Bi-monthly thread on climate solutions and responses.
Reader Interactions
363 Responses to "Forced responses: Aug 2019"
Al Bundysays
patrck027: some claim that inheritance taxes are problematic for family farms
AB: Other than residuals there are no family farms in the USA. Yep, there are factory farms owned by individuals, but who cares? And seriously, why the ef does somebody besides ME deserve to own a farm just because s/he was spawned by someone who was a farmer? I think I should have exactly the same opportunity to own a farm as someone who was spit out of a farmer’s womb. Do YOU disagree with equal opportunity?
Al Bundysays
patrick027: I shouldn’t ask others to live in conditions that I would not choose for myself.
AB: which is why we must link our grandchildren’s future to Others’ grandchildren’s future. If it is impossible to significantly improve MY grandchildren’s future beyond Others’ grandchildren’s future then MY decisions and choices will change drastically.
David B. Bensonsays
zebra @186 — As I previously pointed out, ERCOT Texas offers competition between generating companies at the wholesale level. As for retail, see Austin TX which appears to have 14 different suppliers.
Nemesissays
@nigelj & patrick027
There will be no sharing, right, I know, there will only be ever more exploitation and eco-destruction. That’s exactly why the system is doomed sooner or later, it’s so easy, I realized that decades ago and I repeat it until it’s finished. So lets just keep on discussing smaler population in the meantime. I like that population discussion, it’s just as funny as the climate discussion, extinction discussion, political discussion ect on the way down, down, down.
N 184: ” Germany is phasing out all 84 of its coal plants.”
Sure, in 2038, that’s 20 years from now:
BPL: Do you understand what “phasing out” means? I don’t think it means they wait until 2038, then take down all 84 at once.
zebrasays
#196 Patrick027,
Yes, all the things you mention would contribute– leapfrogging centralized electricity generation and ICE as happened with cells and land-lines probably produces more jobs and stimulates the economy better than the legacy route.
But one thing people don’t like to acknowledge is that immigration to developed countries makes a strong contribution to reducing fertility for people in those countries with high rates.
Also, of course, the much-maligned globalization. “Western values” like excessive consumerism could do with some restraint, but secularization, and general empowerment of women, more than balance the negatives.
zebrasays
#193 Kevin McKinney,
“…so I’m arguing for…”
For what, Kevin? All I see here (e.g. #191) is the factoid dance, and the dysfunctional old couple, going round and round.
You cite Uruguay; EP cites France. And zebra asks, for the umpteenth time:
OK, so you are suggesting the US Federal Government engage in a similar Socialist Nationalization of the electricity sector, and dictate the mix of generation modalities and all related decisions? And you are providing the “correct” final solution, as to the mix, right?
And the answer, every time, is “moi?…oh no, of course not”.
Then what’s the point, other than the dance? How do you get from here to wherever it is? What’s the plan?
alan2102says
Regarding Mark Jacobson:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/24/mark-jacobson-has-a-plan-to-convert-the-world-to-100-renewable-energy-is-it-realistic/
snip
After reading the Interesting Engineering article, I reached out to Mark Jacobson for an update. He graciously responded within a few hours. “I like the fact that the author of this article was able to see that, despite how dire the authors of the critique of our 2015 PNAS paper made their criticisms appear, all that did was catalyze us to demonstrate under many more conditions and throughout the world that the main conclusion of our paper was correct,” he said.
“This conclusion was that it is possible to power countries, regions, and the world, for all energy purposes, with clean, renewable energy (without nuclear, fossil fuels with carbon capture, or biofuels) while matching power demand with supply and storage, at low cost. We ended up showing this for 20 world regions and under 3 vastly different storage situations in each region. Not only that, multiple other groups around the world have come to similar conclusions.”
And then there was this. “In the end, it was the egos of the critics and their inability to get facts straight that interfered with their clear judgment. For example, they insisted that a table of ours contained maximum values when it contained average values, and then used their own mistake to claim we made a huge modeling error, when it was their own carelessness that led to that erroneous conclusion.”
Subsequent to the publication of their critique in PNAS, several of the authors let their biases show. John Weyant, David Victor, and James Sweeney are now “serving as paid experts by the Trump Administration to fight against climate action,” Jacobson points out. They are listed as witnesses in the defense plans to call in the landmark climate legal action known as Juliana vs. United States.
“Two others, Ken Caldeira and Staffan Qvist, at different times over the past several years, have published opinions that the whole world could be powered by nuclear. Several others claim we need a mix of nuclear, CCS, and renewables. As such, it is my opinion that their motivation was to diminish the credibility of 100% renewables to push their own alternative plan,” Jacobson added.
Mal Adapted @16ELSEWHERE
(You asked that any reply be posted here. But do note this is off-topic here. This should be an interchange on the UV thread)
You misrepresent either Victor the Troll or the concept of “warrants and values” described in this RC OP.
I agree with you about the venue, so I posted a short reply here and a longer one over there on Friday. For some reason, neither has appeared yet. I didn’t keep copies, and my thoughts probably aren’t worth reconstructing in their entirety. I’m still interested, however, in Gavin’s discussion of explicit and implicit warrants and values as applied to our resident troll Victor, who presumably has multiple layers of motivation like the rest of us. Meh. If all we know about him is what he says on RC, speculation about his cognitive internals may be no more productive than arguing climate science with him is.
Nemesissays
@BPL, #250
” : Do you understand what “phasing out” means?”
Sure, phasing out, I know exactly what that means. That term fits perfectly, so let’s phase out.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy @199
Zeb. “If using FF is dis-incentivized, and there is in fact a competitive market, the proportion of nuclear to renewables, whether 5% or 50%, will match the demand for what each can offer. I’ve pointed this out, over and over, and asked why my reasoning is incorrect.”
