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Climate Change and the Green House Gas Effect (GHG) Explained

The now familiar term “green house gas effect” is derived, by way of analogy, from the manner in which an actual green house or solar room works to contain or limit the rate of thermal energy in a space. The fundamental scientific concepts behind this phenomenon have been around for about 180 years (1822-24) when the French physicist and mathematician Joseph Fourier first discovered and reported the ‘green house effect’ while working with concepts of heat flow. I am aware that there are readers of this publication who firmly object to the notion that carbon dioxide gases that are released into the earth’s atmosphere – a broad buffer consisting of layers of gases surrounding the Earth – are responsible for recent changes in this planet’s climate (climate change). “There has simply not been enough time (in these past 50 years) for industrial pollution to be the cause of rising temperatures” or “the earth has a repeated and long standing pattern of temperature fluctuations and it is now in a rising phase” or “this planet, its oceans, forests and weather systems are too big for air pollution to harm it” goes some of the rationales against pinpointing GHG consequences.

My goal in the past related articles has been to provide readers with access to some generally established facts regarding energy efficiency, building science and the emerging field of building performance. In that same spirit has this article been researched and prepared so that you may formulate your own conclusions on the green house gas effect. For the record, at this time I declare no definitive position on this matter. We know that the earth’s climate has changed over time. Throughout the Earth’s history, there have been periods of glaciation followed by warming trends in which the glaciers retreated toward higher altitudes and latitudes. We too have concerns for the present and projected rate of climate change based on natural events and on human activities.

How a Green House Works

An actual green house works by limiting the transfer of heat from a space by convection, which we experience as sensible heat. During cold months plants kept in a green house will be insulated from the dry and cold conditions found outdoors. Heat, a form of energy, flows from hot to cold by way of three different processes: conduction (through a solid), convection and radiation. When we stand in the direct sunlight and sense that penetrating warmth on our skin we are experiencing thermal radiation, which will eventually cause skin to burn. The sun emits thermal radiation with apparently 50% of the rays that are directed towards the Earth reaching this planet. That thermal radiation is then absorbed into the surfaces and oceans of the planet; the remainder being reflected to, and/or absorbed by, the atmosphere. That is to say, some of the Sun’s thermal radiation that is reflected back from the Earth is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere and then re-radiated with some returning to the planetary surface. Thus, greenhouse gases act to warm the Earth by re-radiating some of the Sun’s energy back towards the surface.

What are green house gases?

Greenhouse gases are molecules in the atmosphere that absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. As a result of the re-radiating of thermal energy, the planetary surface and its lower atmosphere tends to increase in temperature than had its only source of thermal radiation been from the initial solar transference. As we know from our experience, this form of heating only occurs during the daytime whereas in the nighttime hours the surfaces cool somewhat. Clouds are the major non-gas contributor to the Earth’s greenhouse effect in that they too absorb and emit infrared radiation.

Rate of Change in Average Global Temperatures

Climatologists have detected a steady but small increase in global average temperatures over the last few decades, based on weather data collected all around the world. It is a fact that six of the last ten were the hottest years on record. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have increased worldwide since the 1880’s from approximately 280 parts per million (or 0.028%) to around 365 ppm (0.0365%). This means that around 3 gigatons (3 billion metric tons) of the green house gas CO₂ are being added to the atmosphere every year. Because CO₂ is a powerful greenhouse gas we can assume that the earth’s temperature should go up as CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere increase.

One of the most significant and relatively recent innovations of human civilization has been the discovery of fossil fuels and its application by converting the energy trapped within them into fuel for engines that are the basis for manufacturing, transportation and construction. Since the mid-19^th Century peoples have been burning large quantities of these fossil fuels to power the developing technological and global civilization. In this manner we have been re-releasing the CO₂ trapped in the fuels in the form of energy-rich organic molecules back into the atmosphere, increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO₂.

In prehistoric eras, when a warmer Earth had a higher concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, photosynthetic organisms (algae and higher plants) absorbed the CO₂, and used it to produce abundant organic material. When these organisms died they eventually became buried deep within the earth and slowly turned into coal and oil.

