EPA issues RFP for advanced integrated modeling and assessment of GHGs and air pollutants
19 November 2010
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is soliciting proposals to advance comprehensive, integrated modeling and assessment of multiple greenhouse gases (GHGs) and air pollutants, and to also enhance understanding of climate change impacts and their economic implications. EPA estimates total program funding of $2 million.
Applicants’ proposals must demonstrate enhanced understanding of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), climate change impacts, and economic valuation techniques. The RFP will not fund the development of new IAMs. Proposals must utilize an existing IAM that combines both the socio-economic and earth system (atmosphere, land, and ocean) components of climate change at the global and national levels. Specifically, applicants must describe the extent to which the proposed IAM includes the following features, and how their proposal intends to enhance these features:
Comprehensive, integrated modeling of emissions of multiple GHGs [i.e., carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)] and air pollutants, including short lived climate forcers (e.g., black carbon and organic carbon).
Detailed and rigorous representation of multiple domestic climate change impacts. These include, but are not limited to, human health (i.e., air quality and direct temperature effects), sea level rise, energy demand, natural ecosystems, managed land productivity (i.e., agriculture and forestry) and water resources. EPA is interested in IAMs that comprehensively represent multiple impact sectors, both in the US and globally, and incorporate relevant feedbacks (cause-and-effect chains between climate variables and resulting impacts) in each sector and interactions across sectors and regions.
Ability to generate both bio-physical and economic valuation metrics of the risks and impacts of climate change. EPA is interested in metrics that can operate on both large and small scales (from global to regional to local), and that provide useful information on the benefits of mitigation (i.e., avoided climate change and associated risks on a nonmarginal scale).
Applicants must also describe the capacity of the proposed IAM to do the following, and how their proposal intends to advance current modeling and assessment capabilities in these areas:
Characterize the changes in risk (expressed as probabilities) of incremental reductions in anthropogenic GHG emissions (or concentrations) with respect to temperature, sea level, and/or other climate metrics. For example, what is the change in likelihood of crossing a given global or US temperature target with a ± 10 parts per million (ppm) change from business-as-usual or other emissions/concentration scenario?
Represent changes in precipitation patterns, evapotranspiration, and water supply and demand, including climate impacts on water resources and subsequent impacts from water on other systems/sectors.
Represent land-use change (e.g., shifts between agriculture and forestry uses).
Represent sea level rise uncertainty in the next 100 years, including thermal expansion, glacial melt, and Antarctic/Greenland melt; and quantification of sea level rise damages and benefits of avoided sea level rise.
Characterize and if possible, quantify the benefits of reducing short-lived forcing gas and aerosol emissions on the rate and magnitude of climate change.
Submissions must be in by 7 January 2011.
Resources
The earth has been hotter and the earth has been cooler and the earth has had much more CO2 in the air. But the best thing for the earth is to reduce the number of homosapien inhabitants some of whom may be too misinformed as to wait by the sea coast for the water to rise above their noses. The answer for greenhouse gas reduction by humans is to use nuclear power where ever coal or gas or oil or wood or other biomass is now being used. Biomass droped into an unused salt cavern instead of being burned will reduce the CO2 in the air. The energy required to collect, modify and use it makes it less than carbon neutral. The production of biomass also involves natural processes that release CO2.
Nature is releasing about 30 times more CO2 than humans if humans are not considered part of nature. If humans are part of nature, the CO2 release and global warming is natural and should not be stopped or hindered.
The actual amount of fission products produced by nuclear reactors every year is small enough to fit into perhaps a single shipping container. Do the arithmetic yourself. (The about a million pounds of fission products produced by all nuclear reactors every year would fit in a cube 4 meters on a side, and not all of this is radioactive. A million pounds of uranium were fissioned. But only less than seven times this amount would be required to produce all of the electricity of the world.) One pound of uranium or thorium or plutonium produces the equivalent energy of 3000000 pounds of coal or about 10000000 kilowatt-hours of heat energy which now is being converted into about 2500000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. Fission products have about the average density of iron, so it takes about 16 pounds to fill a liter. Many of the non radio active elements can be removed from fission products and all of the uranium and transuranic elements can be put through reactors again and again until they fission.
K40 has a half life of 1300000000 years, so it is radioactive forever, but every live thing, plant or animal, has alway contained and tolerated it because of the repair mechanisms in the body which are far more active because of oxygen and the sun anyway as they are for other external source of damage and chemicals from bacteria. Besides K40 people naturally have uranium and other radioactive elements in their body and perhaps they are responsible for life as we know it. Perhaps the repair mechanisms that were necessary for protection from the built in radio-active potassium prepared live things for other attacks. There are some live things that actually use nuclear radiation for energy, but many more that are far more resistant to it than humans are.
The very high energy X-ray like gamma rays that come from the K40 in our bodies and all other live things, are much more powerful than that from uranium, and there are about 4000 of them every second. Imagine how few of them you would get from a reactor a mile away by comparison. Then imaging how far many more you get from the potassium in the ground and the rays from space when you get upset about the "massive" amount of nuclear waste being generated by nuclear power plants. The entire earth almost is nuclear waste from exploded stars and some of it like K40 and uranium remains radioactive but it is dispersed enough that our bodies can repair the damage as each cell is doing thousands of times a day for other reasons. We are always ingesting radioactive materials from our food in addition to the potassium, so there is no imperative need to keep every radioactive atom from reactors away from humans. Just dilute them enough so that there will never be too many.
There is a false belief that any radioactivity is to much because people do not know that they and all life have always had built in radioactivity and that there is much more in the natural world. If you are afraid of the radioactivity from nuclear reactors or reactor waste do not fly in airplanes or live at high elevations.
If all "waste" materials from nuclear reactors were mixed uniformly with a hundred times the amount of clay and then placed at the bottom of the ocean that would be the most money and effort needed to provide far more than enough protection for humans and other life and any more money should be spent on rehydration packets for treating patients instead or for mosquito nets.
..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 19 November 2010 at 01:19 PM
The already built and in active service WIPP repository for radioactive materials could easily and safely hide a cube four meters on a side every year and a hundred times as much.
But it is far more expensive than is needed since people have always received natural radioactivity from many other sources than they could get from the limited amounts of fission products compared to the always existing potassium and uranium in the soil. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 19 November 2010 at 01:28 PM