AB: “Because it is impossible. Nuclear is not possible without extreme governmental intrusion because accidents happen. No corporation could adequately insure itself against both a Chernobyl and freedom-fighters’ use of said reactor to try to free themselves of USAian hegemony, and a corporation that builds a nuke without said insurance in full without any governmental defense forces is foisting its costs on society so no competitive and fair market can exist between nuclear and wind/solar. ”
Nigelj: This is a shrewd observation, but there might be a way around it. I don’t know how insurance works in America but I assume companies have to have public liability cover etc. Ok a private sector nuclear power company would presumably not get private insurance against a cherbobyl level disaster, but government could provide some form of cover. Provided the nuclear power company paid commensurate premiums, it would be a level playing field with other players wouldn’t it?
However electricity markets seem a bit contrived to me. I’m not 100% convinced (ie sitting on fence). All I can say is an actual market might help the Nuclear Industry in places like America as Zebra alludes to. It won’t in developing countries so much, because only the government has the resources to develop something like nuclear power in many cases.
Al Bundy @200
Yeah, yeah yeah understood about charitable donations, however the point I was getting at is that by the time people develop that level of comprehension, altruism, idealism, and back it up with action, hell will have frozen over and Africa will probably have a population of about 5 billion people and will be in big trouble, so we should do all we can to encourage them to get their population growth down urgently, and help them as appropriate. It wont come down by accident. It will be much easier. Hopefully in the meantime people will also become more charitable and altruistic, but what is your plan for achieving that change in attitude?
patrick027says
206 zebra “But one thing people don’t like to acknowledge is that immigration to developed countries makes a strong contribution to reducing fertility for people in those countries with high rates.”
I’ve never heard that before; this sounds very interesting. What is the mechanism(s)?
(P.S. I’ve sometimes wondered if the selectivity of my country (U.S.) for immigrants might leave the countries of origin depleted in talent/expertise/skill – although the effect might be minor…?)
patrick027says
Regarding HVAC and electrical transmission…
We seek good electrical conductors and good resistors. We seek good thermal conductors and insulators.
The ideal electrical insulation would also be a good thermal conductor so that the wire/cable/line/”elpipe” can shed waste heat and not get too hot. Diamond comes to mind. Unfortunately, diamond has some drawbacks.
Diamond is a much better conductor of heat than even metals. Some special materials do even better. It would be nice if new materials could be developed to improve the COP of heat pumps, which are often far below thermodynamic limits, as I understand it (for practical reasons). I’m picturing solid plates (lower maintenance than pipes, I’m guessing?) under the floor and embedded in the cielings that distribute heat through a building…
This is not something I know much about so this might be silly, but it occurred to me that waves on a string propagate faster with more tension, so could materials’ thermal conductance be improved with tension?
Also … this is very far out(very very VERY far out, like Star Trek and Doctor Who (and now the word very looks weird to me)), but I recall reading somewhere that some experiment suggested a signal travelled faster than light through a superconductor. Some superconductance is based on pairs of electrons. I don’t know but does that involve quantum entanglement? Recently I’ve learned that limits on quantum entanglement may create distance in space… so could a superconductor with quantum entanglement work like a wormhole?… That would be useful for electrical transmission and thermal conduction, I bet.
Aside from Warp HVAC, is there such a thing as a thermal superconductor?
David B. Bensonsays
patrick027 @216 — No information travels faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Let’s stick to matters related to climate solutions, if you please.
Killiansays
Re #211 nigelj said Al Bundy @199
Zeb. “If using FF is dis-incentivized, and there is in fact a competitive market, the proportion of nuclear to renewables, whether 5% or 50%, will match the demand for what each can offer. I’ve pointed this out, over and over, and asked why my reasoning is incorrect.”
AB: “Because it is impossible. Nuclear is not possible without extreme governmental intrusion because accidents happen. No corporation could adequately insure itself against both a Chernobyl and freedom-fighters’ use of said reactor”
Nigelj: This is a shrewd observation,
shrewd
adjective
1. having or showing sharp powers of judgment; astute.
or…
state the obvious idiom
Definition of state the obvious
: to tell people things they already know
Of the two, AB’s comment falls under the second. There are reasons nuclear is never funded privately, and they include the above and the massive costs. This is well-known, or should be by anyone discussing nuclear as an option.
Also, any insurance co would be bankrupted by a major incident. They get bankrupted by far smaller disasters, or refuse to insure. Gov’t covering this is the same as gov’t funding in the first place, and worse: Gov’t only has costs in this suggested case.
Killiansays
Re #195 nigelj said Sharing is desirable in theory,
It’s not a theory.
zebrasays
#201 Al Bundy,
“And seriously, why the ef does somebody besides ME deserve to own a farm just because s/he was spawned by someone who was a farmer?”
Quite right, by George. (pun intended)
zebrasays
#212 patrick027,
There are two young girls, cousins, in a place where fertility is 6.
One family moves to the USA, say.
Three things happen:
– The immigrant girl is immediately in a situation where lower fertility is the norm. Even if she has 4 children, her two daughters will have probably end up close to 2 each.
– The family that moves will be able to economically help the family that stays.
– The family that stays… (subsequent generations of girls)… will be exposed to the values of their “Westernized” cousins down the line.
Spreading the values, and spreading the wealth, can happen without overt action by foreign organizations or governments, which often meets resistance.
Scott E Stroughsays
@201 AB,
The same odious USDA policies that drove out the family farms are also what prevent you from doing the same. It has very little to do with who your birth mother is, and everything to do with something called regulatory capture.
“Regulatory capture is a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.”
This is how factory farming gained dominance, not because it is better or more efficient or even more profitable…. Because it isn’t, all else equal.
Once upon a time it was thought that all factory farming in the US would make it more efficient. That’s initially the excuse used for these policies designed to drive off family farms by destabilizing them financially. But that has been proven completely wrong.
zebrasays
#199 Al Bundy,
So you want me to refute the argument you would refute yourself??
Having a true free market requires government intervention, so that argument in itself is not relevant.
On “national security”… well, stopping terrorism is the government’s job.
But with respect to insurance:
What the (true free) market does is motivate improving your product. So, whether or not it is all hype right now, the supposed walk-away-safe SMR should be able to get some, after suitable engineering and demonstration.
