Kicking the gas engine scooters while they're down

Interesting article on Electrek, with small gas-engine scooter sales in Europe plunging:

New figures report that sales of gas-powered scooters and motorcycles dropped by 6.1% in the first quarter of 2018, as compared to the same period in 2017. The largest decline in sales has been attributed to smaller scooters and mopeds below 50cc.

Sales of scooters and mopeds under 50cc have dropped by 40.2% over the same period. In France, which is the largest moped market in Europe, sales dropped even further by 41.5%.

Electric scooters and motorcycles sales are rising rapidly but only account for about a quarter of the equivalent gas engine sales, so they're only part of the picture. The rest of the picture:

(Source)

Electric bikes aren't registered so they don't have the same level of recent data, but their range, speed, convenience, and cost are eating into the small scooter market. (Side note: I can speak to this personally, the Ford GoBike program I use now has electric bikes and they make my commute even easier.)

So good news if not exactly the biggest news in the world, but is there a policy implication? Yep - the market is proving that right now that there are great substitutes for small gas engine scooters, so ban the sales of new ones. If that's too dirigiste for some, then ban the gas engines that don't pay for an equivalent amount of lifetime operational carbon emissions, or just require a hefty fee of the ones that don't - it'll have the same effect.

One might argue the effect, regardless, is zero because the market is probably going to eliminate these scooters within several years. My response is that probably doesn't mean certainly, and cutting off a long tail of dwindling sales is a good thing. Even more important though is the cultural and political precedent showing that gas engine vehicles are on their way out, and we're going to give them an additional push in that direction.

While these things barely exist in the US, maybe the mostly-dreaming legislative bills here in California to eventually ban gas-engine cars could take a baby step for now by banning these scooters.

Flim Flam Fred Crawls Out of Retirement

Of the two Freds, S. Fred Singer is still with us and selling flim flam.  His latest appears in the May 16 Wall Street Journal.  It's right out of the Encyclopedia of Scams.

Figuring out what the boys from SEPP are selling requires not paying attention to the set-up but watching for where the pea comes out of the shell, so, let's skip down there.

I chose to assess the sea-level trend from 1915-45, when a genuine, independently confirmed warming of approximately 0.5 degree Celsius occurred.  I note particularly that sea-level rise is not affected by the warming; it continues at the same rate, 1.8 millimeters a year, according to a 1990 review by Andrew S. Trupin and John Wahr. I therefore conclude—contrary to the general wisdom—that the temperature of sea water has no direct effect on sea-level rise. That means neither does the atmospheric content of carbon dioxide.

Keep your eye on the cup.  S. Fred does not assess the sea level trend from 1915-45.  He paw waves.  Trupin & Wahr assessed the sea level from 1900 to 1973, twice the period

What the sea surface temperature has been doing since 1910 has been increasing with a blip around 1940.  Not smoothly, but increasing.  Without that blip not 0.5 C btw 1915 and 1945, dates chosen w. care.





OTOH, watch the pea, what is important for steric sea level rise is the heat content of the oceans, not the sea surface temperature.  S. Fred is a sharp one.  For this our best data only goes back to 1960 or so, and it really only is good after 1993 or later.  However, as Eli will show this is enough.

The mass increase component is driven by melt of ice on land which is a function of the temperature at the surface of the ice.  We know that the increases in surface temperature have been strongest in the Arctic, but we can also look directly at the decrease in land ice.  Satellites are useful.  That's been plunging.

So let's put all this together and look at the increase in global mean sea level.

The rise was slower between 1920 and 1990 back in the days when S. Fred was raising big bucks for his retirement fund, but has sped up since.   The Turpin and Wahr study shows an increase consistent with the figure to the left.

Now some, not Eli to be sure would tell you (Tamino will be coming around in a moment) more about analysis of the time series, but it is more interesting to Eli to note that, hey, we now have the tools to measure sea level rise from space, and also to measure mass gain in the oceans as well as land ice mass loss using the GRACE satellites  (well until recently) and the ARGO floats.  This provides a neat way of closing the budget on sea level rise, to separate the steric thermal expansion which S. Fred  pooh poohs from the mass gain components. 

You would think some bunny has done this. You would think right. Purkey, S. G., Johnson, G. C., Chambers, D. P. (2014). Relative contributions of ocean mass and deep steric changes to sea level rise between 1993 and 2013. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 119, 7509-7522 (2014) and Leuliette, E. W. (2015). The balancing of the sea-level budget. Current Climate Change Reports, 1(3), 185-191.  The later has a nice figure showing that the sum of the steric and ocean mass gain match (within reason) the observed increase in global mean sea level.

There are others.  Not perfect, but useful.  At this point, a healthy bunny would wrap his fish in the Wall Street Journal and go on his way, but one more quick point.  Fred goes on:

Melting of glaciers and ice sheets adds water to the ocean and causes sea levels to rise. (Recall though that the melting of floating sea ice adds no water to the oceans, and hence does not affect the sea level.) After the rapid melting away of northern ice sheets, the slow melting of Antarctic ice at the periphery of the continent may be the main cause of current sea-level rise. 

