A Revolution Made of Wood?

Nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), which is produced by processing wood pulp, is being hailed as the latest wonder material. Japan-based Pioneer Electronics is applying it to the next generation of flexible electronic displays. IBM is using it to create components for computers. Even the US army is getting in on the act, using it to make lightweight body armour and ballistic glass.

To ramp up production, the US opened its first NCC factory in Madison, Wisconsin, on 26 July, marking the rise of what the US National Science Foundation predicts will become a $600 billion industry by 2020.

...NCC will replace metal and plastic car parts and could make nonorganic plastics obsolete in the not-too-distant future, says Phil Jones, director of new ventures and disruptive technologies at the French mineral processing company IMERYS. "Anyone who makes a car or a plastic bag will want to get in on this," he says. _NS

A new "miracle material," nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), offers incredible commercial and technological opportunity, yet it can be made out of waste sawdust, twigs, and tree branches. It is a true "garbage to gold" story.

[Nanocrystalline cellulose is] transparent but it also has eight times the tensile strength of stainless steel due to its tightly packed array of microscopic needle-like crystals. Even better, it's incredibly cheap.

"It is the natural, renewable version of a carbon nanotube at a fraction of the price," says Jeff Youngblood of Purdue University's NanoForestry Institute in West Lafayette, Indiana. _New Scientist

By replacing more expensive materials such as plastics, steel, ballistic glass, body armour, etc.... NCC will impact economies in unanticipated ways.

But this is exactly the kind of substitution of cheap and abundant materials in place of more expensive and rare materials, which Julian Simon discusses in his free online book: Ultimate Resource II.

And it is this type of innovation and substitution which makes most prophecies of resource scarcity doom obsolete.

Production of NCC starts with "purified" wood, which has had compounds such as lignin and hemicellulose removed. It is then milled into a pulp and hydrolysed in acid to remove impurities before being separated and concentrated as crystals into a thick paste that can be applied to surfaces as a laminate or processed into strands, forming nanofibrils. These are hard, dense and tough, and can be forced into different shapes and sizes. When freeze-dried, the material is lightweight, absorbent and good at insulating.

"The beauty of this material is that it is so abundant we don't have to make it," says Youngblood. "We don't even have to use entire trees; nanocellulose is only 2 nanometres long. If we wanted we could use twigs and branches or even sawdust. We are turning waste into gold." _NewScientist

Hungry Plankton Gobble CO2, Astound Scientists

Physorg
There is so much that scientists still do not know about Earth's climate, the oceans, the carbon cycle, and so much more. Recently, scientists were surprised to learn that plankton travel relatively long distances -- in terms of ocean depth -- to seek out both nutrients and CO2. Back to the drawing boards.

For almost three decades, oceanographers have been puzzled by the ability of microscopic algae to grow in mid-ocean areas where there is very little nitrate, an essential algal nutrient. In this week's issue of Nature, MBARI chemical oceanographer Ken Johnson, along with coauthors Stephen Riser at the University of Washington and David Karl at the University of Hawaii, show that mid-ocean algae obtain nitrate from deep water, as much as 250 meters below the surface. This finding will help scientists predict how open-ocean ecosystems could respond to global warming.

...Surface waters in this and other mid-ocean areas contain almost no nitrate or other plant nutrients. Yet each year, microscopic algae (phytoplankton) flourish in these vast, open-ocean areas. Although miniscule in size, these mid-ocean algae consume about one fifth of all the carbon dioxide taken up by plants and algae worldwide.
To solve this mystery, Johnson and his fellow researchers used a robotic drifter called an Apex float, which automatically moves from the sea surface down to 1,000 meters and then back again, collecting data as it goes. Researchers at the University of Washington outfitted this drifter with an oxygen sensor and a custom version of Johnson's In Situ Ultraviolet Spectrophotometer (ISUS), which measures nitrate concentrations in seawater.

