(I think hybrids with an external boost for takeoff and PV covered wings to aid cruising)
I’m a bit unclear how you meant that, Al, but I’m presuming that it’s your suggestion for what a hybrid architecture might be?
At any rate, in service of clarity, especially for folks who might be following this subthread rather more casually, the hybrid architecture proposed for the zunum and airbus planes is a electric primary drivetrains plus a gas turbine ‘range extender’ generator.
(Note that takeoffs per se are not a problem for electric planes in general; for instance, the Pipistrel Electro trainer climbs at 1350 feet per minute, as compared with 715 for the venerable Cessna 152. Of course, the Cessna has 30% greater takeoff weight, and can fly nearly 7x farther.)
Al Bundysays
“Electric Jet Engines”
don’t exist. Jet engines use a heat source to expand air and then direct the hot air out the back. So, yes, one could put a big ol’ resistance heater in the middle of a jet engine (as opposed to igniting fuel) and you’d end up with an incredibly inefficient electric jet engine.
The so-called “electric jet engine” is basically a ducted propeller (fan) engine. Note that jet engines are often mated with ducted or non-ducted props that “steal” energy from the jet, giving a more efficient “turbofan” or “turboprop” engine, where much, most, or nearly all of the thrust is provided by the prop/fan.
The jet engine has survived because it is light and can operate at wicked high airspeed. Unfortunately, it is also inefficient. Jets are stuck in the 20th century, where fuel consumption was only a tertiary issue. Electric and SCC-driven prop/fan are the future.
Carriesays
150 Barton Paul Levenson, um, I agree with the info on your page. It has nothing to do with that I said though, which is completely different to the argument you had with ‘deniers’. I am not a denier. #128 was to assist contextualization. Of course they ‘know’ as you and I know the drivers for warming and so on. But thanks anyway.
The issue is more about the gaps and the projections and uncertainties everywhere. I have no problem with those either as there are valid reasons for this. I support those who keep saying so out loud and often. Including about ECS. The future may be a lot worse than the IPCC and UNFCCC etc etc suggests it might be. I’d prefer that potential consequence is not neglected by conservative dogmatic fuddy duddies who believe nothing happens in reality until someone has put it in a science paper and it’s been cited by others as accurate. Dogma (in any field) is deadly imo, and shown as such in the historical records. Worth being aware of and addressing it firmly when immediately it appears. Perhaps this explanation may also be misconstrued? That’s ok too. I’m no perfectionist.
Fred Magyarsays
Al Bundy @ 152 says:
“Electric Jet Engines”
don’t exist. Jet engines use a heat source to expand air and then direct the hot air out the back. So, yes, one could put a big ol’ resistance heater in the middle of a jet engine (as opposed to igniting fuel) and you’d end up with an incredibly inefficient electric jet engine.
I’m not sure you quite understand what the definition of ‘JET’ propulsion is. Hint, a squid or an octopus is jet propelled and it does not use any heat source to expand air.
“Jet propulsion is the propulsion of an object in one direction, produced by ejecting a jet of fluid in the opposite direction. By Newton’s third law, the moving body is propelled in the opposite direction to the jet.”
From the Illium site:
The electric jet engines work like turbofan jet engines in a regular passenger jet. They suck in air, compress it and push it out the back. However, the compressor fan in the front is not turned by a gas turbine, but by a high performance electric motor. Therefore, they run much quieter and completely emission-free.
If you don’t agree with that explanation take it up with the aeronautical engineers behind the design. I’m sure they will be more happy to explain the basic physical principles behind the concept much more clearly than I could!
Cheers!
Al Bundysays
Mr KillingInaction: Taxes will not reduce CO2 output unless they are very high. Several years ago, the price of gas got up to about $5/gallon in Cal, and was 4+ everywhere else. Didn’t make a dent in consumption.
AB: You’re looking at the wrong metric. Short term consumption is decidedly inelastic. Folks just grumble when prices spike. The true metric is durable goods sales. Those do respond to energy price increases. Escalating carbon taxes provide the incentive to purchase more efficient durable goods without actually having to tax anybody significantly at first. This technique works especially well with vehicles because vehicles are often leased and the lessor will price leases based on resale value, which will be heavily influenced by future taxes. If the tax on a gallon of gas will be $4 in five years ($0 initially and it goes up $1/year for 10 years) then sales of more efficient vehicles will skyrocket and hogs won’t sell even though the tax is $0!
——–
Carrie: Please note that US Democrats do not rate as being “left”. They belong firmly in the right of center box socially and economically and politically.
AB: I’ve heard that if Bernie moved to Europe he’d be middle of the road. And you’re right about unequal opportunity. Note that schools are generally funded based on the income of the kids’ parents. (I’m a bit out of date so corrections welcome) Note that grocery stores are expensive and stock garbage in poor neighborhoods. Note that non-minimum wage jobs are scarce anywhere near the poor, and even minimum wage is often just an MLK dream. Note that 10% of black men in Florida are barred from ever voting and many more are struck from the rolls for “registering while black”. But the US has Mottoes and Beliefs, and those are ever so much better than reality.
——–
Kevin,
There are lots of potential configurations for hybrid aircraft. One would be to use biofuel for cruise and biofuel + electric for takeoff, climb, and to utilize whatever the PVs supply. The electrics get their power from an embedded rail on the runway during takeoff, and from PV and batteries the rest of the time. During descent and landing the electrics can charge the batteries. “Range extender” is a dubious format because batteries are heavy, which is also why the above described external electric supply might be viable.
An esoteric design would use a single-shaft hybrid drone to provide additional thrust during takeoff and climb. The drone decouples the engine and recharges its battery as it descends to grab fuel and the next plane. Then plane’s engines/motors could be sized for cruise. Unfortunately, this would deprive planes of most of their emergency power.
Batteries are decent at supplying peak and negative power (flywheels are better). Batteries are good at augmenting base power and supplying short term power. Batteries suck at supplying long term base power. Engines are good at supplying constant power, be it base or augmentary. Engines suck at supplying peak power and can’t supply negative power.
That 250HP engine in your car could be dropped to about 25HP if it were augmented with very large diameter very slow counter-rotating flywheels (small, fast flywheels are expensive and inefficient) for acceleration and a small battery for mountain climbing and extremely short trips (under 5 miles). Then halve rolling and air resistance and you can power a supercar with a 15HP SCC engine. (Though you couldn’t maintain excessive speed for long periods. The engine is the limiting factor for maximum cruise speed.)
—–
Nigel, biofuels don’t have to take up any land, per se. Forests, farms, and grasslands produce excess above ground cellulose. Instead of supporting crop prices use the money to buy troubled farms on the cheap and re-wild them so they both sequester carbon and supply cellulose, especially in prairie biomes. Consumers produce waste. If new housing were required to have systems that made things easy and automagic then folks would comply because complying would be effortless.
Fred Magyarsays
nigelj @ 147 says:
Fred Magyar @139 I didn’t realise the progress being made with air travel and batteries. I think the problem with corn and sugar cane and cellulose based biofuels is land area. There’s very little spare usable land left on this fine planet. We have a growing population, demands to use land for forestry carbon sinks and biofuels, and I dont think they can all be scaled up.
As far as electric flight and batteries, I’m just a curious layman but I do have some first hand experience and knowledge with sugar cane production in Brazil.
I am not for a moment suggesting that biofuels are even remotely scalable or are anything close to a silver bullet for solving any global climate issues. However the video I linked to hints at a more sustainable path for agriculture in general.
I have also followed Craig Venter’s algae for biofuel production project funded by EXXON. While that may eventually fill some specific minor niches. It is also not scalable. Living organisms, no matter how finely tuned, are still not able to beat the basic laws of physics.
But I agree that growing population and scarcity of available land is a serious dilemma.
Cheers!
Omega Centaurisays
Al @152.
Pretty much what I was thinking about electric jet engines. The reason combustion engines use compression/decompression is so they can extract some of the energy from the combustion and use it to accelerate bypass air, so that the volume of air coming out of the jet is increased. But an electric engine isn’t a heat engine, but really just an electrically powered propeller/turbine.
Now maybe a hybrid could use electrical energy as part of the drive, and maybe that is a better engineering tradeoff to having two different engines for a hybrid fuel and electric plane.
“Taxes will not reduce CO2 output unless they are very high”
Empirically incorrect; see the experience with the BC carbon tax. It’s capped at $30 for now, and has had a significant effect on emissions in British Columbia.
Obviously, a higher tax would have a more marked effect, and equally obviously, that would be desirable if it could be achieved politically.
nigeljsays
Carrie @145, I agree the Niger Delta conflcit is a terrible conflict, and my sympathies are with the people being exploited and shoved off their land due to oil interests, but I don’t see how this relates to my comment. I would not expect poor people to consume less.
We live in western countries with capitalist economies. There’s nothing about this that stops us reducing the amount of stuff we buy if we are concerned about conserving resources. There’s nobody stopping us. The only thing I would say is marketing is a powerful thing that pushes us to over consume, and this is very troubling.
Having said this capitalism is generating or contributing to some obvious problems particularly inequality and environmental degradation as you yourself have pointed out I think, so we have certain choices:
1) Capitalism could change its inner structure, possibly by society and the corporate sector accepting a wider set of environmental goals and not just profit goals. Not easy, but not impossible.
2) Better regulation of market anomalies and environmental issues. This is of course politically resisted by the right.
3) A completely new system. But getting a good system and enough people interested may be as difficult or more difficult than options 1 and 2!
nigeljsays
Carrie @144
“Correct. The fee dividend proponents put that at USD100 per ton CO2 vs the $40 as a starting point they now suggest. Pushes gas way above $5 per gallon. It’s a myth and unnecessary. But lots of money to be made by some players. Just not the everyday person who’ll end up paying through the nose for the ‘luxury’ of being a ‘consumer’.”
You don’t explain why carbon fee and dividend is a myth or unnecessary. Its also hard to see how lots of money is made by some players, given we are talking a 100% rebate given to all consumers.
If you are concerned about social justice, Alberta has a carbon tax and rebate scheme which is skewed to ensure middle to lower income people get most of the rebate. What on earth is wrong with this? if they can do it anyone could potentially do this.
It doesn’t matter if the fee pushes up petrol prices very high because this is phased in, and people get rebates allowing them to purchase electric cars, smaller cars or hybrids.
It sounds like you don’t like carbon tax simply because its identified with the current political establishment and popular with economists.
But you provide 1) no specific evidence of why its a bad thing and 2) no specific case for a better alternative. This is why I find you so unconvincing on it.
I don’t think a carbon tax and dividend is ideal, but its reasonably ok and likely to have wide appeal and this is important. Cap and trade could also be made to work in theory but this is more of a neoliberal thing and money can be captured by special interests. Perhaps you are confusing a carbon tax with cap and trade.
“Actually world wide it isn’t #1. Social justice and equity and wages is. The “left” is as recalcitrant as everyone else is regards rational action and policies to stop global warming. Please note that US Democrats do not rate as being “left”. They belong firmly in the right of center box socially and economically and politically.”
I agree, although theres no reason not to tackle all problems in unison of course
“Elon isn’t a dummy.” “True but he is a low life bully narcissist and an internet troll. iow has distinct personality issues like all neoliberals, randians & libertarians.”
He has Aspergers Syndrome and is rather dominant person etc. I do not see him as being remotely Randian (and I have read her novels). Hes ok.
“But we all have the opportunity to achieve without limit. ”That’s bullshit”
It is indeed BS. Someone with a low IQ or really poor coordination is not going to be a brain surgeon. I think its good to encourage children (and adults) to think they have plenty of potential and can go far, but its a lie to suggest they can become anything they want, and we are setting them up for failure by doing this. What we should do is help children identify their natural talents.
Al Bundysays
Nigelj,
Engine exhaust is essentially benign if the engine is correctly designed. Current obsolete engines use a fluttering above/below stochiometric air/fuel ratio. This leads to high pollution and an expensive complex engine. This is “necessary” because they use an expensive power-robbing fluttering oxidizing/reducing catalytic converter (in an ineffective attempt to control smog-producing NOX) instead of basic chemistry to catalyse CO within the engine, thermal mass to prevent NOX, isolation to prevent oil bypass, a lean homogenous charge to prevent soot and HC, targeted temperature catalysts in the combined cycle section to scavange escaping CO and HC, and an atmospheric microcosm to clean up residuals,
especially NOX (instead of leaving it to the actual atmosphere). Heck, current engines still use four valves per cylinder, high compression, and a muffler!!