And then, they will be able to offer their 24/7 reliable electricity on my marketplace, in competition with the chancy wind and solar providers. I’m guessing the price will be, say, 4-5 times as much. And now, one of my standard questions: What’s the problem?
Some people will be willing to pay the price for that reliability, and some people will take a chance on pure wind and solar, or install a battery, or improve efficiency, or whatever.
All of those options means there will be development and improvement in all of the different technologies, including nuclear. That, to me, is the most desirable outcome.
zebrasays
#203 David Benson,
Could you re-post that reference you keep referring to? I can’t seem to find it.
But much thanks for mentioning Austin; it sounds a lot like what I am proposing. People who think “it can’t be done” should look at this:
Obviously Texas has very substantial resources. But if you institute my proposal nationwide, interstate transmission will develop to pick up any slack for other locales.
OK, so you are suggesting the US Federal Government engage in a similar Socialist Nationalization of the electricity sector, and dictate the mix of generation modalities and all related decisions? And you are providing the “correct” final solution, as to the mix, right?
Sigh.
No, I’m not advocating any such thing. Please re-read my sentence that you took the quote from, back in #193:
“So I’m arguing for what I think is most likely to be pragmatically useful in what I expect will continue to be a highly imperfect world.”
Does the putative suggestion of “Socialist Nationalization” sound “pragmatic” to you? It sure doesn’t to me.
Nor am I attempting in any way to “dictate.” So far as I can tell, the odds of my becoming “dictator” are somewhere south of the odds of discovering that the moon is actually made of green cheese after all.
What I am doing is addressing what I regard as a fallacious and unhelpful argument. E-P thinks nuclear is a silver bullet for climate change. It ain’t, and IMO, it’s worthwhile presenting the reasons why that is the case.
It’s also worthwhile–again, IMO–presenting the reasons why I think that renewable energy not only can, but will, make a very significant contribution toward decarbonizing electricity generation in the coming decades.
Finally, I think it’s worthwhile pointing out that anyone’s prescriptions–including all political leaders anywhere–are of limited efficacy. Even actual dictators don’t get to dictate their own national energy mix (though they sure can influence it.) What gets built is the emergent of innumerable decisions over time. The result, to a high probability, is going to be a mixed electrical grid for the next several decades. There will be a lot more RE and various types of storage, and a lot less FF, with some nuclear capacity (probably more or less flat), some hydro capacity (probably slightly positive growth, but pretty small as potential is constrained) and various other small players and even possible wild cards, like SMRs.
(Biomass, BTW, is an interesting case, as there’s a lot of capacity now including traditional uses, making it not such a ‘small player’, but the sustainability is very questionable over time. But my crystal ball is very cloudy in that region.)
…why the ef does somebody besides ME deserve to own a farm just because s/he was spawned by someone who was a farmer?
Traditionally, because s/he grew up on that farm, contributing sweat equity the entire time, and developing (in not a few cases) an intense emotional attachment to the place and to the people connected with it.
It’s not a reality much recognized nor valued by ‘homo economicus’, but then maybe that’s the point.
I’ve sometimes wondered if the selectivity of my country (U.S.) for immigrants might leave the countries of origin depleted in talent/expertise/skill – although the effect might be minor…?
Thank you for noticing. In the Canada of my youth, there was considerable public angst about the “brain drain”–ie., exactly what you are speculating about: talented Canadians leaving permanently for the US, UK, or other ‘sexier’ places where, presumably, they would have bigger and/or better opportunities. But as I recall at least, one stopped hearing much about this in the Viet Nam era, perhaps because Canada started getting an influx of talented Americans disinclined to be drafted for the conflict.
Nowadays, Canadians still migrate in considerable numbers to the US–heck, I’m one of them:
Hollywood has been an attraction for a long time–as citing the names of Mary Pickford (yes, “America’s sweetheart” was Canadian by birth) and Jim Carrey might indicate, and as the fact (per the above) that Los Angeles county is the top county for Canadian-born in the US. (Hey, not for nothing do they have an NHL franchise there, despite the paucity of natural ice surfaces.)
On the other hand, lots of Americans move to Canada, too:
It would appear that the flow to Canada is larger, proportionately to the countries’ populations, than the flow to the US (though smaller in absolute terms). That’s based on ~253k American-born immigrants living in Canada (2016), versus 783k Canadians in the US in the same year.
Interestingly, Canada is more selective than is the US–there’s a points system, which recognizes family connections but also considers skills and abilities (including financial ones). That’s coupled with proportionately higher levels of immigration in general.
“From 2005 to 2014, the immigration rate to Canada quite consistently hovered around an average of 253,000 people accepted for permanent residency in the county each year.” That’s about 1/120th of the population, give or take.
For the US, “From 2005 to 2015, the United States saw an average of 1,079,377 immigrants becoming permanent per year.” That’s only ~1/300th of the US population.
“Also, any insurance co would be bankrupted by a major incident. They get bankrupted by far smaller disasters, or refuse to insure. Gov’t covering this is the same as gov’t funding in the first place, and worse: Gov’t only has costs in this suggested case.”
Well yes this is true, but I think you could still make an electricity market work and have nuclear power participate, which was the point I was getting at. Granted it would be convoluted, and I admit I’m not loving it. Often its about the lesser of the various evils.
——–
Al Bundy: We should remember free markets are just really shorthand for managed markets; there will always have to be some regulation to ensure markets are orderly and don’t devolve into monopolies but this doesn’t negate the advantages of competition and largely private sector decision making.
David B. Bensonsays
In the USA nuclear power stations are insured via American Nuclear Insurers. About one million dollars per year.
David B. Bensonsays
zebra @221 — I recommend studying all of https://www.e-education.psu.edu/ebf483/
An introduction to electricity markets. ERCOT does a variation of all of this except that there is no capacity market.
No, not much more interstate transmission in the USA. The land for right-of-way is largely bespoke.