...From January through October of each year, the instruments on the drifter showed a gradual increase in oxygen concentrations in the upper 100 meters of the ocean. At the same time, the float detected a gradual decrease in concentrations of nitrate in deeper waters, from 100 to 250 meters below the surface.
Johnson and his coauthors found that the amount of oxygen being produced near the surface through photosynthesis was directly proportional to the amount of nitrate that was being consumed in deeper water. _Physorg

Science is still relatively ignorant about the deep processes of life and climate on Earth. Certainly far too ignorant for humans to base the future of their civilisations upon half-baked computer models which leave out the most critical parameters -- and include too much uncertainty to reliably predict anything at all.

Science is just barely beginning to learn a few of the things it would need to know to predict a future climate. It is time for the rational humility of our present limitations to enter science at all levels once again -- particularly in the areas where science intersects with politics and public technological and economic policy.

There are a large number of ocean organisms that take CO2 out of the atmosphere on a semi-permanent basis -- as is obvious from observing geologic phenomena such as limestone and chalk. Fossil fuels are still being formed under the oceans, as well as the massive layers of fossil rock. All of that carbon was cycled through life forms -- including the lowly plankton.

Black Carbon Update: Up to 90% of Warming

A new study of the effect of black carbon on the melting of Himalayan glaciers demonstrates that 90% of melting is due to aerosols -- not CO2. More than 30% of melting is due to black carbon aerosol, and probably considerably more than 30%.

These findings are consistent with studies that show that significant (over half) amounts of arctic ice melting has been caused by black carbon and other aerosols.

Previous studies have shown that black carbon can have a powerful effect on local atmospheric temperature. “Black carbon can be very strong,” Menon says. “A small amount of black carbon tends to be more potent than the same mass of sulfate or other aerosols.”

Black carbon, which is caused by incomplete combustion, is especially prevalent in India and China; satellite images clearly show that its levels there have climbed dramatically in the last few decades. The main reason for the increase is the accelerated economic activity in India and China over the last 20 years; top sources of black carbon include shipping, vehicle emissions, coal burning and inefficient stoves. According to Menon’s data, black carbon emitted in India increased by 46 percent from 1990 to 2000 and by another 51 percent from 2000 to 2010. _Source

Melting glaciers and ice sheets have been used as an example of the effect of CO2 on climate, when in actuality they are an example of the effect of aerosol pollutants -- largely from China and India.

But then, you did not need this blog to tell you that CO2 hysteria is a scam, right?

China Outsmarts Obama / Pelosi Carbon Reich

In a brilliant feat of legerdemain, China has demonstrated its own adroitness on the world energy scene. Anticipating the carbon-phobic stance of the incoming Obama / Pelosi reich, China has laid the foundation for supremacy in clean-coal IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle) technology. Coal gasification is a critical component of any intelligent "bridge energy policy" meant to span the gap in time between the "cheap oil age", and the "abundant clean sustainable energy age".

Coal is an abundant energy resource worldwide, and using IGCC technology coal can be cleaner than most other current large-scale forms of energy production. But US carbon-hysteric politicians in the Obama / Pelosi reich are afraid of coal, and are unlikely to allow most large scale coal gasification projects to proceed. That carbon-phobic stance leaves the door wide open for any nation willing to develop this vital bridge energy technology.

The oil and gas giant BP reinforced China's position as a clean-coal technology leader last month, by establishing a $73 million research center in Shanghai with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to help commercialize technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and gasification. In another sign of the country's suddenly bold role in green technology, China's battery giant BYD launched the world's first mass-produced plug-in hybrid vehicle yesterday.

Underpinning China's potential leadership in carbon-neutral coal power is broad expertise with gasification. By 2010, China will have installed 29 gasification projects since 2004, compared with zero in the United States, according to the Gasification Technologies Council, a trade group based in Arlington, VA. Most of these Chinese projects turn coal into synthesis gas (or syngas)--a blend of carbon monoxide and hydrogen--to feed catalysts that synthesize chemicals and fuels. IGCC technology uses the same syngas to drive turbines and generate electricity with far less pollution than conventional coal plants. For example, mercury and soot levels are close to those seen at natural gas-fired plants, while carbon dioxide comes out in a pure stream that should be easier to capture and sequester.