Don’t take past stupido complex design as proof that intelligent design is impossible. A proper engine has very few parts. Ya know, simplification.
Scott E Stroughsays
102 nigelj says: “In reality nobody is really proposing energy grids based entirely around solar power. Most proposals include a mix of solar power, wind power and storage.”
You are correct, but think a bit outside the box for a moment. In reality the best most dependable and cheapest energy by far is hydroelectric. And not just huge mega-projects either. Many small generators fed by “Mill pond” size reservoirs turns out to be a great way to provide dependable cheap electricity to isolated rural communities and individual farms in developing countries.
As it turns out the US Model of stringing an inclusive interconnected “grid” to every imaginable home in the middle of nowhere is an incredible expensive and inefficient waste of resources. Appropriate technology has got this easily, if people are willing to actually use the intelligence God gave us.
The paper is a bit old now, but by now rural hydropower has actually exceeded what was discussed in the paper. A stunning success so far.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @152
“Electric and SCC-driven prop/fan are the future.”
Probably right, but then theres also ammonia as a fuel source.
alan2102says
148 zebra says: “alan2102 #140, Mal #141, Projecting in a realistic timeframe, which I see as about 300 years, with 150 years as the likely point where the technological shift could become global… what do you do with all the people?”
I don’t understand:
1) what you see taking 150-300 years to happen. Nothing that I wrote about will take 150 years, except possibly in the most-retarded places currently, like Africa. Even there, 100 years would be a reasonable guesstimate. 50 years everywhere else. (This assumes, of course, that climate or other black swans don’t wreck everything; a dangerous assumption, I know.)
2) the meaning of your last question. What do you “do” with all the people? What are you talking about?
Zebra: “So, no taxi drivers and no Jiffylube mechanics, and no subsistence farmers and no cashiers and baggers, and no code-monkeys, and far fewer doctors and lawyers, and so on. OK then…what’s a human to do?”
Do you mean, how will we spend our days, having been freed of all drudgery and repetitive and boring tasks? Somehow I don’t see that as a problem. It is only a problem for those with crippled imaginations.
alan2102says
126 Mr. Know It All says: “we all have the opportunity to achieve without limit.”
For the record, this is the myth of social mobility. And it IS a myth, mostly. It happens, but to perhaps 10% of the extent that people like MKIA think (wish).
Actually, in the case of this particular expression (“… achieve without limit”) it is the myth of social mobility combined with a flaky you-can-do-anything hucksterism.
Delusional.
alan2102says
126 Mr. Know It All says: “Where are the products from the environmental leaders that will save the climate FOR THE CHILLLLLDREN! Are we a bunch of statists waiting for the goobermint to save the planet? Or can we put on our big boy pants and start making some concrete progress?”
Concrete progress can be made in several ways, including personal voluntary action, and public policy. The latter is where the heavy lifting is done; personal voluntary piecemeal action (e.g. personal decision to reduce one’s carbon footprint) will — without public or social reinforcements — always fall short. If saying that makes me a “statist waiting for the goobermint”, then so be it. I am a statist waiting for the goobermint.
Regarding the more general matter of trust in institutions (of which one aspect is “statists waiting for the goobermint”), here is a fascinating tidbit:
https://stalinsmoustache.org/2018/02/27/edelman-trust-barometer-china-tops-the-world/
Edelman Trust Barometer: China tops the world
27 february, 2018, posted in another world is possible, china, marxism
These curious reports keep appearing. I have already mentioned the Ipsos survey from last year, which found last year that 87% of people in China are confident in the direction the country is heading. Now we have the Edelman Trust Barometer, which finds the following for China:
Trust among the ‘informed public’:
In government: 89%
In business: 85%
In media: 80%
In NGOs: 76%
Average: 83%
Trust among the general population:
In government: 84%
In business: 74%
In media: 71%
In NGOS: 66%
Average: 74%
Overall, this is up by 27% in one year, the highest in the world
[end quote]
Wow! The Chinese people overwhelmingly trust their institutions! The article goes on to show that trust in institutions in the U.S. has fallen by 37% (!!!) in ONE year (!!!) — a far bigger fall than anywhere else in the world.
There’s a good reason for this. Institutions in the U.S. are in the process of betraying the people and even flushing many of them down the toilet, while institutions in China are, for the most part, supporting the people. People in China are “statists waiting for the goobermint” — and their faith is backed by reality. China’s Big Government is helping them and looking out for them. Imperfectly, of course, but overall they are doing a pretty good job. They’ve done a spectacular job of growing the economy and lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Their environmental record is obviously poor, but that was a necessary trade-off. (The U.S. was similarly filthy-dirty during its rapid growth era.) More importantly, they are taking their global responsibilities seriously: curtailing coal growth, rapidly building-out renewables, rapidly building-out mass transit, developing a global UHV grid (with huge implications for renewables use, worldwide), among other excellent environment-related actions. They are committed to the Paris agreement. They are progressing in the right directions about as fast as a country of their size and history (of abysmal under-development) can possibly progress. They have a big government, and they trust it, and it is working wonders for them, and it is generally doing good work, some if it great work. After China emerges as the overall dominant force on the global scene (~20 years), what will be the response of MKIA and the Randroid small-government types? Will they say it was a fluke?
Al Bundysays
Oops, I just realized that I used the phrase “oil bypass”. ERROR! I meant hydrocarbon (HC) bypass into the bottom end, where only oil should reside. This bypass results in pollution and the “necessity” of frequent oil changes. A properly designated engine’s maintenance consists of air filter changes. Its oil only needs changing every 100k miles or so.
Again, that engineers protect their owner’s intellectual property rights and physical plant and worker mind share is irrelevant to what a true inventor can create. Engineers are NOT inventors. Engineers are folks who use equations so as to optimise results.
Thus, a proper team dedicated to advancement would be an inventor, an engineer, and a mechanic, along with nary a capitalist in sight.
JRClarksays
Humanity is devouring our planet’s resources in increasingly destructive volumes, according to a new study that reveals we have consumed a year’s worth of carbon, food, water, fibre, land and timber in a record 212 days.
As a result, the Earth Overshoot Day – which marks the point at which consumption exceeds the capacity of nature to regenerate – has moved forward two days to 1 August, the earliest date ever recorded.
Concrete progress can be made in several ways, including personal voluntary action, and public policy. The latter is where the heavy lifting is done; personal voluntary piecemeal action (e.g. personal decision to reduce one’s carbon footprint) will — without public or social reinforcements — always fall short.
Absolutely correct. As is alan’s summary about China and how filthy the west has been most of the last 250 years of the industrial revolution and how abusive of the people (at home and abroad) as being expendable pawns. #165 is equally spot on about KIA – a delusional believer in myths and make believe who eats up the manipulative propaganda with relish.
Carriesays
160 nigelj But you provide 1) no specific evidence of why its a bad thing and 2) no specific case for a better alternative. This is why I find you so unconvincing on it.
I don’t have to provide anything because I am not the only person who thinks like I think and say what I say. I stand on the shoulders of giants. :-)
Feel free to do the math and think about it yourself. I’m not here to convince the unconvincable while you ref Alberta as a carbon tax nirvana. Alberta, as in of Alberta Tar Sands infamy. Has the carbon tax shut that disgusting industry down by making it uneconomical for green loving marketplace already? Because I hadn’t heard of that great achievement. Let me know when it does. Then I might reconsider my position, but until then …..
Al Bundysays
KillingInaction,
Ahh, your issue clarifies. Drumpf’s bankruptcies were not failures to be expected from a risk taker. They were legal assaults. He set up agreements so he could drain value instead of paying his bills, and then, once he siphoned all the cash into his own pocket he jettisoned the husk. That you crow about Drumpf’s bankruptcies as proof of his goodness and fitness while freely admitting that you speak from complete ignorance speaks loudly.
Please up your game to Victor’s level.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @155, yes you cannot judge the influence of a petrol prices on short term time frames, because people know the oil market goes up and down and they wait things out. If you look at the oil shocks of the 1970 -1980’s period it was different, because it looked longer lasting, and people started buying smaller more fuel efficient cars. Once again Mr KIA mixes up short and longer term time frames.
Yes of course you can use cellulose from existing plants of various types. I’m a twit I wasn’t thinking, trying to read this stuff while watching TV at the same time. Never works.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @169, “engine exhaust…..”, I think you might be responding to the wrong person. But I get the feeling they attach on catalytic converters because its easier than your re-design of the engine in the sense of just doing what requires the least effort – so laziness. Not my field though.
However I have often felt progress with the internal combustion engine seems slow compared with electronics design. A mechanical design engineer friend of mine said the oil companies buy up all the patents that could improve things like engine efficiency and low petrol consumption.
Carriesays
160 nigelj, I’ll clarify what I said before by simply saying it’s my conclusion based on all manner of info and thinking not worth getting into. People have other opinions ideas and conclusions, that’s fine, but they do not need to prove anything to me nor convince me of anything at all.
There is more than enough room in this world for people to come to different conclusions and have different views without the need that every time they say something that others demand / ask to be convinced and to ‘prove it’ of demand a science ref x 100 to back up their own personal opinions about life, technology and society. Because that’s nuts to expect they should in the first place. That is not what sharing ideas and dialogue is all about.
The day I want to publish an academic economic science paper on the usefulness of carbon taxes on society and if they can deliver the promises made well I’ll make sure I include all the math and the refs to support my hypothesis and explain exactly what the null hypothesis is.
Until then this is but another publicly open discussion forum on the internet where the topic is climate science. It’s not a peer review journal and it never will be one.
What gets me the most is that I now feel the need to point out such obvious things about life and internet forums in the first place. :-)
nigeljsays
Scott E Strough @162, you are preaching to the converted there. I live in NZ and about half of our electricity comes from hydro power, and its a good system, although its mostly large scale power. Smaller scale hydro power is good to, and probably has fewer environmental impacts than huge projects.
But obviously countries have such different geographies that no one system will be viable for everyone. Jacobsen has done research on specific packages suited to each country called The Solutions Project. I dont know how he treats hydro too much, because I have only read part of this huge study for a few countries. Here it is for anyone interested:
Forests, farms, and grasslands produce excess above ground cellulose.
No, they don’t. Those materials are need back in the soil they came from or will require externnal inputs to replace them.
Killiansays
Another example: large-scale, mechanized agriculture is vastly more simple than, say, everyone tending their own permacultural operation.
You do not understand permaculture. There is no such thing as a “permaculture operation. Permaculture is a process, not an outcome.
You are conflating simplicity, simple and complexity. Complexity has nothing to do with how many things there are, but more the interactions of those things, steps in a process, etc.
I.e., a thousand rubber duckies in a small wading pool is incredibly simple. That same pool with soil, a few aquatic plants and a dozen fish is far more complex.
“Modern” agriculture is incredibly complex, involving many millions of items in a long, global chain of interactions and the lifecycles and footprints of all those items. A million permies growing regenerative gardens is magnitudes simpler.
You are speaking if things you neither know nor understand. Please get educated.
I’m a fan of permaculture, but I agree it doesn’t have to be done using small scale farms.
You do not know enough about it to have a valid opinion. Why are you making such statements? I like jazz, have minor in music, even, but I am not qualified to analyze it with any authority. So is your relationship to Pc.
There is nothing about permaculture that limits the scale of application… except this principle: Use small and slow solutions. Oh, and this one: Build in chunks. Ah, and this: Natural before mechanical, mechanical before high tech.
So, permaculture can be applied to a bio-region successfully, but not as one massive project, but as many small ones.
Try not to speak from ignorance. People read this stuff.
Mr. Know It Allsays
158 – Kevin
Nope. $35/ton now equates to around 25-30 cents per gallon of gasoline. Would not even be a consideration in consumption at double or even triple that amount. Consumption fell from 2008 to 2012, then leveled off, but it didn’t fall due to a 25 cent tax.
Now maybe a hybrid [plane] could use electrical energy as part of the drive, and maybe that is a better engineering tradeoff to having two different engines for a hybrid fuel and electric plane.
Basically, it does both the things you describe: essentially, one of the engines of a BAe 146 jetliner will be replaced with a 2 mw electric turbofan.
