Happy New Year, and happy new open thread.
As per usual, nuclear energy is off-topic – it’s not that it’s uninteresting, but it ends up dominating conversation to the total exclusion of everything else and just becomes repetitive and dull. Recent excursions on this topic shows what happens when we relax the moderation, so back to being strict about this. If you want to discuss this, please go somewhere else.
Theo van den Berg 44,
“Climate experts” are not salespersons. Why do you think they should be?
I’ve tried to introduce a theme on that subject from time to time, and it’s just very difficult for people to accept. If you want to educate (and influence) people who are not destined to get advanced degrees in science, or engineering, or pretty much anything, you have to think in terms of their perceptions, not yours. Experts are notoriously incapable of doing that.
What’s your solution?
Eric S #45
“…and may well put your utility out of business”
OMG the order of things has been overthrown– our feudal master is hanging at the gibbet for the sport of his own crows!
I just responded to theo vdb about why it’s so hard to move things along, given that many here agree there’s a problem.
It’s because most people, however well educated, are terrified of change…
these? http://cdiac.ornl.gov/GCP/carbonbudget/2015/
Re- Comment by Edward Greisch — 4 Jan 2016 @ 3:40 PM, ~#50
Ed, you are mostly correct except for the fact that engineers are not trained for and thereby not capable of deciding what to do. They are very good at planning how to do something and that’s about it.
The deciders are those that can integrate all of the needs of a society and, of course, the ones that pay for it.
Steve
41 – “climate experts” have a duty to learn how to be salespersons. If they cannot sell global warming, it’s not likely that others will.
The battle against ozone hole depletion can serve as a model. Rowland, et. al., aroused the scientific community and the law-makers, in the 1980’s. Rowland et al overcame the political power of the chemical industry. DuPont wanted to continue selling CFC’s just like Exxon wants to continue selling oil.
A problem now is that the Republicans have changed, becoming anti-science, “pants on fire” lying, no-nothings. So the climate scientists, if they are to fight global warming, have to be openly partisan.
Kevin McKinney: But the next logical phase would seem to be transportation, and that’s going to be harder. The replacement technology is arguably less mature,
RC: Rubbish. Vehicle decarbonization is far further along than electrical. We’re already 15% better through ethanol (that’s a bit off as ethanol isn’t as zero carbon yet as it is guaranteed to be in a few years as cellulosic ethanol takes off), and another perhaps 20% (sorry, not looking it up) through increased mileage. Given that mileage can easily double in the next ten years with essentially zero investment (the design I’m bringing to market will easily get 100 MPG in a medium-sized fast car – 40-50% real-world efficiency, as compared to current 20-25%, and a 50% reduction in air resistance) That’s perhaps a 70% (still not doing the math) :-) reduction in the near future (though delayed by the slow retirement of the existing fleet – something that pertains whether we go electric or biofuel). Electricity doesn’t have a hope in Hades of decarbonizing more than a bit in the next decade, especially since we’re going to be replacing the current paradigm of coal-and-nuke with natural gas, which emits as much carbon as the combined coal-and-nuke. By moving transportation out of the “biofuel” column and into the “electricity” column, we’re just ensuring the absolute worst case result for the planet.
QUESTION: Since batteries are the choke-point, is it smarter to burn through 40 KWH of batteries building ONE car that emits as much carbon as a 50 MPG vehicle and prevents the retirement of coal plants while leaving 39 cars at 25 MPG, -OR- build 40 hybrids at 1 KWH per car that get 50 MPG and allow for expedited retirement of coal? (Your choice is whether we should have a ~27 MPG fleet average or a 50 MPG fleet average) Of course, 100 MPG with a hybrid design is even better. I’ll go public in a few months. Right now I’m shopping manufacturers.
——-
Theo: So none of you “Climate Experts” have any idea how to sell the COP21 target to our children ?
RC: heavens, I hope that’s impossible. They are far too concerned about their lives to accept such a watered down bit of non-action. Climate science surveys are consistent; the younger the group, the more they want to tackle climate change.
———–
Eric S: It’s called the Power of Eminent Domain and the Federal Government can take what ever they want, the only requirement being that they must compensate the previous title holder.
RC: Are you saying we should pay the (tens-of? hundreds of?) trillions of dollars to those who hold “dead” reserves should be “compensated” for not extracting those “reserves”? If so, at $10000000 a barrel, I’m sure I could squeeze a few barrels out of my land. Where’s MY money?
——–
Edward Greisch: Negotiation between the engineers and the politicians is acceptable, but engineering rules because Nature rules. The engineers are representing Nature, or God in antique language
RC: I’ve never met an engineer who didn’t design exactly what their manager wanted, even if it was a nuclear bomb. Engineers don’t do “decisions” EVER. They merely give data and translate decisions into reality or explain how it’s impossible. And if the decision is “do it anyway”, the engineer will do her darnedest trying. (you say essentially the same elsewhere in your comments)
Edward Greisch: If the president manages to take over writing laws and declaring laws constitutional, we no longer have a democracy. Jurisdictions have to stay separate to prevent dictatorship.
RC: BULL! If the president took over all governmental powers at the federal, state, and local levels, then we’d have exactly the same amount of democracy as we have now, just in one bucket instead of many. And since we’re getting rid of the Supreme Court in that scenario, we’d actually have MORE democracy!
