Any idea why hydro fell? Was it decommissioning, higher downtime for service, weather, or some (what?!) combination?

OK gonna play devils advocate here. The numbers are interesting, but how do they measure this. Also, whats to say that a neighboring country like Canada or Mexico can't contribute to its neighbors numbers. Forgive me for asking, but I do not understand how this is measured, and how Mexico, Canada, or, for that matter, China's, emissions cannot be regarded. I am all for being educated on this.

The chart would be far more useful demonstrating actual energy use trends, instead of residual outputs. EIA should rethink how it represents information.

This is just a guess, but I suspect the reduced hydropower is GW related. Warmer weather means less snow collecting in the winter and therefore less runoff in the summer to drive hydroelectric plants.

Mark A;

Sooner or latter, each country will have to include all the CO2/GHG created by/for their resisdents, including all the CO2 created to produce the goods and services imported minus those
exported. Since USA has a very very large trade deficit, the total GHG is in reality much larger than the current method.

Lou:

Yes, hydro production is normally directly proportional to the water available, unless you have a large energy surplus and you have to let water run down without using it, which is not the case in USA.

Developed countries collect pretty good data on how much of each type of fossil fuel is used each year. Since the average carbon content of each type is well known it's straightforward to calculate how much CO2 was produced.

Hydro power requires not merely flowing water but, as much as possible, a constant rate of flowing water. For example if all of the annual rain in a watershed falls in one month most of it will have to flow unused over or around the dams. Global warming thus can hurt hydro power production not only by reducing precipitation but also by increasing evaporation from reservoirs and by making precipitation less consistent during the year.

"Since USA has a very very large trade deficit, the total GHG is in reality much larger than the current method."

Shhhh! Third world emissions don't count towards GW. As per Al Gore and Kyoto. This summer the world is going to get a good look at China's air. It's about as bad as 1970 LA.

The headline although accurate is misleading. If you compare apples, 2007 was both hotter and colder than 2006 and GDP was 2.2 higher. For the equivalent amount of output the CO2 emissions were reduced by .6%.

Lou, the reduction in Hydro was caused by the water war between Georgia and Tennessee and the local drought. The root of the problem is that Atlanta has outgrown its water supply, not GW. Despite Georgia having one of the largest coastlines in the country, they apparently do not know the term Desalinization. The public planning can only be described as abyszmal.

"each country will have to include all the CO2/GHG created by/for their resisdents..."

Will this include the amount of water vapor each country is responsible for? Since 70% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, countries like Canada with its vast freshwater resources would be huge GHG emitters. And while we're at the commerce - shouldn't there be a water vapor cap n' trade scheme put in place? That way desert countries like Saudi will be able to sell off their abundant vapor credits to offender nations like Canada!

"Will this include the amount of water vapor each country is responsible for? Since 70% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor," sulleny

Water vapor does not accumulate in the atmosphere, it condenses out as rain. Fossil carbon, on the other hand, is accumulating at an accelerating rate of 2.14 ppm (by volume) per year or about 2 billion tons per year-carbon. The problem is that fossil carbon is being oxidized and then dumped into the atmosphere, a global commons. Commons...that means we share it, it is not your dump.

Atlanta is not only hundreds of miles from the coast, it is also a thousand feet uphill. I don't even want to think about the financial and environmental costs of such a scheme.

BJ,

One of the major conceits of the AGW proponents is the very subject that you raise.

In order to give CO2 some power to warm, it was necessary to posit somehow that CO2 doesn't wash out of the atmosphere, despite the proponderance of the scientific evidence that it does exactly that.

In order to dream up a reason for extended CO2 life endurance in the atmosphere, the AGW proponents had to violate a Law of empirical Chemistry called Henry's Law.

Henry's Law provides a method to calculate the solubility of any gas-liquid interface.

They dreamed up a special case of one way buffer functions between the atmosphere and the Oceans that only CO2 obeys, out of whole cloth. They sold that scheme to the IPCC progenitors 25 or more years ago, even though there is lots of scientific evidence that it is a Crock.

The IPCC said as much in AR4. The IPCC Nobel winners, said you extended life CO2 advocates had better produce some evidence that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for longer than Henry's Law of Gases predicts. As lots and lLots and even More lLots of scientific experiments keep affirming. You had better show some predicted side effects of the extended CO2 life too, that you can't seem to find.

The IPCC says they will dump the extended CO2 atmospheric residency in their next report AR5, even as they used it in AR4 calculations, (for the last time). They merely are giving the AGW people some more time to hang themselves, since these residency proponents have been searching, in vain, for any evidential support to their ideas for 30 years.

That change reduces CO2 warming power in direct proportion to the ratio of residencies, especially against widely exagerrated and outlandish claims of the AGW proponents. Henry' Law and Carbon 14 measurements from the atmospheric nuclear bomb tests, as well as isotopic comparisons of atmosphere and sea water solubility measurements all say CO2 is resident for 5.7 years as genuinely settled Science successfully predicts for thousands and thousands of other compounds.

And not the 200-300 years the fabulists propound in their "settled" science.

