The Promised Land.

Matt Damon has a new film out and rather that being a genius/bent cop/CIA trained killer his latest roll sees him caught up in something far more exciting...fracking!

Damon plays a salesman for a natural gas company traveling across the agricultural heartland of the USA tasked with persuading people to sign over their land so his company can get at the gas locked away beneath it. It won;t give anything away but watch the trailer below and you'll see that it doesn;t appear to go to plan...

Promised Land tackles something that is an incredible topical issue in America. As the boom in fracking continues more and more previously agricultural communities are being effectively taken over by the oil and gas industry.  As I alluded too in my previous article on fracking there is a lot of heated debate going on as too if this is really a good thing or not. The Promised Land comes seems to be planted strongly in the 'against' campe. Indeed proponents of fracking are so worried about 'Hollywood takes on fracking' that they are rumored to be preparing an extensive campaign to counter the films message.

I think the most encouraging this about The Promised Land is that is is being made at all. 'The Inconvenient Truth' hit our screens years after climate change was a scientifically recognised phenomenon. That the entertainment industry is making this film now is a nice sign that it isn't just hippies and scientists care enough about what is happened to the Earth top want to talk about it.

Green building isn't jusr for Hobbits...

Think of the phrase ‘green building’ for a moment. What comes to mind? Maybe something frightfully cutting edge with solar panels on the roof and a wind turbine in the back garden. Or perhaps you are more rustically minded and instead think of a new age paradise, one that incorporates nature into the home like a modern day Hobbit hole complete with a grass roof. 

 A green house…

 

I’ll bet you didn’t think of a road. Surely there is nothing ‘green’ about the ribbons of black asphalt that on a physical level cut up the natural world more than anything else we build. However in Vancouver things are a little different. The city has recently started building what have dubbed ‘greenroads’ using asphalt made entirely from recycled plastic and a ‘warm mix’ method of laying it. The essence the warm mix method involves adding a wax (itself made from the recycled plastic) to the asphalt resulting in the temperature at which the mixture achieves the correct viscosity for spreading to fall by between 50 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This can result in a reduction in fossil fuel use (usually gas) during the process of up to 20%. 

Vancouver City Council has indicated it is keen to roll out the method (no pun intended) from the current test trial section of roads and according to Karyn Magnusson, spokesperson for the city’s engineering service Vancouver would ‘love to embrace this as the norm rather than a special mix’, especially if a local source of wax can be found. Rarely has a city seemed so enthusiastic about what a relatively small change in policy can do, although when you consider Vancouver’s aim to be the world’s greenest city by 2020 it is perhaps unsurprising they’re keen.

A green road…

It isn’t just roads that can provide somewhat unusual examples of green building. The Malaysian government sparked a few headlines recently with its plans to build the world’s first ‘green city’ to house three million people by 2025. This new ‘smart metropolis’ will be fuelled entirely by renewables, have a comprehensive public transport network  and be full of open ‘green spaces’ to encourage social interaction and break the concrete jungle mould of most modern cities. Although on a completely different scale from Vancouver’s road project it is still far removed from the green building projects of most other countries where the best the government can do is offer subsides to help individuals bolt solar panels onto their roofs. 

Plans for Iskandar. What a green city looks like.

Green building then certainly isn’t just the preserve of eccentric individuals with money to burn and it doesn’t have to be expensive or even cutting edge (warm mix asphalt has been around for years). Simply applying technology smartly to make construction more efficient can go a long way towards making a building more energy efficient. It may look nice by having a grass roof isn’t everything when it comes to being green.

Fracking in the UK

Two weeks is a long time in the world of 24 hour news and I’ve missed a few important developments in the world of climate science recently. However anyone who is reading this from the UK and keeps more than a cursory eye on the news will know that this week fracking was finally given the go ahead (again) and, if some people are to be believed, we are soon to enter a golden age of energy self-sufficiency and cheaper bills for all.