Some excerpts from the economist.com August 2019 on sea level rise, the science and mitigation including use of barriers. Well worth a read, if you subscribe you get a couple of articles of your choice for free. This article confirms some points I made elsewhere on the huge costs of barriers.
“The rising oceans. Climate change is a remorseless threat to the world’s coasts. The world is not ready for the sea levels it will face”
“There are some 1.6m kilometres of coastline shared between the 140 countries that face the sea. Along this they have strung two-thirds of the world’s large cities. A billion people now live no more than ten metres above sea level. And it is coming to get them. Global mean sea level (gmsl) ticked up by between 2.7mm and 3.5mm a year between 1993, when reliable satellite measurements began, and 2017 (see chart). ”
“That may not sound like much; but to raise gsml a centimetre means melting over 3trn tonnes of ice. And though forecasts of sea-level rise are vexed with uncertainties and divergences, there is a strong consensus that the rate is accelerating as the world warms up. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), which assesses climate change for the un, says sea level rose by around 19cm in the 20th century. It expects it to rise by at least twice that much this century, and probably a good bit more. It is worth noting that last year the authors of a study looking at 40 years of sea-level-rise forecasts concluded that the ipcc’s experts consistently “err on the side of least drama”.
“Sea-level rises on the order of one metre—a bit above the ipcc range for 2100—will cost the world a lot. Leaving aside fatalities owing to storms and storm surges, whose effects are worse in higher seas, one estimate made in 2014 found that by 2100 the value of property at risk from marine flooding would be worth between $20trn and $200trn. The Union of Concerned Scientists, an American ngo, estimates that by that time 2.5m existing coastal properties in America, today worth $1.1trn, could be at risk of flooding every two weeks.”
“A lot of effort is devoted to engineering a way out of the problem. New York is paying almost $800m for the Big U, a necklace of parks, walls and elevated roads to shield lower Manhattan from another Sandy. Mumbai wants to build four huge and costly seawalls. Bangladesh, a delta country ten times more populous and one-thirtieth as rich as the Netherlands, is doubling its coastal embankment system and repairing existing infrastructure. Indonesia intends a $40bn wall in the shape of a giant mythical bird to seal Jakarta off from the seas.”
“Such schemes take decades to plan and execute, which means the conditions they end up facing are not necessarily those they were conceived for. When the Big U was first proposed, a year after Sandy, the worst-case scenario for sea-level rise on America’s east coast was one metre. When its environmental assessment report was eventually published this April, that looked closer to the best case.”
“London’s Thames Barrier—conceived, like the Dutch delta defences, after the floods of 1953—closed just eight times between its inauguration in 1982 and 1990. Since 2000 it has shut 144 times. In Venice mose, a system of flood barriers which cost a staggering €5.5bn, will be needed every day if the seas rise by 50cm. Such near-permanence will render moot the huge effort and expense that went into keeping it unobtrusively submerged when not in use. At one metre of sea-level rise it would be basically pointless. Even the resourceful Dutch only designed Maeslant with one metre of sea-level rise in mind.”
” In the rich world such “managed retreat” is anathema. People see the government’s job as protecting them, not moving them. Relocating a neighbourhood in New York requires the consent of the residents; holdouts can block decisions for years. ”
“In Bangladesh, though, the Ashrayan project, run directly by the prime minister’s office, has relocated 160,000 families affected by cyclones, flooding and river erosion to higher ground at a total cost of $570m. Each family is housed in an army-built barracks and receives a loan …”
David B. Bensonsays
alan2102 @208 — This only confirms that Mark Jacobson fails to understand grid based electrical power systems. Briefly, without so-called backup generators, dispatchable in power engineering speak, massive amounts of energy storage is required. Nobody can afford so much. MIT has a recent research report about it, stating that the price of energy storage in the USA would have to fall by a factor of ten. I doubt that is possible.
— solar district heating (SDH) with seasonal heat storage —
I just started a petition on the Berlin city parliament to create a giant solar district heating project. I really wonder how it will come out.
Contrary to electric energy, heat energy can be stored efficiently and cheaply in big thermally insulated basins (> 100.000 m³), even for months. In Denmark, a couple dozen SDH projects have been or are currently beeing realized with big solar collector fields (40.000 m²) plus heat storage basins, delivering heat at competitive prices. (Such basins can also be useful to temporary store excess heat of combined heat-power plants and could provide a heat sink for cooling purposes on hot summer days.)
We soon will have one airport too many, so we’ll have enough space for a 1 – 3 km² installation. Together with large scale insulation of buildings, a zero emission capital city is possible – at least concerning heat.
The cost of the heat energy delivered depends crucially on the interest rate – which is very low for the foreseeable future. This is holding for any renewable energy, where the capital expenditure is absolutely dominant.
The technical problems are no small ones, even if the basic technology can almost be baught off the shelf. The system has to be integrated into the existing district heating infrastructure, which have big power-heat-coupling power plants as a basis. The current temperature level of > 60 °C seems too high for a solar heating system, but we will see.
Everybody can discuss this as a possibility for her/his own town.
patrick027says
re 214 David B. Benson – it was related, albeit tangentially; and I should have noted that this was something I had come across a long time ago, might have been spurious, etc., nonetheless, … well it’s right there in the comment (hint I was not suggesting faster than light signaling).
Nemesissays
Economy? Free market? Capitalist competition?
Shrug, will be over soon anyway. Cause it’s the Fire, the Fire, feel the Fire…
… and I guess(??) not a strong enough effect to be of any use for HVAC, http://eqseis.geosc.psu.edu/~cammon/HTML/Classes/IntroQuakes/Notes/waves_and_interior.html (seismic wave speed as a proxy (is that wise?) – significant depths within the Earth required to achieve significant variations (alghough temperature is also changing, but still…) – although the prior link notes more sensitivity at lower pressure, but I’m guessing not enough to be useful…)
… so forgetting that idea for now, … but it would be nice if they could find a way to achieve graphene-like properties in bulk material.