CO2 imputed warming power declines in direct proportion to the ratio o ftime CO2 has to work or 5.7/300 or by 98%! If the IPCC in AR4 says temperatures could rise by 3 degrees in a 100 years now, it would take almost 50 times as long or 5000 years, a thousand years longer than the Pyramids have existed to get there.

Ever wonder why its been cooling for the past decade in response to a modestly declining solar output? Or why the Profit of Warming bought a sea-level Mansion that is supposed to be 30 feet under water in his lifetime, by his own prophecies.

This in spite of the (temporary)monotonically rising CO2 levels from a trace of virtually nothing, to a little more than next to nothing.

The petroleum era is drawing to a close within a ferw decades, and everyone with half a brain can see it. The last great market for Oil disappears when autos are electrified; and the electric generation goes away from fossil fuels; even as electric generation has already migrated away from petroleum.

Stan,
Please refrain from mentioning Al Gore in all your rebuttals of climate change. Climate change science was around long before Gore made his movie and many many respected scientists came to agreement on the science of climate change. Gore simply made the general public more aware of the issue.

Are you saying that the ocean is an inexhaustable sink of carbon? When you add the worlds massive fossil carbon releases (especially as China and India grow) to the deforestation and soil carbon losses that began long ago and continues as the planet gets more and more over-populated, it seems logical to most people that the carbon sinks cannot merely absorb all this extra carbon. As for fossil fuel use declining due to electrification of transport- please remind me what the US, China and India will be doing to generate electricity- burning COAL. Coal remains the cheapest and dirtiest method to produce electricity, so guess what for every kWh produce one more tonne of carbon will be released (that was previously stored underground). If cars become electrified, then all of that petroleum energy demand has to come from somewhere and our electricity grids will need to increase in capacity, which at present is a daunting task for any low carbon technology to fill that void.

I am all for questioning the issue of climate change and ensuring that the science is correct, but at some point I think a simple common sense analysis of the fluxes of CO2 and the concept of the enhanced greenhouse effect should really make it clear to people that we are screwing up our planet.

I give you the example of the ozone layer depletion- if mankind succeeded in destroying a massive hole in the ozone layer in about 30-50 years, then it seems with our fossil energy dependent society and with increasing population (every Indian and Chinese person will strive for the same standard of energy intense living that America enjoys) that carbon releases can in fact cause a global crisis. We fixed the ozone layer problem by responding fairly quickly with the Montreal Accord, pretending climate change doesn't exist could really put us into a world of hurt by ignoring common sense.

Henry's law does not imply that an infinite amount of CO2 can be dissolved into the ocean.

Stan,
Please do your homework, in less than 5 minutes of research wikipedia proved you wrong ( I admit wiki isn't the best source, but none the less it does specifically state the irrelevance of your claim regarding Henry's law as shown below).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry's_law

"It (Henry's Law) also only applies for solutions where the solvent does not react chemically with the gas being dissolved. A common example of a gas that does react with the solvent is carbon dioxide, which rapidly forms hydrated carbon dioxide and then carbonic acid (H2CO3) with water."

Nice try Stan. Also the equilibrium between CO2 in its gaseous and aqueous forms will also be rate limiting for the dissolution of CO2 from the atmosphere so the ocean is not going to be an infinite sink of carbon, rather equilibrium will be reached.

Also changing the density of ocean currents through carbonate addition (ie the equilibrium between CO2, bicarbonate and carbonic acid) could well cause a change in the Gulf Stream and severely impact north western Europe

Matthew

My water comes from the Colorado, 300 miles away with a rise of almost a mile. SRP is one of the most enviro-freindly water and power systems in the country. Getting water to Atlanta would be a piece of cake compared to getting it to the AZ high country. Like I said, poor planning.

Stan:
I didn't say anything about AWG, the temperature of the air, climate, or the weather in Kansas City. What I said was...if you insist on dumping fossil carbon into the atmosphere then pay your tipping fee. Just like you do at the dump. According to the Stern Report the social and environmental cost is about $85 per ton of CO2, or $183 per ton of carbon. About a forth of the carbon comes from transportation (oil), about a forth from electrical generation (coal) and about a forth from the destruction of tropical rainforests and peat lands (trees/peat). The natural systems that have been able to absorb most, but not all, of the carbon are now showing signs of having reached their limits as evidenced by the decrease in ocean pH of .22 units...a fact that no one argues with. As most who read this blog are aware, pH is an exponential function and a drop of .22 units is very alarming. Especially since the ocean's ability to absorb more carbon is weakening.

Henry's Law and other attempts at obfuscation aside, direct observation, namely of the rate of increase of atmospheric CO2, shows that we now exceed the absorption capacity of existing CO2 sinks by roughly 10 billion tonnes per year.

The indirect costs of carbon may exceed $150 per tonne but a tax about $50 per tonne of fossil carbon would be more than enough to tip the direct costs firmly in favor of non-fossil alternatives (nuclear, wind, and Solar electricity, and artificial vehicle fuels made from non-fossil carbon sources). Thus the total net economic benefit of a carbon tax is greater than 2:1.