So it will be using ‘electric energy as part of the drive’, and it will also have two different species of engines.
They’ll test fly it for a while in that configuration, and then plan (presuming all goes well) to convert a second engine to an e-fan. Then it’s time to take the lessons learned, and hopefully build an all-electric hybrid plane.
The E-Fan X demonstrator will explore the challenges of high-power propulsion systems, such as thermal effects, electric thrust management, altitude and dynamic effects on electric systems and electromagnetic compatibility issues. The objective is to push and mature the technology, performance, safety and reliability enabling quick progress on the hybrid electric technology. The programme also aims at establishing the requirements for future certification of electrically powered aircraft while training a new generation of designers and engineers to bring hybrid-electric commercial aircraft one step closer to reality.
zebrasays
#164 alan2102,
OK– so, the former mechanic or former taxi driver can be “imaginative” while starving to death?
The culture you envision obviously doesn’t require the number of people that now exist, or will exist, in order to function. Indeed, even with current technology, the vast majority of individual humans are, to use that clever Brit term, redundant, except for one “job”– controlling resources.
The China you appear to admire clearly understands this quite well. First they restricted their own population growth. Now they are gaining control of resources through a combination of economic imperialism/colonialism and military expansion. The goal of course is to own a large ratio of resources relative to China’s population. That’s what we call “prosperity”.
If one’s concern is to have the entire human population experience prosperity, then the solution is obvious– reduce global population to the point that competition for resources becomes pointless, because there is more than can be used.
To repeat the point you ignored: Your simplified, efficient, technological culture is what would naturally occur under those condition.
We’re starting to agree on things?! Who’d a thunk it?
Al Bundysays
AB: Forests, farms, and grasslands produce excess above ground cellulose.
Killian: No, they don’t. Those materials are need back in the soil they came from or will require externnal inputs to replace them.
AB: The materials don’t go away just because they are burned. Tis obvious that the ash needs to be spread back where it came from. And consider the alternatives: to fight wildfires at great cost, which results in massive amounts of dry fuel and crowded unhealthy forests; or to let the forests burn, which really bums out the area’s residents.
I note that when folks analyze different points of view they tend to warp the proposal into the most harmful, stupid, and ignorant caricature possible. (not saying you did that, just saying)
——–
nigelj: A mechanical design engineer friend of mine said the oil companies buy up all the patents that could improve things like engine efficiency and low petrol consumption.
AB: Patents are published in a public database and they expire in about 17 years. If your friend was correct, anybody could build those engines and bring them to market as the patents expire. Old Wives’ Tale.
nigelj: . But I get the feeling they attach on catalytic converters because its easier than your re-design of the engine in the sense of just doing what requires the least effort – so laziness. Not my field though.
AB: True, but I don’t think it’s easier or a function of laziness. Frankly, I am not smart enough (in that specific way) to do what automotive engineers do. It’s a different field and level of risk. Big companies tend to hire engineers. Inventors tend to be maverick solo artists. Engineers do incremental improvements that raise the bar just enough to comply with regulations and market forces. And, what is key, is that this is safe and protects the corporation. So, when an inventor comes up with a supposed revolutionary idea (generally from Appalachia) the corporation has the choice to chuck out its whole system and immediately lose BIG BUCKS!!! In return the corporation might just end up with the equivalent of wood alcohol moonshine.
So, corporations hate radical change because it burns their existing IP, physical plant, and knowledgebase while exposing the corporation to tremendous risk. There’s a phrase in business: “With regard to advancement it’s best to be in second place.” (Kind of like penguins, who try to shove another penguin in the water to test for killer whales.)
nigeljsays
Carrie @170,
So which giants do you claim oppose carbon taxes? I mentioned Alberta’s carbon tax only as an example of a scheme that makes poor people aren’t hurt by the idea. Their tar sand issue is another issue.
Other countries have carbon taxes that are working to at least some extent, but all are set too low to be truly effective. Refer carbon tax on wikipedia. But this is the problem we have with all mitigation policies, namely political resistance to them being set at strong levels.
I’m not seeing anyone articulate a different solution to carbon taxes and why it would be better / easier.
However I also agree with Alan we need a combination of personal initiative and public policy on climate change, and I doubt that one single public policy would be a magic answer. The UK has cut emissions significantly with a combination of measures.
Carrie @174
“There is more than enough room in this world for people to come to different conclusions and have different views without the need that every time they say something that others demand / ask to be convinced and to ‘prove it’ of demand a science ref x 100 to back up their own personal opinions about life, technology and society. Because that’s nuts to expect they should in the first place. That is not what sharing ideas and dialogue is all about.”
Can’t agree. You want to make claims on a science website, they don’t have much use unless you can back them up with either reference sources, detailed explanation or at least a few key points, etc. Otherwise its just a silly rhetorical discussion like you get on various media websites!
Its normal for people to be critical and nit pick about what people say, and in science and mitigation details often matter. As long as it doesn’t become personal.
But yes sharing information is also good and not everything has to be an argument. The internet used to be more like this. Those were the good old days…
Al Bundysays
KillingInaction,
You spoke about how rich people should compartmentalize their holdings so that losses can be foisted off to others.
I’m confused. You also crow about “personal responsibility” quite religiously. Shouldn’t you actually be calling for the elimination of limited liability corporations?
During a lecture at a symposium in Tokyo on July 23, Nobuo Tanaka, former IEA executive director, said nuclear power is utterly “uncompetitive” with solar power generation in terms of costs for building or expanding nuclear plants
Scientists at First Street Foundation — a technology nonprofit dedicated to increasing awareness of sea level rise — used data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Geological Survey, local governments, the National Weather Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to estimate flood risks.
Scientists used data from local governments to determine changes to property values over time.
FSF used the data to create an interactive tool — Flood iQ — that allows people to search communities and individual properties to see how much value they’ve lost, and could lose in the future due to sea level rise.
“Sea level rise is something that is already costing the American public billions of dollars and in the last five years alone has sped up 66 percent,” Matthew Eby, FSF executive director, told The News & Observer.
Steven A. McAlpine, head of data science at FSF, and. Jeremy R. Porter, a Columbia University lecturer and FSF statistical consultant, recently released an academic paper in the journal “Population Research and Policy Review” showing $465 million was lost in Miami-Dade County real-estate market value from 2005 to 2016 due to sea level rise flooding.
160 nigelj But you provide 1) no specific evidence of why its a bad thing and 2) no specific case for a better alternative. This is why I find you so unconvincing on it.
I don’t have to provide anything because I am not the only person who thinks like I think ….
Carrie, our hosts here have asked us all to provide citations for claims we assert, and in particular to include the DOI information so people can look them up.
Please help out — iwhen you’re posting something someone else wrote that you read elsewhere, at least tell us who besides you thinks that is the case.
Killiansays
#168 JRClark said To maintain our current appetite for resources, we would need the equivalent of 1.7 Earths, according to Global Footprint Network
And that’s with 4 to 5 billion of us remaining poor. This is why people are so dunderheaded about solutions: They cannot seem to keep all variables in mind at the same time. Solar is great… or a small number of people over many generations, but it is a mirage for 9 billion people, period. That is, that 1.7 Earths only applies if those 4 or 5 billion remain poor and economically enslaved, working for pennies on the dollar to keep our “way of life” going while having nearly zero chance of ever experiencing it.
9 billion living even half as resource intensively as the U.S. does on average is more like 3 or 4 planets.
Discussions of meeting current demand in the future never factor in those 4 – 5 billion living with as much electricity as we do in the OECD.
Carry on my wayward sons…
Simplicity. Only that.
alan2102says
177 Killian 24 Jul 2018 at 2:55 AM: “You do not understand permaculture. There is no such thing as a “permaculture operation.” Permaculture is a process, not an outcome.”
A permaculture operation, IN operation, is a process, not an outcome.
K: “Modern agriculture is incredibly complex, involving many millions of items in a long, global chain of interactions and the lifecycles and footprints of all those items. A million permies growing regenerative gardens is magnitudes simpler.”
Why do you say that? You are suggesting that millions of people take up this practice, and each of them shoulder the task of detailed learning and practice, probably consuming hours every day. In essence: distributing operations that were centralized, and greatly increasing the human cognitive and physical intensity (human time and effort required) to accomplish the same things. How is that simpler? Instead of having a (relative) few specialists and a (relatively) centralized bureaucracy or support infrastructure, we’re now making everyone a specialist and distributing the infrastructure across the whole society, while greatly increasing the sum of infrastructure required (i.e. everything has to be duplicated at each household or location, which is extremely inefficient). Again, how is that simpler?
Modern agriculture is not all that complex. There are no “millions of items” in “long, global chains of interactions”. I think you have in mind globalization and the movement of agricultural commodities and inputs under the global neoliberal regime, not modern ag itself, or *per se*.
Modern ag actually has an urgent need to become more complex, in the sense of making much better use of the flood of relevant information being published on technological improvements. This would necessarily involve more education-oriented infrastructure (more and better extension services), some more specialists, etc.; i.e. more complexity, more overhead. But complexity/overhead very well spent, I would argue.
Hundreds of millions of permies growing hundreds of millions of different gardens of unique design? Magnitudes more complex than modern ag.
Modern ag frees up millions of people from each having to think about a zillion little things pertaining to their personal survival and food supply. Modern ag frees me personally from having to think about all those things, and I’m grateful for it. And I did not mention the freedom from physical drudgery — a very big bonus. Modern ag greatly simplifies and improves my life, and that of countless millions of others. It provides an abundance of nutritious food, amazingly cheaply. It is a spectacularly successful system.
Modern ag gives us one of the very best “deals” in terms of time and effort saved relative to sacrifice or cost. Other fields have become impossibly complex and burdened with bureaucracy, self-serving infrastructure, circles of viciously-competing special interests, and so forth (after the fashion of Tainter’s well-known book “The Collapse of Complex Societies”) — all of which add up to great energy waste and reduced marginal returns. Not so much with agriculture. It is fairly simple and straightforward, and gives us great marginal returns on investments of energy and resources. The military-industrial-security complex would be an example (the worst of several) at the other extreme: fantastically complex and wasteful, with probably *negative* real marginal returns to society. If we want to attack our big wasteful industrial complexes, let’s choose the ones that are by far the worst, OK? Not agriculture.
Killian, if you want to make a general claim about the advantage of permaculture, a better concept than complexity might be resilience. Permaculture makes for a food system that might be, and probably would be, more resilient than the relatively centralized, industrial system we have today. Resilience by virtue of the decentralization, and diversity.
………………………
None of what I just wrote is an argument against the practice of permaculture, for those for whom it is attractive and is a good fit with natural aptitudes and preferences. Permaculture is a very good idea, for some people. It also has advantages such as delivering the freshest food, and possibly more nutrient-dense food. It also has the social advantage of resilience, as noted. It also has the potential of being practiced as an art form, transforming lifeless and soulless urban and semi-urban (slurban) wastelands into vibrant, beautiful and life-enhancing environments; this is surely its highest and best potential, far beyond mere provision of food, but it will take many decades, and will probably always be practiced by only a modest circle of devotees.
Also, none of what I wrote should be taken as a dismissal of the very real problematic aspects of modern industrial agriculture and food systems, including excessive use of fossil fuels, excessive use of toxic chemicals, and so on. To say that modern industrial ag is a “spectacularly successful system” that gives us “great marginal returns” is NOT to say that all is sweetness and light, and that there is no room for improvement! Agriculture and food systems clearly need to be reformed and reconstituted along post-modern sustainable agroecological lines. That does not mean wholesale abandonment of the modern, but it does mean profound reform of it. This can be done over a few decades, mostly with existing technology. Some of it is very simple, no-brainer stuff like ceasing to ship lettuce from California to New York; i.e. idiotic waste of resources and unnecessary carbon-intensity. Some of it is transitioning the culture away from animal foods, which are far too energy and carbon intensive, but it will take decades for the culture to change. Some if it will involve application of striking tech developments as reported in the agro/bio literature (the “flood of relevant information being published on technological improvements” mentioned above) that can speed and enhance the process, and greatly increase carrying capacity, improve human nutrition, and improve adaptation to climate change. (More on this if anyone is interested; extracting this literature is becoming a hobby of mine.) There’s also the matter of using modified agriculture, or agroecologic technique, to help SOLVE climate change; I will leave exposition of that topic to Scott Strough and others.
