Waterjettting 19b - California gold mining

While mankind has directed the flow of water against earth and rock faces for millennia, as a way of eroding and removing material, it was not until the days of the Gold Rush in California around 1850 that the idea of confining the water into a hose, and through a nozzle crystallized.

Gold was originally found in the gravel in 1848, when James Marshall was helping John Sutter build a sawmill on the banks of the South Fork of the American River, in what is now Coloma, CA.

Figure 1. Sutter’s Mill on the American River (Replica by California Parks ).

The news that gold had been found in the tailrace led into what has been referred to as the greatest mass movement of people in the Western Hemisphere, as people flocked to California over the next few years, during the period of the California Gold Rush.

Figure 2. Location of Coloma, CA (red circle) relative to Sacramento and San Francisco – Lake Tahoe is by the 395 sign in the upper right. (Google Earth)

As the prospectors panned the gold from the stream beds, so they moved north east along the valleys and rivers, seeking the sources of the gold particles that millennia had washed down from the Sierra Nevada. One such source was found at American Hill, just north east of Grass Valley. Here the gold was found in beds of a weak sandstone, lying relatively close to the surface.

Figure 3. The American Hill Diggings, with plaque. The original height of the hill can be seen in the background.

The gold settled to the bottom of the sandstone, and so the miners would tunnel into the side of the hill, seeking to find the richest layer. Unfortunately as you dig out the bottom of a hillside, the overlying rock has a habit of falling down, with mildly fatal results to those caught in its path. This made mining somewhat dangerous, given the soft nature of the rock as Edward E. Matthison found when he was nearly buried when he was working the property. So with partners, he decided that a more remote method of digging out the gold was needed. So, with the help of a local blacksmith named Miller, he fashioned a nozzle on the end of a canvas hose he ran from a water reservoir at the top of the cliff (initially a nail keg) and used the resulting stream to wash the ore (and overlying rock) into a channel that was later turned into a flume, with a series of strips to catch the gold.

Figure 4. Early hydraulic mining

The method had many advantages since, in the process of washing the rock from the solid it was broken down into individual particles. This separated the gold, sand and clay particles, so that while the gold particles would be trapped in the flume, the lighter sand and clay particles would be carried further downstream with the water. By 1853 they were paying a water bill of $153 a week (with water at $0.75 per miners inch this meant they were using 2,000 gal/min) but making the four partners a profit of $50 a day. Larger and larger monitors (the name given to the nozzle and pivoting assembly) were built, throwing water at greater distances, and mining at much faster rates.

Figure 5. Monitors at work at the North Bloomfield mine.

This, in turn, required increasing amounts of water, and this was carried in flumes down through the Sierra Nevada, with agreements being made between companies for distribution, collection and the passing on of water. The nozzle diameters of some of the larger monitors grew to more than 8 inches, and they were capable of mining tens of feet from the operator.

Figure 6. Later design of monitor. The wooden beam usually had a box holding rock on the other end in order to balance the weight of the nozzle section.

The nozzles were made longer, as they were made larger, in order to get the jet to throw to greater distances, but this made steering and control of the jets more difficult. The gooseneck swivel was invented in 1855 to help swivel the nozzle, and a monitor operator noted that when he stuck his shovel into the stream of water it deflected the nozzle. This was Dave Stokes at the Malakoff mine and led to the invention by his Supervisor, Henry Perkins, of the rotating system for sprinklers that is still used to this day.

Figure 7. Modern rotating sprinkler showing the deflection plate. (Aliexpress )

The largest mine in the region was the Malakoff, and in the region around it there were some 425 companies operating and, between 1871 and 1880 they produced $121 worth of gold (at the price of the day).

But there was costs to this operation outside of just the mining ones. For while the gold was captured in the flumes, the sand, and more particularly the clay, was carried in the water until it became less turbulent. And that was when it reached the Yuma, American and Beam rivers flowing out of the Sierra Nevada and down towards Sacramento. As the water slowed, so the clay precipitated out, and the river beds filled with sediment. Thus, when the rains came, the water overflowed its banks, flooding the neighboring fields.

Foregoing the fact that it was the mining that had brought the farmers and many others to the region, the floods were not acceptable, and following the floods of 1880 there was an increasing effort to contain the mining sediments. This led to the court ruling by Judge Sawyer in 1886 restricting the practice of hydraulic mining, and the technology fell into abeyance. It was restarted at the time of both World Wars, but in recent times there was only one small mine that had been “grandfathered” still in production. Its role in developing California is not greatly recognized at present, and the remaining legacy is more seen in the vertical bluffs and large flat areas of mined sand that are left north of Grass Valley, together with the old wooden water flumes that still thread their way around the edges of the valleys.

Figure 8. View of the Malakoff Diggings

I’ll talk more about the spread of the technology next time.

Hyperlooping and Planetran

There has been considerable fanfare this week over the Hyperloop idea, put forward by Elon Musk. In this concept, which was, in this case developed by engineers at Tesla and SpaceX, trains would travel in evacuated tubes at speeds of up to 800 miles an hour.

The Hyperloop concept (Tesla motors)

The concept itself is not new. Back when The Oil Drum was first started I wrote a piece on Planetran, based on an article in the Ecyclopaedia Britannica 1980 Science and the Future yearbook. (And it also was mentioned in one of Robert Heinlein’s books, though I have forgotten which).

Figure 2. The Planetran Concept as illustrated in the Encylopaedia Britannica in 1980.

The concept at the time (it dates back to an idea in 1957 at Lockheed) was to drill high speed tunnels and after they were lined evacuate them. The trains would be magnetically elevated (Maglev) and with little air in the tubes could be accelerated using the surrounding magnets at an acceleration of 1 g.