BJ,

One of the major conceits of the AGW proponents is the very subject that you raise.

In order to give CO2 some power to warm, it was necessary to posit somehow that CO2 doesn't wash out of the atmosphere, despite the proponderance of the scientific evidence that it does exactly that.

In order to dream up a reason for extended CO2 life endurance in the atmosphere, the AGW proponents had to violate a Law of empirical Chemistry called Henry's Law.

Henry's Law provides a method to calculate the solubility of any gas-liquid interface.

They dreamed up a special case of one way buffer functions between the atmosphere and the Oceans that only CO2 obeys, out of whole cloth. They sold that scheme to the IPCC progenitors 25 or more years ago, even though there is lots of scientific evidence that it is a Crock.

The IPCC said as much in AR4. The IPCC Nobel winners, said you extended life CO2 advocates had better produce some evidence that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for longer than Henry's Law of Gases predicts. As lots and lLots and even More lLots of scientific experiments keep affirming. You had better show some predicted side effects of the extended CO2 life too, that you can't seem to find.

The IPCC says they will dump the extended CO2 atmospheric residency in their next report AR5, even as they used it in AR4 calculations, (for the last time). They merely are giving the AGW people some more time to hang themselves, since these residency proponents have been searching, in vain, for any evidential support to their ideas for 30 years.

That change reduces CO2 warming power in direct proportion to the ratio of residencies, especially against widely exagerrated and outlandish claims of the AGW proponents. Henry' Law and Carbon 14 measurements from the atmospheric nuclear bomb tests, as well as isotopic comparisons of atmosphere and sea water solubility measurements all say CO2 is resident for 5.7 years as genuinely settled Science successfully predicts for thousands and thousands of other compounds.

And not the 200-300 years the fabulists propound in their "settled" science.

CO2 imputed warming power declines in direct proportion to the ratio o ftime CO2 has to work or 5.7/300 or by 98%! If the IPCC in AR4 says temperatures could rise by 3 degrees in a 100 years now, it would take almost 50 times as long or 5000 years, a thousand years longer than the Pyramids have existed to get there.

Ever wonder why its been cooling for the past decade in response to a modestly declining solar output? Or why the Profit of Warming bought a sea-level Mansion that is supposed to be 30 feet under water in his lifetime, by his own prophecies.

This in spite of the (temporary)monotonically rising CO2 levels from a trace of virtually nothing, to a little more than next to nothing.

The petroleum era is drawing to a close within a ferw decades, and everyone with half a brain can see it. The last great market for Oil disappears when autos are electrified; and the electric generation goes away from fossil fuels; even as electric generation has already migrated away from petroleum.

BJ:

"Water vapor does not accumulate in the atmosphere, it condenses out as rain."

I wasn't aware that the evaporation cycle was somehow limited to a discontinuous event. Warmer air evaporates ground water forming water vapor and clouds that cause minimally 70% (or more due to feedback) of the greenhouse effect. Note that the forcing of cloud solar reflectivity has not been well adopted into climate models and is largely unaccounted for. Given the 2.14ppm/annum may represent some 10% of the greenhouse effect - should we NOT address the problem with water vapor?

BJ:

"According to the Stern Report the social and environmental cost is about $85 per ton of CO2, or $183 per ton of carbon."

Your reliance on Stern for realistic economic figures is problematic. Stern, not a climate scientist, utilizes only worst case economic scenarios taken from the A2 storyline of AR3 - which by now is ancient history.

"In using only the worst case scenarios and very specific one-sided literature, Stern develops a highly pessimistic outlook for future climate changes and thus builds the Review on a very weak scientific basis. In addition, the predictions of the Report cover two centuries which implies a huge amount of scientific uncertainty in both climate and economic developments."
Byatt, Sir Ian et al. (2006); World Economics, October-December p 165-232.

A good review of Stern and the tendency of many AGW fanatics to catastrophize can be found at University of Stockholm Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology:

http://www.atlantic-community.org/app/webroot/files/articlepdf/
MM_Stern%20Report%20revised%20%20AI.pdf

"Exaggeration leads the coalition of disbelief." Sumzage

Speaking of CO2 emissions, get a load of this:

Simple, Low-cost Carbon Filter Removes 90 Percent Of Carbon Dioxide From Smokestack Gases

Since USA has a very very large trade deficit, the total GHG is in reality much larger than the current method.

Almost all of hte US trade deficit is due to oil imports. That oil is already counted in our CO2 stats.

Nice work Stan, your rebuttal consisted of copying what you had already written and pasting it again. Apparently you are fresh out of new ideas once someone has disproven your shoddy logic.

doggydog:

If by almost all, you mean almost half, then sure.

In March 2008 the US trade deficit was $60 billion
In March 2008 the US imported 9.385 million barrels per day, roughly equal to $30 billion

Half the deficit is oil. The other half? Crap we don't need to be happy but continue to buy from China -- stimulating Chinese demand for oil driving up our trade deficit further. Go figure.