Bottom line: there’s lots of work to be done, and I did not mean to make light of it or suggest that all is well with modern ag as it now exists.
Mal Adaptedsays
Apropos the version of Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff (‘CF&D/BAT’) recently proposed by two former AGW-deniers in the US Senate, this NYTimes OpEd by two officers of the Rockefeller Family Fund takes a suspicious view:
Most environmentalists, including us, desperately want a meaningful tax on carbon…
Well, Mr. Lott and Mr. Breaux aren’t simply proposing a tax, but a deal: a carbon tax in exchange for two other things. First, they want “an outright repeal of the Clean Power Plan,” which allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions and which the Trump administration is moving to cancel. Second — and most consequentially — they want to give fossil fuel companies immunity from lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for damage they have done to the climate. As their proposal puts it, “Robust carbon taxes would also make possible an end to federal and state tort liability for emitters.”
As a living member of Homo sapiens with collateral descendants, I’m desperate for a meaningful carbon price too. I’m convinced that in its simplest form a revenue-neutral US CF&D/BAT of meaningful size would substantially reduce emissions, and effectively drive investment in carbon-neutral energy supplies and infrastructure. I’m resistant to proposals to make it more complicated, or divert revenues from dividends for any purpose. I also think the Clean Power Plan will reduce emissions by a meaningful increment with or without CF&D/BAT, and I find the idea of immunizing fossil fuel producers against financial liability morally repugnant.
OTOH, we all know money is power. I’m as sure as I need to be that no meaningful decarbonization legislation is possible unless climate realists make deals with fossil fuel billionaires. I’d be open to limiting producer liability to some extent, and maybe even trading away the Clean Power Plan, if the result was enactment of a carbon fee/tariff as outlined by citizensclimatelobby.org: collected from producers/importers beginning at $40 per tonne, and incremented as often and by as much as necessary to keep reducing our aggregate fossil carbon emissions; all combined fee and tariff revenue periodically returned to federal income tax filers in an equal-sized dividend. YMMV, but I’m keeping my eye on this latest “bipartisan” move by crafty politicians to co-opt a simple, rational proposal for collective action against AGW. In my 7th decade, I’m willing to swallow some moral outrage if it will buy the survival of civilization under popular sovereignty, and my great-nephew’s along with it.
alan2102says
144 Carrie 20 Jul 2018 at 3:41 AM: “MKIA: ‘So, since AGW is threat number 1 per those on the left’. World wide it isn’t #1. Social justice and equity and wages is. The “left” is as recalcitrant as everyone else is regards rational action and policies to stop global warming. Please note that US Democrats do not rate as being “left”. They belong firmly in the right of center box socially and economically and politically.”
This needs to be said loudly and often: the Democratic Party is on the RIGHT. Center-right, perhaps, but right, and moving rightward with surprising speed. The DP is becoming the CIA-worshipping Russophobic war party to a degree unimaginable just a few years ago. The DP is the FAKE left or pseudo-left, or what passes for a “left” in a nation that has veered wildly to the right for decades. Elsewhere in the world, someone like Bernie Sanders is considered a moderate centrist, not left at all. But here, in psychotic right-wing-land, he is thought of as “far left”.
There really is no authentic left at all in the U.S., save for a few tiny pockets (e.g. wsws.org, blackagendareport.com, counterpunch.org). After the Powell memo in the early 70s, and the well-organized and well-funded backlash to the 60s insurrections that followed, the left was crushed. One aspect of that was the further enthronement of the fossil fuel interests (and big nuke) to the relative neglect of renewables, as I pointed out recently. The destruction of the left in the U.S. had several aspects and outcomes, all of them bad, and some of them disastrous. DECADES of delay on AGW and the renewables buildout might prove the most disastrous of all.
As for AGW being “threat number 1 per those on the left” (i.e. pseudo-left, or what passes for a “left”): no, it is not. Not even close.
vis: the climate-denying, pro-fossil-fuel, pro-Trump website joannenova.com.au has a new post up about climate change as left media pariah-topic:
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/07/climate-change-is-a-ratings-killer-everyone-is-bored-to-death-of-the-sermon/ — “Scott Whitlock at Newsbusters reports that one climate-worrier journalist revealed in a tweet that climate change kills the ratings. Another tweeter had prodded Liberal MSNBC journalist Chris Hayes to cover more on climate change. “Acting like there is nothing to be done is not excusable.” In reply Chris Hayes lamented: “almost without exception. every single time we’ve covered it’s been a palpable ratings killer. so the incentives are not great.” @chrislhayes 24 July 2018. Those crashing ratings would change overnight if news networks threw open the doors and pitted skeptics against believers in a real televised form of debate. The spectators would suddenly be able to pick sides — may the best person win. There would be genuine controversy. Sacred cows would be slaughtered, and for a while at least, climate change would rate well.” end quote
See? There’s a reason the left (pseudo-left) — like Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and all the others — doesn’t talk about AGW. Because it is bad for business (ratings)! It is a “palpable ratings killer”, and that is enough to leave it off the agenda. This “left” is all about bu$ine$$, which is to say it is not left at all.
Feel free to stop by joannenova’s site and leave a comment. I’m sure they’ll love to hear from us. Haha. Heck, you could even invite them over here for some good clean debate fun.
Carriesays
DW Germany Living Planet: Drought’s grip on farmers
(podcast audio 30mins) this week It’s hot out there. The heat wave sweeping across the northern hemisphere this week has farmers worried, especially where the high temperatures are combined with drought. We look at how farmers around the world are protecting their livestock and crops as the global temperature creeps ever higher. https://soundcloud.com/deutsche-welle-in-english/sets/living-planet-dws-1
Wel, at least somebody’s planning ahead:
hat tip to Soylet News
[1]China’s Plan to Seize a Near-Earth Asteroid Sounds Surprisingly Feasible
For centuries, humans have extracted minerals from the Earth withreckless abandon, but it’s only a matter of time before our desirefor gold, platinum, iron, tungsten, and other useful ores will exceedour planet’s ability to provide them. But what if we could lookbeyond Earth for the raw materials we need to power the engines ofindustry? We’ll spare you the disingenuous prattle about how thissounds like a sci-fi movie, because the fact of the matter isasteroid mining is right over the horizon, and a group of Chinesescientists is already trying to figure out how to snag a[2]near-Earth asteroid out of space to harvest all its goodies onEarth.
“Sounds like science-fiction, but I believe it can be realized,”[3]Li Mingtao, Ph.D., a researcher at the National Space ScienceCenter under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, [4]tells Chinesestate-run news agency Xinhua. Li and his colleagues introduced theirplan at a competition in Shenzhen in which participants proposedinnovative future technologies.
Their plan, which involves a constellation of satellites in an orbitaround the sun that would search for asteroids, wrap a massive bagaround an asteroid, and ferry it back to Earth, has significantengineering obstacles. Even once they get a spacecraft to interceptan asteroid and envelop it in some kind of strong material, they’llstill have to get it here. That’s where a giant, unfolding heatshield comes in, to keep the asteroid from burning up upon reentry.It may sound crazy, but it’s just one of many equally ambitious ideasfloating around in the [5]asteroid mining field. And as far asasteroid mining schemes go, it sounds pretty reasonable.
So far, Li and his team have been working with the Qian XuesenLaboratory of Space Technology, under the China Aerospace Science andTechnology Corporation, to identify a suitable target, reportsXinhua. This will likely be a near-Earth asteroid about 30 feet indiameter. Even a small asteroid would be hard to wrangle, but itcould still potentially contain [6]billions of dollars worth ofprecious metals.
I’m envisioning two ways of [7]getting asteroid chunks down to Earth without burning them up: either a controlled landing of a small portion (tens or hundreds of tons) of minerals using a BFR or other reusable rocket, or diverting a heat-shielded asteroid (or small chunk of one) into Earth orbit and then controlling its descent. Possibly into a desert instead of an ocean.
Related: [8]Luxembourg Announces Investment in Asteroid Mining [9]NASA Asteroid Mission — Metals “Worth” Ten Thousand Quadrillion Dollars [10]Asteroid Mining Could Begin in 10-20 Years [11]”Mission Success” for Arkyd-6 Asteroid Prospecting Demonstration Spacecraft (Planetary Resources has since [12]run dry on funding)
I’m envisioning two ways of [7]getting asteroid chunks down to Earth without burning them up: either a controlled landing of a small portion (tens or hundreds of tons) of minerals using a BFR or other reusable rocket, or diverting a heat-shielded asteroid (or small chunk of one) into Earth orbit and then controlling its descent. Possibly into a desert instead of an ocean.
Somehow, as I read this idea and contemplate the prospect of controlling the re-entry and descent of a massive, asymmetrical object of imperfectly known composition and engineering properties, it’s not primarily the danger of burning up the asteroid that worries me…
Who is it, exactly, who thinks this is ‘surprisingly feasible?’
But heck, maybe I just read “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” too many times at an impressionable age. (“We’ll throw rocks at them!”)
Carriesays
181 alan2102 says:
24 Jul 2018 at 2:32 PM
169 Carrie says: “166 alan2102: …. Absolutely correct.”
We’re starting to agree on things?! Who’d a thunk it?
…………………….
Alan, we already agreed on hundreds of things especially Values but you chose not to notice or care because we disagreed about one aspect of tech about one issue you were not as well informed about as I was in regards latest cutting edge R&D and operating tech. Instead of listening properly and hearing what I was saying specifically you over-generalized and dumped me into a Box then padlocked a chain around it for eternity.
Rather than inquire seek more info, clarifications, or ask meaningful questions first, you happily leapt to knee jerk emotional reactions then made all manner of false assumptions about me and proceeded to paint me (falsely) as some kind of evil force in the world. That was all your doing Alan not mine.
Carriesays
for nigelj and hank
187 Hank Roberts says:
25 Jul 2018 at 5:45 PM
Carrie says:
23 Jul 2018 at 7:53 PM
160 nigelj But you provide 1) no specific evidence of why its a bad thing and 2) no specific case for a better alternative. This is why I find you so unconvincing on it.
I don’t have to provide anything because I am not the only person who thinks like I think ….
Carrie, our hosts here have asked us all to provide citations for claims we assert, and in particular to include the DOI information so people can look them up.
Please help out — iwhen you’re posting something someone else wrote that you read elsewhere, at least tell us who besides you thinks that is the case.
…………………..
1) The hosts never asked me to provide citations nor do they state that on their info pages. Maybe their emails ended up in my spam folder?
2) The issue was carbon tax and F&D – if Mr Google Expert cannot easily find contrary arguments about that idea, well you’re no google expert. You’ll probably find some on these very RC pages if you looked.
3) If I said I was fat do you require a DOI for that too, or would photo evidence suffice? But what can I do if believed the photo wasn’t legit? Provide a sworn deposition for anyone on an internet forum most of whom are anonymous who requested it.
4) You ask me for refs while ignoring the hundreds of other comments making assertions, claims and giving opinions with no refs or citations including nigel’s
5) For a science site, there’s a not much scientific practice going on – so why only cull me out of the pack “as if” it’s a major issue (when clearly it is not).
6) When I suggest genuine scientific based information to discuss I always provide ref urls – not that any Paper is ever sufficient to convince the unconvincible anyway. As you should well know.
7) You want a ref to “prove” other people think like I do about F&D and carbon taxes? Even pro-climate change action engineers, environmentalists, economists, hippies, anti-fa activists, scientists, politicians and the general public – “You cannot be serious!” John McEnroe, Wimbledon Tennis Final
8) The day nigel provides a ref, doi, citation for all the stuff “he believes” and pronounces here in almost every post I’ll do the same.
Until then “Go Fish!” for someone else to waste their time arguing with people not worth arguing with.
Carriesays
190 Mal Adapted, logic has always been in great shortage regard human endeavors (especially in politics) for centuries. Gratefully I had no need for Lee Wasserman or David Kaiser to think logically myself. Including about the many other issues not raised in that very short article. Others seem to need a helping hand, not that Wasserman & Kaiser will be of much use to them long term. :-)
193 Hank Roberts, do let me know when you come back to Earth.
Carriesays
183 nigelj says: “Otherwise its just a silly rhetorical discussion like you get on various media websites!”