Ed: If a government wants to lower CO2 production and tries to do so by mandating renewable energy, the price of electricity doubles or quadruples, but CO2 production does not go down.
RC: True. We need to reduce carbon intensity across the board instead of plinking incredibly expensive zero-carbon micro-bits into an almost totally fossil system. 39 cars at 25 MPG + one at 50 MPG equivalent is pure-t-insanity compared to 40 cars at 50 MPG, of which 15% is already biofuel and can be easily increased as cellulosic ethanol takes off.
Edward G,
By the way, engineers aren’t the folks to look for for solutions. The folks to look for are called “inventors”. There isn’t an engineer on the planet who could design an affordable 100 MPG mid-sized fast car unless she was working under the direction of an inventor.
Re 51 Zebra: Best thing I can find is at http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/Ocean_Planet/activities/ts1pcac2.pdf . And then we do our sums. according to Wiki, average ocean depth 3688m. Water expands about 3.4% from 20 to 90 degrees. Shit, that makes 1.8m rise for 1 degree. Yes, but a rise will flood areas and spread the water. And water contracts from 0 to 4 degrees, so those melting ice-shelves are lowering sea level. Too hard. Should consult somebody who really knows this stuff.
Asked my son, if he was prepared to go without heating/cooling his house and go by pushbike to work, just so some islanders in the Pacific don’t get their sea-level gardens flooded. And, of course, serious economic depression, cause Aus is not allowed to export any coal. New house, new baby, you know what the answer is !
If you just want to do the monitoring, but you don’t want to take action after your findings, what is the point ?
T. Marvell: ” “climate experts” have a duty to learn how to be salespersons.”
Horse crap. Climate scientists are not sales people. Their job is to determine the facts and provide understanding. Period. If some also choose to enlighten the public.
The truth does not need salesmen. People either accept it or they deny it. And if they deny it, they ultimately pay the consequences.
RC: By moving transportation out of the “biofuel” column and into the “electricity” column, we’re just ensuring the absolute worst case result for the planet.
BPL: The most recent analysis said that in total life-cycle, electric cars already get the equivalent of 87 mpg compared to 50 or so for fossil-fuel cars. The whole bit about electric cars burning CO2 is based on CO2-based power anyway, so will inevitably improve as more renewable power is brought on line.
58: Asked my son, if he was prepared to go without heating/coo
ling his house and go by pushbike to work, just so some islanders in the Pacific don’t get their sea-level gardens flooded.
BPL: The old “the only way to stop global warming is through universal suffering” argument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
26:Killian. I also have a 10y/o son and am also aware what Pres. Obama said that this the first generation to be able to truly see the significance of climate change and the last to be able to do anything about it; thus leaving this unfolding mess to our children is to me truly unthinkable. We know that in 15-20 years time the horses have bolted and it is essentially all over. The fact that almost every year since 2000 has been hotter than the preceding one tells me that something is cooking as well. The natural fluctuations on the unmistakable trend line are very small and this really scares me!. We are taking a global average of land and sea temps as well we should, and the most influential by far is the steady rise of ocean temps but still the shape of the graph really bothers me. It makes your wish to stabilise the ocean temps seem increasingly like a pipe dream. The bottom waters of the arctic are just about 0.0C or fractionally under in most places but in others it’s above 0C leading to increasing- over time methane release.
The biggest GG of course is water vapour and going by all the reports all over the globe of flash flooding (I haven’t seen the figures re: monsoons ie: SE asia or India, whether these monsoons are getting more severe or not??). However unprecedented/historic/unheard of/record flash flooding events now seem to happen everywhere and very often in conjunction with severe wind patterns. The hydrologic engine appears to be red-lining.
40: Urs Neu. Thanks for responding to my questions and what you said has been taken on board.
Ray Ladbury: T. Marvell: ” “climate experts” have a duty to learn how to be salespersons.”
Horse crap. Climate scientists are not sales people. Their job is to determine the facts and provide understanding. Period. If some also choose to enlighten the public.
The truth does not need salesmen. People either accept it or they deny it. And if they deny it, they ultimately pay the consequences.
RC: I’m not so sure. “If they deny it,” should perhaps be followed by “I and my family will pay a far higher price since we aren’t profiting from the rape of the planet while the deniers are rolling in the dough that will enable them to ride out the consequences.”
And this is a situation where the stereotypical “union employee” saying “it ain’t in my contract” is not the role model to use. Sort of like a citizen who doesn’t tackle the mass-murderer in action because “I ain’t a cop”.
So, it’s complicated, and with the planet’s future at stake, I think your insistence is a tad overblown. It’s not clear cut by any means, but my heart tugs towards T Marvell’s side.
BPL: The whole bit about electric cars burning CO2 is based on CO2-based power anyway, so will inevitably improve as more renewable power is brought on line.
RC: I did the numbers myself. My guess is that your source forgot to subtract ethanol from the gas car CO2 equations. I got about 47 MPG equivalent. In any case, EVs have very little headroom for improvement other than via exotic materials while ICEs can do far better than current vehicles (I invented a new cycle – you know, the Otto cycle, the Diesel cycle, and the Atkinson cycle? Well, my cycle beats all of them to heck with regard to mirroring the Carnot theoretical cycle.)
And your comment about EVs improving in the future through differences in future sources, well, did you even read my post? If you had, then you’d either acknowledge or refute my contention that reducing the fossil percentages in ICEs is easier than with EVs. Got any data or logic which says otherwise?