Nemesissays
@nigelj, #229
” The world is not ready for…”
Oups, that wasn’t hard to foresee (if you understand the system), I knew it years ago, the world is not ready to stand the effects of it’s own deeds. First not ready for significant CO2 reduction (for how long now?) and now not ready for adaption- that’s the point where the return of cause and effect (the real pain) starts to pay off, sure, with some latency, but that’s the real pain in the ass, the latency of faustian bargains. It will only get worse day by day, year by year, decade by decade, mercyless, click clack tic tac.
We live in capitalist system. Who will pay countless and ever rising billions and trillions of dollars for adaption? The bankrupt nations of this globe? Just take a look at global national debts, all bankrupt. Or will the Deutsche Bank and Exxon Mobil et al pay for it? Muhahaha, will they pay for all the desastreous consequence of eco destruction and climate heating? Who will pay for the desastreous loss of habitats, animal populations ect ect ect?:
No one will pay for it. Or more precisely:
The human species will pay for it as a whole, not with dollars, but with flesh and bones.
Killiansays
Re #231 Dominik Lenné says — solar district heating (SDH) with seasonal heat storage —
I just started a petition on the Berlin city parliament to create a giant solar district heating project. I really wonder how it will come out.
Hmmm… I wouldn’t. 1. Not sustainable. 2. Scale makes citizens vulnerable to vagaries of policies and pricing set by people who may or may not care whether they have heat.
If you were advocating smaller neighborhood-scale, I would be less hesitant.
Killiansays
Re #229 nigelj said Some excerpts from the economist.com August 2019 on sea level rise, the science and mitigation including use of barriers… This article confirms some points I made elsewhere on the huge costs of barriers.
“The rising oceans. Climate change is a remorseless threat to the world’s coasts. The world is not ready for the sea levels it will face”
“There are some 1.6m kilometres of coastline shared between the 140 countries that face the sea. Along this they have strung two-thirds of the world’s large cities.
The inability to adapt in place WRT SLR for most is a prima facie indisputable. This has been said for a very long time on these pages. Have we finished fixing New Orleans? NYC? ANY of the climate-related disaster locations? No? Hmmm… But we’re going to build out a nearly completely new energy infrastructure globally, pay for that infrastructure for the poorer 4~5 billion who have no or virtually no energy now, eliminate economic, et al., injustice by raising the consumption level of those 4~5B people and… and… and…
It’s mitigation or bend over and kyag.
This is and has been obvious. There is one and only one way to do this, if people actually wanted to have huamnity living decent lives globally:
Nested Commons globally (which eliminates any and all issues of $$ or economics from the equation) and simplifiction in which the wealthy vstly reduce consumption and the poor raise their comfort level importantly, but minimally consumptively.k
nigeljsays
David B. Benson @230
“MIT has a recent research report about it, stating that the price of energy storage in the USA would have to fall by a factor of ten. I doubt that is possible.”
Stranger things have happened. The price of solar panels has dropped by more than a factor of 10 (below). There are a lot of disruptive battery technologies now under development that use commonly available materials that may achieve a price breakthrough.
I suppose its a question of timing, but there is some room to be positive because it will be 10 – 20 years realistically speaking before mass storage is really required in huge bulk leaving time for more development and prices to drop further.
I’m resisting the temptation to take a one sided view of the nuclear v renewables issue, because the world has enough groups of people screaming at each other, and I don’t want to add to this. And it’s not hard to work out that in the real world there may be a place for nuclear power in the mix.
re my last… https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/469626/would-graphene-as-a-bulk-material-act-the-same-as-the-single-layer – turbostatic and intercalated graphite… interesting. I found a few other things… One idea I had was to take macroscopic layers of graphite and some other material (Al?), stacked, warmed to soften, passed through drums to thin, and then fold and repeat… 20 halvings would reduce layer to ~ 1 millionth the starting value… but that’s a lot of mechanical work, I suppose(?) (and no idea what the result would actually be)…
patrick027says
re 218 zebra – thank you; that makes sense. Are there studies supporting this? (I found something https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262095453_Immigration_to_the_UK_from_High-Fertility_Countries_Intergenerational_Adaptation_and_Fertility_Convergence , but didn’t have time to read it yet; the beginning mentions reduced fertility in countries of origin but it wasn’t clear whether any of this was attributed to migration or just happening independently. PS Given recent controversy, I might tend to be suspicious of anything that sounds like bad news, but that would lead to confirmation bias on my part, and this isn’t something I have much prior knowledge of, so I might not spot obvious bunk.)
231 – Dominik
“— solar district heating (SDH) with seasonal heat storage —
I just started a petition on the Berlin city parliament to create a giant solar district heating project. I really wonder how it will come out.”
Do you have a link to schematics or diagrams of such a system?
222 & 223 Kevin
Good answers. You should be able to give property (of any type) to your children or to anyone else you want. Property rights are good – people are more likely to take care of property that is theirs; the commons – maybe not. See rivers on fire, etc.
224 – Kevin
“For the US, “From 2005 to 2015, the United States saw an average of 1,079,377 immigrants becoming permanent per year.” That’s only ~1/300th of the US population.”
Those numbers are for legal immigration only. Illegal immmigration is even larger, but exact numbers are not known for obvious reasons. The US illegal population is probably > 100×10^6 and does include some Canadians. ;)
“Around 1 million Canadians live in the United States. The next most popular destination is Hong Kong, where approximately 300,000 Canadians are based.”
“…that is still 5–6 times too expensive for a renewables only grid.”
Just to reiterate: IMO, a renewables-only grid is a bit of a strawman–especially if “renewables-only” is taken (as it sometimes is) is exclude hydro. There will be nuclear capacity on the grid for decades, in all probability. And, from what I’ve read, it appears that even 5% makes variable RE integration a whole lot easier than in the 100% wind-and-solar case.