Welcome to the real world on Real Climate Nigel.
“I’m not seeing anyone articulate a different solution to carbon taxes and why it would be better / easier.”
Try opening your eyes now and then, then use them to look!
“You want to make claims on a science website???, they don’t have much use unless you can back them up with either reference sources, detailed explanation or at least a few key points, etc.”
The floor is yours Nigel.
Back up your claims, beliefs, and opinions about the Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff (‘CF&D/BAT’) by showing your own work, some math of example scenarios, and your lengthy list of credible Citations that go beyond mere Opinion and Political Rhetoric.
I hope this will end with your evidence for when the world goes Net Carbon Neutral and what the global mean temperature anomaly and global atmospheric CO2 ppm will be at that time.
People in Glass Houses Nigel shouldn’t be throwing rocks at others.
Take the Log out of thine own eye before complaining about the tiny splinter in other’s. ‘Tis the wisdom of The Buddha Nigel. It’s also Logic which can work as good here as it does in a NZ Public Bar. :-)
nigeljsays
Carrie @198
“You want to make claims on a science website???, they don’t have much use unless you can back them up with either reference sources, detailed explanation or at least a few key points, etc.”
“The floor is yours Nigel.Back up your claims, beliefs, and opinions about the Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff (‘CF&D/BAT’) by showing your own work, some math of example scenarios, and your lengthy list of credible Citations that go beyond mere Opinion and Political Rhetoric.”
I have already stated my views on a carbon tax (fee) and dividend @160 above and on previous articles on this website. I certainly don’t have time to do maths of typical scenarios, and I have already referred to carbon tax on wikipedia as an excellent introduction to the issue, with arguments for and against and links to the peer reviewed research.
I never asked you to do more than that. I was just trying to find out what you personally thought was persuasive one way or the other, and what alternative solution you preferred. Looks like I will never get a straight answer.
You are obviously not interested in discussion, unless everyone agrees with you, so I probably won’t bother again.
Be happy with your claimed “superior knowledge” about renewable electricity and everything else. What was your nobel prize in again? :)
Killiansays
Re #182 Al Bundy said AB: Forests, farms, and grasslands produce excess above ground cellulose.
Killian: No, they don’t. Those materials are need back in the soil they came from or will require externnal inputs to replace them.
AB: The materials don’t go away just because they are burned. Tis obvious that the ash needs to be spread back where it came from.
Obvious to whom? Is every reader of your post a regenerative systems specialist? A soil expert? The problem in your post was the use of the word “excess.” Your self-correction does not fix that, it moves the goal posts.
A more accurate response might have been, ‘Thanks for pointing that out. I should have closed the circle on the process after using the misleading “excess.”‘
Even then, the ash being returned does not return everything. A system should be designed to cycle everything in place whenever possible, so nothing is “excess,” though one might choose to redistribute and accept the resulting risk.
I note that when folks analyze different points of view they tend to warp the proposal into the most harmful, stupid, and ignorant caricature possible. (not saying you did that, just saying)
I note it’s hard for people to admit they made an error even though it is more efficient for all.
Al, #142–
I’m a bit unclear how you meant that, Al, but I’m presuming that it’s your suggestion for what a hybrid architecture might be?
At any rate, in service of clarity, especially for folks who might be following this subthread rather more casually, the hybrid architecture proposed for the zunum and airbus planes is a electric primary drivetrains plus a gas turbine ‘range extender’ generator.
(Note that takeoffs per se are not a problem for electric planes in general; for instance, the Pipistrel Electro trainer climbs at 1350 feet per minute, as compared with 715 for the venerable Cessna 152. Of course, the Cessna has 30% greater takeoff weight, and can fly nearly 7x farther.)
“Electric Jet Engines”
don’t exist. Jet engines use a heat source to expand air and then direct the hot air out the back. So, yes, one could put a big ol’ resistance heater in the middle of a jet engine (as opposed to igniting fuel) and you’d end up with an incredibly inefficient electric jet engine.
The so-called “electric jet engine” is basically a ducted propeller (fan) engine. Note that jet engines are often mated with ducted or non-ducted props that “steal” energy from the jet, giving a more efficient “turbofan” or “turboprop” engine, where much, most, or nearly all of the thrust is provided by the prop/fan.
The jet engine has survived because it is light and can operate at wicked high airspeed. Unfortunately, it is also inefficient. Jets are stuck in the 20th century, where fuel consumption was only a tertiary issue. Electric and SCC-driven prop/fan are the future.
150 Barton Paul Levenson, um, I agree with the info on your page. It has nothing to do with that I said though, which is completely different to the argument you had with ‘deniers’. I am not a denier. #128 was to assist contextualization. Of course they ‘know’ as you and I know the drivers for warming and so on. But thanks anyway.
The issue is more about the gaps and the projections and uncertainties everywhere. I have no problem with those either as there are valid reasons for this. I support those who keep saying so out loud and often. Including about ECS. The future may be a lot worse than the IPCC and UNFCCC etc etc suggests it might be. I’d prefer that potential consequence is not neglected by conservative dogmatic fuddy duddies who believe nothing happens in reality until someone has put it in a science paper and it’s been cited by others as accurate. Dogma (in any field) is deadly imo, and shown as such in the historical records. Worth being aware of and addressing it firmly when immediately it appears. Perhaps this explanation may also be misconstrued? That’s ok too. I’m no perfectionist.
Al Bundy @ 152 says:
I’m not sure you quite understand what the definition of ‘JET’ propulsion is. Hint, a squid or an octopus is jet propelled and it does not use any heat source to expand air.
From the Illium site:
If you don’t agree with that explanation take it up with the aeronautical engineers behind the design. I’m sure they will be more happy to explain the basic physical principles behind the concept much more clearly than I could!
Cheers!
Mr KillingInaction: Taxes will not reduce CO2 output unless they are very high. Several years ago, the price of gas got up to about $5/gallon in Cal, and was 4+ everywhere else. Didn’t make a dent in consumption.
AB: You’re looking at the wrong metric. Short term consumption is decidedly inelastic. Folks just grumble when prices spike. The true metric is durable goods sales. Those do respond to energy price increases. Escalating carbon taxes provide the incentive to purchase more efficient durable goods without actually having to tax anybody significantly at first. This technique works especially well with vehicles because vehicles are often leased and the lessor will price leases based on resale value, which will be heavily influenced by future taxes. If the tax on a gallon of gas will be $4 in five years ($0 initially and it goes up $1/year for 10 years) then sales of more efficient vehicles will skyrocket and hogs won’t sell even though the tax is $0!
——–
Carrie: Please note that US Democrats do not rate as being “left”. They belong firmly in the right of center box socially and economically and politically.
AB: I’ve heard that if Bernie moved to Europe he’d be middle of the road. And you’re right about unequal opportunity. Note that schools are generally funded based on the income of the kids’ parents. (I’m a bit out of date so corrections welcome) Note that grocery stores are expensive and stock garbage in poor neighborhoods. Note that non-minimum wage jobs are scarce anywhere near the poor, and even minimum wage is often just an MLK dream. Note that 10% of black men in Florida are barred from ever voting and many more are struck from the rolls for “registering while black”. But the US has Mottoes and Beliefs, and those are ever so much better than reality.
——–
Kevin,
There are lots of potential configurations for hybrid aircraft. One would be to use biofuel for cruise and biofuel + electric for takeoff, climb, and to utilize whatever the PVs supply. The electrics get their power from an embedded rail on the runway during takeoff, and from PV and batteries the rest of the time. During descent and landing the electrics can charge the batteries. “Range extender” is a dubious format because batteries are heavy, which is also why the above described external electric supply might be viable.
An esoteric design would use a single-shaft hybrid drone to provide additional thrust during takeoff and climb. The drone decouples the engine and recharges its battery as it descends to grab fuel and the next plane. Then plane’s engines/motors could be sized for cruise. Unfortunately, this would deprive planes of most of their emergency power.
Batteries are decent at supplying peak and negative power (flywheels are better). Batteries are good at augmenting base power and supplying short term power. Batteries suck at supplying long term base power. Engines are good at supplying constant power, be it base or augmentary. Engines suck at supplying peak power and can’t supply negative power.
That 250HP engine in your car could be dropped to about 25HP if it were augmented with very large diameter very slow counter-rotating flywheels (small, fast flywheels are expensive and inefficient) for acceleration and a small battery for mountain climbing and extremely short trips (under 5 miles). Then halve rolling and air resistance and you can power a supercar with a 15HP SCC engine. (Though you couldn’t maintain excessive speed for long periods. The engine is the limiting factor for maximum cruise speed.)
—–
Nigel, biofuels don’t have to take up any land, per se. Forests, farms, and grasslands produce excess above ground cellulose. Instead of supporting crop prices use the money to buy troubled farms on the cheap and re-wild them so they both sequester carbon and supply cellulose, especially in prairie biomes. Consumers produce waste. If new housing were required to have systems that made things easy and automagic then folks would comply because complying would be effortless.
nigelj @ 147 says:
As far as electric flight and batteries, I’m just a curious layman but I do have some first hand experience and knowledge with sugar cane production in Brazil.
I am not for a moment suggesting that biofuels are even remotely scalable or are anything close to a silver bullet for solving any global climate issues. However the video I linked to hints at a more sustainable path for agriculture in general.
I have also followed Craig Venter’s algae for biofuel production project funded by EXXON. While that may eventually fill some specific minor niches. It is also not scalable. Living organisms, no matter how finely tuned, are still not able to beat the basic laws of physics.
But I agree that growing population and scarcity of available land is a serious dilemma.
Cheers!
Al @152.
Pretty much what I was thinking about electric jet engines. The reason combustion engines use compression/decompression is so they can extract some of the energy from the combustion and use it to accelerate bypass air, so that the volume of air coming out of the jet is increased. But an electric engine isn’t a heat engine, but really just an electrically powered propeller/turbine.
Now maybe a hybrid could use electrical energy as part of the drive, and maybe that is a better engineering tradeoff to having two different engines for a hybrid fuel and electric plane.
“Taxes will not reduce CO2 output unless they are very high”
Empirically incorrect; see the experience with the BC carbon tax. It’s capped at $30 for now, and has had a significant effect on emissions in British Columbia.
Obviously, a higher tax would have a more marked effect, and equally obviously, that would be desirable if it could be achieved politically.
Carrie @145, I agree the Niger Delta conflcit is a terrible conflict, and my sympathies are with the people being exploited and shoved off their land due to oil interests, but I don’t see how this relates to my comment. I would not expect poor people to consume less.
We live in western countries with capitalist economies. There’s nothing about this that stops us reducing the amount of stuff we buy if we are concerned about conserving resources. There’s nobody stopping us. The only thing I would say is marketing is a powerful thing that pushes us to over consume, and this is very troubling.
Having said this capitalism is generating or contributing to some obvious problems particularly inequality and environmental degradation as you yourself have pointed out I think, so we have certain choices:
1) Capitalism could change its inner structure, possibly by society and the corporate sector accepting a wider set of environmental goals and not just profit goals. Not easy, but not impossible.
2) Better regulation of market anomalies and environmental issues. This is of course politically resisted by the right.
3) A completely new system. But getting a good system and enough people interested may be as difficult or more difficult than options 1 and 2!
Carrie @144
“Correct. The fee dividend proponents put that at USD100 per ton CO2 vs the $40 as a starting point they now suggest. Pushes gas way above $5 per gallon. It’s a myth and unnecessary. But lots of money to be made by some players. Just not the everyday person who’ll end up paying through the nose for the ‘luxury’ of being a ‘consumer’.”
You don’t explain why carbon fee and dividend is a myth or unnecessary. Its also hard to see how lots of money is made by some players, given we are talking a 100% rebate given to all consumers.
If you are concerned about social justice, Alberta has a carbon tax and rebate scheme which is skewed to ensure middle to lower income people get most of the rebate. What on earth is wrong with this? if they can do it anyone could potentially do this.
It doesn’t matter if the fee pushes up petrol prices very high because this is phased in, and people get rebates allowing them to purchase electric cars, smaller cars or hybrids.
It sounds like you don’t like carbon tax simply because its identified with the current political establishment and popular with economists.
But you provide 1) no specific evidence of why its a bad thing and 2) no specific case for a better alternative. This is why I find you so unconvincing on it.
