Carbon is to return to Carbon

Carbon emission is a matter of great concern to all the countries around the world due to the global warming and climate change. After the Paris talks many countries are genuinely trying to reduce their emissions either by switching over to renewable energy or cutting down their emissions by reducing their Carbon footprint. In their desperate measure to reduce Carbon emissions some countries like Canada are trying to accelerate carbon emission reduction by promoting innovation technologies with millions of dollars of grant money. Recent fires in the state of Alberta, rich in oil sand deposits have opened the eyes of the world to witness how a disaster can unfold so quickly and thousands of people to be evacuated in a short notice. Many fled their homes leaving behind their valuables and memories. It was one of the worst fire disasters in recent memory. Canada especially the state of Alberta is now all the more determined to avert such incidents in the future but also equally determined to reduce their Carbon emissions. The fire is due to dry conditions due to global warming and accelerated by oil sands. It is a perfect recipe for a disaster. Many countries have switched over from coal to natural gas as a cleaner fuel to reduce their Carbon emission. Natural gas emits less CO2 compared to coal. But does it help combat global warming? One has to compare the two different fuels and their combustion by the following reactions: C + O2 ----> CO2 and CH4 + 2O2 -------> CO2 + 2H2O Combustion of coal requires less Oxygen (air) when compared to combustion of natural gas which requires twice the volume of Oxygen (air). Coal combustion emits oxides of Nitrogen and Sulphur apart from CO2 and a minor quantity of water vapour and particulate matters. Combustion of natural gas releases twice the volume of water vapour apart from oxides of Nitrogen and sulphur. Recent findings by NASA confirms that water vapour is the major greenhouse gas apart from CO2 that is responsible for warming globe and the climate change. Therefore, natural gas does not help combating global warming and climate change. The following excerpts from NASA highlights this fact: Water Vapour Confirmed as Major Player in Climate Change Credit: NASA The distribution of atmospheric water vapour, a significant greenhouse gas, varies across the globe. During the summer and fall of 2005, this visualization shows that most vapour collects at tropical latitudes, particularly over south Asia, where monsoon thunderstorms swept the gas some 2 miles above the land. Water vapour is known to be Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change. Andrew Dressler and colleagues from Texas A&M University in College Station confirmed that the heat-amplifying effect of water vapour is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. With new observations, the scientists confirmed experimentally what existing climate models had anticipated theoretically. The research team used novel data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to measure precisely the humidity throughout the lowest 10 miles of the atmosphere. That information was combined with global observations of shifts in temperature, allowing researchers to build a comprehensive picture of the interplay between water vapour, carbon dioxide, and other atmosphere-warming gases. The NASA-funded research was published recently in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters. AIRS is the first instrument to distinguish differences in the amount of water vapour at all altitudes within the troposphere. Using data from AIRS, the team observed how atmospheric water vapour reacted to shifts in surface temperatures between 2003 and 2008. By determining how humidity changed with surface temperature, the team could compute the average global strength of the water vapour feedback. “This new data set shows that as surface temperature increases, so does atmospheric humidity,” Dressler said. “Dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere makes the atmosphere more humid. And since water vapour is itself a greenhouse gas, the increase in humidity amplifies the warming from carbon dioxide." Specifically, the team found that if Earth warms 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, the associated increase in water vapour will trap an extra 2 Watts of energy per square meter (about 11

square feet) "That number may not sound like much, but add up all of that energy over the entire Earth surface and you find that water vapour is trapping a lot of energy," Dressler said. "We now think the water vapour feedback is extraordinarily strong, capable of doubling the warming due to carbon dioxide alone." Because the new precise observations agree with existing assessments of water vapour’s impact, researchers are more confident than ever in model predictions that Earth's leading greenhouse gas will contribute to a temperature rise of a few degrees by the end of the century. The amount water vapour released by burning natural gas is twice the volume of natural gas burnt. A plant using 10,000 m3/day natural gas can release 20,000m3/day water vapour that can be recovered. In fact, if the Gulf countries can recover water from exhaust of their gas fired power plants they may not require any water by desalination of seawater at all. Current consumption of natural gas world-wide exceeds 3.5 trillion cubic meters which roughly translates to 7 trillion cubic meters of water vapour into the atmosphere. Such a large volume has a potential to change our climate system.What goes up as water vapour has to condense into water and come down.It has a potential to flood