Within the last five years NASA used satellite imagery to examine the extent of Arctic sea ice for a period going back 27 years. Researchers concluded that Arctic sea ice had declined by around 8.5 percent per decade over the period. For the ice to recover sustained cooling is needed but this has not been the case over the past 20 years, and it is not expected to be the case in the future if new research from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology is correct. Calculations by German scientists there suggest that over the next century the climate will change more quickly than it ever has in the recent history of the Earth. The results come from the latest climate model calculations from the German High Performance Computing Centre for Climate and Earth System Research. If the model is correct, global temperatures could rise by up to seven degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

But not everyone agrees. A group of researchers from Duke University say that man’s impact on climate change may be overstated, and that the solar cycle may have more of an effect than previously thought.

The Duke researchers, Nicola Scafetta and Bruce West, who examined solar changes over a period of 22 years, state that models of global warming need to be corrected for the effects of changes in solar activity. At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxide gas released by various human activities.

They stressed that their findings do not discount that human-linked greenhouse gases contribute to global warming. “Those gases would still give a contribution, but not so strong as was thought,” Scafetta said. “For now, if our analysis is correct, I think it is important to correct the climate models so that they include reliable sensitivity to solar activity.”

Partly based on material from NASA, Max Planck Institute and Duke University

According to California’s legislative analyst’s office, California is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the United States and one of the largest emitters of GHGs in the world. The California Global Warming Act was enacted in 2006, more commonly known as AB32, which established a target to reduce the state’s emissions of GHGs to the levels that existed in 1990 by the year 2020. The law will in effect reduce GHGs by 30% from where they would be otherwise if left unregulated.

The state’s Air Resources Board (ARB) is tasked with developing and imposing the necessary rules and regulations to attain the mandated outcome. AB32 also directs the ARB to create public health benefits via rules that govern GHG reduction by also taking advantage of ways that will improve air quality. It is postulated that improvement in air quality would increase worker productivity and reduce government and business costs for health care.

There has been creativity and flexibility shown by the ARB in how to achieve the targeted reductions in GHG. Aside from traditional regulatory measures – such as establishing energy efficiency standards for buildings, cars, light trucks, appliance performance and a requirement for utilities to obtain a greater portion of their electric supplies from renewable energy sources – the “scoping plan” offers market-based means via a ‘cap-and-trade’ program. A cap or limit on GHG emissions for an industry would be set by the ARB and then emission allowances are issued to emitters.

The emitters are allowed to buy, sell, or trade those emissions allowances to maintain a favorable balance to their account so not to be penalized. All measures for AB32 that regulate GHG emission reduction, such as “cap and trade” programs, must be adopted by January 1, 2011 and put into effect by January 1, 2012. What follows is an excerpted interview with an internationally recognized renewable energy pragmatist, Hermann Scheer, who unexpectedly passed away earlier this month in Berlin. His comments relate directly to the text above.

llama looking for emitters

From a 10/15/10 televised interview on ‘Democracy Now!’ with Amy Goodman

[Hermann Scheer was the main architect of Germany's pioneering Renewable Energy Act, which set up a system of incentives paid for by utilities to encourage hundreds of thousands of home owners and investors to build solar and wind power systems.

Thanks to the legislation, Germany gets 16 percent of its power from green sources, triple the level of 15 years ago, and wants to raise that to 30 percent by 2020. The law, passed by the SPD-Greens government in 2000, has been adopted in more than 50 countries.

In Germany, it has led to the creation of more than 350,000 jobs. About half of the world's grid-based solar electricity is produced in Germany, which now has about 18 gigawatts of solar power capacity or the equivalent of 18 large coal-fired power plants.]

HERMANN SCHEER: The tragedy of our present civilization is that it became dependent on marginal energy sources. The marginal energy sources are fossil sources, fossil resources and nuclear, based on the raw material uranium. The gigantic energy potential is the renewable energy potential always all coming from the sun, including its derivatives, like wind and the photosynthetic-produced–photosynthetically produced materials, organic materials, plants, hydro-base. And the sun offers to our globe, in eight minutes, as much energy as the annual consumption of fossil and atomic energy is. That means to doubt–the doubtings if there would be enough renewable energy for the replacement of nuclear and fossil energies, this argument is ridiculous. There is by far enough.