I don’t think a carbon tax and dividend is ideal, but its reasonably ok and likely to have wide appeal and this is important. Cap and trade could also be made to work in theory but this is more of a neoliberal thing and money can be captured by special interests. Perhaps you are confusing a carbon tax with cap and trade.
“Actually world wide it isn’t #1. Social justice and equity and wages is. The “left” is as recalcitrant as everyone else is regards rational action and policies to stop global warming. Please note that US Democrats do not rate as being “left”. They belong firmly in the right of center box socially and economically and politically.”
I agree, although theres no reason not to tackle all problems in unison of course
“Elon isn’t a dummy.” “True but he is a low life bully narcissist and an internet troll. iow has distinct personality issues like all neoliberals, randians & libertarians.”
He has Aspergers Syndrome and is rather dominant person etc. I do not see him as being remotely Randian (and I have read her novels). Hes ok.
“But we all have the opportunity to achieve without limit. ”That’s bullshit”
It is indeed BS. Someone with a low IQ or really poor coordination is not going to be a brain surgeon. I think its good to encourage children (and adults) to think they have plenty of potential and can go far, but its a lie to suggest they can become anything they want, and we are setting them up for failure by doing this. What we should do is help children identify their natural talents.
Nigelj,
Engine exhaust is essentially benign if the engine is correctly designed. Current obsolete engines use a fluttering above/below stochiometric air/fuel ratio. This leads to high pollution and an expensive complex engine. This is “necessary” because they use an expensive power-robbing fluttering oxidizing/reducing catalytic converter (in an ineffective attempt to control smog-producing NOX) instead of basic chemistry to catalyse CO within the engine, thermal mass to prevent NOX, isolation to prevent oil bypass, a lean homogenous charge to prevent soot and HC, targeted temperature catalysts in the combined cycle section to scavange escaping CO and HC, and an atmospheric microcosm to clean up residuals,
especially NOX (instead of leaving it to the actual atmosphere). Heck, current engines still use four valves per cylinder, high compression, and a muffler!!
Don’t take past stupido complex design as proof that intelligent design is impossible. A proper engine has very few parts. Ya know, simplification.
102 nigelj says: “In reality nobody is really proposing energy grids based entirely around solar power. Most proposals include a mix of solar power, wind power and storage.”
You are correct, but think a bit outside the box for a moment. In reality the best most dependable and cheapest energy by far is hydroelectric. And not just huge mega-projects either. Many small generators fed by “Mill pond” size reservoirs turns out to be a great way to provide dependable cheap electricity to isolated rural communities and individual farms in developing countries.
As it turns out the US Model of stringing an inclusive interconnected “grid” to every imaginable home in the middle of nowhere is an incredible expensive and inefficient waste of resources. Appropriate technology has got this easily, if people are willing to actually use the intelligence God gave us.
Best working example I know of is Rwanda.
Maintenance of Hydropower Potential in Rwanda Through
Ecosystem Restoration https://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/wrr_case_study_ecosystem_restoration_rwanda.pdf
The paper is a bit old now, but by now rural hydropower has actually exceeded what was discussed in the paper. A stunning success so far.
Al Bundy @152
“Electric and SCC-driven prop/fan are the future.”
Probably right, but then theres also ammonia as a fuel source.
148 zebra says: “alan2102 #140, Mal #141, Projecting in a realistic timeframe, which I see as about 300 years, with 150 years as the likely point where the technological shift could become global… what do you do with all the people?”
I don’t understand:
1) what you see taking 150-300 years to happen. Nothing that I wrote about will take 150 years, except possibly in the most-retarded places currently, like Africa. Even there, 100 years would be a reasonable guesstimate. 50 years everywhere else. (This assumes, of course, that climate or other black swans don’t wreck everything; a dangerous assumption, I know.)
2) the meaning of your last question. What do you “do” with all the people? What are you talking about?
Zebra: “So, no taxi drivers and no Jiffylube mechanics, and no subsistence farmers and no cashiers and baggers, and no code-monkeys, and far fewer doctors and lawyers, and so on. OK then…what’s a human to do?”
Do you mean, how will we spend our days, having been freed of all drudgery and repetitive and boring tasks? Somehow I don’t see that as a problem. It is only a problem for those with crippled imaginations.
126 Mr. Know It All says: “we all have the opportunity to achieve without limit.”
For the record, this is the myth of social mobility. And it IS a myth, mostly. It happens, but to perhaps 10% of the extent that people like MKIA think (wish).
Actually, in the case of this particular expression (“… achieve without limit”) it is the myth of social mobility combined with a flaky you-can-do-anything hucksterism.
Delusional.
126 Mr. Know It All says: “Where are the products from the environmental leaders that will save the climate FOR THE CHILLLLLDREN! Are we a bunch of statists waiting for the goobermint to save the planet? Or can we put on our big boy pants and start making some concrete progress?”
Concrete progress can be made in several ways, including personal voluntary action, and public policy. The latter is where the heavy lifting is done; personal voluntary piecemeal action (e.g. personal decision to reduce one’s carbon footprint) will — without public or social reinforcements — always fall short. If saying that makes me a “statist waiting for the goobermint”, then so be it. I am a statist waiting for the goobermint.
Regarding the more general matter of trust in institutions (of which one aspect is “statists waiting for the goobermint”), here is a fascinating tidbit:
https://stalinsmoustache.org/2018/02/27/edelman-trust-barometer-china-tops-the-world/
Edelman Trust Barometer: China tops the world
27 february, 2018, posted in another world is possible, china, marxism
These curious reports keep appearing. I have already mentioned the Ipsos survey from last year, which found last year that 87% of people in China are confident in the direction the country is heading. Now we have the Edelman Trust Barometer, which finds the following for China:
Trust among the ‘informed public’:
In government: 89%
In business: 85%
In media: 80%
In NGOs: 76%
Average: 83%
Trust among the general population:
In government: 84%
In business: 74%
In media: 71%
In NGOS: 66%
Average: 74%
Overall, this is up by 27% in one year, the highest in the world
[end quote]
Wow! The Chinese people overwhelmingly trust their institutions! The article goes on to show that trust in institutions in the U.S. has fallen by 37% (!!!) in ONE year (!!!) — a far bigger fall than anywhere else in the world.
There’s a good reason for this. Institutions in the U.S. are in the process of betraying the people and even flushing many of them down the toilet, while institutions in China are, for the most part, supporting the people. People in China are “statists waiting for the goobermint” — and their faith is backed by reality. China’s Big Government is helping them and looking out for them. Imperfectly, of course, but overall they are doing a pretty good job. They’ve done a spectacular job of growing the economy and lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Their environmental record is obviously poor, but that was a necessary trade-off. (The U.S. was similarly filthy-dirty during its rapid growth era.) More importantly, they are taking their global responsibilities seriously: curtailing coal growth, rapidly building-out renewables, rapidly building-out mass transit, developing a global UHV grid (with huge implications for renewables use, worldwide), among other excellent environment-related actions. They are committed to the Paris agreement. They are progressing in the right directions about as fast as a country of their size and history (of abysmal under-development) can possibly progress. They have a big government, and they trust it, and it is working wonders for them, and it is generally doing good work, some if it great work. After China emerges as the overall dominant force on the global scene (~20 years), what will be the response of MKIA and the Randroid small-government types? Will they say it was a fluke?
Oops, I just realized that I used the phrase “oil bypass”. ERROR! I meant hydrocarbon (HC) bypass into the bottom end, where only oil should reside. This bypass results in pollution and the “necessity” of frequent oil changes. A properly designated engine’s maintenance consists of air filter changes. Its oil only needs changing every 100k miles or so.
Again, that engineers protect their owner’s intellectual property rights and physical plant and worker mind share is irrelevant to what a true inventor can create. Engineers are NOT inventors. Engineers are folks who use equations so as to optimise results.
Thus, a proper team dedicated to advancement would be an inventor, an engineer, and a mechanic, along with nary a capitalist in sight.
Humanity is devouring our planet’s resources in increasingly destructive volumes, according to a new study that reveals we have consumed a year’s worth of carbon, food, water, fibre, land and timber in a record 212 days.
As a result, the Earth Overshoot Day – which marks the point at which consumption exceeds the capacity of nature to regenerate – has moved forward two days to 1 August, the earliest date ever recorded.
To maintain our current appetite for resources, we would need the equivalent of 1.7 Earths, according to Global Footprint Network
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/23/earths-resources-consumed-in-ever-greater-destructive-volumes
166 alan2102:
Concrete progress can be made in several ways, including personal voluntary action, and public policy. The latter is where the heavy lifting is done; personal voluntary piecemeal action (e.g. personal decision to reduce one’s carbon footprint) will — without public or social reinforcements — always fall short.
Absolutely correct. As is alan’s summary about China and how filthy the west has been most of the last 250 years of the industrial revolution and how abusive of the people (at home and abroad) as being expendable pawns. #165 is equally spot on about KIA – a delusional believer in myths and make believe who eats up the manipulative propaganda with relish.
160 nigelj But you provide 1) no specific evidence of why its a bad thing and 2) no specific case for a better alternative. This is why I find you so unconvincing on it.
I don’t have to provide anything because I am not the only person who thinks like I think and say what I say. I stand on the shoulders of giants. :-)
Feel free to do the math and think about it yourself. I’m not here to convince the unconvincable while you ref Alberta as a carbon tax nirvana. Alberta, as in of Alberta Tar Sands infamy. Has the carbon tax shut that disgusting industry down by making it uneconomical for green loving marketplace already? Because I hadn’t heard of that great achievement. Let me know when it does. Then I might reconsider my position, but until then …..
KillingInaction,
Ahh, your issue clarifies. Drumpf’s bankruptcies were not failures to be expected from a risk taker. They were legal assaults. He set up agreements so he could drain value instead of paying his bills, and then, once he siphoned all the cash into his own pocket he jettisoned the husk. That you crow about Drumpf’s bankruptcies as proof of his goodness and fitness while freely admitting that you speak from complete ignorance speaks loudly.
Please up your game to Victor’s level.
Al Bundy @155, yes you cannot judge the influence of a petrol prices on short term time frames, because people know the oil market goes up and down and they wait things out. If you look at the oil shocks of the 1970 -1980’s period it was different, because it looked longer lasting, and people started buying smaller more fuel efficient cars. Once again Mr KIA mixes up short and longer term time frames.
Yes of course you can use cellulose from existing plants of various types. I’m a twit I wasn’t thinking, trying to read this stuff while watching TV at the same time. Never works.
Al Bundy @169, “engine exhaust…..”, I think you might be responding to the wrong person. But I get the feeling they attach on catalytic converters because its easier than your re-design of the engine in the sense of just doing what requires the least effort – so laziness. Not my field though.
However I have often felt progress with the internal combustion engine seems slow compared with electronics design. A mechanical design engineer friend of mine said the oil companies buy up all the patents that could improve things like engine efficiency and low petrol consumption.
160 nigelj, I’ll clarify what I said before by simply saying it’s my conclusion based on all manner of info and thinking not worth getting into. People have other opinions ideas and conclusions, that’s fine, but they do not need to prove anything to me nor convince me of anything at all.
There is more than enough room in this world for people to come to different conclusions and have different views without the need that every time they say something that others demand / ask to be convinced and to ‘prove it’ of demand a science ref x 100 to back up their own personal opinions about life, technology and society. Because that’s nuts to expect they should in the first place. That is not what sharing ideas and dialogue is all about.
The day I want to publish an academic economic science paper on the usefulness of carbon taxes on society and if they can deliver the promises made well I’ll make sure I include all the math and the refs to support my hypothesis and explain exactly what the null hypothesis is.
Until then this is but another publicly open discussion forum on the internet where the topic is climate science. It’s not a peer review journal and it never will be one.
What gets me the most is that I now feel the need to point out such obvious things about life and internet forums in the first place. :-)
Scott E Strough @162, you are preaching to the converted there. I live in NZ and about half of our electricity comes from hydro power, and its a good system, although its mostly large scale power. Smaller scale hydro power is good to, and probably has fewer environmental impacts than huge projects.
But obviously countries have such different geographies that no one system will be viable for everyone. Jacobsen has done research on specific packages suited to each country called The Solutions Project. I dont know how he treats hydro too much, because I have only read part of this huge study for a few countries. Here it is for anyone interested:
http://thesolutionsproject.org/resource/139-country-100-infographics/
Forests, farms, and grasslands produce excess above ground cellulose.