Planetran "trains" would consist of lightweight cars which are "floated" by magnetic repulsion between vehicles and guideway. These repelling magnetic fields would be phased so as to produce a traveling wave along the guideway. This magnetic wave would provide both vehicle support and propulsion (or braking.) Planetran tunnels would follow the Earth's curvature and would be generally located several hundred feet below the surface in rock structures. Besides evacuated tubes for high-speed Planetran travel the tunnels would also house conventional railroad lines and power lines, communication links, and pipelines. This shared usage would help defray tunnel costs, which are the major element in Planetran's overall expense.

The tunnels are expensive, but when comparing costs consider that it is can be relatively cost competitive to drive a tunnel under a city, relative to the price of surface construction.

To give some idea as to how this might change life consider:

Instead of two-way local service in a four-tube tunnel, planners have considered operating locals in one direction only. Because of the high speeds achieved, passengers could go the long way around to their destination. An example is the New York City - Boston link with local traffic to Hartford. By running local traffic only in the NYC to Boston direction, a traveler from Hartford to NYC would go by way of Boston. Hartford to Boston on the local would take 7 minutes, and Boston to NYC 11 minutes, for a total of 18 minutes.

Some 30-plus years later the technology plans to use a linear induction motor for propulsion, and light-weight materials such as those used as in aircraft construction. However the tube will not be evacuated, and instead will rely on pulling air into the front of the train and ejecting it underneath the train to provide suspension. (This is a technology that works quite well as an air bearing in moving heavy loads. The project description notes that these have been proved to work at speeds up to Mach 1.1 – higher than those planned for this system (which will remain sub-sonic).

Figure 3. Hyperloop car, showing the air compressor at the front, and the air bearing support.

By covering the top of the tube with solar panels it will be possible to provide more than enough energy for the system, and by mounting it on pylons along the Interstate land costs can be minimized. This takes away from the need to drive tunnels (although in time these may still be needed for the in-town sections), which is a pity since that was one of my main reasons for being interested. However the development of new technologies has resolved some of the existing problems and lowered the cost considerably. It is now estimated to cost only $6 billion to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles, and Mr Musk is apparently willing to invest his own money in further development. This could get quite interesting since this is, in a sense, competing with the High-Speed Rail Projet that California has started.

The California Urban Heat Island Effect

Last week Anthony Watts had a post at WUWT in which he talked about a new effort to find out just how much the urban environment was affecting the temperatures at Californian weather stations. The study is being carried out in conjunction with the EPA, and the announcement came by e-mail rather than a more conventional press release.

I was interested since, as part of series that I carried out looking at the US Historic Climate Network (USHCN) data, I plotted temperatures for the stations in each state as a function of latitude, longitude, elevation and local population. The first three values were identified with the information at each station. The local population for a town can be found on the web in several different places, and very largely I relied on the city-data web sites for information (see, for e.g. this for Sacremento).

The question arose as to which particular temperature should be used for that of the station, since the USHCN provides annual average temperatures, as raw data, Time of Observation (TOBS) corrected and “adjusted.” When the original post for California was written, only the last of these was available, and thus it formed the basis of the analysis. Shortly thereafter, in 2010, the USHCN site also provided the raw data, and the TOBS temperatures for each station, each year. The data was therefore re-analyzed using the TOBS values. But the plot that was originally generated was plotting the current population against the average temperature since 1895.

As the study grew to include more states, that plot seemed to be an error, since populations can change very rapidly, and go up as well as down. So, towards the end of the series the average temperature was taken only for the past five years, since this was likely to reflect the impact of current populations. At the same time, since there is little difference between the two sets of values in this period, the “adjusted” values were used to derive the plot. It looks like this:


Figure 1. The comparison of average California station temperature plotted relative to adjacent population, with a log-normal plot.

Now the “discovery” of a log-normal relationship is not new. Oke has been studying the topic for decades, and has proposed such a relationship. But it does have a side effect. Consider what happens when the trend line is shown on a normal plot:

Figure 2. The comparison of average California station temperature plotted relative to adjacent population, with a normal scale on both axes.

There is a “kick-over” in the rate of temperature rise at around a population of 10,000. (In fact this is a curve and the sharp transition is an artifact of the software, but it illustrates the trend). Temperature gains for smaller gains in population are higher below that level, while those above that population require a larger population growth to get the same increase. (Failure to recognize this is one of the underlying faults of the Berkeley Earth Project work on the topic.) Since the GISS data on temperatures also does not recognize any difference in population size below 10,000 it is also a fault of that data set.

I am curious to see how the California study pans out, I did drop a note with this finding to William Dean, as the e-mail suggested, and he was courteous enough to reply noting that this was “an interesting approach.”

As I pointed out to him, the strength of that relationship is, perhaps, borne out not only by the R^2 value, but by the consistency of the coefficient over the plots for a number of states. The tabulation is as follows:



I have had to cut the list in two to allow screen capture.


Figure 3. Correlation Coefficients for the relationship of temperature to local conditions with temperatures in degrees C.



And similarly for the table where I have converted the temperatures to def F.


Figure 4. Correlation Coefficients for the relationship of temperature to local conditions with temperatures in degrees F.

ONI and individual state temperatures

The influence that sea surface temperatures have on land temperatures and climate is an ongoing debate, and I mentioned this somewhat in my last post on this topic. However, in looking back over that post it was perhaps too general an approach to look at the impact of the El Niño events over the large scale of the West Coast, and thereon East. Given that effects were, as I showed, more regionalized and remembering that we are in a La Nina winter, I’ll just repeat the anticipated effect plot from Kumar, et al.

Impacts of a La Nina winter (after Kumar et al).