Let’s start with 57 Richard Caldwell: Engineers ARE inventors. Sometimes scientists are also inventors, but the whole idea in science is to publish theories that have no immediate application. Scientists sometimes invent the first of something, becoming engineers in the process. But there is plenty of engineering/inventing to do in inventing the second, third, and so on. Examples: Transistor. The first transistor was invented by a man who was trained as a physicist. Transistor inventing transferred to the electrical engineering department immediately. Transistor inventing is done by people with degrees in electrical and electronics engineering who specialize in electron devices. Quit insulting engineers.
56 Richard Caldwell: OF course engineers who work for a capitalist design what the capitalist wants, on pain of unemployment. That says that the system is corrupt, with no reflection on the engineers. Sometimes the engineers quit and start their own company. Examples: Intel was started by dissatisfied engineers who formerly worked for another company. Bill Gates was a software engineer before he became a capitalist.
Sometimes the capitalist wants something that is nonsense, like Volkswagen’s car that performs too well for the pollution controls to be operating. So the engineers did the only thing they could given the orders they had. No doubt the engineers tried to tell management that what management wanted was not possible at the time without breaking rules. Management wouldn’t hear it. So now Volkswagen is in trouble.
Sometimes the engineer can get the manager to back down, as I did at least once. My boss at the time wanted to design and market a medical testing device, but he was worried about what might happen if the machine was used after it started to fail. So I designed in a self-destruct mechanism that would destroy the entire machine after so many hours. The boss decided not to go into the medical field.
54 Steve Fish: Your comment is an insult and a libel. Engineers certainly can decide what to do. They do so every day.
“Climate salesfolk”–who should they be?
The reasonably well-informed and clear-sighted. The self-motivated. Communicators of all sorts–even (gasp!) musicians. Above all, social networkers and organizers who can get folks out to meetings, workshops and demos. Folks who know how to throw a good party in a good cause. Folks who can build relationships, even with Congress critters of the slimiest ilk (and their staffers–don’t forget the staffers.)
Climate change is a social disease, and needs a social cure.
Edward G: Engineers ARE inventors
RC: I suppose that’s a matter of internal definitions. To me, a person can be both a basketball star and a neurosurgeon, just like she can be both an engineer and an inventor, and also, like you said, both a physicist and an inventor (or a dancer and an inventor). My comment was somewhat unclear. I’m mostly talking about PRIMARY patents, not secondary patents. Inventors typically work on primary patents – i.e. “the transistor” or “a new heat engine cycle”, while engineers generally polish corners (as your example of engineers taking the already-invented transistor and making it better) I apologize for not making myself clear at first. And I understand your point and to a degree agree with you. Engineering and inventing often swirl around each other. Often, the inventor builds a baling-wire-and-duct-tape prototype and then engineers figure out how to make the thing “in real life”.
Your comment that Volkswagen’s engineers did the “only thing they could given the orders they had” is, well, ludicrous. Folks who deceive their boss* and break both morals and laws in order to pretend to follow the boss’ supposed desires are low-life scum. Bringing low-life scum up as an example of Engineer Goodness, well, your debating skills could use some improvement. :-)
* This bit is speculation. I’ve got no idea whether the “boss” was in on the scam or not.
Theo vdb #58,
I’m with BPL on this– your sincerity and credibility are called into question when you use one of the denial holy trinity of Strawman, Nirvana Fallacy, and Reverse NF (“aaaah we’re all going to freeze to death in the dark”).
I’m going to answer your original question anyway. Climate experts could help by not hedging about attribution all the time. They shouldn’t be manning the barricades and proselytizing, but they could play a role in getting “meteorologists” on TV to acknowledge what everyone here knows, which is that extreme weather is predicted by climate science, and exactly the kind of extreme weather we are experiencing.
Discussing arcane statistics and the subtleties of models is exactly how to lose the audience.
BPL: “The whole bit about electric cars burning CO2 is based on CO2-based power”
Precisely, so if you don’t get the electricity from burning carbon the equivalent mpg gets higher. Much higher. Already it depends on where you live. My region currently gets 50% of its electricity from nukes, 26% from hydro, 20% from nat gas, 3% and growing from wind, 1% from biofuel and solar, and zero from coal. Zilch.
RC: reducing the fossil percentages in ICEs is easier than with EVs.
BPL: EVs don’t burn fuel, as I recall. That would be a fossil percentage of zero. If you’re counting manufacturing and power generation, again, it gets better as more renewables and less fossil fuels are used. So the argument against EVs appears to me to be totally specious.
Richard Caldwell: “I and my family will pay a far higher price since we aren’t profiting from the rape of the planet while the deniers are rolling in the dough that will enable them to ride out the consequences.”
Then maybe you and your family should be the ones doing the selling.
Look, we’ve known for 20 years that we needed to take action. Even most of the denialists know it–at least they would know it if greed and fear weren’t blinding them to the evidence. Look, it really comes down to how much you want to pass on to your grandchildren something remotely resembling a functioning global society. The scientists have been out front on this issue for at least 4 decades.
Richard Caldwell:
Your statements about electric vehicles are laughably false. You appear to be seriously ill-informed on the subject, perhaps willfully so … or else pretending to be ill-informed.