...The project plans to start up a 250-megawatt IGCC plant in Tianjin in 2010 using a novel gasifier designed by the Thermal Power Research Institute in Xi'an; the plant will also supply some syngas and heat to local chemical plants. GreenGen plans to catapult the output of the gasifier design, from a 36-tons-per-day pilot plant, directly to commercial scale of 2,000 tons per day.

And GreenGen is already preparing to scale up further: in April, GreenGen and Tianjin officials signed an agreement for two 400-megawatt IGCC units. Meanwhile, Chinese utility firm Huaneng, GreenGen's majority stakeholder, started up a CCS pilot project at its Beijing coal power plant this summer. _TechReview

With the experience and expertise of building and operating large scale IGCC projects under their belts, Chinese enterprises will be in the driver's seat, energy-wise. As Europe and the Anglosphere grow more carbon-phobic and energy-starved, China will be the only one experienced enough with IGCC and "clean coal" to bail out the foolish carbon hysterics.

Of course if the west pursues advanced generation nuclear fission, or gets lucky with scalable nuclear fusion, coal can be used for making chemicals and polymers instead of energy and fuel -- sometime in the next 30 or 40 years. In the meantime, several decades will need to be spanned with some form of plentiful energy source.

China is betting on a sure thing, the same "sure thing" at which the Obama / Pelosi reich turns its nose up. In fact, the O / P reich turns its nose up at a lot of things, including oil sands, oil shale, coal, nuclear, offshore oil, arctic oil, and almost any other form of energy you can think of.

Solar thermal and geothermal are two likely sources of energy with big futures, which are also sustainable. In 20 or 30 years, they could both be a hugely important part of the energy portfolio. Wind is too unreliable for anyone but airheads to rely on it. Photovoltaics are still waiting for large scale energy storage that is affordable. Even biomass -- the best renewable -- will take decades to scale up to its potential.

Any way you slice it, coal gasification (IGCC is the best form), is a very good bet. You can judge the good players and the poor players by how they react to that technology.

Carbon Dynamics in the Deep Oceans Surprising

Image Source

Cloaked by darkness, microbes of the deep ocean function at high pressures and temperatures to convert simple carbons to more complex hydrocarbons, calcium carbonates, and other carbon compounds. Land-borne science is largely ignorant of important processes occurring over large areas of the planet's seafloor. Current models are based upon uninformed theories, and are worse than worthless. Time for science to get its hands dirty and jump in the muck to find out what is happening.

Miles below us, deep within Earth's crust, life is astir. Organisms there are not the large creatures typically envisioned when thinking of life. Instead, thriving there are microbes, the smallest and oldest form of life on Earth. Although the biological diversity of these deep biosphere microorganisms may surpass that of the more familiar surface biosphere, much about them is still unknown, including the origin of the organic compounds they consume. Arizona State University researchers are using a novel approach that integrates physical organic chemistry with organic geochemistry and biogeochemistry to uncover the source of these organic compounds.

Carbon, the building block of organic matter, is one of the most dynamic elements on the planet; it responds to biological, physical and chemical processes in many ways and on many timescales. Understanding how carbon is formed, where it comes from, and how much of it exists, is important for a more detailed and coherent picture of the global carbon cycle. Yet a complete understanding of how carbon is produced and consumed in the environment still evades researchers because much of what is known is based on processes that act on short time-scales and at Earth's surface.

...Theoretical biogeochemist Everett Shock, a professor in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, leads an interdisciplinary group of researchers who are investigating how this geochemical transformation from recalcitrant matter to usable organic compounds occurs deep in Earth's crust.

