I've Moved...

Unplucked Wildflowers has been moved to a new space - I needed a website that would let me do a little more than just blog.

So - in the future - you'll find me writing at www.laura-krantz.com/looking.

Homework!

The nice thing about this year is I get to be a student but I don't have to do the homework or write the papers or take the tests. But there have been a couple of homework assignments that seem like worthwhile exercises, like the one that was due today.

For my Energy and Climate Change course, we were asked to come up with a whole paragraph (!) about where we - as supreme leader of the planet - think the world's energy will come from in 2040. 

First - how I came to power:

The year is 2040. Global temperatures have risen an average of 2°C. 

Just six years earlier, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) - the world's last climate change denier - left office at the age of 100. The United States Congress finally agreed to sign on to several international climate change treaties. But their actions came too late. Already, nothing remained of Miami Beach but a thin strip of sand; the city itself is slowly disappearing into the ocean. In the panic, former Scripps Fellow Laura Krantz wrested control of the government away from President Jenna Bush, took over the UN and began to implement a new energy plan…

Ok. So this wasn't included in what I turned in. But that probably will be when Inhofe retires - pretty sure I'm right about that. Anyway - my actual homework follows.

Supplying the world’s energy in 2040:

The planet will have 9 billion people, consuming twice as much energy as 2015. So where is it all going to come from? Realistically, I don’t think we’ll be off fossil fuels entirely, but I do think they’ll be reduced. And I see a lot of the developing world – with the cooperation and aid of wealthier nations – skipping right over the fossil fuels stage and going directly to renewables, which will have grown exponentially.

25% - 30% of the world’s energy needs will be met by renewables, specifically solar. There’s a tremendous amount of energy from the sun that can be more efficiently captured and, by 2040, storage and distribution technologies will have made it a more reliable and constant source of energy, even in places that don’t get consistent sunshine.

25% will likely still come from oil and gas. The transition to renewables will take time and there will still be technology that’s reliant on traditional fossil fuel sources. But the price tag for these fuels will be higher because they'll actually include the costs of dealing with emissions and air pollution - costs that aren't factored in to 2015 prices. Additionally, recognizing the problems that fossil fuels pose, the majority of governments will no longer be subsidizing these industries.

The remaining 25% will come from nuclear. There was a lot of fear about nuclear in the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima disaster but those fears will have faded as the world became more concerned with finding cleaner energy sources. Wealthier countries will benefit most from nuclear technology – it’s too expensive for most developing nations.

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It's an interesting exercise and my answer is probably a little too optimistic when it comes to renewables and delusional when it comes to nuclear (I personally think nuclear is waaay better than coal). Fossil fuels are almost certain to still be the main source of energy and, as much as I dislike the idea, that includes the use of coal. The US Energy Information Administration projects that the increase in world energy demands will mean an increase in all types of energy (although natural gas and renewables will see the biggest growth - see below).

What is worth noting is that the chart above is working off the assumption that our rate of consumption will be constant. In other word,s the above chart shows the projected growth of these energy sources based on current consumption levels. So if people were to increase their energy efficiency, it could alter that chart considerably. One way to force that would be through costs - higher taxes on fossil fuels, higher fuel economy standards. Not exactly a popular idea, especially in this political climate. (But that could change when Miami starts to go underwater.)

The other thing to think about is that there doesn't seem to be a perfect energy source. All of them have pluses and minuses. The problems with fossil fuels are well known. Solar requires using rare earth metals to create the panels - those are limited and pose their own environmental challenges when it comes to mining them and recycling them. Nuclear energy runs on specific elements that a) are limited and b) produce extremely toxic waste that's hard to dispose of. Using wind turbines - as I learned today - can have a big effect on local climate by changing the flow of the atmosphere. 

I don't think there's going to be a magic energy bullet or a perfect solution. It's going to be about finding the right mix and constantly fine-tuning it, as well as increasing our efficiency, to get the greatest amount of energy for the least amount of environmental and social cost. 