No, they don’t. Those materials are need back in the soil they came from or will require externnal inputs to replace them.
Another example: large-scale, mechanized agriculture is vastly more simple than, say, everyone tending their own permacultural operation.
You do not understand permaculture. There is no such thing as a “permaculture operation. Permaculture is a process, not an outcome.
You are conflating simplicity, simple and complexity. Complexity has nothing to do with how many things there are, but more the interactions of those things, steps in a process, etc.
I.e., a thousand rubber duckies in a small wading pool is incredibly simple. That same pool with soil, a few aquatic plants and a dozen fish is far more complex.
“Modern” agriculture is incredibly complex, involving many millions of items in a long, global chain of interactions and the lifecycles and footprints of all those items. A million permies growing regenerative gardens is magnitudes simpler.
You are speaking if things you neither know nor understand. Please get educated.
I’m a fan of permaculture, but I agree it doesn’t have to be done using small scale farms.
You do not know enough about it to have a valid opinion. Why are you making such statements? I like jazz, have minor in music, even, but I am not qualified to analyze it with any authority. So is your relationship to Pc.
There is nothing about permaculture that limits the scale of application… except this principle: Use small and slow solutions. Oh, and this one: Build in chunks. Ah, and this: Natural before mechanical, mechanical before high tech.
So, permaculture can be applied to a bio-region successfully, but not as one massive project, but as many small ones.
Try not to speak from ignorance. People read this stuff.
158 – Kevin
Nope. $35/ton now equates to around 25-30 cents per gallon of gasoline. Would not even be a consideration in consumption at double or even triple that amount. Consumption fell from 2008 to 2012, then leveled off, but it didn’t fall due to a 25 cent tax.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia_carbon_tax
Omega Centauri, #157–
See the Airbus E-fan X project:
https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/press-releases/en/2017/11/airbus–rolls-royce–and-siemens-team-up-for-electric-future-par.html
Basically, it does both the things you describe: essentially, one of the engines of a BAe 146 jetliner will be replaced with a 2 mw electric turbofan.
So it will be using ‘electric energy as part of the drive’, and it will also have two different species of engines.
They’ll test fly it for a while in that configuration, and then plan (presuming all goes well) to convert a second engine to an e-fan. Then it’s time to take the lessons learned, and hopefully build an all-electric hybrid plane.
#164 alan2102,
OK– so, the former mechanic or former taxi driver can be “imaginative” while starving to death?
The culture you envision obviously doesn’t require the number of people that now exist, or will exist, in order to function. Indeed, even with current technology, the vast majority of individual humans are, to use that clever Brit term, redundant, except for one “job”– controlling resources.
The China you appear to admire clearly understands this quite well. First they restricted their own population growth. Now they are gaining control of resources through a combination of economic imperialism/colonialism and military expansion. The goal of course is to own a large ratio of resources relative to China’s population. That’s what we call “prosperity”.
If one’s concern is to have the entire human population experience prosperity, then the solution is obvious– reduce global population to the point that competition for resources becomes pointless, because there is more than can be used.
To repeat the point you ignored: Your simplified, efficient, technological culture is what would naturally occur under those condition.
169 Carrie says: “166 alan2102: …. Absolutely correct.”
We’re starting to agree on things?! Who’d a thunk it?
AB: Forests, farms, and grasslands produce excess above ground cellulose.
Killian: No, they don’t. Those materials are need back in the soil they came from or will require externnal inputs to replace them.
AB: The materials don’t go away just because they are burned. Tis obvious that the ash needs to be spread back where it came from. And consider the alternatives: to fight wildfires at great cost, which results in massive amounts of dry fuel and crowded unhealthy forests; or to let the forests burn, which really bums out the area’s residents.
I note that when folks analyze different points of view they tend to warp the proposal into the most harmful, stupid, and ignorant caricature possible. (not saying you did that, just saying)
——–
nigelj: A mechanical design engineer friend of mine said the oil companies buy up all the patents that could improve things like engine efficiency and low petrol consumption.
AB: Patents are published in a public database and they expire in about 17 years. If your friend was correct, anybody could build those engines and bring them to market as the patents expire. Old Wives’ Tale.
nigelj: . But I get the feeling they attach on catalytic converters because its easier than your re-design of the engine in the sense of just doing what requires the least effort – so laziness. Not my field though.
AB: True, but I don’t think it’s easier or a function of laziness. Frankly, I am not smart enough (in that specific way) to do what automotive engineers do. It’s a different field and level of risk. Big companies tend to hire engineers. Inventors tend to be maverick solo artists. Engineers do incremental improvements that raise the bar just enough to comply with regulations and market forces. And, what is key, is that this is safe and protects the corporation. So, when an inventor comes up with a supposed revolutionary idea (generally from Appalachia) the corporation has the choice to chuck out its whole system and immediately lose BIG BUCKS!!! In return the corporation might just end up with the equivalent of wood alcohol moonshine.
So, corporations hate radical change because it burns their existing IP, physical plant, and knowledgebase while exposing the corporation to tremendous risk. There’s a phrase in business: “With regard to advancement it’s best to be in second place.” (Kind of like penguins, who try to shove another penguin in the water to test for killer whales.)
Carrie @170,
So which giants do you claim oppose carbon taxes? I mentioned Alberta’s carbon tax only as an example of a scheme that makes poor people aren’t hurt by the idea. Their tar sand issue is another issue.
Other countries have carbon taxes that are working to at least some extent, but all are set too low to be truly effective. Refer carbon tax on wikipedia. But this is the problem we have with all mitigation policies, namely political resistance to them being set at strong levels.
I’m not seeing anyone articulate a different solution to carbon taxes and why it would be better / easier.
However I also agree with Alan we need a combination of personal initiative and public policy on climate change, and I doubt that one single public policy would be a magic answer. The UK has cut emissions significantly with a combination of measures.
Carrie @174
“There is more than enough room in this world for people to come to different conclusions and have different views without the need that every time they say something that others demand / ask to be convinced and to ‘prove it’ of demand a science ref x 100 to back up their own personal opinions about life, technology and society. Because that’s nuts to expect they should in the first place. That is not what sharing ideas and dialogue is all about.”
Can’t agree. You want to make claims on a science website, they don’t have much use unless you can back them up with either reference sources, detailed explanation or at least a few key points, etc. Otherwise its just a silly rhetorical discussion like you get on various media websites!
Its normal for people to be critical and nit pick about what people say, and in science and mitigation details often matter. As long as it doesn’t become personal.
But yes sharing information is also good and not everything has to be an argument. The internet used to be more like this. Those were the good old days…
KillingInaction,
You spoke about how rich people should compartmentalize their holdings so that losses can be foisted off to others.
I’m confused. You also crow about “personal responsibility” quite religiously. Shouldn’t you actually be calling for the elimination of limited liability corporations?
Please explain.
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201807240045.html
https://www.heraldonline.com/latest-news/article215476785.html
Hotlinks to sources in the text included at the original page
Carrie, our hosts here have asked us all to provide citations for claims we assert, and in particular to include the DOI information so people can look them up.
Please help out — iwhen you’re posting something someone else wrote that you read elsewhere, at least tell us who besides you thinks that is the case.
#168 JRClark said To maintain our current appetite for resources, we would need the equivalent of 1.7 Earths, according to Global Footprint Network
And that’s with 4 to 5 billion of us remaining poor. This is why people are so dunderheaded about solutions: They cannot seem to keep all variables in mind at the same time. Solar is great… or a small number of people over many generations, but it is a mirage for 9 billion people, period. That is, that 1.7 Earths only applies if those 4 or 5 billion remain poor and economically enslaved, working for pennies on the dollar to keep our “way of life” going while having nearly zero chance of ever experiencing it.
9 billion living even half as resource intensively as the U.S. does on average is more like 3 or 4 planets.
Discussions of meeting current demand in the future never factor in those 4 – 5 billion living with as much electricity as we do in the OECD.
Carry on my wayward sons…
Simplicity. Only that.
177 Killian 24 Jul 2018 at 2:55 AM: “You do not understand permaculture. There is no such thing as a “permaculture operation.” Permaculture is a process, not an outcome.”
A permaculture operation, IN operation, is a process, not an outcome.
K: “Modern agriculture is incredibly complex, involving many millions of items in a long, global chain of interactions and the lifecycles and footprints of all those items. A million permies growing regenerative gardens is magnitudes simpler.”
Why do you say that? You are suggesting that millions of people take up this practice, and each of them shoulder the task of detailed learning and practice, probably consuming hours every day. In essence: distributing operations that were centralized, and greatly increasing the human cognitive and physical intensity (human time and effort required) to accomplish the same things. How is that simpler? Instead of having a (relative) few specialists and a (relatively) centralized bureaucracy or support infrastructure, we’re now making everyone a specialist and distributing the infrastructure across the whole society, while greatly increasing the sum of infrastructure required (i.e. everything has to be duplicated at each household or location, which is extremely inefficient). Again, how is that simpler?
Modern agriculture is not all that complex. There are no “millions of items” in “long, global chains of interactions”. I think you have in mind globalization and the movement of agricultural commodities and inputs under the global neoliberal regime, not modern ag itself, or *per se*.
Modern ag actually has an urgent need to become more complex, in the sense of making much better use of the flood of relevant information being published on technological improvements. This would necessarily involve more education-oriented infrastructure (more and better extension services), some more specialists, etc.; i.e. more complexity, more overhead. But complexity/overhead very well spent, I would argue.
Hundreds of millions of permies growing hundreds of millions of different gardens of unique design? Magnitudes more complex than modern ag.
Modern ag frees up millions of people from each having to think about a zillion little things pertaining to their personal survival and food supply. Modern ag frees me personally from having to think about all those things, and I’m grateful for it. And I did not mention the freedom from physical drudgery — a very big bonus. Modern ag greatly simplifies and improves my life, and that of countless millions of others. It provides an abundance of nutritious food, amazingly cheaply. It is a spectacularly successful system.
Modern ag gives us one of the very best “deals” in terms of time and effort saved relative to sacrifice or cost. Other fields have become impossibly complex and burdened with bureaucracy, self-serving infrastructure, circles of viciously-competing special interests, and so forth (after the fashion of Tainter’s well-known book “The Collapse of Complex Societies”) — all of which add up to great energy waste and reduced marginal returns. Not so much with agriculture. It is fairly simple and straightforward, and gives us great marginal returns on investments of energy and resources. The military-industrial-security complex would be an example (the worst of several) at the other extreme: fantastically complex and wasteful, with probably *negative* real marginal returns to society. If we want to attack our big wasteful industrial complexes, let’s choose the ones that are by far the worst, OK? Not agriculture.
Killian, if you want to make a general claim about the advantage of permaculture, a better concept than complexity might be resilience. Permaculture makes for a food system that might be, and probably would be, more resilient than the relatively centralized, industrial system we have today. Resilience by virtue of the decentralization, and diversity.
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None of what I just wrote is an argument against the practice of permaculture, for those for whom it is attractive and is a good fit with natural aptitudes and preferences. Permaculture is a very good idea, for some people. It also has advantages such as delivering the freshest food, and possibly more nutrient-dense food. It also has the social advantage of resilience, as noted. It also has the potential of being practiced as an art form, transforming lifeless and soulless urban and semi-urban (slurban) wastelands into vibrant, beautiful and life-enhancing environments; this is surely its highest and best potential, far beyond mere provision of food, but it will take many decades, and will probably always be practiced by only a modest circle of devotees.
Also, none of what I wrote should be taken as a dismissal of the very real problematic aspects of modern industrial agriculture and food systems, including excessive use of fossil fuels, excessive use of toxic chemicals, and so on. To say that modern industrial ag is a “spectacularly successful system” that gives us “great marginal returns” is NOT to say that all is sweetness and light, and that there is no room for improvement! Agriculture and food systems clearly need to be reformed and reconstituted along post-modern sustainable agroecological lines. That does not mean wholesale abandonment of the modern, but it does mean profound reform of it. This can be done over a few decades, mostly with existing technology. Some of it is very simple, no-brainer stuff like ceasing to ship lettuce from California to New York; i.e. idiotic waste of resources and unnecessary carbon-intensity. Some of it is transitioning the culture away from animal foods, which are far too energy and carbon intensive, but it will take decades for the culture to change. Some if it will involve application of striking tech developments as reported in the agro/bio literature (the “flood of relevant information being published on technological improvements” mentioned above) that can speed and enhance the process, and greatly increase carrying capacity, improve human nutrition, and improve adaptation to climate change. (More on this if anyone is interested; extracting this literature is becoming a hobby of mine.) There’s also the matter of using modified agriculture, or agroecologic technique, to help SOLVE climate change; I will leave exposition of that topic to Scott Strough and others.