"The secret appears to lie in how temperature and pressure affect the reactivity of organic compounds, and, maybe more importantly, how the properties of water change deep in sediments and sedimentary rocks," says Shock. "The transformation in how water behaves is so enormous that we would hardly recognize it as the same stuff that comes out of our kitchen taps."

Most organic reactions at the Earth's surface do not work very well in water; either they need an organism that has evolved the mechanisms to promote organic reactions in water or they need an organic solvent, hexane or benzene, for example. The very deep Earth, below where microbial life has been shown to exist, has lots of rocks but no organic solvents. It does, however, have very hot water.

Hilairy Hartnett, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and ASU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is part of Shock's interdisciplinary group examining the mechanisms of the sub-surface carbon cycle. The team hypothesizes that conditions deep in the Earth might be good for complex organic reactions.

"Evidence suggests that hot water at high pressures - conditions we'd find in the subsurface - is actually a very good solvent for organic reactions," Hartnett says. "It might be possible for these reactions to occur without biology if the conditions are right." She explains, "Biological processes can promote reactions to generate complex organic molecules even at unfavorable low temperatures and pressures - the difference for the deep Earth is the high-temperature and pressure." _PO

This research is long overdue. Politicians are prepared to complete their slaughter of the world economy, based upon obsolete models of climate change. The models are worse than worthless, because they are based upon false assumptions, poorly thought out theories, and missing data. The death of economies is what happens with psychological neoteny in charge of governments, politicised quasi-scientific agencies such as the IPCC, politicised funding agencies and academic departments, and a populace that is too stupid to know when it is being taken for fools.

Much more is happening in the oceans than politicians and politicised scientists are willing to admit. Time for the citizens to inform themselves, before the next narcissist-in-chief finishes the slaughter of the innocents.

A Pictorial Look at Earth's Carbon Cycle

The first image portrays the Earth's carbon cycle without life.

In the geological carbon cycle, carbon moves between rocks and minerals, seawater, and the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reacts with some minerals to form the mineral calcium carbonate (limestone). This mineral is then dissolved by rainwater and carried to the oceans. Once there, it can precipitate out of the ocean water, forming layers of sediment on the sea floor. As the Earth’s plates move, through the processes of plate tectonics, these sediments are subducted underneath the continents. Under the great heat and pressure far below the Earth’s surface, the limestone melts and reacts with other minerals, releasing carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is then re-emitted into the atmosphere through volcanic eruptions. (Illustration by Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC)

The balance between weathering, subduction, and volcanism controls atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over time periods of hundreds of millions of years. The oldest geologic sediments suggest that, before life evolved, the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide may have been one-hundred times that of the present... Source

The next image looks at the much richer carbon cycle that includes many of the contributions of the biospheres of land and sea. We are just beginning to quantify the movement of carbon between the various biospheric compartments, the oceans, the lithosphere, and the atmosphere. At least a third of human-generated CO2 ends up sequestered by either the biosphere of land and sea, or by going into solution in the oceans.Local land biosphere carbon sequestration may involve incorporation into growing plants such as trees, or incorporating into micro-organisms, fungi, and animals in the soil.This graphic looks at global turnover of carbon from various compartments. As you can see, human contributions to atmospheric carbon are quite low compared to natural contributions. As long as the biosphere is allowed to grow, it is capable of sequestering the larger part of human emissions of CO2.This image looks at the photosynthetic activity of the Earth seen from space, during the time period of 18-25 Dec, 2000. Observe that the northern hemisphere displays very low photosynthetic activity compared to the southern hemisphere, at that time of year. You would expect to see a mirror image of photosynthesis north to south when viewing the time period of 18-25 June.

CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is roughly 380 parts per million, or 0.000380 of the atmosphere, or 0.038 per cent of the atmosphere. Since modern measurements of CO2 have begun, CO2 concentrations have steadily increased--although the rate of increase may have temporarily slowed, as measured at Mauna Loa.

These images are meant as a preliminary to a future more detailed look at the carbon cycle, and possible biological feedbacks in the carbon cycle. Significant sequestering of CO2 can be carried out through a number of human interventions, including biochar agriculture, wiser forestry practises, and other ways of making carbon work for us as the valuable resource that it is.