We should be focusing on rapid decarbonization–I know, that’s a news flash!–which means retiring FF capacity as quickly and economically as possible. I think that means, inter alia, speeding up the deployment of wind and solar. Attention to ‘firming’ capacity, including nuclear and various forms of storage, is needed on an ongoing basis to do that successfully. 100% RE may be a useful benchmark for research, but is not, I think, the best direction from which to approach the determination of some optimized decarbonization “glide path.”
zebrasays
#240 David Benson,
The reference you give provides an excellent way to understand my free-market approach, although the use of industry jargon tends to obfuscate a pretty simple concept.
What you need there is an even more robust market environment, where even individual households can, with smart metering, be compensated for reducing their usage, just like the big guys:
“ERCOT can reduce system demand by interrupting power for large industrial customers who have contractually agreed for such contingencies.”
But what this really illustrates is that there is no reason someone couldn’t just build a nuclear plant (maybe SMR) and sell their product, if it is so much in demand, as long as the grid operator treats everyone fairly. Those for whom the risk/benefit of being subject to power reduction or interruption is unacceptable would just contract with that nuclear plant, at a price that makes the plant a good investment.
Killian: The inability to adapt in place WRT SLR for most is a prima facie indisputable.
AB: true, but there’s lots of profit to be made by trying. Of course, the profit earned by those who matter is offset many times over by debt and loss to those who don’t.
___________
David B. Benson: MIT has a recent research report about it, stating that the price of energy storage in the USA would have to fall by a factor of ten. I doubt that is possible.
AB: An electrical backbone bypasses the majority of storage requirements, especially if it’s global.
nigeljsays
David B. Benson @243, thanks and interesting, but we wont have a renewables only grid by 2030 anyway so prices will have fallen more by the point we need mass storage, perhaps to something close enough to being acceptable. There is also pumped hydro, but I confess those costs wont be dropping much. And its good to know we have options like nuclear power that could form part of the mix if battery technology is still not cost competitive enough.
I do confess its questionable whether there is enough lithium for large scale grid storage, and it may require other battery technologies. Its easy to over hype technology, but there are so many technologies under development its reasonable to be optimistic about it. Something fyi:
patrck027: some claim that inheritance taxes are problematic for family farms
AB: Other than residuals there are no family farms in the USA. Yep, there are factory farms owned by individuals, but who cares? And seriously, why the ef does somebody besides ME deserve to own a farm just because s/he was spawned by someone who was a farmer? I think I should have exactly the same opportunity to own a farm as someone who was spit out of a farmer’s womb. Do YOU disagree with equal opportunity?
patrick027: I shouldn’t ask others to live in conditions that I would not choose for myself.
AB: which is why we must link our grandchildren’s future to Others’ grandchildren’s future. If it is impossible to significantly improve MY grandchildren’s future beyond Others’ grandchildren’s future then MY decisions and choices will change drastically.
zebra @186 — As I previously pointed out, ERCOT Texas offers competition between generating companies at the wholesale level. As for retail, see Austin TX which appears to have 14 different suppliers.
@nigelj & patrick027
There will be no sharing, right, I know, there will only be ever more exploitation and eco-destruction. That’s exactly why the system is doomed sooner or later, it’s so easy, I realized that decades ago and I repeat it until it’s finished. So lets just keep on discussing smaler population in the meantime. I like that population discussion, it’s just as funny as the climate discussion, extinction discussion, political discussion ect on the way down, down, down.
N 184: ” Germany is phasing out all 84 of its coal plants.”
Sure, in 2038, that’s 20 years from now:
BPL: Do you understand what “phasing out” means? I don’t think it means they wait until 2038, then take down all 84 at once.
#196 Patrick027,
Yes, all the things you mention would contribute– leapfrogging centralized electricity generation and ICE as happened with cells and land-lines probably produces more jobs and stimulates the economy better than the legacy route.
But one thing people don’t like to acknowledge is that immigration to developed countries makes a strong contribution to reducing fertility for people in those countries with high rates.
Also, of course, the much-maligned globalization. “Western values” like excessive consumerism could do with some restraint, but secularization, and general empowerment of women, more than balance the negatives.
#193 Kevin McKinney,
“…so I’m arguing for…”
For what, Kevin? All I see here (e.g. #191) is the factoid dance, and the dysfunctional old couple, going round and round.
You cite Uruguay; EP cites France. And zebra asks, for the umpteenth time:
OK, so you are suggesting the US Federal Government engage in a similar Socialist Nationalization of the electricity sector, and dictate the mix of generation modalities and all related decisions? And you are providing the “correct” final solution, as to the mix, right?
And the answer, every time, is “moi?…oh no, of course not”.
Then what’s the point, other than the dance? How do you get from here to wherever it is? What’s the plan?
Regarding Mark Jacobson:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/01/24/mark-jacobson-has-a-plan-to-convert-the-world-to-100-renewable-energy-is-it-realistic/
snip
After reading the Interesting Engineering article, I reached out to Mark Jacobson for an update. He graciously responded within a few hours. “I like the fact that the author of this article was able to see that, despite how dire the authors of the critique of our 2015 PNAS paper made their criticisms appear, all that did was catalyze us to demonstrate under many more conditions and throughout the world that the main conclusion of our paper was correct,” he said.
“This conclusion was that it is possible to power countries, regions, and the world, for all energy purposes, with clean, renewable energy (without nuclear, fossil fuels with carbon capture, or biofuels) while matching power demand with supply and storage, at low cost. We ended up showing this for 20 world regions and under 3 vastly different storage situations in each region. Not only that, multiple other groups around the world have come to similar conclusions.”
And then there was this. “In the end, it was the egos of the critics and their inability to get facts straight that interfered with their clear judgment. For example, they insisted that a table of ours contained maximum values when it contained average values, and then used their own mistake to claim we made a huge modeling error, when it was their own carelessness that led to that erroneous conclusion.”
Subsequent to the publication of their critique in PNAS, several of the authors let their biases show. John Weyant, David Victor, and James Sweeney are now “serving as paid experts by the Trump Administration to fight against climate action,” Jacobson points out. They are listed as witnesses in the defense plans to call in the landmark climate legal action known as Juliana vs. United States.