Richard Caldwell #68
As an engineer, I can assure you that engineering can be thought of as paid invention. But, the definition of “Invention” is important here and if one uses patents granted by the patent office, one must understand that a patent is simply a grant of a short term monopoly to an individual to produce some product. The granting of a patent does not (necessarily) limit the use of the idea(s) which may be the basis for the patent. Indeed, a new patent may be granted for a design which is only marginally different from that which has already received a patent.
Perhaps a better distinction is that of “research” vs. “development” and research can be subdivided divided into “applied” and “basic”. What we call science tends to fall under the category of basic research. Your notion that an individual who is unschooled in science and technology will somehow produce a ground breaking invention is common, but hardly relevant in today’s very complex technological world. Besides, it’s said that most patented inventions never make it to market and those companies which are able to do so often fail.
Your reference to automobile fuel economy is something I have some knowledge of, having “invented” both a high MPG vehicle (235 mpg) and an engine which was intended to achieve even better MPG results. Other car companies have done similar work, for example the VW 1-Liter prototype, but such designs aren’t what the buying public appears to want in the US. If fuel cost $10 a gallon, things would be different, but we aren’t there yet. The buying public demands “performance”, such as short 0-60mph time, which kills fuel economy. Power is the time rate of use of energy, so the more power a vehicle has available, the potential is for more energy to be used to move the vehicle and it’s occupants down the road…
#56–Richard C. “Rubbish!”
Well, your POV is noted–and, actually, welcomed. The main reason I post here is to learn stuff, and your comment qualified as teaching a few points.
However, I think it was a tad harsh–particularly since your comments were mostly beside the point of what I said, addressing only the idea that transportation was closer to decarbonizing than electric generation.
Let’s take that last topic first, though. Your comment seems to imply that you feel that transportation can exhibit faster short-term incremental improvements through improvements to existing ICE (‘internal combustion engine’, for those who may not be familiar with the acronym) technology. You propose a 70% improvement in mileage, based on your technology. Do I have that right?
It seems that you are talking about the passenger car market, since you refer to a “a medium-sized fast car.” Fine, but what about a) air transport, b) mass transit, c) short haul deliveries and d) long-haul commercial traffic, not to mention e) marine transport? I have no idea, off the top of my head, so this is an honest question, but how much of the total do these sub-categories account for? And what are the prospects of improvements there? (I know of some, off the top of my head, but as I said, I’m here mostly to learn.)
By contrast, let’s consider electricity. It may be true that, due to long life-times of installed infrastructure, change figures to be slow. Yet it has been shown that a 100% renewable grid is technically possible in principle. It’s easier if you allow some use of The Power That Dare Not Speak Its Name This Month, as you then have a good base capacity. The problems are economic and political–and I don’t say that to trivialize; economic and political problems can obviously prove highly intractable. But we do know, in theory at least, of several ways by which we could almost certainly get to an emissions-free electrical grid. I’m not sure that we have a comparable ‘map’ for transportation–certainly, I haven’t seen one.
That was the general sense I had in mind when I wrote that “arguably” the tech was less mature in the transportation sector. And while I appreciate your information, I don’t know that I’d view it differently now. In a sense, we were using different metrics to compare.
I also have a couple of specific concerns. One is the 15% you credit to ethanol. (You don’t, I think, really say what it is 15% *of*, but I’m guessing you mean emissions.) I’m with Barton on that; as I understand it, US ethanol, based on corn, decreases emissions insignificantly, and may even increase them in some scenarios. Whither then your 15%? (It’s also my understanding that the Brazilian sugar-cane-based ethanol *does* in fact reduce emissions significantly, to be fair.)
Yes, you speak of switch-grass as if its dominance of ethanol production in the near future is a sure thing. But it has drawbacks, too, and its potential has been seriously questioned, here at RC–I recall Hank posting on this, for one example–and elsewhere. Random snapshots on the state of ethanol today, mostly in the US:
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-terms-food-fuel.html
http://knoxblogs.com/humphreyhill/2015/12/25/70m-tn-switchgrass-biofuel-project-scuttled/
http://www.ethanolproducer.com/articles/12914/study-suggests-perennial-crop-yields-can-compete-with-corn-stover
http://www.elpasoinc.com/columns/local_columnists/article_abe1a9bc-a8db-11e5-bc1a-ef986dc3a8dd.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-ethanol-epa-fuel-mandate-renewables-20151211-story.html
http://www.gctelegram.com/news/local/fcedc-abengoa-issues-won-t-impact-local-ethanol-producers/article_c8946314-0e08-57c4-9ad5-c4a627ecef3d.html
If you can discern a clear trend toward switchgrass dominating the field in that, you may just have better eyes than I do.
Secondly, you wrote “especially since we’re going to be replacing the current paradigm of coal-and-n*** with natural gas, which emits as much carbon as the combined coal-and-n***.”
I don’t know who ‘we’ is, in that context. That’s partly because I can’t think of anyplace where the process you describe seems actually to be happening. Germany maybe comes closest, because they are retiring all their r*******, but they sure aren’t replacing them with gas, because natgas is relatively expensive in Europe. The US is building lots of natgas plants because the gas is cheap here, but we aren’t seeing the systematic retirement of our n****** fleet–and in fact, 4 units will be coming online in the next few years. China? We know better.
And of course, you also omit any mention of renewables, deployment of which is exploding around the world, and which, contrary to some claims, does result in lower emissions.