There has been an infuriating amount of rubbish written about the pro and cons of fracking over the past few months. Ever since it was initially banned in 2011 after allegedly causing a number of minor earthquakes near Blackpool it has been a highly polarising issue. On one side energies companies and their supporters have spoken at length about huge untapped reservoirs of gas and thousands of new jobs.  They have told us with surprising certainty how much gas is beneath out feet as we stroll for example, over the rolling hills of Lancashire (£6bn a year according to Cuadrillia Resources) and it would seem like madness in a time of economic uncertainty to ignore what may be our greatest discovery of natural resources since North Sea Oil was first barrelled. 

On the other side we have been warned of massive environmental damage, especially concerning the pollution of water, at of course the risk of more earthquakes. A picture has been painted of gung-ho engineers blasting open the ground in a search for gas regardless of the costs. In what has become a highly emotive debate almost everything that has been said needs to be taken with a very large pinch of salt.

Credit for this description of fracking goes to the very informative Climate Adaptation blog that brought my attention to it.

Firstly as a geologist (although not a very good one I admit) I feel I must try to clarify a few things. There is no way that Cuadrillia Resources or any other company with plans to exploit the shale formations of the UK can know how much gas is there with the certainty they have been quoted. Oil and gas exploration is one of the most difficult fields to be a geologist in. Until drilling has started there is no way of being sure your predictions are correct and the art of predicting where gas or oil may be lying is challenging at best. In the early 1990s geologists predicted up to £1bn of oil might be found underneath Windsor castle in Berkshire. A royally approved test well was dug, much to the outrage of the Mayor of Windsor who declared that the town would be turned into a ‘second Dallas’. In the end nothing was found, all the hype was for nothing and two year old me was deprived of the chance to grow up familiar with the sight of the nodding donkey’s head pump. Oddly enough a recent and highly amusing article in the Daily Mail made similar claims, declaring that shale gas could turn Blackpool into ‘Texas-by-the-sea’ due to the exploitation a reservoir apparently containing two hundred trillion cubic feet of gas. I wonder if we’ll be looking back on that in twenty years time thinking ‘where did they get that from?’.

I also feel that there has been an unfair assumption that fracking is by nature a reckless and highly dangerous activity. The same Daily Mail article reprinted a number of horror stories from the US including claims that fracking has made tap water flammable in some areas and suggestions that the iconic hot springs at Bath could be threatened by nearby test wells. The tabloids aren’t the only ones getting hysterical; most of the British environmental movement has hopped onto the anti-fracking bandwagon. As I outlined a few weeks ago in the piece on the IEA report on unconventional oil I am no fan of further oil and gas extraction but if we’ve going to have a proper debate on fracking in the UK then we should at least be fair minded in out treatment of both sides. It is very easy to bash energy companies but we must remember that unlike the US we have a greater level of regulation on oil and gas extraction and that fracking has only been given the go ahead on the condition of further ‘strong regulation’ on the process. We must be thankful that for once the government took time over the decision and that the temporary ban allowed for a detailed scientific review to be carried out.

So fracking is going to happen. Assuming for a moment it doesn’t cause all our rivers to run black and the ground to split asunder what does this mean for the UK? Well if there really is all that gas down there then there are huge potential economic benefits. Just as America is finding fracking has the potential to provide jobs and fuel security, the kind of thing politicians dreams are made of in times of recession and instability in the middle-east. It is by no means a long term fix but it has been suggested that it could be a much needed shot in the arm for the UK economy. Of course there are the environmental risks to content with, however good the regulations are and the fact that shale gas is still a fossil fuel. In an ideal world the money that is going to be spent to breaking open shale formations up and down the country would go on renewables instead but that it would seem is very wishful thinking.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Whatever happens it will be interesting to look back on the debate of the last year or so and see who was right and who should have done some more research.

Sink or Swim?

At the end of last week an interesting little article appeared on a number of news websites about a new report that had finally 'worked out' how much sea level had risen in the last two decades. At first this seemed like a bit of a non-story, there have been plenty of studies trying to quantify sea level rise before. However on a bit of further reading things get interesting because this is the first paper to be published combining data from ALL of the previous attempts to work out how much extra water has flowed into the oceans in the last few decades.