Yet Another Problem with IPCC Climate Models

IPCC GCM climate models have poor results in the real world. Clearly there are many real-world climate forcings that go unaccounted for in IPCC GCMs. Yet another deficiency of IPCC models has come to light recently--biological particles that play a big role in cloud seeding.

"Our motivation was the inability of climate models to reproduce the climate of the supergreenhouse episodes of the Cetaceous and Eocene adequately," said Lee R. Kump, professor of geosciences. "People have tried increasing carbon dioxide in the models to explain the warming, but there are limits to the amounts that can be added because the existing proxies for carbon dioxide do not show such large amounts."

In general, the proxies indicate that the Cretaceious and Eocene atmosphere never exceeded four times the current carbon dioxide level, which is not enough for the models to create supergreenhouse conditions. Some researchers have tried increasing the amount of methane, another greenhouse gas, but there are no proxies for methane. Another approach is to assume that ocean currents changed, but while researchers can insert new current information into the models, they cannot get the models to create these ocean current scenarios.

... According to the researchers, changes in the production of cloud condensation nuclei, the tiny particles around which water condenses to form rain drops and cloud droplets, decreased Earth's cloud cover and increase the sun's warming effect during supergreenhouse events.

Image Source

Normal cloud cover reflects about 30 percent of the sun's energy back into space. Kump and Pollard were looking for a scenario that allowed in 6 to 10 percent more sunlight....When there are large numbers of CCN, there are more cloud droplets and smaller droplets, consequently more cloud cover and brighter clouds. With fewer CCN, there are fewer droplets and they are larger. The limit to droplet size is 16 to 20 microns because the droplets then are heavy enough to fall out as rain.

..."The model reduces cloud cover from about 64 percent to 55 percent which lets in a large amount of direct sunlight," Kump says. "The increased breaks in the clouds, fewer clouds and less reflective clouds produced the amount of warming we were looking for."
__Source

The ad hoc nature of climate research is quite interesting. Try this model. Don't get the result you want? Tweak this parameter. No? Try this . . . Most fascinating. You may notice the veiled attempt to claim that biological seeding of clouds is no longer meaningful in the world of man. But that is yet another unproven assumption to add to a long list of unproven assumptions employed by biased bureaucrats and others with vested interests in maintaining liberal levels of funding for global warming catastrophe research.

We know that cloud feedback is a huge deficiency of IPCC models. Most of the alarmist predictions made by James Hansen and "colleague" Al Gore are based upon unproven assumptions about cloud and water vapour feedbacks.

Soot effects, land use effects, poorly placed ground station monitors providing biased temperature measurements--all of these and more can be added to the failure of the IPCC to properly account for cloud and water vapour feedbacks. The IPCC is clearly not ready for primetime.

Supplementary:

Why Climate Model Agreement is Not That Exciting
Flaccid Peer Reviewing in Climate Science

For the unfortunate people who put their trust in the integrity of the IPCC, the only cure is a harsh dose of a wake-up kick in the rump. If they are not willing to look more closely into the morass of the interlocking inner circle of "climate consensus", they probably deserve the greater shock they will eventually receive.

Update Supplementary Materials 12 April 08:

From ClimateScience blog:

What are climate models?
Climate Models are unfalsifiable

Climate models are not science. They are highly tunable tautological pieces of computer code that too often amount to nothing more than glorified circular jerkular hoopla.

Attention Earthlings: Submit to the First Carbon Reich -- Prepare to be Assimilated

Behind every revolution, there are groups of people waiting in the wings for the smoke to die down. Waiting to take control and run things the way they have always known things should be run. We are waiting in the wings, because we cannot afford to make our move until it is the right time.