And therefore we are in a situation running into a conventional energy trap in two directions at the same time. First, we are in a process of the coming depletion of conventional energies, faster than many people imagine–or want to believe. And the second limit is an ecological limit, because the negative effects of conventional energies, of nuclear as well as fossil energies in different ways, overstress the ecosphere. That means the life conditions. And it is an open question, and it is not necessary to give an answer to that. It is an open question which limit of the conventional energy systems is closer to our time. Even if there would be much more potential, much more conventional energy reserves, it would not help, because we would arrive at the ecological limit, and we are practically at the bottom crossing this ecological limit. Therefore, we can only recognize, and we must recognize, we have to replace the conventional energies consumption not only in the future at a specific time, we have to recognize it in the run of the next twenty to twenty-five years. This is the main challenge of civilization, to do that.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you do it?

HERMANN SCHEER: The big mistake in the energy debate is that most people think, because they believe that there is a monopoly and the expertise for all energy activities in the hand of the existing energy players. Many people, including governments, including many scientists, who get their orders for studies from them, they believe and think that the present energy suppliers, the present energy trusts, the companies, they should organize the transformation. And this is a big mistake–a big mistake–because this part of the society is the only one who has an interest to postpone it. The only one. All others, all the others, have an interest to speed it up. But as long government think that it should be left to the energy companies, we will lose the race against time.

HERMANN SCHEER: And just look to the third-world countries, the same situation. They are–they have to pay with, let’s say, possibly a grand national product of five percent rebated to Europe or to United States, five percent per capita. They have to pay for the importation of oil, the same like we. With which money? They don’t have the money for that. The reason is poorer and poorer people–no, the result is–excuse me, the result is poorer and poorer economies. More than forty countries in the world, more than forty in the third world, have to pay more for the importation of oil than their total export earning is. That means it’s over. It’s over. If they want to promote their economy, they need more energy. If the energy bill eats all the coming revenues by the promotion of the economy, they are in a dead-end street. And therefore, until the situation goes down and down and down, who speaks about third-world problems and forgets this energy point doesn’t know about what he is speaking, really. And therefore, this shows it–and it is an ethical problem. To help them, to come from these imported energies to indigenous renewable energies, this is the only economic chance for them, the only economic–otherwise, they will become poorer and poorer. And therefore, it is not only–not only a question for energy consumption. It’s a question for economic development. It’s a question of a democratic–for the survival of democracies. It’s a question for overcoming the third-world rises. And it is a decision to keep the human values

Just a bit over 100 years ago in 1908 only 8% of American homes had electricity. Within seventeen years, by 1925, this percentage grew six-fold to include 53% of homes that were then connected to an electric grid. Today the United States contains but 5% of the world’s overall population and yet consumes 25% of its energy supplies. American’s homes (70% of existing and 80% of all new) have air conditioning and contain televisions, computers, audio equipment, and all sorts of comfort devices and kitchen tools that contribute to this high demand for energy. Greenhouse gas production (carbon dioxide) increased by 16% in the United States from 1990 to 2000.

Quezalcoatel

Electricity is efficient at its end point of use, for example when converted into heat for space or hot water use, but is very inefficient (about 30%) in its losses during generation and transmission. In this way, cheaper fossil fuel energies like natural gas, propane, and oil are more efficient in the sense that they are converted into heat “on site” at between 40% – 90% efficiency and do not have the associated generation and transmission losses.

Whether you agree with scientists, or not, who claim that our current, principal source and use of energy supplies is a major contributor to warming the atmosphere via the by-product of carbon dioxide, and if the ethical reasons alone do not justify your concerns –that policy and choice about energy supply, price and use have contributed significantly towards war and corruption and sustaining eco-negligent corporations and politicians in power – then the facts that indicate an impending shortage and end to fossil fuel supplies would alone make the case for there to be stepped up research, policy and development made in the area of renewable, sustainable energy.

In 2001 the United States imported 55% of the oil it used, that is the USA does not exist in freedom, so to say, but is a strongly dependent nation. It is a fool’s fancy to believe that America exists in a state of freedom. Nuclear electricity that creates energy from splitting off atoms, although it releases no carbon dioxide, creates radioactive industrial wastes with it own environmental problems. Policies that promote and enforce energy efficiency and energy conservation must be widely supported to facilitate the advantages of renewable energy’s safety, environmental quality, and economic sensibility.

*most of the statistics herein come from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Energy Information Administration (EIA).