In theory this means that we should finally have a reliable record of previous anthropogenic sea level rise.

The graph above shows the paper's main conclusions. Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been modeled separately and then combined to look at the overall picture. As you can see there is a very pronounced rise from the mid-nineties onwards following from a period of relative stability.

Of course the eagle eyed reader will noticed that this 'pronounced rise' is only about 11mm. Not only that but it can be argued that ice sheets and glaciers have been undergoing melting driven by human activity since before the start of the studies time period, so why does the data appear to only show a response from sea level in the late 1990s?

Still the finding have generated quite a bit of media interest (see the video below) and even if the results aren't exactly shocking they do demonstrate two things. Firstly the paper offers conclusive proof that sea level has been rising. Secondly the research itself shows that the scientific community can work together to produce reliable, informative pieces of literature. One of the main flaws in modern climate science has been its inability to work together  without producing confused and conservative conclusions. This then is a step in the right direction.

Don't take it all from me though, you can see a short video here of one of the academics behind the research and also read the paper itself.


Reference:

A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance. Shepherd et al. Science, Vol 338 no. 6111 pp.1183-1189. 2012.

Fun things of a Friday.

The Onion, everyone's favourite satirical newspaper, hit the headlines this week when North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was named the winner of their 'Sexiest Man Alive' award and Chinese news agency China People's Daily took them at face value, publishing a glowing 55 page online spread on the news.

The Onion has quite a history of its cutting satire being taken seriously but this gem from 2008 is probably a little too out there to be taken seriously by anyone.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/hurriphoonado-cuts-swath-of-destruction-across-eas,2629/

It is still hilarious though...

A new dawn for Oil?

One of the more frustrating parts of being an environmentalist ‘in the know’ so to speak is that sometimes you have to challenge perceived wisdom of the kind that you really wish was actually true. The notion of oil and gas as finite, fossil fuels is one that almost everyone is familiar with; the notion that oil is going to run out very soon is one that is almost as widely held. However if you ask a geologist when we’re going to run out of oil they will describe a much murkier picture. Indeed for a glimpse of how confused the situation is, here is an article I wrote earlier this year for Experimentation Online on the subject of oil resources. While estimates of when the black gold will dry up vary wildly it can probably be safely assumed that we have at least fifty years of oil left and, according to a new report by the IEA among other sources, we may have much longer.

To summaries the IEA report, the somewhat controversial exploitation of oil shales and tar sands is leading to a supply boom for oil and gas in the western world. In the US alone supply from these sources is expected to rise from 23% currently to 49% by 2035. Instead of the slow decline of supply as the points of ‘peak oil’ and ‘peak gas’  are reached new technologies and ever increasing demand (along with the ever increasing cost that every motorist is familiar with) are leading to an oil boom. In fact, as engines become more efficient and supply continues to increase the IEA quite optimistically predicts that the US is on track to becoming self-sufficient in terms of both oil and natural gas and may even become a major exporter in the future. 

This is all a bit different from what you thought you knew about oil isn’t it?

While it is the US and Canada that are benefiting the most right now, being rich in the geological formations that contain this unconventional oil and having the technology to extract it, the rest of the world may yet follow. On the heels of the IEA report The Diplomat published a very interesting article highlighting the potential for extraction of oil and gas from unconventional sources to spread to Asia. As ever China appears to be heading for a collision course with America having made recent moves to try to acquire the appropriate technology to extract fossil fuels from its own shale 

formations. Australia seems even better placed to compete on the global market with both a more suitable geological setting than China and a proximity to the burgeoning, oil hungry economies of South-East Asia that America cannot match. However it is not unrealistic to suggest that some of these developing economies will, given time, try to drain their own shales and tar sands rather than buying from their neighbours. The think tank EAI (not to be confused with IEA) which specialises in developing new energy policies for India suggests that the country, now the world’s fifth largest economy may have up to 15 billion tonnes of oil shale reserves alone in three main regions, the Assam Shelf, Naga Schuppen Belt and Assam-Arakkan Fold Belt. The idea that the Indian government and energy industry as a whole will ignore this potentially vast resource is naïve to say the least.

