Papers

AVS2001 Session AT-TuM: Climate Change, Sustainable Energy, and Industry

Tuesday, October 30, 2001 9:00 AM in Room 111

Tuesday Morning

Start	Invited?	Item
9:00 AM		AT-TuM-3 Plasma Fusion Research and the Technical and Spiritual Challenges of Sustainable Energy I. Hutchinson (MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center) Plentiful energy for economic production is the basis of the industrial world's material comfort; but the present pattern of fossil fuel consumption can not be sustained even for a few decades longer without major future global environmental impact and probably disaster. Thus energy is perhaps the archetypal challenge to sustainability. Technical solutions to energy needs are vital. Renewables and fission can play important roles. Harnessing thermonuclear fusion, the energy source of the stars, has long been an ideal. It has motivated much of the past half century of plasma physics. Fusion is now at a cross-roads. Plasma science has developed magnetic confinement configurations that appear adequate for producing sustained fusion burn, but a demonstration experiment will be big and expensive, with the economic benefits seeming distant. Every technical solution is double-edged. There is no purely technological fix for energy needs or for most other environmental concerns. Changes in habits of consumption, expectations, population, and values will become essential in a sustainable-energy society. These are ultimately spiritual values. Religious faith is the primary source and sustainer of such values, and provides major teaching resources for guiding individuals and society. It is not sufficient, though, to attempt to manipulate those resources in support of secular objectives, however worthy. Religious teaching has authority only when true to God's call. Society cannot at the same time discount religious values in economic or cultural matters and hope to recruit their help in challenges of sustainability.
9:40 AM		AT-TuM-5 Environment and Industry: An Antithesis or Is There an Acceptable Role of Industry J. Slanina (Netherlands Energy Research Foundation (ECN), Netherlands) Environmental problems vary in scale from very local impact, such as urban air quality to true global impact, as is the case of greenhouse gases. The contribution of industry to these environmental problems is variable, but in many cases very important indeed, as example the large contribution of industry in the emissions and emission reduction of Chloro-Fluoro-Compounds (CFC’s) can be mentioned. The need for more sustainable production processes is perceived, but implementation is rather slow due to economic (international competition) and (in the case of developing countries) social reasons. On top of that, the perception is currently in the US that environmental groups and NGO have grossly exaggerated the impact of environmental problems. Crying wolf all the time has surely been damaging regarding a balanced public perception of environmental problems. A high point in this development has been the rejection of the Kyoto protocols by US President Bush. And careful and objective analysis of the situation makes clear that severe environmental problems indeed do exist, and that measures are necessary; Health effects of aerosols, the oxidant problem and climatic change, though perhaps at later time as prophesied will remain important issues. The perceived antithesis between industry and research community and responsible environmental organizations creates an unproductive atmosphere where arguments of both sides are no longer heard and understood. To change this situation, restrain in unwarranted extrapolations by environmental groups and NGO’s is necessary, but also the perception by industry that industry must take a proactive role. Some typical European mechanism is called “convenants” where industry and government make a “gentleman’s agreement” regarding emission abatement. The actual implementation is then left to industry; government’s role is only overall monitoring that the goals are met. This instrument has proven to be quite effective and it indeed puts industry in the necessary pro-active role.
10:20 AM		AT-TuM-7 Atmospheric Aerosols and Their Impact on Climate U. Baltensperger (Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland) Atmospheric aerosols originate from either naturally occurring processes or anthropogenic activity. They may influence the climate in two important ways, through direct and indirect effects. Direct effects refer to the scattering and absorption of radiation and their subsequent influence on planetary albedo and the climate system. Indirect effects refer to the increase in available cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) due to an increase in anthropogenic aerosol concentration. This is suspected to increase the cloud droplet number concentration and to decrease the mean diameter of cloud droplets for a constant cloud liquid water content. As a result, the increase in cloud albedo is predicted to influence the Earth's radiation budget. These effects are, however, poorly quantified, and more data are therefore needed for a more accurate modelling of the net effect of climate forcing by anthropogenic changes of the atmospheric composition. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has established the Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Program in order to ensure long-term measurements in order to detect secular trends and to help closing this gap. Concerning aerosols, the objective of the GAW program is to determine the spatio-temporal distribution of aerosol properties related to climate forcing and air quality up to multi-decadal time scales. Presently, GAW consists of some 20 Global stations, which cover different types of aerosols: Clean and polluted continental, marine, arctic, dust, biomass burning, and free troposphere. An overview will be given on the parameters relevant to the quantification of the aerosol impact on climate, illustrated by examples from a remote site in the Central European Alps.
11:00 AM		AT-TuM-9 The Chemistry of Sulfur in the Background Environment: Impacts on Global Climate A.R. Bandy (Drexel University) Sulfur is the only element for which the anthropogenic contributions to the global atmospheric burden is much larger than the contribution of natural sources. Since this dominance of anthropogenic sulfur has occurred mostly in the past century the impacts on global climate also have occurred during the past century. This presentation will focus on the impacts of sulfur chemistry on local and global climate using the large body of work on this subject developed over the past 20 years. Much of this presentation will use results from numerous NASA and NSF airborne field programs flown over the past 10 years. Because these programs used high performance instruments developed in the 1980's, data from them account for most of our present knowledge of chemistry of sulfur in the global atmosphere. Sulfur dioxide will receive special attention because it is the most important sulfur gas of anthropogenic origin. The global distribution of sulfur dioxide will be discussed in detail. Background sulfur dioxide of anthropogenic origin will receive particular attention. Since there are no natural non-volcanic sources of sulfur dioxide we will focus on identifying the origin of sulfur dioxide in the background environment where anthropogenic sources have little impact. Finally we will discuss the physics and chemistry of sulfur in the background environment with special emphasis on how these processes impact local and global climate.
11:20 AM		AT-TuM-10 Surface Composition of Atmospheric Aerosol: Forest Fires, Sea Salt and Asian Dust R.E. Peterson, B.J. Tyler (University of Utah) The atmospheric aerosol consists of a complex mixture of organic and inorganic compounds. The aerosol has important effects on human health, visibility, climate, and precipitation chemistry. Past effort has concentrated on the determination of number, size and bulk chemical analysis of these particles. Individual particles vary in properties such as toxicity, light attenuation and hygroscopic behavior which are functions of their shape and three dimensional chemical composition. Our group is involved in a continuing effort to characterize individual particle images and compositions using both SEM and ToF-SIMS. This combination provides information on both bulk and surface chemistry and images of single aerosol particles. This study included size segregated samples (via Al substrates in an 8 stage cascade impactor) and bulk aerosol filter samples (via 47 mm Millipore PTFE filters) from the summer 2000 Montana forest fires, from Hawaiian sea salt, and from an Asian Dust event reaching Salt Lake City, Utah in April 2001. Multivariate statistical analysis was used to extract information from the SIMS images. Images of the particles were separated from the image background, which significantly improved our ability to acquire the composition of individual aerosol particles. Montana forest fire aerosol was predominantly submicron, well within the respirable range (PM2.5), and had a characteristic surface identified as the amides of stearic acid and palmitic acid. Sea salt showed a layered structure of organic compounds on the surface of aqueous NaCl. The Asian Dust event could be clearly distinguished from normal Salt Lake City particulate pollution.