David Shearman praises China’s recent ban on plastc shopping bags, expressing special admiration for its authoritarian quality. “The importance of the decision,” he writes, “lies in the fact that China can do it by edict and close the factories.” “Views like this reveal an ugly and ominous aspect of the political frenzy surrounding global warming,” said Dr. Keith Lockitch, a resident fellow of the Ayn Rand Institute.

“While few global-warming activists are willing--as Shearman is--to come out in favor of openly dictatorial policies, the kinds of laws and regulations that activists do call for will hand a comparably frightening degree of control over our lives to politicians and environmentalist bureaucrats. “In one form or another, every minute of our every day involves the emission of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas claimed to be the cause of climate change. Every moment we spend running our computers, lighting our homes, powering countless laborsaving appliances, driving to work or school or anywhere else--we are using industrialscale energy to make our lives better. “But global-warming activists want our use of the fossil fuels that provide the major source of that energy to be strictly controlled by the government and severely curtailed, no matter the harm that causes.___Source

A carbon dictatorship would need to control every aspect of your life. What do you do that does not cause the release of CO2 into the atmosphere? Nothing! Every breath you take releases CO2 into the air. What if--wait for it--what if CO2 were not responsible for the lion's share of climate twists and turns, rises and falls? We must not think about that. More importantly, we must not let anyone else think about that.

What is ... interesting is the 2.2° temperature rise from 7.8° in 1696 to 10.0° in 1732. This is a 2.2° rise is 36 years. By comparison, the world has seen a 0.6° rise over the 100 years of the 20th century. That temperature rise in the early 18th century was four times as large and three times as fast as the rise in the 20th century.
The significance of this is that the world can experience very rapid temperature swings all due to natural causes. The temperature peak of 10° in 1732 wasn’t reached again until 1947.__PDFArchibaldSolarCycle2425

CO2 is indisputably a greenhouse gas. But is it the driver of the climate? Or is CO2 merely the driver of the bandwagon of the religio-political "global warming crusade", CAGW? Again, you must never think about things like that.

Anthropogenic warming is real, it is also minuscule...The effect of carbon dioxide on temperature is logarithmic and thus climate sensitivity decreases with increasing concentration. The first 20 ppm of carbon dioxide has a greater temperature effect than the next 400 ppm. The rate of annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 30 years has averaged 1.7 ppm. From the current level of 380 ppm, it is projected to rise to 420 ppm by 2030.

The projected 40 ppm increase reduces emission from the stratosphere to space from 279.6 watts/m2 to 279.2 watts/m2. Using the temperature response demonstrated by Idso (1998) of 0.1°C per watt/m2, this difference of 0.4 watts/m2 equates to an increase in atmospheric temperature of 0.04°C.

Increasing the carbon dioxide content by a further 200 ppm to 620 ppm, projected by 2150, results in a further 0.16°C increase in atmospheric temperature.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased the temperature of the atmosphere by 0.1°.__PDFArchibald

If CO2 is not driving the climate, what is? Unfortunately, we do not have time to consider that. No, we must hurry to do something, anything, to halt the rise of CO2 emissions coming from industrial countries. (we can ignore the third world, until we get the first world under control)

We must stop the "climate crimes" by oil companies such as BP--which recently moved into tar sands development And we must transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of ill-gotten capitalist gains from the pockets of capitalists into our own pockets, for safe-keeping. Perhaps we will need to bring out the guillotine--no one knows yet.

Certainly we must weed out the professional heretics--fire them, deny them tenure, destroy their reputations, deny them funding, deny them publication. We must then move against the amateur heretics, who are such a thorn in our side.

The point is, we are the only ones who know what must be done, and have the will to do it. We deserve to be in power.

Image and links H/T Tom Nelson

CO2 to Gasoline: More on Green Freedom

More details about the Los Alamos Lab's Green Freedom (pdf) CO2 to Fuels project are revealed at Green Car Congress.