many parts of the world and we are already witnessing flash flooding more frequently.The economic loss by such natural disasters may run into several hundreds of billion dollars in future.It is absoluetly critical that human induced emissions are curtailed with great urgency. It is interesting to examine how the state of Alberta is trying to reduce their carbon emissions by promoting innovative technologies. Majority of the proposals are supposed to convert CO2 emissions into “a useful product” so that the emission can be curtailed or reduced. A quick glance on the list of the proposals they have funded so far indicates they will convert CO2 into an industrial chemical such as Methanol or a Fertilizer such as Urea or alkaline chemicals such as bicarbonates and calcium carbonates etc. Can they really solve the problem of carbon emissions by turning them into useful products? The answer is most likely no. It will help capture CO2 at Alberta but it will be released somewhere else where the end products are used. It will simply shift the problems of Carbon emission from Alberta into some other region of the world. For example, Urea synthesised from captured CO2 will again be released into the atmosphere when Urea is used by farmers. An enzyme in the soil will release the CO2 from Urea into the atmosphere. The only real solution is to convert captured CO2 back into a fuel such as SNG (synthetic natural gas) so that it can be recycled into the power plant. By this way the CO2 emission will be converted into solid Carbon. One need not bury CO2 under the ground or emit it into the atmosphere but constantly recycle into SNG so that power plant can generate power continuously without emitting any greenhouse emissions. To do this we need Hydrogen. At present Hydrogen is produced commercially from natural gas but with carbon emission. Other methods of producing Hydrogen without carbon emissions are expensive. But Hydrogen can be generated from natural gas without Carbon emission and it can be used to convert captured CO2 from power plants into SNG. In other words, two greenhouse gases namely CO2 and methane (CH4) will be reacted to generate commercially valuable Carbon nanotube as a main product as shown below. This high temperature reaction can generate superheated steam that can generate power while a valuable solid Carbon is regenerated. Such a process is still in a developmental stage but has a potential to become a commercial reality in the near future. CH4 + CO2 ------------> 2C + 2 H2O In fact, the carbon emission is converted back into a solid Carbon. The Carbon is to return to Carbon to avoid GHG emission (CO2, N2O, NO2 and H2O) that is changing our climate.

Desalination plants contribute to climate change

There is a growing evidence that shows increasing salinity of seawater effects the “water cycle” resulting in climate change. Apart from the natural cycle, the highly saline brine discharged from man-made “desalination” plants around the world also contributes to the increasing salinity of seawater. There are only few desalination plants suppliers world-wide who build such large scale desalination plants and they use only decades old desalination technologies. They recover 35% of fresh water and discharge 65% highly concentrated, toxic effluent back into the sea. Their main focus of innovation is to reduce the energy consumption because it is an energy intensive process. Such energy comes mainly from fossil fuels. The result is unabated Carbon emission, toxic brine discharge into the ocean, warm saline water discharge into the ocean from “once through cooling towers” from co-located power and desalination plants.Currently about 5000 million cubic meters of fresh water is generated per year from seawater desalination plants around the world; this capacity is expected to increase to 9000 million cubic meter per year by 2030.The brine outfall from desalination plants will amount to a staggering 30 billion cubic meters/yr. Such a huge volume of saline water with salinity ranging 70,000 ppm up to 95,000 ppm will certainly alter the water chemistry of the ocean. Desalination plant suppliers are not interested in “innovation” that can recover fresh water without “polluting” the sea. They rather justify using “environmental impact study” which invariably concludes there is absolutely no impact on environment and any toxic discharge into the sea is “harmless”. This practice is going on for decades without any check. Dwindling fish population world–wide is a direct impact of such discharge. Financial institutions such as world bank, Asian development bank etc are willingly finance such projects without questioning such technologies and their impact on marine environment. Their focus is only “return on investment”–the only criteria that is required for funding and not the “cost and benefit analysis”. A detailed analysis will reveal “handful of rich and powerful” Governments and individuals can influence the world’s climate intentionally or unintentionally. The same “rich and powerful” can shun any innovations “that might threaten their business model” and “ nip such innovations or inventions at their bud” because they simply do not believe in Research and Development or unwilling to direct their “cash flow” into R&D because they do not want any threat for their existing technologies. There are very few financial professionals who can think “outside the box” or predict their financial impact due to innovative technologies of the future. Their financial decisions reflect the sentiments of the financial institutions, namely “the return on investment”. “When you read about human-induced climate change it's often