The disadvantage of using the regional average can be seen just in the US West Coast. At the upper end the season is cooler and wetter, while down in the south it is drier and warmer – the average might well be “no change.” So since we have the individual state temperatures for the period I looked at last time, I thought it might be interesting, before looking at other Oscillations, to just check how this event correlated on a more localized basis.

The ONI plot from 1950 (GGWeather )

It is logical to start on the West Coast, and given that the predicted impact this winter will be on the upper Northwest, the first comparison is with Washington State. For now I am going to use the homogenized data set, rather than the TOBS data, though I may come back later to look at how that changes things. (This is the fun of doing this without an agenda, we don’t need to have the data fit any pattern, so it is more informative to look at options).


The ONI plot overlain on a plot of Washington state temperatures.

It can be seen that while there was some correlation, in places, overall the agreement is not very good.

The other states that seem to be most impacted are the southern tier, that would include California, Arizona, and possibly New Mexico and Texas . From the regional comparison the Pacific SST effects seem to weaken somewhat once one gets over the Rockies, hence the caution as to how far we might expect the impact along the South Coast – so we shall see.

Turning first to California, recognize in the beginning that with the state being as long as it is, there are internal temperature variations along the state, Overlaying the ONI plot on the relevant part of the California temperature curve:

Relation of California temperatures to ONI temperature anomalies

My sense is that the correlation is a bit better, but still lacking. So let’s try the Arizona comparison:

Relation of Arizona temperatures to ONI temperature anomalies.

There does seem to be more of a correlation here, than with the earlier comparisons.

Moving on to New Mexico, and the same superimposition:

Relation of New Mexico temperatures to ONI

Well what correlation there was in the first states seems to be getting less here, lets try Texas.

Relation of Texas temperatures to ONI

Well, using that well known calibrated eyeball, it would appear that the correlation seems to get worse as one moves away from the Pacific.

Well this wasn’t totally what I was expecting, though I mentioned at the top that I suspected that the effect might not reach as far as New Mexico. so I think I will cogitate a little more on this before venturing an opinion. However it might be worth looking at relative precipitation levels, since this seems to be more the effect that is most obvious. (Though that also gets into cloud formation . . . . . . )

Regional US temperatures, the West, the Middle and the East

The relative changes in the temperature profiles between the Central States and those along the Atlantic Coast, begs the question as to the relative conditions on the West Coast. And so I have combined the state temperatures of California, Oregon and Washington State. As with the other regions the first average that I took was for the homogenized data, and just took an average for the three states, to get a sense of what has occurred over the past hundred and ten years.

Average temperature over time for the Pacific Coast, using the average of state temperatures, and homogenized USHCN reported temperatures

The most obvious immediate conclusion is that the temperature drop from 1950 to 1965 which is so evident on the East Coast does not appear to have happened in the West. And the flat temperatures over the last hundred years found in the Central States don't appear to hold either.

Breaking this down to a review of the initial Time of Observation corrected temperatures, but initially again just averaging the state temperatures, one gets:

Average temperature for the states along the West Coast, averaging the TOBS average state temperatures.

In contrast with the Middle States there does appear to be a steady increase, with time, in the average temperature. Looking at the average of all the stations (a total of 138), the data continues to show that rise:

Average temperature for the states along the West Coast, averaging the TOBS average station temperatures.

The area that each station covers falls from an average of 3,000 sq miles in California, through 2,460 in Oregon to 1,621 in Washington. When one adjusts for area, using this weighting, and adding a trend line to see what the temperature change averages, one gets:

Average temperature for the states along the West Coast, weighting the TOBS averages by area.

There is still no sign of that fall in temperatures in the 1950’s, in fact the temperature goes up. Comparing the results for the three different states:

Average individual West Coast TOBS temperatures over time

The form of the plots are roughly similar with the two more northern states showing almost identical patterns, and a slightly wider range of fluctuation.

When one compares the three regions that I have looked at to date, however, the difference between them is quite clear. Well actually, if I plot the data itself it is a little obscured by the curves as they superimpose.

Average temperatures for different regions of the country over the past century.

The Middle states are clearly warmer than those on the two coasts, which I hadn’t expected, but it is more difficult to separate the two coastal variations. Because of this overlap I have moved the lines a little apart, so that the changes in pattern can be more clearly seen. So, for this plot, ignore the temperature values on the left, since I have, as shown, adjusted the values so that they are separated, and so that the differences in behavior each year can be seen.

Pattern of temperature change for three regions of the United States over the past century.

While there is some congruity between the central and Atlantic values, these are clearly different from the Western states. Perhaps I should see what is happening in the mountains??

I am also curious to see what the effects of El Nino’s have on the land temperatures, but I think that I will add in the mountain states, before putting those effects onto the plot.

I might start here but any other suggestions would be welcome.

The rising number of earthquakes in America, not Iceland

This is just a short post drawing attention to a couple of things that are starting to look a little odd. The first was the subject of a post over at Chiefio’s website pointing out that there has been a recent doubling in the number of earthquakes per day along the Western coast. This led him onto a piece that suggests that the recent activity might be a pre-cursor to a volcanic eruption near Hawthorne, Nevada – since there have been over 500 of these quakes in that area. And if one goes to the USGS site that maps their location and strength, the latest image shows that activity is still ongoing.

Recent earthquakes in the Hawthorne area (USGS )

The concentration of activity around a fixed point argues more for volcanic activity than it does a growing risk of a major earthquake. However if one looks at the region in general there is also a lot of activity along the major fault lines through California. However that tends not to be as focused, suggesting that the normal movement along the faults is continuing, though intensified just south of the border.