All this, because it is much warmer now than 12,000 years ago, at the end of the most recent glaciation. Yet there is little heat available in the Antarctic to support melting.

Eli would point the uninterested reader to a figure that Jos Hagalaars put together and the Bunny called "the wheelchair".

Eli is a generous beast, OK, S. Fred meant 16000 years ago, and we take his meaning, but the truth is that the Holocene climatic maximum was 12,000 years ago, and the Earth has been slowly cooling from that point (with bumps, especially local ones) until about a century ago when folk started pumping greenhouse gases, esp. CO2 into the atmosphere.

Singer is tying to leave the impression that melting started back in the year dot and been continuous and constant since.  The data and observation show that melting was slowing up until we started using fossil fuels. By ignoring the satellite and float data, he manages to "disappear" the steric component. 

It is generally thought that sea-level rise accelerates mainly by thermal expansion of sea water, the so-called steric component. But by studying a very short time interval, it is possible to sidestep most of the complications, like “isostatic adjustment” of the shoreline (as continents rise after the overlying ice has melted) and “subsidence” of the shoreline (as ground water and minerals are extracted).

Always look for the bent corner move when you play three card Fred.  But then it gets funny

The cause of the trend is a puzzle. Physics demands that water expand as its temperature increases. But to keep the rate of rise constant, as observed,expansion however evidently must be offset by something else. What could that be? I conclude that it must be ice accumulation, through evaporation of ocean water, and subsequent precipitation turning into ice. Evidence suggests that accumulation of ice on the Antarctic continent has been offsetting the steric effect for at least several centuries.

As some players may recall, increasing water vapor feedback, which is Singer's answer to the puzzle, is a base prediction of what most think will happen when CO2 increases in the atmosphere and the sea surface temperature rises.  Thank you Fred.

Robert H. Goddard, the Father of NASA Climate Science and Renewable Energy

Eli has been reading a number of vituperations on the involvement of NASA with climate science and renewable energy.  Sadly to say some of them have come true including cancellation of the greenhouse gas monitoring program following the current administration's line of if it is not measured nothing can be done.

One of the odder takes is that NASA GSFC and GISS, both named for Robert H. Goddard, who is the US pioneer of rocketry, must return to its Buzz Lightyear roots.  However, a little searching shows that as is often the case with those who value their attitudes above understanding, that they are clueless and that Goddard was indeed the father of NASA climate science.

In a 1920's presentation to the National Academy of Sciences, Goddard wrote

It is well understood that the pressure, temperature, wind velocity, and moisture content, which obtain at the top of the troposphere, i.e., at the 10 km. level, would be of much importance in weather forecasting; making possible the prediction of surface conditions many miles distant from the place of observation.  

The data would obviously be of greatest value if obtained simultaneously at a number of separated stations. If this were done, an accurate weather map, representing conditions at a definite high elevation could be made, and compared with that representing surface conditions. Such a high altitude weather map would also be of obvious importance in aviation.

Goddard worked through the requirements for an atmospheric sounding rocket program and discussed the need for a set of stations

In short, then, the most desirable method of obtaining high altitude data for weather forecasting, would consist in the sending of instruments to the 10 km. level daily, from a number of stations, the ascent and descent being as rapid as practicable; provision further being made, if desirable, for maintaining the instruments at this level during an appreciable interval of time.

He was involved in testing instruments to be used to measure meteorological variables using sounding rockets as discussed in a 1920s letter to Science Magazine.

But, Goddard was not only the father of US rocketry and climate science, but also one of the earliest proponents of solar energy, holder of several patents on solar heat engines and concentrators.  His contributions to solar energy, summarized in the early 1960s by Hagermann, were practical realizations of pie in the sky designs.  In 1929, Goddard summarized one of his inventions

In conclusion it may be said that, instead of being a necessarily inefficient heat engine, the properly designed solar engine may rival in efficiency and smallness of bulk any other type of heat engine that can be imagined. This results from the easy utilization of very high temperatures, together with low heat and frictional losses. Expressed in another way, the properly designed solar engine is capable of handling enormously concentrated energy, such concentration of energy making possible maximum heat absorption, together with minimum heat loss, and minimum size. An interesting feature of the solar engine herein described is an extreme of lightness, for a given power, which no other type of heat engine can approach. This results from the small size, possibility of using light materials, and absence of weight of fuel. 

Eli shudders to think how Robert H. Goddard would have been described by Steve S Goddard, aka Tony Heller   The Good Goddard was as a solar power enthusiast of the first water who developed practical and efficient solar powered engines and more.  In 1929, he wrote in Popular Science about a small, 30 HP, concentrated solar motor he was working on that could reach an efficiency of 50% and be used to power large farms, with excess energy generated in the day being used to charge batteries.  Goddard concluded that  "The practical and obvious first use for the new solar motor however is to supply abundant and cheap power for mankind."

Hagermann has an interesting speculation about an alternative history

It is--from a solar-energy development point of view --too bad that Colonel Lindbergh persuaded the Guggenheims to give Goddard $100,000. For, instead of devoting his time to solar experimentation, Goddard removed his equipment from Camp Devens where he had been conducting static tests and went to Roswell, New Mexico, for flight tests on his own proving grounds.