Jim Eager: Precisely, so if you don’t get the electricity from burning carbon the equivalent mpg gets higher. Much higher.
RC: Precisely. So if you don’t get the fuel for your internal combustion engine from fossil fuel, the equivalent MPG gets higher. Much higher. Right now an E85 vehicle running on cellulosic ethanol gets how many MPG-equiv? How many decades do you think it will take EVs to catch up?
So how do EVs differ from flex-fuel ICEs with regard to potential future decarbonization? Anybody?
SecularAnimist, please mention any statement I made which isn’t substantially correct. I respect you and I’d have thought that you’d actually say something if you had anything to say instead of just spewing insults. (so far YOU sound closed-minded, eh? you seem to have entered the conversation with a pre-conceived conclusion and essentially NO specific knowledge nor any inclination to find anything out. Not my conclusion, merely an initial pre-analysis based on what seems to be your shift to the amygdala and its shut-down of your logical faculties. I’ll make conclusions later.)
Anyway, I’m always eager to learn and change my opinion. Help me out. Anywhere, anything, even a single morsel of Truth I’ve missed (or the boatload you claim)…
Asked my son, if he was prepared to go without heating/cooling his house and go by pushbike to work, just so some islanders in the Pacific don’t get their sea-level gardens flooded. And, of course, serious economic depression, cause Aus is not allowed to export any coal. New house, new baby, you know what the answer is !
If you just want to do the monitoring, but you don’t want to take action after your findings, what is the point
Theo, you’ve gone off the rails… “I asked my son? ”
We’ll I guess that settles it. You got us there.
I own a Chevy Volt. Costs penny’s to charge. Driven to work and back or locally requires NO gas. Unlimited mileage. The car tells you when the gas in your tank is too old to use. Even using the gas engine we get 85 mpg.
Chuck, your Volt may not need gas, but how much carbon it takes to charge it depends on how the electricity is generated. For a Volt owner in the US Midwest it’s mainly generated by burning coal, so lots of carbon. For a volt owner in Quebec it’s almost exclusively generated by hydro, so very little carbon. It depends on where you charge the batteries.
Jm Eager. A lot of people with EVs or plugins purchase solar panels, so in some sense the marginal increase in power demand is made up for by renewables. If you change your demand on the margin, the CO2 cost by any reasonable accounting should be the CO2 cost of the grid adding (or retaining) marginally more demand. We are adding mostly renewable capacity for new build, so in some sense most EVs are mainly powered by renewables.
I’m currently waiting for approval to turn on my PV expansion to power my wife’s Leaf. That’s how it tends to work.
CO2 for December 2015 from MLO 401.85
CO2 for December 2014 from MLO 398.85
So a jump of 3 ppm in the monthly average in a year. As Killian has noted: something is burning somewhere.
Daily CO2 for Jan 4, 2015 from MLO 402.2
Daily CO2 for Jan 6, 2015 from MLO 399.79
And of course, we can start watching methane in the atmosphere if we want to be concerned about the methane volcano going off courtesy of SOCAL Gas.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/05/aliso-canyon-leak-california-climate-change
Is there a recognized global site that measures methane levels in the same way that MLO measures CO2?
I like the https://www.co2.earth/show-co2# website for CO2, but can’t find anything similar with focus on methane. Can anyone point me in the right virtual direction for such a site?
E.Musk said [closely]: Eventually I think all transportation will
probably be electric–except, ironically, for rocket fuel.
Kevin mcKinney: Fine, but what about a) air transport, b) mass transit, c) short haul deliveries and d) long-haul commercial traffic, not to mention e) marine transport?
RC: Yes, I was a bit harsh. Sorry about that.
Air transport: this is biofuel. Electricity is out of the running for about anything except blimps, at least until (if?) air-based batteries come online.
Mass transit: Trains and busses can power-up at stops with regenerative braking for both biofuels and electricity using flywheels, the grid, or batteries. Trains (and trams) can be powered through rails along the way. This arena looks like a “fair fight” between biofuels and electricity.
Short haul: Another nebulous category, if one is talking very local deliveries. Electric vans with drop-in battery packs are cool.
Long haul trucking: Like air transport, long haul is pure-t-biofuel. Electric 18-wheelers are a fool’s dream.
Freight trains: These are perfect for biofuel. A third rail could be added and the trains run on electricity, but why? I suppose we’ll find out…
Marine transport: Again, biofuel. Electric container ships could be made. They’d probably be slow and need sails and to travel the currents and winds. Maybe they’d be covered completely with solar cells. But biofuel could also benefit from the same actions! (including the solar cells)
Passenger cars: Again, biofuel except for local business. Teslas using fast chargers suck down juice with horrendous inefficiency. Even if the EV were 100% efficient, it would still be a big fail for intercity travel. Tesla seems to be moving towards battery swaps, which would mitigate this issue, though at great expense. (Random numbers: If the “service station” were taking in batteries at one per 5 minutes and it takes five hours to charge a battery with decent efficiency and acceptable degradation, well, a 60-1 ratio of in-to-out timeframes makes logistics difficult.)
So, electricity is a good competitor in a few areas and horribly inappropriate in others. Local passenger cars with ranges under ~25 miles (more than that and your vehicle becomes a heavy battery hog. Batteries should be shared with EVERYBODY.), local deliveries, and mass transit are decent electrical vehicle possibilities. Everything else should wait for air-based batteries, should they ever come to pass.