Recent Earthquakes on the west coast (USGS)

The two phenomena may well be separate. Generally I look for a lack of earthquake activity along a fault line as an indicator that the fault is not moving in that region, and thus stress is building up, and a larger quake will be required at some time in the future to relieve that greater stress. And in that regard it is the zone without the current quakes along the fault path that is more worrying to me than the zones where there is a lot of quaking, and thus movement.

In contrast it is the focusing of lots of earthquakes in a small area that suggests that the cause of the quakes might be more due to volcanic activity. Though one really also needs the relative vertical location of the epi-centers to determine whether magma is moving towards the surface, which is generally a warning of something in the offing.

The other thing that has me a little puzzled is the opposite situation. I have been monitoring the quakes in Iceland since the eruption last year, as reported by the Icelandic Met Office, and recording all those quakes that exceed magnitude 3. (At the bottom of this post. I note that after seeing about a hundred quakes in the past year, there hasn’t been one (greater than 3) since March 12th. Which is kinda odd.

The combination of the two events may or may not be related, we will have to see how things progress, but it is worth taking note of and keeping a closer watch to see what happens next.

Natural gas shortages in the Southwest

The troubles with energy supply are not just confined to electric power blackouts in Texas. A shortage of natural gas in New Mexico has left 32,000 customers without a supply. Because the gas is supplied through pipelines that are kept at a fixed pressure to allow the gas to flow at sufficient volume, drops in either pressure or supplied volume will lower the amount coming out at the delivery end. This has led to a declared state of emergency with the governor urging that schools close in face of the cold and the shortage of fuel.

The problem with natural gas feeds, as opposed, for example to electricity, is that when supply is shut-off the flame that burns the gas goes out. Thus there is a safety protocol required to restore service:

The process to restore natural gas service to homes and businesses is the most time-consuming aspect of any outage. We ask for your patience as we begin and complete the restoration process over the upcoming days.

What can our customers expect? The restoration process means visiting each home and business twice. First, every meter is shut off. Then, work begins on restoring gas in the large pipelines bringing natural gas to their area and make sure the system is operating safely. Finally, our crews will go door-to-door, revisiting every home and business, to turn the meters back on, perform critical safety checks and relight gas appliances. There may be a slight smell of gas in your neighborhood while technicians purge the meters.

Who will be relighting my appliance? Qualified, trained New Mexico Gas Company service technicians from around the state will be helping to restore service to affected areas in an orderly manner.

The disruptions are not just confined to New Mexico. El Paso Natural Gas has declared “Force majeure” because of the constraints on supply. And frozen wellheads in Wyoming are reducing the flows available to customers in California. Just as with electric power, the utility answer is to shed some of the industrial load. Large industrial concerns get a lower price for their gas if they agree that it can be shut off in times where supply is no longer adequate. Such is now the case in San Diego where 88 companies have had their supplies curtailed as part of this program. Under normal circumstances the region is supplied through the Trans-western pipeline, which carries 2.4 Bcf/day.

It is reported that up to 5% of normal production has been temporarily lost both due to well head freeze-off and problems in the processing plants. And this is not all occurring in just the more northerly states.

The unexpected drop in supplies from wells freezing off forced utilities and some looking to churn a quick profit to reach for gas in storage, forcing the company to set limits on withdrawals. At least 1.5 bcfd of production is offline in the East Texas, Fort Worth and Texas Gulf Coast basins, Bentek estimates, with at least 900 mmcfd offline in the Anadarko Basin, which lays partly in Texas and Oklahoma. 'Anadarko volumes being off makes a lot of sense,' said Matt Marshall, senior energy analyst with Bentek in Evergreen, Colorado. 'It got hit hard by the weather and it's liquids rich.'

Liquids-rich gas tends to freeze faster since it has a higher dew point, Marshall said.

While supplies in storage should be more than adequate to meet demand, the problems arise in both getting this into the delivery pipelines, and then getting it to the customer. Or deciding which customer gets it. As the EIA noted in their latest (Feb 3rd) Natural Gas Weekly Update

The largest percent price increases during the week occurred in markets west of the Mississippi River, where there has been little price volatility this winter.In the Rockies and Midcontinent, where weather conditions were extreme and there were numerous reports of declines in production due to icing conditions at producing wells, price increases exceeded well over $1 per MMBtu or about 30 percent. BENTEK Energy, LLC, reported that flows on pipelines shifted significantly as higher demand in localized markets in the Rockies decreased flows on other pipelines that transport supplies out of the Rockies to the east, such as the Rockies Express Pipeline. In addition, numerous Midcontinent and Rockies area pipelines reported constraints on their systems, resulting in losses of flexibility to move gas between regions . . . . Prices in the Rockies increased at all trading locations. For example, the price for supplies on the Questar Corporation system in Utah increased $1.39 per MMBtu to $5.46, the highest price reported at this location this winter.

(As an aside it is worth noting that the EIA is predicting that there will be an additional 4 Bcf of natural gas coming onto pipelines from the Marcellus shale by this November). Overall the wellhead freeze-offs and other problems lowered national gas production, on average, to around 62 bcf/day.

Wellhead freeze-off occurs because the natural gas coming out of the well contains a varying amount of water in the mix. When temperatures get cold enough then, even though the gas comes out of the ground quite warm, this water can freeze. (A gas is considered dry in the USA when it contains less than 7 lb of water per million scf). When it does it blocks the flow channels, and the well is shut-in until it thaws. That is the simplest case, and since we know the freezing temperature of water then that should tell us when it is going to happen. Unfortunately, as some of you may remember from the Gulf oil spill incident this last summer, there are also conditions when gas hydrates can form in the infrastructure. These can form and freeze at higher temperatures. More typically, however, it is the water vapor in the line which causes a problem. David Fish gives an example of what can happen.