The Snows of Mount Mouser

Undoubtedly you've heard this already but I had to have a post noting this week's news that 2014 was the hottest year on record, possibly the hottest year in the last two millennia; that ocean life faces a major extinction event; and that sea level is rising faster than we thought.

Those articles are a pretty big downer, especially the one about marine life. Having just finished Elizabeth Kolbert's book, The Sixth Extinction, I'm not feeling all that upbeat about humanity as a species. We're on the edge seeing some big changes and losing a lot of species, not to mention causing some serious alterations to the landscape.

Alterations like, say, the shrinking of glaciers, the melting of arctic ice sheets and the exposure of snowy peaks in the dead of winter. I'm still holding out hope that all this news will be something of a wake-up call for people. And, to avoid a complete depressive state, I tried to have a little fun this afternoon.

Below, you will see the intrepid explorer B. Tiberius Cat as he approaches the top of Mount Mouser.

On a January day, when you would expect the barren slopes to be frozen over with treacherous ice and battered by unrelenting winds, our hero easily achieves the peak...

...and laments how little snowpack remains on this natural wonder. Soon this snow mound will be as Mount Kilimanjaro - barren, exposed, just a shadow of its famed, snowy glory.

Disappointed, B. Tiberius Cat begins his arduous descent, back to civilization where he plans to inform the masses of an unfolding environmental tragedy. 

A Striking Similarity

First - I know. I've totally been feeling guilty about the fact that I haven't posted in almost two months. Not because of a lack of interesting things to post but because I've been working on a story for Newsweek, due out in February (more on that later). It took up a lot of that two months; the rest of my free time was taken up by baking these beauties:

But the cookies have long been devoured, a new semester has begun and I'm getting back in the saddle with a 9am class called Energy and Climate Change. So far, it's been an overview of climate change in context of the earth's history and we started with something our professor called "The Great Oxygen Catastrophe". This is a pretty simplified version of the actual events but I think it covers the basics.

3.5 billion years ago, blue-green cyanobacteria evolved on earth. These little organisms were capable of photo-synthesis and, as part of that process, they released oxygen into the atmosphere as waste. Keep in mind that, prior to this, there were no loose oxygen molecules bouncing around in earth's atmosphere - it was all absorbed immediately by other molecules.

Over the next billion or so years, as these cyanobacteria were giving off oxygen, it was still being taken up by all those other molecules, like iron - which created rust - or hydrogen - to create hydrogen peroxide. The earth was, essentially, a giant oxygen vacuum, sucking up all the oxygen.

As the earth began to cool and change - with fewer volcanoes spewing hydrogen and much of the iron already saturated - more oxygen molecules were left untethered, free-wheeling around the atmosphere. This is somewhere between .75 and 2 billion years ago (give or take a few days). But oxygen was toxic to much of earth's anaerobic residents and they were almost entirely wiped out - meaning these cyanobacteria basically caused one of the most significant extinction events in earth's history. 

Maybe you see where this is going?

Fast forward to, oh, say the modern era. In what could be seen as a striking similarity, there's a relatively new population of creatures on the planet that have been steadily increasing their emissions of carbon dioxide for the past 150-200 years. For a while, the earth was absorbing all those CO2 molecules without too much trouble but it's starting to reach a saturation point. The result could be another of the most significant extinction events in earth's history.

It's an interesting parallel. Andrew Revkin had this to say about it on his blog, Dot Earth:

"...you could step back and say there's not much of a difference between our carbon bins and that oxygen outburst. Except those mats of photosynthesizing slime weren't looking up at the sky, measuring and marveling at what they'd done. Through science, we are. With awareness comes responsibility, at least in theory. I'm pretty sure cyanobacteria are not self-aware."

We, as a species, have an opportunity to do something different. We're not pre-programmed to continue down the same path mindlessly. We can change the current course, reduce emissions, try to undo some of the damage we've done. In other words, we've evolved beyond the level of cyanobacteria - maybe it's time to act like we have.