempra’s President is on the Halliburton Board of Directors).

All I’m saying is that these are complicated situations and the fossil fuel industry will divide and conquer as much as they can, standing on our edges and shouting, “Let’s you and him fight!” and then slinking off to do as they please while we are distracted, discouraged and despairing.

It is possible to resolve these disputes without so much acrimony, but it takes hard work, respect and faith that we the people will do the right thing enough of the time.

by HiTension at 2:17 PM on 27 Jun 2008

as you’d guess the conversation mama of this comment is t’riffic.

ps. don’t listen. self-righteousness is a critical coping mechanism. if you are right but act like you’re wrong scientists say you will die in six weeks.

29 jun. deleted halliburton sentence per correction.

the visits log says yesterday somebody translated a post here so they could read it. that’s the first time i know of that happening at either site. ok my records suck. it’s cool tho, no?

next milestone: a post that i wrote gets translated. this one was 100% quotation.