In a practical case you can have gas flowing in the pipeline at 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 700 psi and have no evidence of freezing. If you pass through a regulator station and cut the pressure to 225 psi, the flowing temperature at the point of regulation will drop 33 degrees Fahrenheit to approximately 27 degrees Fahrenheit. If the gas stream is saturated with water vapor and condensate, you will quickly experience the freezing concerns we are discussing.

There are several ways in which this the supply can be protected from this happening – though in parts of the country where it doesn’t normally get this cold, they might not be cost effective. The first is to remove the water, which can be done using a variety of tools typically either a solid or liquid dessicant, alternately methanol can be trickled into the line, lowering the freezing temperature of the mix, hopefully below prevailing temperatures, and thirdly the system can be kept warm enough that it doesn’t freeze. The last two of these make some assumptions on how cold it is going to get. And if the temperature falls below that point, then they may become ineffective.

High Speed Rail - Europe and the American Election

It was President Obama who famously said, after the 2008 vote that “Elections have Consequences.” Well two years later that dictum still applies (as it will two years from now). I bring it up since (h/t to Luis) the European Commission has just released a report on High Speed Rail which gives some of the progress that has been achieved on that continent since the first high speed line was inaugurated between Florence and Rome in 1977, though it was not until the service between Paris and Lyon in 1981 that the boom began. And now Europe has 3,861 miles of high-speed lines where trains can travel at faster than 150 mph (the fastest is over 220 mph in commercial service, 350 mph in trials). The inter-continental service is continuing to grow, though to facilitate progress the EU is seeking to develop common technical standards across the network. Unfortunately, after Tuesday, the prognosis is not that favorable to the change in the United States.



It will be a considerable boon in Europe, as expansion continues. Spain, for example, is planning on expanding the network so that 90% of the inhabitants are within 30 miles of a station. The results can be seen with the reduction in travel times between major cities. (And remember that the stations generally lie in the heart of the city, not an hour or so away as many airports now are).


It becomes faster, and more efficient, as well as (speaking personally) less physically tiring, to travel increasingly great distances in Europe by train, in contrast both with air and car. As a result, the report notes:

The advantages of HSLs, in terms of frequent connections (which can easily be modified depending on demand) and flexibility for passengers, have allowed the railways to compete more effectively against other modes of transport. Since 1997, over 6 million passengers a year have been using the Brussels–Paris HSL. As a result, flights have been cut back on this route.

Overall the growth in traffic has been a six-fold increase in usage.

Since high-speed lines were introduced, the number of passengers opting for this mode of transport has constantly increased. The number of passengers on all German, Belgian, Spanish, French, Italian and British lines increased from 15.2 billion passenger-kilometres (bpkm) in 1990 to 92.33 billion in 2008.

In looking at door-to-door travel times, the report chart shows that air becomes faster than conventional rail at a travel distance (in Europe) of around 240 miles, while air does not become faster than high speed lines until a distance of about 500 miles. I start to think about flying instead of driving at a distance of around 300 miles.

At the present time those dealing with the anticipated growth of the network over the next ten years have not, I suspect, taken into consideration the changing fuel availabilities of the next decade. If, as is a reasonable possibility, crude oil pops over $100 in the next year, thereby drawing increasing attention to the coming of Peak Oil, then it is likely that demand for improved rail traffic will likely rise significantly beyond the 25% increase in growth that has been projected. As I have noted before, trains in Europe are becoming increasingly full, at current rates of demand, even in off-peak hours. In the shorter term, as the report notes, train transport may also be helped by the increasing saturation of existing airports with flights. But it also leads to the problems of using rail to transport goods as well as people. These services have different imperatives, and so the report concludes that two separate systems will evolve.

The difference in speed between a (slower) goods train and a high-speed train impacts on rail traffic management for the simple reason that freight trains spend longer on the track and therefore use up more traffic capacity (train paths). This difference in speed may also cause safety problems when these two types of train pass. This makes safeguarding infrastructure availability, while guaranteeing optimum capacity and security, an extremely difficult task. Physically freeing train paths simply means dedicating HSLs solely to passenger traffic and giving freight a higher priority on conventional lines. This is an option being explored by Sweden in particular.

They do however expect that, if environmental policies are tightened, that rail traffic as a whole might increase to as high as 420 bpkm for the entire network by 2020, from 189 bpkm in 1999. The planned network expansion at present looks to being completed in 2030, at which time it will be at around 20,000 miles of track, and carry 535 bpkm per year, with extensions moving out into Eastern Europe. The initial connection to Russia will be through Finland.


The report even looks at the environmental impact of the change in travel mode, since it recognizes that while the trains are electrically powered, that power does not magically appear in the power lines.


And for those interested in energy efficiency

Although the environmental impact of HSLs can also be reduced by improving the energy efficiency of trains and working on other elements of the vehicle, the carbon foot- print of rail travel is still much smaller than that of air or road travel. In the case of a journey from Paris to Marseilles, CO2 emissions in grams per passenger-kilometre (g/pkm) are just 2.7 g/pkm by HS train, compared with 153.0 g/pkm by air and 115.7 g/pkm by car. From the point of view of energy efficiency, HSTs also perform better, using 12.1 grams of petrol per passenger-kilometre, compared with 17.6 for conventional trains, 18.3 for a coach, 29.9 for a car and 51.5 for an aircraft.

So how does this tie into the first paragraph? Well in the United States, and a part of the Stimulus from the Federal Government, high speed lines had been proposed, with funding from Washington. However, with the election of Republican governors in several states due to receive that money, the plans may have to change. The new governor of Wisconsin, for example, has vowed to kill the high-speed line between Madison and Milwaukee. This was meant to be part of a network that would run from Chicago to Minneapolis, and stopping the project will likely cost the state money and jobs – but as a top campaign issue it is likely something the Governor-elect may have to follow up on.