about melting glaciers and sea ice, increasing frequency of heat waves and powerful storms. Occasionally you'll hear about the acidification of the oceans too. What you don't often hear about is the saltiness of the seas. But according to a new piece of research just published inGeophysical Research Letters that is changing too. The saltiness, or salinity, of the oceans is controlled by how much water is entering the oceans from rivers and rain versus how much is evaporating, known as 'The Water Cycle'. The more sunshine and heat there is, the more water can evaporate, leaving the salts behind in higher concentrations in some places. Over time, those changes spread out as water moves, changing the salinity profiles of the oceans. Oceanographers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory fingerprinted salinity changes from 1955 to 2004 from 60 degrees south latitude to 60 degrees north latitude and down to the depth of 700 meters in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. They found salinity changes that matched what they expected from such natural changes as El Niño or volcanic eruptions (the latter can lower evaporation by shading and cooling the atmosphere). Next the ocean data was compared to 11,000 years of ocean data generated by simulations from 20 of the latest global climate models. When they did that they found that the changes seen in the oceans matched those that would be expected from human forcing of the climate. When they combined temperature changes with the salinity, the human imprint is even clearer, they reported. "These results add to the evidence that human forcing of the climate is already taking place, and already changing the climate in ways that will have a profound impact on people throughout the world in coming decades," the oceanographers conclude.” (Ref: Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News) SALINITY Although everyone knows that seawater is salty, few know that even small variations in ocean surface salinity (i.e., concentration of dissolved salts) can have dramatic effects on the water cycle and ocean circulation. Throughout Earth's history, certain processes have served to make the ocean salty. The weathering of rocks delivers minerals, including salt, into the ocean. Evaporation of ocean water and formation of sea ice both increase the salinity of the ocean. However these "salinity raising" factors are continually counterbalanced by processes that decrease salinity such as the continuous input of fresh water from rivers, precipitation of rain and snow, and melting of ice. SALINITY & THE WATER CYCLE Understanding why the sea is salty begins with knowing how water cycles among the ocean's physical states: liquid, vapor, and ice. As a liquid, water dissolves rocks and sediments and reacts with emissions from volcanoes and hydrothermal vents. This creates a complex solution of mineral salts in our ocean basins. Conversely, in other states such as vapor and ice, water and salt are incompatible: water vapor and ice are essentially salt free. Since 86% of global evaporation and 78% of global precipitation occur over the ocean, ocean surface salinity is the key variable for understanding how fresh water input and output affects ocean dynamics. By tracking ocean surface salinity we can directly monitor variations in the water cycle: land runoff, sea ice freezing and melting, and evaporation and precipitation over the oceans. SALINITY, OCEAN CIRCULATION & CLIMATE Surface winds drive currents in the upper ocean. Deep below the surface, however, ocean circulation is primarily driven by changes in seawater density, which is determined by salinity and temperature. In some regions such as the North Atlantic near Greenland, cooled high-salinity surface waters can become dense enough to sink to great depths. The 'Global Conveyor Belt' visualization (below) shows a simplified model of how this type of circulation would work as an interconnected system. The ocean stores more heat in the uppermost three (3) meters than the entire atmosphere. Thus density-controlled circulation is key to transporting heat in the ocean and maintaining Earth's climate. Excess heat associated with the increase in global temperature during the last century is being absorbed and moved by the ocean. In addition, studies suggest that seawater is becoming fresher in high latitudes and tropical areas dominated by rain, while in sub-tropical high evaporation regions, waters are getting saltier. Such changes in the water cycle could significantly impact not only ocean circulation but also the climate in which we live." (Ref: NASA earth science) The four main forces that control the earth’s climate are “Sea, Sun, Moon and earth’s rotation and interference by human beings will alter the equilibrium of the system. In order to maintain its equilibrium, Nature is forced to change the climate unpredictably with devastating effects. We cannot underestimate the pollution caused by human beings because they are capable of altering the Nature’s equilibrium over a period of time no matter how “miniscule” (parts per millions or billions) the pollution may be. Any future investment on large scale infrastructures should take into account the “human induced climate change” in their model and projections, failing which “climate change” will prove them wrong and the consequences will be dire. Reference : Environmental Impacts of Seawater Desalination: Arabian Gulf Case Study Mohamed A. Dawoud1 and Mohamed M. Al Mulla 1 Water Resources Department, Environment Agency, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates 2.Ministry of Environment and Water, Dubai, United Arab Emirates