Bottom line: there’s lots of work to be done, and I did not mean to make light of it or suggest that all is well with modern ag as it now exists.
Apropos the version of Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff (‘CF&D/BAT’) recently proposed by two former AGW-deniers in the US Senate, this NYTimes OpEd by two officers of the Rockefeller Family Fund takes a suspicious view:
As a living member of Homo sapiens with collateral descendants, I’m desperate for a meaningful carbon price too. I’m convinced that in its simplest form a revenue-neutral US CF&D/BAT of meaningful size would substantially reduce emissions, and effectively drive investment in carbon-neutral energy supplies and infrastructure. I’m resistant to proposals to make it more complicated, or divert revenues from dividends for any purpose. I also think the Clean Power Plan will reduce emissions by a meaningful increment with or without CF&D/BAT, and I find the idea of immunizing fossil fuel producers against financial liability morally repugnant.
OTOH, we all know money is power. I’m as sure as I need to be that no meaningful decarbonization legislation is possible unless climate realists make deals with fossil fuel billionaires. I’d be open to limiting producer liability to some extent, and maybe even trading away the Clean Power Plan, if the result was enactment of a carbon fee/tariff as outlined by citizensclimatelobby.org: collected from producers/importers beginning at $40 per tonne, and incremented as often and by as much as necessary to keep reducing our aggregate fossil carbon emissions; all combined fee and tariff revenue periodically returned to federal income tax filers in an equal-sized dividend. YMMV, but I’m keeping my eye on this latest “bipartisan” move by crafty politicians to co-opt a simple, rational proposal for collective action against AGW. In my 7th decade, I’m willing to swallow some moral outrage if it will buy the survival of civilization under popular sovereignty, and my great-nephew’s along with it.
144 Carrie 20 Jul 2018 at 3:41 AM: “MKIA: ‘So, since AGW is threat number 1 per those on the left’. World wide it isn’t #1. Social justice and equity and wages is. The “left” is as recalcitrant as everyone else is regards rational action and policies to stop global warming. Please note that US Democrats do not rate as being “left”. They belong firmly in the right of center box socially and economically and politically.”
This needs to be said loudly and often: the Democratic Party is on the RIGHT. Center-right, perhaps, but right, and moving rightward with surprising speed. The DP is becoming the CIA-worshipping Russophobic war party to a degree unimaginable just a few years ago. The DP is the FAKE left or pseudo-left, or what passes for a “left” in a nation that has veered wildly to the right for decades. Elsewhere in the world, someone like Bernie Sanders is considered a moderate centrist, not left at all. But here, in psychotic right-wing-land, he is thought of as “far left”.
There really is no authentic left at all in the U.S., save for a few tiny pockets (e.g. wsws.org, blackagendareport.com, counterpunch.org). After the Powell memo in the early 70s, and the well-organized and well-funded backlash to the 60s insurrections that followed, the left was crushed. One aspect of that was the further enthronement of the fossil fuel interests (and big nuke) to the relative neglect of renewables, as I pointed out recently. The destruction of the left in the U.S. had several aspects and outcomes, all of them bad, and some of them disastrous. DECADES of delay on AGW and the renewables buildout might prove the most disastrous of all.
As for AGW being “threat number 1 per those on the left” (i.e. pseudo-left, or what passes for a “left”): no, it is not. Not even close.
vis: the climate-denying, pro-fossil-fuel, pro-Trump website joannenova.com.au has a new post up about climate change as left media pariah-topic:
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/07/climate-change-is-a-ratings-killer-everyone-is-bored-to-death-of-the-sermon/ — “Scott Whitlock at Newsbusters reports that one climate-worrier journalist revealed in a tweet that climate change kills the ratings. Another tweeter had prodded Liberal MSNBC journalist Chris Hayes to cover more on climate change. “Acting like there is nothing to be done is not excusable.” In reply Chris Hayes lamented: “almost without exception. every single time we’ve covered it’s been a palpable ratings killer. so the incentives are not great.” @chrislhayes 24 July 2018. Those crashing ratings would change overnight if news networks threw open the doors and pitted skeptics against believers in a real televised form of debate. The spectators would suddenly be able to pick sides — may the best person win. There would be genuine controversy. Sacred cows would be slaughtered, and for a while at least, climate change would rate well.” end quote
See? There’s a reason the left (pseudo-left) — like Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and all the others — doesn’t talk about AGW. Because it is bad for business (ratings)! It is a “palpable ratings killer”, and that is enough to leave it off the agenda. This “left” is all about bu$ine$$, which is to say it is not left at all.
Feel free to stop by joannenova’s site and leave a comment. I’m sure they’ll love to hear from us. Haha. Heck, you could even invite them over here for some good clean debate fun.
DW Germany Living Planet: Drought’s grip on farmers
(podcast audio 30mins) this week
It’s hot out there. The heat wave sweeping across the northern hemisphere this week has farmers worried, especially where the high temperatures are combined with drought. We look at how farmers around the world are protecting their livestock and crops as the global temperature creeps ever higher.
https://soundcloud.com/deutsche-welle-in-english/sets/living-planet-dws-1
Wel, at least somebody’s planning ahead:
hat tip to Soylet News
Hank, #193–
Somehow, as I read this idea and contemplate the prospect of controlling the re-entry and descent of a massive, asymmetrical object of imperfectly known composition and engineering properties, it’s not primarily the danger of burning up the asteroid that worries me…
Who is it, exactly, who thinks this is ‘surprisingly feasible?’
But heck, maybe I just read “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” too many times at an impressionable age. (“We’ll throw rocks at them!”)
181 alan2102 says:
24 Jul 2018 at 2:32 PM
169 Carrie says: “166 alan2102: …. Absolutely correct.”
We’re starting to agree on things?! Who’d a thunk it?
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Alan, we already agreed on hundreds of things especially Values but you chose not to notice or care because we disagreed about one aspect of tech about one issue you were not as well informed about as I was in regards latest cutting edge R&D and operating tech. Instead of listening properly and hearing what I was saying specifically you over-generalized and dumped me into a Box then padlocked a chain around it for eternity.
Rather than inquire seek more info, clarifications, or ask meaningful questions first, you happily leapt to knee jerk emotional reactions then made all manner of false assumptions about me and proceeded to paint me (falsely) as some kind of evil force in the world. That was all your doing Alan not mine.
for nigelj and hank
187 Hank Roberts says:
25 Jul 2018 at 5:45 PM
Carrie says:
23 Jul 2018 at 7:53 PM
160 nigelj But you provide 1) no specific evidence of why its a bad thing and 2) no specific case for a better alternative. This is why I find you so unconvincing on it.
I don’t have to provide anything because I am not the only person who thinks like I think ….
Carrie, our hosts here have asked us all to provide citations for claims we assert, and in particular to include the DOI information so people can look them up.
Please help out — iwhen you’re posting something someone else wrote that you read elsewhere, at least tell us who besides you thinks that is the case.
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1) The hosts never asked me to provide citations nor do they state that on their info pages. Maybe their emails ended up in my spam folder?
2) The issue was carbon tax and F&D – if Mr Google Expert cannot easily find contrary arguments about that idea, well you’re no google expert. You’ll probably find some on these very RC pages if you looked.
3) If I said I was fat do you require a DOI for that too, or would photo evidence suffice? But what can I do if believed the photo wasn’t legit? Provide a sworn deposition for anyone on an internet forum most of whom are anonymous who requested it.
4) You ask me for refs while ignoring the hundreds of other comments making assertions, claims and giving opinions with no refs or citations including nigel’s
5) For a science site, there’s a not much scientific practice going on – so why only cull me out of the pack “as if” it’s a major issue (when clearly it is not).
6) When I suggest genuine scientific based information to discuss I always provide ref urls – not that any Paper is ever sufficient to convince the unconvincible anyway. As you should well know.
7) You want a ref to “prove” other people think like I do about F&D and carbon taxes? Even pro-climate change action engineers, environmentalists, economists, hippies, anti-fa activists, scientists, politicians and the general public – “You cannot be serious!” John McEnroe, Wimbledon Tennis Final
8) The day nigel provides a ref, doi, citation for all the stuff “he believes” and pronounces here in almost every post I’ll do the same.
Until then “Go Fish!” for someone else to waste their time arguing with people not worth arguing with.
190 Mal Adapted, logic has always been in great shortage regard human endeavors (especially in politics) for centuries. Gratefully I had no need for Lee Wasserman or David Kaiser to think logically myself. Including about the many other issues not raised in that very short article. Others seem to need a helping hand, not that Wasserman & Kaiser will be of much use to them long term. :-)
193 Hank Roberts, do let me know when you come back to Earth.
183 nigelj says: “Otherwise its just a silly rhetorical discussion like you get on various media websites!”
Welcome to the real world on Real Climate Nigel.
“I’m not seeing anyone articulate a different solution to carbon taxes and why it would be better / easier.”
Try opening your eyes now and then, then use them to look!
“You want to make claims on a science website???, they don’t have much use unless you can back them up with either reference sources, detailed explanation or at least a few key points, etc.”
The floor is yours Nigel.
Back up your claims, beliefs, and opinions about the Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff (‘CF&D/BAT’) by showing your own work, some math of example scenarios, and your lengthy list of credible Citations that go beyond mere Opinion and Political Rhetoric.
I hope this will end with your evidence for when the world goes Net Carbon Neutral and what the global mean temperature anomaly and global atmospheric CO2 ppm will be at that time.
People in Glass Houses Nigel shouldn’t be throwing rocks at others.
Take the Log out of thine own eye before complaining about the tiny splinter in other’s. ‘Tis the wisdom of The Buddha Nigel. It’s also Logic which can work as good here as it does in a NZ Public Bar. :-)
Carrie @198
“You want to make claims on a science website???, they don’t have much use unless you can back them up with either reference sources, detailed explanation or at least a few key points, etc.”
“The floor is yours Nigel.Back up your claims, beliefs, and opinions about the Carbon Fee and Dividend with Border Adjustment Tariff (‘CF&D/BAT’) by showing your own work, some math of example scenarios, and your lengthy list of credible Citations that go beyond mere Opinion and Political Rhetoric.”
I have already stated my views on a carbon tax (fee) and dividend @160 above and on previous articles on this website. I certainly don’t have time to do maths of typical scenarios, and I have already referred to carbon tax on wikipedia as an excellent introduction to the issue, with arguments for and against and links to the peer reviewed research.
I never asked you to do more than that. I was just trying to find out what you personally thought was persuasive one way or the other, and what alternative solution you preferred. Looks like I will never get a straight answer.
You are obviously not interested in discussion, unless everyone agrees with you, so I probably won’t bother again.
Be happy with your claimed “superior knowledge” about renewable electricity and everything else. What was your nobel prize in again? :)
Re #182 Al Bundy said AB: Forests, farms, and grasslands produce excess above ground cellulose.
Killian: No, they don’t. Those materials are need back in the soil they came from or will require externnal inputs to replace them.
AB: The materials don’t go away just because they are burned. Tis obvious that the ash needs to be spread back where it came from.
Obvious to whom? Is every reader of your post a regenerative systems specialist? A soil expert? The problem in your post was the use of the word “excess.” Your self-correction does not fix that, it moves the goal posts.
A more accurate response might have been, ‘Thanks for pointing that out. I should have closed the circle on the process after using the misleading “excess.”‘
Even then, the ash being returned does not return everything. A system should be designed to cycle everything in place whenever possible, so nothing is “excess,” though one might choose to redistribute and accept the resulting risk.
I note that when folks analyze different points of view they tend to warp the proposal into the most harmful, stupid, and ignorant caricature possible. (not saying you did that, just saying)
I note it’s hard for people to admit they made an error even though it is more efficient for all.