Similarly in Ohio, the incoming Governor, John Kasich has said that “Passenger rail is dead in Ohio.” In this case he was discussing the $400 million plan to restart passenger service between Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland.

Work on the high-speed Florida link has already started, this is expected to carry up to two million folk a year from Tampa to Orlando or back, by 2015. It was not favored by Rick Scott who was just elected Governor of the State, though some of his opposition may come from the investment needed to extend the link from Orlando down to Miami. However the incoming Chair of the House Transportation Committee has already spoken out against it.

On the other hand the fate of the investment in a high-speed link in California has not been changed by the election. The backbone of that system, the 500 miles from LA to San Francisco is planned for completion by 2020. (video here). The discussion is more about where the construction will start.

California temperatures, GISS USHCN, E.M. Smith and Anthony Watts

This is the day that I am going to look at the temperature records for California. It was the truncation of the number of stations in the GISS analysis that led E.M. Smith to his post, that started me off into taking a significant look into the temperature records. His concern was initiated by the discovery that the number of stations being used by GISS to monitor CA temperatures had been cut to four, all located near the coast. So does this have any meaning? The task begins, as I outlined at the beginning, by getting the data from the 50 USHCN stations and also inputting the data from the GISS stations.

There will be a slight pause while I do this. And after loading in the data from the 54 USHCN stations there are a few observations. Firstly the data from Death Valley is missing three data points (1896, 1897 and 1899). So noting that 1896 was 0.29 degrees above the state average, and that Death Valley is on average 16.62 degrees above the state average, suggests that in 1896 the temp there would have been 75.92 deg. And so we enter that and do the same for 1897, and 1899. And in passing I note that there are a couple of stations (Death Valley and Indio) that are below sea level. Wonder how that will work out. There don’t seem to be that many in the heights, but we’ll see how the graphs plot out. This is the correction that I explained in more detail when I was looking at the data from Colorado and found some values missing.

Now I get the four station data from GISS that Chiefio lists, which are San Francisco, Santa Maria, Los Angeles, and San Diego, which I download from the GISS site and at first none of these are on the GISS list. So I go back to the station locator and type in San Francisco and I get four stations and checking with Chiefio’s list by grid reference the top one is the one he cites. (and it is the one that has data from 1880 to 2010). So the next one on his list is Santa Maria, try that through the station locator and there are two locations, but neither has a full set of data!! In this case it is the lower of the two, which gets me information from 1948 on. Los Angeles data is all there, as is San Diego’s, though again one has to choose the longer history site from the four available. Phew!

OK so what have we got? With the varying conditions in the state (and particularly since we are coming down from the mountains to the sea) I will expect that there will be some influence of longitude, but given the concentration of data along the coast and at low elevations, I am not sure how it will end up. And then there are a lot more towns with larger populations that we have seen in the states we have looked at until now. Checking populations Cedarville was too rural for the usual city-data site, so I got the population from neighborhoodlink . Cuyamaca is a State Park with zero inhabitants (I put down 1). Electra also appears to be on none of the lists – (So looking at the one site with info, I put down 10). Lake Spaulding is a fishing camp (no data – suggest 5).

And having put in all the data (using the elevations of the airports for the GISS stations) one finds some interesting results. Firstly how do the GISS stations compare with the USHCN data?

While the GISS stations are on average 1.6 degrees warmer than the USHCN stations, the difference between the two is increasing:


(Note however that the small number of GISS stations relative to the number of USHCN stations means that when one does a total average for the state the differences induced are quite small.) Even without the GISS station contribution, the temperature in the state has been increasing, though the rate seems relatively constant since about 1900.


The state is a relatively long one, and there remains a strong influence of latitude:


I had expected, since the mountains are on the East and the sea is on the West, that there would also be an influence of longitude.


And that, at any significant level is apparently a wrong assumption.

Hmm! Well how about height, that has been fairly consistent.


And so it is again, though note that those below sea level seem to be even hotter than predicted.

Now one thing that we also can check on, given that there are significantly more stations in this state, is as to whether the scatter in the data is getting worse. This is something that would be suggested by Anthony Watts survey of stations. The premise has been that as the maintenance on the stations declines so the scatter in the results would get worse. This would be reflected in an increasing standard deviation across the stations in the state.


And while there was no such trend in other states, it is very clear and significant in California.

And with respect to the influence of population, I am still seeing that logarithmic fit, with the knee of the curve being at around 10,000 folk. Thus if GISS is cutting off all the influence of towns below that size, and just calling them rural, the evidence continues to suggest that this is a significant error.


Well I also suppose that this is one of the states where there are enough larger cities in the data bank that we can plot this on a log scale:


Correcting the individual temperatures as though the stations were at the center of the state (i.e. adjusting for latitude, as I did last time), one gets:


And then if one looks at the effect of elevation with latitude taken out of the data, one gets:


Again a clear correlation, except that there is a considerable scatter as one gets down to the range below about 100 m. Since this brings in the possible effects of the nearby ocean, and I am not sure how to isolate that at this time, we’ll leave that part of the analysis until we have more information.

The average elevation of California, by the way, is 884 m, and if you look at the plot above you can see that there are only 9 stations (out of 58) that are above that height. So if you do just an average of the data (which is what I have been doing) it will be weighted by the stations below the average elevation, and this will bias the results. By how much? Well we’re going to have to find more data before we can answer than question, and I suspect that it has to do with making adjustments for being close to the ocean.