“Two others, Ken Caldeira and Staffan Qvist, at different times over the past several years, have published opinions that the whole world could be powered by nuclear. Several others claim we need a mix of nuclear, CCS, and renewables. As such, it is my opinion that their motivation was to diminish the credibility of 100% renewables to push their own alternative plan,” Jacobson added.
MA Rodger:
I agree with you about the venue, so I posted a short reply here and a longer one over there on Friday. For some reason, neither has appeared yet. I didn’t keep copies, and my thoughts probably aren’t worth reconstructing in their entirety. I’m still interested, however, in Gavin’s discussion of explicit and implicit warrants and values as applied to our resident troll Victor, who presumably has multiple layers of motivation like the rest of us. Meh. If all we know about him is what he says on RC, speculation about his cognitive internals may be no more productive than arguing climate science with him is.
@BPL, #250
” : Do you understand what “phasing out” means?”
Sure, phasing out, I know exactly what that means. That term fits perfectly, so let’s phase out.
Al Bundy @199
Zeb. “If using FF is dis-incentivized, and there is in fact a competitive market, the proportion of nuclear to renewables, whether 5% or 50%, will match the demand for what each can offer. I’ve pointed this out, over and over, and asked why my reasoning is incorrect.”
AB: “Because it is impossible. Nuclear is not possible without extreme governmental intrusion because accidents happen. No corporation could adequately insure itself against both a Chernobyl and freedom-fighters’ use of said reactor to try to free themselves of USAian hegemony, and a corporation that builds a nuke without said insurance in full without any governmental defense forces is foisting its costs on society so no competitive and fair market can exist between nuclear and wind/solar. ”
Nigelj: This is a shrewd observation, but there might be a way around it. I don’t know how insurance works in America but I assume companies have to have public liability cover etc. Ok a private sector nuclear power company would presumably not get private insurance against a cherbobyl level disaster, but government could provide some form of cover. Provided the nuclear power company paid commensurate premiums, it would be a level playing field with other players wouldn’t it?
However electricity markets seem a bit contrived to me. I’m not 100% convinced (ie sitting on fence). All I can say is an actual market might help the Nuclear Industry in places like America as Zebra alludes to. It won’t in developing countries so much, because only the government has the resources to develop something like nuclear power in many cases.
Al Bundy @200
Yeah, yeah yeah understood about charitable donations, however the point I was getting at is that by the time people develop that level of comprehension, altruism, idealism, and back it up with action, hell will have frozen over and Africa will probably have a population of about 5 billion people and will be in big trouble, so we should do all we can to encourage them to get their population growth down urgently, and help them as appropriate. It wont come down by accident. It will be much easier. Hopefully in the meantime people will also become more charitable and altruistic, but what is your plan for achieving that change in attitude?
206 zebra “But one thing people don’t like to acknowledge is that immigration to developed countries makes a strong contribution to reducing fertility for people in those countries with high rates.”
I’ve never heard that before; this sounds very interesting. What is the mechanism(s)?
(P.S. I’ve sometimes wondered if the selectivity of my country (U.S.) for immigrants might leave the countries of origin depleted in talent/expertise/skill – although the effect might be minor…?)
Regarding HVAC and electrical transmission…
We seek good electrical conductors and good resistors. We seek good thermal conductors and insulators.
The ideal electrical insulation would also be a good thermal conductor so that the wire/cable/line/”elpipe” can shed waste heat and not get too hot. Diamond comes to mind. Unfortunately, diamond has some drawbacks.
Diamond is a much better conductor of heat than even metals. Some special materials do even better. It would be nice if new materials could be developed to improve the COP of heat pumps, which are often far below thermodynamic limits, as I understand it (for practical reasons). I’m picturing solid plates (lower maintenance than pipes, I’m guessing?) under the floor and embedded in the cielings that distribute heat through a building…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_thermal_conductivities
This is not something I know much about so this might be silly, but it occurred to me that waves on a string propagate faster with more tension, so could materials’ thermal conductance be improved with tension?
Also … this is very far out(very very VERY far out, like Star Trek and Doctor Who (and now the word very looks weird to me)), but I recall reading somewhere that some experiment suggested a signal travelled faster than light through a superconductor. Some superconductance is based on pairs of electrons. I don’t know but does that involve quantum entanglement? Recently I’ve learned that limits on quantum entanglement may create distance in space… so could a superconductor with quantum entanglement work like a wormhole?… That would be useful for electrical transmission and thermal conduction, I bet.
Aside from Warp HVAC, is there such a thing as a thermal superconductor?
patrick027 @216 — No information travels faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Let’s stick to matters related to climate solutions, if you please.
Re #211 nigelj said Al Bundy @199
Zeb. “If using FF is dis-incentivized, and there is in fact a competitive market, the proportion of nuclear to renewables, whether 5% or 50%, will match the demand for what each can offer. I’ve pointed this out, over and over, and asked why my reasoning is incorrect.”
AB: “Because it is impossible. Nuclear is not possible without extreme governmental intrusion because accidents happen. No corporation could adequately insure itself against both a Chernobyl and freedom-fighters’ use of said reactor”
Nigelj: This is a shrewd observation,
or…
Of the two, AB’s comment falls under the second. There are reasons nuclear is never funded privately, and they include the above and the massive costs. This is well-known, or should be by anyone discussing nuclear as an option.
Also, any insurance co would be bankrupted by a major incident. They get bankrupted by far smaller disasters, or refuse to insure. Gov’t covering this is the same as gov’t funding in the first place, and worse: Gov’t only has costs in this suggested case.
Re #195 nigelj said Sharing is desirable in theory,
It’s not a theory.
#201 Al Bundy,
“And seriously, why the ef does somebody besides ME deserve to own a farm just because s/he was spawned by someone who was a farmer?”
Quite right, by George. (pun intended)
#212 patrick027,
There are two young girls, cousins, in a place where fertility is 6.
One family moves to the USA, say.
Three things happen:
– The immigrant girl is immediately in a situation where lower fertility is the norm. Even if she has 4 children, her two daughters will have probably end up close to 2 each.