On percentages, perhaps US gas vs diesel sales are a good marker. 130 to 40 billion gallons, so personal transport is perhaps three times as large as heavy land transport. That’s large enough so that if EVs were less carbon intensive than next-generation hybrids, they’d be worthwhile, but EVs can just barely keep up with old-style hybrids, and that’s with a horrendous slurping up of available batteries.
Kevin: as I understand it, US ethanol, based on corn, decreases emissions insignificantly, and may even increase them in some scenarios. Whither then your 15%?
RC: True. Corn kernel ethanol is similar to lead-acid batteries. “Training wheels” that are laughably inefficient but useful to learn with. I only looked at your first link on cellulosic ethanol. (I’ll probably read the others later. Thanks) It said, “That core mission has been fulfilled as demonstrated by DuPont’s recently opened 30 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol facility in Nevada, Iowa,”.
So it sounds like the experiment was so successful that they stopped it short and went directly to production. This meshes well with everything else I’ve read on the subject. What’s your take?
And yes, I was talking specifically about the US when I said “we”. How provincial of me! According to the EIA natural gas use for electrical production increased by 12.3% in 2014 while coal consumption declined by 11.7%.
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/
As to the n-word, that’s a huge row on an individual plant basis. Nobody can do anything but speculate and fight about that one. My stance is based on the fact that the default in a political fight is “status quo”, and power plants eventually wear out.
Yep, I didn’t mention wind or PV because they have NOTHING to do with EVs yet. We can build all the wind and PV we want either with or without putting any into vehicles. However, after we’ve retired our coal and natural gas plants, then EVs will have a stronger case and wind and solar will have lots to do with EVs. EVs can provide a service once current generating plants retire and the grid smartens up, by storing and releasing energy at a high cost. (Figures seem to say that battery degradation is double or triple the cost of the electricity itself, and you lose about 15% charging and maybe a similar amount in discharging. Add all that up and EV-based grid-peaking power is very useful, very inefficient, and very expensive. Of course, given that the alternative future with 40 times as many hybrids as the future with EVs, that exact same service can be provided by the hybrids.)
On the political and economic (as opposed to physically possible) path to low carbon, next-generation hybrids will have NO political downside and NO economic downside. They also essentially keep the status quo with regard to the consumer and the infrastructure serving her.
Chuck Hughes: Even using the gas engine we get 85 mpg.
RC: Actually, the Volt is the closest current vehicle to what I’ve got in mind, though with a bigger battery. My research points to a sweet spot of about 2 KWH per vehicle for maximum battery utility by the entire fleet. This allows for short trips without combustion and it allows for utility of batteries’ surge capability (which is far more important than range. Note that if you focus on range, you end up with ridiculous amounts of surge. Tesla is inching above 1g in acceleration. Wouldn’t that power be better distributed amongst a hundred vehicles so all of them could have smaller, more efficient engines?)
Your claim of “pennies to charge” is misleading. The exact same thing can be said about a hybrid you re-fill at the gas station twice a day. The question is relative cost. In that regard, the Prius and the Leaf are about the same, with the Leaf benefiting from immunity from road taxes. (though tax exemptions do NOT decrease costs. They merely pawn those costs off on others.) And, of course, the Leaf’s $7,500-$10,000 initial tax debt has to be paid by somebody. At under $500 a year for fuel costs for a Prius, that’s 20 years before the Leaf makes economic sense even if electricity and loans were free.
As to your 85 MPG claim, that’s an error. I’d bet your penny to my $100 that if you filled your tank and emptied your battery then took a drive at normal speed, you’d get less than 45 MPG (The feds say 37 MPG.)
—-
Jim Eager: For a volt owner in Quebec it’s almost exclusively generated by hydro, so very little carbon. It depends on where you charge the batteries.
RC: Well, sorta. Hydro power is determined by rainfall and, like wind and solar, ~100% will be used with or without EVs. So, if your jurisdiction has NO fossil sources, then the EV is “clean”. Otherwise, the jurisdiction will have to increase its use of fossil fuel in essentially lock-step with EV electrical consumption. Like taxes, marginal rates are what count. (Though if EVs mostly charge at night and there is excess rainfall than can’t be used “normally”, then their carbon footprint can plummet. EVs and wind also have synergy since wind tends to increase at night. EVs and solar suck together.)
Chuck, your Volt may not need gas, but how much carbon it takes to charge it depends on how the electricity is generated. For a Volt owner in the US Midwest it’s mainly generated by burning coal, so lots of carbon. For a volt owner in Quebec it’s almost exclusively generated by hydro, so very little carbon. It depends on where you charge the batteries.
Comment by Jm Eager — 5 Jan 2016
The point is…. it costs penny’s to charge the Volt no matter the source. Let’s stick to how much carbon the car uses regardless of the source. If I were having to use the gas engine instead of the electric engine the car would be much more carbon intensive. So is the Volt a better choice than a car that get’s 35mpg? It depends on how you drive and where you drive but no matter how or where, gas or electric (both engines work together) I still get ~85mpg. That’s way better than 35mpg. If I drive locally it’s 250+ mpg. Not to mention I received a $10,000 tax rebate when I bought it.