Looking back at 2009

This has been an interesting year to look back on. The change in the Administration and the difference in outlook that they bring to many of the concerns that I write about have altered the way in which the future will evolve. That evolution is still continuing, but there can be no doubt that the key committees in the Congress are now led by folk that do not look particularly kindly on the historic producers of fossil fuels. Yet the path forward for the alternatives, power from renewable energy, is not necessarily going to be that certain either. That was brought home just recently with the move by Senator Feinstein to protect portions of the Mohave Desert from future construction. This limits some of the areas in which solar farms had been planned, though clearing some of the legislative hurdles for others. But the legislation (which would apparently affect some 19 applications) is a sign of the debates to come, as the land needed for renewable energy is discovered to have other potential uses or benefits, that will make the search for available space that much more difficult.

And it is not just in California, there are debates in other states, including Wyoming.

As a result, 23 percent of Wyoming's winds that are class 4 or higher -- and about half or more of developable class 6 and 7 winds -- are in core areas. And in July, the state put those winds off-limits by essentially banning big wind farms in core areas. Many in the wind industry see it as devastating. The Interwest Energy Alliance -- a trade group -- said the ban could have "a deleterious effect on renewable energy development" across the West, and that it could kill the development of 10,000 megawatts of wind in Wyoming.

Though there are some sites that appear less controversial than others.

He takes me on a tour in a big white truck, making me wear a hardhat because turbine blades can throw chunks of ice. From the top of a hill, as a bunch of antelope amble nearby, Anderson points southward through the forest of windmills to a huge plume of steam that marks the Dave Johnston power plant. Then he motions to the earth all around where we stand. The wind farm sits on the reclaimed remnants of an old, giant coal mine; all this land was once torn up, gouged by draglines, its carboniferous bounty burned in the plant down below. "We wanted to take a coal mine," says Anderson. "And make it useful."

Yet as these debates continue, there seems to be little recognition of the needs that the future will bring, that are not being prepared for. Nor is there much recognition of the problems in getting power from where wind can generate electricity to the places where it is needed (particularly those states that have mandated high levels of renewable energy into their mix in the nearer future). For while wind turbines can generate money for the landowner, there is much less for the farmer who lets a transmission line across his land, who only gets a single payment.

The cap-and-trade legislation may not, in the end, make it through the Senate, and thus may die for this Congress, but it has made it difficult to justify investment in coal-fired power stations, when the rules that will govern their use are not clear. And while the EPA has adjudged carbon dioxide to be a pollutant , it has yet to write the rules under which plants that produce carbon dioxide will operate. (Remembering of course that each of us is also a generator). As a consequence some 100 or more power plants have been put on hold until the situation becomes clearer. But given the challenges that will likely come to the legislation (there is some question, for example as to whether they can limit the application of legislation to plants that produce more than 25,000 tons for example), the delays in planning for construction of future power plants are likely to continue, and perhaps grow worse.

The new Administration does not see much in the short-term that will cause energy supply, whether crude oil or electricity, to be a problem. The Secretary of Energy, through the research and funding that they have produced over the past year, is looking at more distant options for generating power than meeting any proximate needs. Unfortunately, coming from California, where it was easy to mandate a reduction in coal-burning in the state when the power could be generated alternately from coal-burning plants in Utah, does not work as well when the entire country becomes subject to the legislation, and such an alternative no longer exists.

Among other news of the past year that make my list of major stories I would count two more. They don’t seem to have caught as much attention of folks such as Robert Rapier who has a different list, but one of them is listed in the page that Platts had for their survey. The first (and that listed by Platts) is the continued collapse of the oil production in Mexico. While this has significant impact to the United States (which is now going to have to find alternate sources for the Mexican oil it was importing from fields that are now running dry, particularly Cantarell) the impact on Mexico’s deficit has been to drop the deficit off a cliff. For the USA it is going to be increasingly difficult to find that alternate supplier. China has increased their purchases from Saudi Arabia by more than 12% this year (to 800,000bd) and has signed agreements to take this over 1 mbd next year. With non-OPEC production having peaked, it is only the surplus production in the OPEC countries that keeps the world in balance, and the size of that “cushion” is something that we debate. (I am less optimistic than some others).

The other event was the opening of the gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China. Again it is feeding fuels that were, at one stage, available to the West, to a new customer, itself growing in demand, and with a considerable scope to increase market purchases in the years to come. The glut in natural gas that we currently see will not I suspect, last as long as it is currently projected, and that will open a different can of worms.

But all these stories from the past aside, I do wish you all a Successful and Prosperous Year, that brings you Happiness and Joy, and not too many snow storms.

Trying to legislate technology

Over on Climate Progress there is a note on the 100th coal-fired power station to be cancelled or postponed in recent months. This one is in Utah, and was cancelled as a result of the decision of the City of Los Angeles to be “coal free” by 2020. The Intermountain Power Agency was going to build a third power station, some 900-megawatts, to meet LA’s growing needs, but this is not to be.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced last week that the city -- which purchases about 45 percent of the IPA's power -- wants to end its use of coal-fired power by 2020. Villaraigosa said that the city will replace its coal-fired electricity with energy from renewable sources, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric power.

It will certainly be interesting to watch how this plays out, given that the best wind sites in the state appear to be already in use, and that there has been a slowdown in growth of new farms, to the point that Iowa has now passed California by. Certainly Baja California is getting into the act, with the promise of having 75% of the power needed for public lighting to come from a wind farm by 2011. But there is a considerable difference between the 10-megawatts of that plant, and the 900-megawatts just foregone. Solar continues to be very much more expensive, nuclear is unlikely to be available within the time frame anticipated, and there has been some debate about dismantling dams that provide some of the hydroelectric power. So it will fall on the back of natural gas to make up the shortfall, or so it would appear.

This would seem to give additional impetus to the prospects for the Ruby pipeline.