While the chemistry of capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can be straightforward (CO2 is readily absorbed into a potassium carbonate solution where it forms bicarbonate ions), the challenge in developing a practical system lies in the large volumes of air that would need to be processed to capture sufficient amounts of CO2 for useful application. Furthermore, according to the Los Alamos team, the conventional processing can only capture 73% of the carbon dioxide from the processed air on a single pass.

By contrast, Green Freedom uses a newly-developed electrolytic stripping process that can capture production quantities of air; capture more than 95% of the carbon dioxide on a single pass; and produces hydrogen as a byproduct that reduces supplemental hydrogen production requirements by 33%.

Read the full PDF report here.

The bottom line? The price of gasoline at the pump would need to be US $4.60 per gallon for the process to be profitable. The calculation assumes the incorporation of a nuclear reactor to provide electricity for the process.

Update: Snake Oil Baron was kind enough to provide the link to this UCLA research on CO2 trapping using zeolidic imidozolate frameworks (ZIFs).

"For each liter of ZIF, you can hold 83 liters of carbon dioxide," Banerjee said.... Zeolites are stable, porous minerals made of aluminum, silicon and oxygen that are employed in petroleum refining and are used in detergents and other products. Yaghi's group has succeeded in replacing what would have been aluminum or silicon with metal ions like zinc and cobalt, and the bridging oxygen with imidazolate to yield ZIF materials, whose structures can now be designed in functionality and metrics. ___Physorg

Very intriguing indeed. Thanks Baron!

When we burn fossil fuels and utilise biomass and biofuels, we are taking advantage of nature's ability to turn CO2 into fuel. What scientists at Los Alamos, Sandia, ELCAT, etc are trying to do is to go cleanly from CO2 to gasoline or diesel, without involving life forms.

As better CO2 air capture methods are developed, the economics of CO2-to-gasoline should improve. No one wants to pay $4.60 per gallon at the pump, but when that becomes the norm, it would be nice to know that the gasoline you are burning was made locally, out of thin air.

Sun and Ocean Driving Climate, Not CO2

The numbers tell an interesting tale about climate, CO2, the sun, and ocean oscillations. Look at the strength of correlation between temperature records and the three variables below.Source Icecap via NCMedia

Atmospheric CO2 levels have been rising over the past century, and show no sign of slowing down. The apparent association between rising CO2 levels and rising surface temperatures has fueled an apocalyptic media feeding frenzy over the past decade and a half--carrying many politicians and opportunists along with a gullible public. A more sober analysis appears to indicate that other factors may be much more important than the low level CO2 effect.

Much of the rain and snow we are having right now is the result of a La Nina which may be an early indicator that the Pacific has shifted to a cool phase. This shift will bring us back to the weather we had between the 1940 and 1970s. It was a lot colder and wet in the winter and spring. I remember one year when it seemed to rain from December to May. [arid California foothills]

You can down load the whole analysis here (pdf).

NevadaCounty Media Watch
H/T Tom Nelson

Note: AMO in the graph above stands for Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. PDO stands for Pacific Decadal Oscillation. USHCN stands for United States Historical Climatology Network, i.e. ground station temperature record.

More: Oceans affect the world's climate in many ways. Oceans store enormous amounts of solar heat. The ocean is also a huge carbon sink by multiple means. Scientists are learning more all the time about the ability of ocean micro-organisms to use the sun's energy together with atmospheric CO2 to contain and sequester a monstrous amount of carbon.

As the oceans warm from solar heating, they release dissolved CO2 into the atmosphere. This is responsible for most of the rise in atmospheric CO2 being observed in the atmosphere. As the solar cycles move into longer, weaker cycles, that effect will diminish. There is necessarily a lag time of many decades to centuries between the solar cycles and the changes in ocean-CO2 balance.

The simplistic GCMs that focus on CO2 to the exclusion of the truly important climate forcings, have the effect of dumbing down the public in science, and diverting trillions of dollars to non-productive (anti-productive) enterprises. Humans could never reach the next level that way.

Update: Anthony Watts has an excellent posting explaining all the information above over at Watts Up With That. H/T Tom Nelson