I’ve had more people stop me and ask about the car because it says VOLT on the side. Even die hard Conservative Republicans who trashed the car when it came out are jealous. The dealer offered to remove the VOLT from the sides of the car. I told em NO WAY. I feel like I’m setting a good example for others to follow. And, it adds credibility when I talk to people about the environment because I went out of my way to get the car. The positives far outweigh any negatives. The new Volt’s are even better because the technology keeps improving and the price keeps dropping. I also get a monthly maintenance email telling me to air up the tires or fix whatever is wrong with it. The warranty is good for eight years so I don’t get charged if something goes wrong with the car.
Oh, and one more thing… when it comes to acceleration it can pass a sports car like it’s standing still. The electric engine kicks butt. Chuck Yeager would be proud.
End of commercial.
Theo,
“And water contracts from 0 to 4 degrees, so those melting ice-shelves are lowering sea level”
No, since the ice shelves are attached to land.
Mike,
“Daily CO2 for Jan 6, 2015 from MLO 399.79”
I guess you meant 2014, not 2015, as Jan 6 is not yet over (at time of posting).
I understand methane is not as well mixed in the atmosphere as CO2, so I doubt there is a representative site. But try a few from the ESRL web site. They also provide an annual greenhouse gas index (currently through 2014), which is quite interesting (we’re up to more than 480 ppm CO2e, though aerosol masking isn’t included).
Re 61, 69: My posts are just observations and questions from a lay-person i.e. not officially debating and trying to score a point. Sure, some of my questions have bite, cause debating cars or Saudi or Engineers vs Inventors is cute, but really doesn’t get us anywhere.
Re 77: Yes, I did ask my sons and the answer was that there were far more important things to worry about than a 13cm sea-level rise and a 1 degree increase in temperature over 100 years. If it gets too bad, no doubt somebody will do something.
And Chuck, you are definitely the most un-friendly on this site (see previous posts) and moderation doesn’t seem to temper that. As a final blast, to see me truly off the rails, enjoy my next paragraph.
Climate Change is only one of the side effects of over-population. Every year, we add the population of England. Urbanization adds the equivalent of 2 Englands to our consumer base. They all need houses and cars and heating and cooling and computers to blog on. This currently totals at about 3%, so one would expect pollution and Global Warming to increase by 3% each year. In medicine they try to tackle the source of the problem, not the symptoms. So what do we do about over-population ? In the past we managed to keep our numbers down by having lots of wars. But that is currently out of fashion, but soon there will be real shortages of everything, so then we will have another go. My preference is that Climate Change does the pruning, cause at times of emergencies, our hearts go out to each other.
OK guys, thanks for no real answers !
68 Richard Caldwell: The engineers at Volkswagen did not deceive their boss. The boss knew exactly what they were doing. The CEO knew exactly what they were doing. Why do you suppose the CEO resigned so quickly? The CEO ordered it. You must have misread what I said. If you think you can put one over on your boss, you have a very stupid boss or you are very arrogant.
Dancer and inventor: NO. Physicist and inventor: YES.
Myers–Briggs Type Indicator
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A chart with descriptions of each Myers–Briggs personality type and the four dichotomies central to the theory
Carl Jung in 1910. Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Cook Briggs extrapolated their MBTI theory from Jung’s writings in his book Psychological Types.
The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is an introspective self-report questionnaire designed to indicate psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions.[1][2][3]
Scientists, engineers, inventors and “Field Marshals” [whatever they are] form a tight group of similar people called “masterminds”
I happen to fall in the crack between scientist and engineer. I am equally happy being a scientist, an engineer or an inventor. But in-between types tend to be ball-droppers.
I agree with 74 Eric S.
#81, Mike–
Well, a long-standing mainstay is ESRL’s network:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about.html
There are other terrestrial programs as well, and there’s also satellite monitoring:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_Gases_Observing_Satellite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory_2
ICE versus EV greenhouse impact:
Hawkins et al., Industrial Ecology, 2013.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00532.x/full
It also states that light-duty vehicles account for about 10% of GHG emissions globally, but is expected to rise significantly due to a roughly 300% projected increase in global car ownership “over the coming decades.”
Also, Ma et al., 2012, unfortunately paywalled and with a not so informative abstract:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421512000602
The prospects for various vehicle options in China, per Ou et al., 2012:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261911002029
The US least-cost approach, modeled by Supekar et al., 2013, and my candidate for most frustrating paywall of this group, at least:
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-4451-48-2_75
Many, many others, via a search of Google Scholar with keywords:
“life+cycle+analysis+of+electric+vehicle+greenhouse+gas+emissions”.
Oh, and a useful review, which, however, is only partially available without charge. Relevant bit:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-012-0440-9
Worth remembering, perhaps, is this factoid: “The entire [Tesla gigafactory] will be powered by renewable energy sources; Tesla hopes to achieve net zero energy.”
– See more at: http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/200283/so-what-actually-is-teslas-gigafactory#sthash.ic1kSAoZ.dpuf
The goal is for full production in 2020, with output from the facility to exceed 2013 global production levels. Discussions are apparently underway for a similar facility to be built in Germany. Not to be a fan boi, but realization of those two items would shift the paradigm a tad–especially if Tesla actually starts to turn a profit.
The EV comments are pretty much as pointless as those from EG on you-know-what; illustrating the flaw in most discussions of mitigation.
There is no all-powerful world government, nor US government, that is going to read your opinions and Mandate! one technology or the other. In addition, you have lost track of the basic principle of engineering, design, making stew…first, you catch the rabbit.