As proposed, the Project is expected to include approximately 675 miles of 42-inch natural gas transmission pipeline, beginning at the Opal Hub in Wyoming and terminating at interconnects near Malin, Oregon. Contracts for the pipe have been signed and pipeline construction companies have been selected. The Project will have an initial design capacity of up to 1.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) and will traverse portions of four states: Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Oregon. Four compressor stations are proposed for the project: one near the Opal Hub in southwestern Wyoming; one south of Curlew Junction, Utah; one at the mid-point of the project, north of Elko, Nevada; and one in northwestern Nevada.

The connection of a pipeline from the currently underpriced supplies in Colorado and Utah into the Western market through the connection in Oregon and into the Northwestern gas pipeline will likely reduce the costs of gas in the West, while giving Colorado and Utah markets for their gas, at the time that they are potentially losing the Eastern market that was targeted with the Rockies Express. That pipeline has now reached Ohio and was placed to meet the need for cheaper gas in the North East. (among other things by replacing Canadian gas, which is also now going to lose the market in California). This market is now threatened by the potential of gas supplied from the Marcellus shale.

The role that hydrofracing plays in all this provides an interesting sub-text. As I have recently noted, there is a move by two Coloradan Congressmen and one from New York to tighten the regulation of hydrofracing. However
industry officials claim state regulation of the practice is more than adequate and that the chemicals used in fracking need to be kept secret for competitive purposes.

They also argue that in 60 years of fracking there has never been a case directly linking it to the contamination of drinking water wells because so many precautions are taken.

Interestingly Colorado has recently passed tougher legislation governing drilling in the state, which includes the need to list the components of the fracing fluid, legislation which is said to have increased costs in the state, and reduced the level of drilling (albeit the price of gas might just also have some effect on this).

The desire by the Colorado Congressfolk to make the rest of the nation work to the same rules as their gas industry (which incidentally does not have that much of the gas shale which requires hydrofracing to be economic) has yet to be decided in the national Congress, but should the legislation pass then the costs to the California consumer may be significant.

Unfortunately, at the time that they discover that the costs of switching to the more environmentally friendly power generation system is costing them significant dollars (at a time when California is broke) it may be too late to reverse the decision, in the way that Durango recently did and move back to coal, since the coal plants will not, it would appear, now be there.

Whether, with the increasingly levels of demand for natural gas to replace planned coal-fired plants, the natural gas will be there to meet that increased demand is a tale for another day.

(NOTE: When I originally wrote this piece it had a different end section, the original end section, and the reason for the change are discussed in the section below. My apologies for the error in including that material, and my thanks to Gail for catching the error and drawing my attention to it).


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
When I first wrote this piece, the end segment read as follows:
The role that hydrofracing plays in all this provides an interesting sub-text. As I have recently noted, there is a move by two Coloradan Congressmen and one from New York to tighten the regulation of hydrofracing. The fight is now, apparently getting a little rougher. (H/t Prof Goose) A research professor at Colorado School of Mines has run into some unpleasant reactions.

Thyne said he was threatened with termination as a research associate professor at Mines, a position he still holds through the end of the summer, because of pressure put on the state school by powerful players in the oil and gas industry who were upset with his position that federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing may ultimately be necessary if oil companies don’t find other solutions.

In fact he has moved on to another university (Wyoming) but has been working on a site where there is a possible problem.

Thyne contends there needs to be much more rigorous study of fracking to determine the extent to which it can contaminate groundwater supplies. Industry money currently being poured into the aggressive and highly defensive campaign to defeat DeGette’s legislation would be better spent building a credible scientific case for why the exemption was necessary in the first place, he adds.

Industry officials claim state regulation of the practice is more than adequate and that the chemicals used in fracking need to be kept secret for competitive purposes. They also argue that in 60 years of fracking there has never been a case directly linking it to the contamination of drinking water wells because so many precautions are taken.

But Thyne is currently being employed as an independent consultant by Garfield County to study a case near Silt in which a property owner claims fracking contributed to an ongoing gas seep in Divide Creek.

Interestingly Colorado has recently passed tougher legislation governing drilling in the state, which includes the need to list the components of the fracing fluid, legislation which is said to have increased costs in the state, and reduced the level of drilling (albeit the price of gas might just also have some effect on this).

As for the CSM prof, given that the story has popped out only after he had found a position to move on to, I tend to be a bit cynical about the weight of the pressure that might have been applied to him. Having been peripherally involved in a case of our own where a faculty member’s untimely remarks about a company to the press probably cost our University at least one and likely several large contracts, as well as ruining relations between us for several years. It happens. There were several rude exchanges, so I gather, but it all blew over. As this likely would have.

But given the desire by the Colorado Congressfolk to make the rest of the nation work to the same rules as their gas industry (which incidentally does not have that much of the gas shale which requires hydrofracing to be economic) I am not sure that the overall discussion will have as simple an outcome.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The reference to Dr. Thyne is innaccurate. It turns out, as Gail discovered and called to my attention that CSM had commented on the situation, with the following statement:

“I want you to know that no one in the Mines administration recalls having anything but cordial conversations with Dr. Thyne this spring. When Dr. Thyne was quoted during that time by the media, the school received inquiries about Dr. Thyne’s association with Mines.

“As a result, Mines officials phoned and e-mailed Dr. Thyne to inform him of the inquiries, and also to remind him of the university policy that people must be clear in public communications that the opinions they express are personal and do not represent institution positions — one way or another — on issues being discussed.

“Also, as a matter of clarification, Dr. Thyne left employment at Mines in August 2006 due to employment at the University of Wyoming. He has remained in a very limited role on a non-paid basis (in an advisory capacity with graduate students) since then, and that contract ends at the end of August 2009.”

Given the dates at which Dr Thyne changed employment, it appears, therefore that there is significantly less to the story than I had described. My thanks again to Gail for catching this, and my apologies that I did not.