So it appears that the perceived wisdom that oil is running out needs a bit of a revision. Conventional oil bearing formations such as those being drained in the North Sea and Persian Gulf are edging towards their peak but there is still plenty in the tank for the world as a whole. The range of environmental and economic consequences of this are vast and could fill a number of pages (I again recommend the article in The Diplomat for a brief, Asia-centric summary of them). However, as long as there is money in extracting oil and gas and we, the public, feel no pinch at the pump there is never going to be the will to invest wholesale in the innovative green technologies needed if we are truly going to combat climate change. For once it would perhaps be best if that perceived wisdom was correct. If we really were staring down an empty oil barrel we might start sorting out the climate before it is too late.

Paper Review: ‘A review on the forecasting of wind speed and generated power’. Lei et al 2009.

Wind farms are a divisive issue both in this country and abroad. Their supporters will tell you that they are a clean and increasingly efficient way of harnessing a potentially limitless source of energy. Sceptics, the new environment secretary Owen Patterson among them, will argue that they are unsightly, noisy and ineffective. In arguments between these two sides the science of how we work out the efficiency of wind farms is often ignored. The simple fact is that wind energy can never be incorporated large scale into a county’s power supply unless there is a reliable method of forecasting the wind. Without this there is no way of working out how much power a set of wind turbines will generate, making it virtually impossible to plan for their use.

In this paper the fully range of wind speed prediction methods are reviewed.  It is highlighted that there are both Physical modelling methods, which use the physical characteristics of a given site to predict future wind speed and Statistical models that run almost entirely on previously observed data. The paper also goes on to review a number of new Artificial Intelligence based models.

Most physical models are mathematical NWPs or Numerical Weather Prediction models. They use a wide range of input data including the orographic characteristics of a site, the ‘roughness’ of terrain, average pressure and temperature and potential obstacles in the area. This data is used to help predict wind speeds at a particular site. More advanced physical models also include subsidiary programmes that can model the effect of obstacles in more detail (WAsP programs) or even take into account the effect of turbine shadowing (PARK programs). Obviously then physical models require a large amount of data of be gathered before they are run and often the data they generate needs to be analyses further. The paper recommends that for short term forecasting of wind speed accurate evaluation models are also needed in order to give reliable results.

There are a much wider range of statistical models, the majority of which are based upon the input of historical wind speed data and the identification of patterns and trends by computer programmes. These range from more simple Autroregressive models (AR) to more complex Autoregresssive moving average models (ARMA), each with their own limitations and advantages. For example the paper cites a study that has shown ARMA models to have 95% accuracy on both long and short scales of prediction but only when using 2-yearts of previous wind speed data. There are also spatial correlation models which aim to increase the accuracy of predictions by using data from nearby sites as well as the location of wind turbines. These models have been shown to be very effective on flat terrain but almost useless when trying to predict wind speed over complex topography.

The paper also mentions artificial intelligence based models that are a much more recent development in wind speed forecasting. A number of examples of such models are presented in the paper but there is little consensus on their effectiveness.

The overall trends seem to be that NWP based physical models perform well over large spatial scales and long time periods. Statistical models are often more effective over very short-term temporal scales and certain AI models only appear accurate when there is a very large amount of historical data to compute. There is however no ‘silver bullet’ model that can accurately predict wind speed regardless of location or time scale. As the paper rightly points out there is much more study in this area needed if wind power is ever to become a viable renewable energy source and it is most likely that a synthesis of a number of different models will prove the most effective in forecasting wind speed in the future.

(The full paper, ‘Ma Lei, Luan Shiyan, Jiang Chuanwen, Liu Hongling, Zhang Yan,

 A review on the forecasting of wind speed and generated power, 

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 

Volume 13, Issue 4, May 2009, Pages 915-920’ is available here)