On Edith Foote's Experiment

There is a sort of  simmering discussion on Twitter and Facebook whether Edith Foote found the basis of the greenhouse effect before John Tyndall.  Eli is here to tell you what was done.  The TL:DR is no, she did not.

Her report can be found on the net in as a Google book,

Katherine Hayhoe describes it this way

In 1856, Mrs. Eunice Foote presented the results of a simple experiment at the annual meeting of the AAAS - The American Association for the Advancement of Science.

She filled up glass jars with different types of gases, including water vapour and carbon dioxide, and put them out in the sun. She then measured how much each jar heated up.

In her own words, "the highest effect I have found to be in carbonic acid gas" - that's what they used to call carbon dioxide back then.

She went on to say, "an atmosphere of that gas would give our earth a high temperature; and if as some suppose, at one period of its history the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature from its own action must necessarily have resulted" - in other words, if there were more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, then it would trap more heat, and the earth would be warmer.

When Eunice did her experiment, average carbon dioxide levels were about 290 parts per million in the atmosphere. She probably never dreamed that by 2016, they'd be over 400 parts per million.

Next year, I'm attending the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. There will be plenty of talk about the latest, cutting-edge research. But the coolest thing is this: that the basic science connecting carbon dioxide to a warming planet is 160 years 

Eli's analysis of Foote's experiment and observations rests on three platforms.  First the observation of the solar spectrum at the surface of the Earth

The absorption of water vapor and CO2 in this spectrum are what are called combination and overtone absorption bands where there is a change of multiple vibrational quantum numbers as a result of absorbing  visible (380 - 800 nm) or NIR (near IR > 800 nm) photons.  For example if the three vibrational modes ν1, the symmetric stretch, ν2,the bend, and ν3, the asymmetric stretch are (0,0,0) in the ground state, a transition to (0,2,0) would be an overtone and to (1,0,1) a combination band.  As a general rule overtones and combination bands are about a factor of 100 to 10000 weaker than single quantum transitions.

Readers of Rabett Run also know that there is very little flux in the solar spectrum in the IR, particularly where the CO2 bending mode is active

The bunnies need one more piece of information, the transmission of glass

Got it?  OK, let's go

Foote used glass cylinders.  Glass cannot pass IR light beyond 4 microns.  The solar spectrum is weak beyond 2 microns.  Foote was not looking at absorption of thermal radiation from the warm surface.  She was measuring absorption in the overtone and combination bands of CO2 and H2O and a bit from the H2O stretching bands at 2.66 and 2.74 microns .

One further point, why did Foote observed a stronger effect from CO2 than H2O?  The answer is that she had a much higher partial pressure of CO2 in her containers than H2O because water vapor is condensible at 25-30 C, about 30 Torr.

The Best of Alsup

In the aftermath of Judge Alsup's dog and pony show, Eli thought it would be well to search out the best answers.

1. What caused the various ice ages (including the “little ice age” and prolonged cool periods) and what caused the ice to melt? When they melted, by how much did sea level rise? 
2. What is the molecular difference by which CO₂ absorbs infrared radiation but oxygen and nitrogen do not? 
3. What is the mechanism by which infrared radiation trapped by CO₂ in the atmosphere is turned into heat and finds its way back to sea level? 
4. Does CO₂ in the atmosphere reflect any sunlight back into space such that the reflected sunlight never penetrates the atmosphere in the first place? 
5. Apart from CO₂, what happens to the collective heat from tail pipe exhausts, engine radiators, and all other heat from combustion of fossil fuels? How, if at all, does this collective heat contribute to warming of the atmosphere? 
6. In grade school, many of us were taught that humans exhale CO₂ but plants absorb CO₂and return oxygen to the air (keeping the carbon for fiber). Is this still valid? If so, why hasn’t plant life turned the higher levels of CO₂ back into oxygen? Given the increase in human population on Earth (four billion), is human respiration a contributing factor to the buildup of CO₂? 
7. What are the main sources of CO₂ that account for the incremental buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere? 
8. What are the main sources of heat that account for the incremental rise in temperature on Earth?

Now the bunny is more than fond of his answer to question 2, and as long as it is, Eli will book no contradiction on the point.  For question 3 Eli nominates John Nielsen-Gammon in a comment at Real Climate which has the virtues of being concise, clear and complete.

Q3: What is the mechanism by which infrared radiation trapped by CO2 in the atmosphere is turned into heat and finds its way back to sea level?  

A3: The extra heat at sea level comes from the Sun. CO2 reduces the rate at which the atmosphere loses its energy to space via infrared radiation, which in turn reduces the flow of energy from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere.  

Energy from absorbed sunlight at sea level is transferred from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere through direct heat exchange, evaporation, and exchange of infrared radiation. All three of these mechanisms slow down if the atmosphere is retaining extra energy, as it does if greenhouse gas concentrations increase.  

The resulting accumulation of energy from the Sun raises temperatures throughout the climate system. A warmer atmosphere is able to lose more energy to space, so the whole climate system eventually approaches a warmer equilibrium.

So what are the bunnies favorites and who won the boobie prizes?