So, if everyone here agrees that we need some kind of disincentive to the use of FF, you have to begin the discussion of technology assuming something like a carbon tax has already increased the cost of coal or NG or petrol.
Now, I gave my approach earlier with respect to meeting the needs of buildings, which is to establish a free market condition through government regulation or operation of the electrical grid, allowing consumers to choose how they wish to light, heat, cool, and so on. Likewise, consider the transportation sector and how anti-competitive conditions are maintained through lobbying and regulatory capture. If you have a government committed to dealing with climate change (rabbit), and it has the power to institute a [carbon tax], the one thing it can also do is create a free market. An obvious example is eliminating that insult to the concept of interstate commerce that doesn’t allow [Tesla] to sell its own cars in many states.
An illustration would be the development of light bulb technology. I can imagine you guys at one point arguing over which direction of the spiral in CFL’s was better, based on this or that inconclusive study, but in the end, market forces brought us the LED bulb. And what’s really interesting about that is that the LED bulb is a market winner against traditional incandescents and other options not because of the difference in energy consumption, but because it’s just all-around superior for the user. The same thing will happen with transportation and vehicles, if you give it a chance.
mike @81.
Regarding CO2, that 3ppm 12-month rise to Dec 2015 would thus be =10th in the ranking of such rises since 1959, as would have been indicated in the rankings provided last month. This is surely the El Nino that is again “burning somewhere.”
Regarding watching CH4, if you want an equivalent for CH4 as MLO is for CO2, may I suggest MLO. It’s records stretch back to 1983 which is as far as any other, although the early part are flask measurements rather than in situ and the latest year is presented as provisional and only provided graphically with updates about quarterly. (See here although you need to choose CH4 (& in situ/flask as appropriate) before hitting ‘submit’.) You might also find the executive summary page of the NOAA CarbonTracker-CH4 Data Assimilation Product worth a look.
Theo van den berg said “Asked my son, if he was prepared to go without heating/cooling his house and go by pushbike to work, just so some islanders in the Pacific don’t get their sea-level gardens flooded. And, of course, serious economic depression, cause Aus is not allowed to export any coal. New house, new baby, you know what the answer is!”
There’s a saying, “Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.” Do you really think the issue is some island people losing their homelands, and that’s it? Climate Change is done?
Ask him if he’s willing to risk his children and/or grandchildren living a dystopian nightmare, and possibly be among those who watch humanity go extinct, or, is he willing to live a simpler, more connected life in order to create a future that is safe and abundant for them?
AC, good point about adding solar panels when one buys an EV (a friend who just bought a KIA Soul EV already had SV panels), but it proves my point, or rather refines it: it depends on *how* you charge the batteries.
Richard, you seem to be rather unfamiliar with how much hydro Quebec generates. The James Bay reservoir complex alone is huge (it’s east of Hudson Bay, so think annual snow pack, not just rain). Quebec has sufficient excess generating capacity that it will take a good many EVs to make a dent.. Not counting the power it generates out of provence at Churchill Falls in Labrador, or wind and biomass, it generates 98% of its electricity from hydro.
http://www.hydroquebec.com/generation/
I used Quebec as an example because it is probably as close to zero fossil fuel generation as you can find in North America. Even British Columbia has a few nat gas plants, while Washington State also burns coal.
Griesch: sorry, you’re fooling yourself. It’s not science, it’s sciencey.
http://www.google.com/search?q=meyers+briggs+validation or use Scholar for the source research
‘The easiest person to fool is yourself’ is an observation from research, it’s not original to Feynman though he said it a lot.
You can look that up too.
http://www.google.com/search?q=fallacy+of+positive+validation
It seems right to you. It _feels_ right. You know in your guts it’s true. That’s reason to mistrust what you think.
You know might be a great way to raise Climate awareness?
A Online Viral challenge.
How I invisioned it:
You take a recording device of any kind. And Interview somebody Below the Age 13
All you do is apologize to them for 3 hazordius effects of a warming world that you’re leaving them with.
But then Say theres still hope for change, and you address viewer as the Goverment asking for serious action. Then address the viewer like the viewer and do the same to raise awareness for this increasingly dire issue.
RC
As to your 85 MPG claim, that’s an error. I’d bet your penny to my $100 that if you filled your tank and emptied your battery then took a drive at normal speed, you’d get less than 45 MPG (The feds say 37 MPG.)
I said, depending on how you drive and where you drive. Also 85 mpg is average
Over the life of the vehicle. MPG changes constantly as it does with every car.
I’m talking about the average mileage. All cars sold advertise the average mileage, not the mileage at any given moment. The gas engine and electric engine are integrated. You cannot separate the two because the car doesn’t operate that way. Coasting recharges the battery. The gas engine kicks in as needed.
I own the car. I drive it. I put fuel in it. I know what it does. I know what it costs. It does exactly what the manufacturer says it does. Read the specs and get back to me on it.
RC 84: if your jurisdiction has NO fossil sources, then the EV is “clean”. Otherwise, the jurisdiction will have to increase its use of fossil fuel in essentially lock-step with EV electrical consumption.
BPL: Fallacy of equivocation. It will have to increase its use of power generation–not fossil fuel power generation. This is the big fallacy in your whole anti-EV rant. As if more fossil fuels were the only way to generate power. This when half the new generating capacity put in place in the US last year was renewable.