– The family that moves will be able to economically help the family that stays.
– The family that stays… (subsequent generations of girls)… will be exposed to the values of their “Westernized” cousins down the line.
Spreading the values, and spreading the wealth, can happen without overt action by foreign organizations or governments, which often meets resistance.
@201 AB,
The same odious USDA policies that drove out the family farms are also what prevent you from doing the same. It has very little to do with who your birth mother is, and everything to do with something called regulatory capture.
“Regulatory capture is a form of government failure which occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.”
This is how factory farming gained dominance, not because it is better or more efficient or even more profitable…. Because it isn’t, all else equal.
Once upon a time it was thought that all factory farming in the US would make it more efficient. That’s initially the excuse used for these policies designed to drive off family farms by destabilizing them financially. But that has been proven completely wrong.
#199 Al Bundy,
So you want me to refute the argument you would refute yourself??
Having a true free market requires government intervention, so that argument in itself is not relevant.
On “national security”… well, stopping terrorism is the government’s job.
But with respect to insurance:
What the (true free) market does is motivate improving your product. So, whether or not it is all hype right now, the supposed walk-away-safe SMR should be able to get some, after suitable engineering and demonstration.
And then, they will be able to offer their 24/7 reliable electricity on my marketplace, in competition with the chancy wind and solar providers. I’m guessing the price will be, say, 4-5 times as much. And now, one of my standard questions: What’s the problem?
Some people will be willing to pay the price for that reliability, and some people will take a chance on pure wind and solar, or install a battery, or improve efficiency, or whatever.
All of those options means there will be development and improvement in all of the different technologies, including nuclear. That, to me, is the most desirable outcome.
#203 David Benson,
Could you re-post that reference you keep referring to? I can’t seem to find it.
But much thanks for mentioning Austin; it sounds a lot like what I am proposing. People who think “it can’t be done” should look at this:
https://www.vaultelectricity.com/Austin.html
Obviously Texas has very substantial resources. But if you institute my proposal nationwide, interstate transmission will develop to pick up any slack for other locales.
#207, zebra–
Sigh.
No, I’m not advocating any such thing. Please re-read my sentence that you took the quote from, back in #193:
“So I’m arguing for what I think is most likely to be pragmatically useful in what I expect will continue to be a highly imperfect world.”
Does the putative suggestion of “Socialist Nationalization” sound “pragmatic” to you? It sure doesn’t to me.
Nor am I attempting in any way to “dictate.” So far as I can tell, the odds of my becoming “dictator” are somewhere south of the odds of discovering that the moon is actually made of green cheese after all.
What I am doing is addressing what I regard as a fallacious and unhelpful argument. E-P thinks nuclear is a silver bullet for climate change. It ain’t, and IMO, it’s worthwhile presenting the reasons why that is the case.
It’s also worthwhile–again, IMO–presenting the reasons why I think that renewable energy not only can, but will, make a very significant contribution toward decarbonizing electricity generation in the coming decades.
Finally, I think it’s worthwhile pointing out that anyone’s prescriptions–including all political leaders anywhere–are of limited efficacy. Even actual dictators don’t get to dictate their own national energy mix (though they sure can influence it.) What gets built is the emergent of innumerable decisions over time. The result, to a high probability, is going to be a mixed electrical grid for the next several decades. There will be a lot more RE and various types of storage, and a lot less FF, with some nuclear capacity (probably more or less flat), some hydro capacity (probably slightly positive growth, but pretty small as potential is constrained) and various other small players and even possible wild cards, like SMRs.
(Biomass, BTW, is an interesting case, as there’s a lot of capacity now including traditional uses, making it not such a ‘small player’, but the sustainability is very questionable over time. But my crystal ball is very cloudy in that region.)
AB, #201–
Traditionally, because s/he grew up on that farm, contributing sweat equity the entire time, and developing (in not a few cases) an intense emotional attachment to the place and to the people connected with it.
It’s not a reality much recognized nor valued by ‘homo economicus’, but then maybe that’s the point.
#212, patrick–
O/T alert for this whole comment!
Thank you for noticing. In the Canada of my youth, there was considerable public angst about the “brain drain”–ie., exactly what you are speculating about: talented Canadians leaving permanently for the US, UK, or other ‘sexier’ places where, presumably, they would have bigger and/or better opportunities. But as I recall at least, one stopped hearing much about this in the Viet Nam era, perhaps because Canada started getting an influx of talented Americans disinclined to be drafted for the conflict.
Nowadays, Canadians still migrate in considerable numbers to the US–heck, I’m one of them:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/canadian-immigrants-united-states
Hollywood has been an attraction for a long time–as citing the names of Mary Pickford (yes, “America’s sweetheart” was Canadian by birth) and Jim Carrey might indicate, and as the fact (per the above) that Los Angeles county is the top county for Canadian-born in the US. (Hey, not for nothing do they have an NHL franchise there, despite the paucity of natural ice surfaces.)
On the other hand, lots of Americans move to Canada, too:
https://canadaimmigrants.com/us-immigrants-to-canada/
It would appear that the flow to Canada is larger, proportionately to the countries’ populations, than the flow to the US (though smaller in absolute terms). That’s based on ~253k American-born immigrants living in Canada (2016), versus 783k Canadians in the US in the same year.
Interestingly, Canada is more selective than is the US–there’s a points system, which recognizes family connections but also considers skills and abilities (including financial ones). That’s coupled with proportionately higher levels of immigration in general.
“From 2005 to 2014, the immigration rate to Canada quite consistently hovered around an average of 253,000 people accepted for permanent residency in the county each year.” That’s about 1/120th of the population, give or take.
https://www.immigroup.com/news/immigration-united-states-america-vs-canada
For the US, “From 2005 to 2015, the United States saw an average of 1,079,377 immigrants becoming permanent per year.” That’s only ~1/300th of the US population.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/130869/thermal-superconductivity – okay, it is a thing.
Killian @215
“Also, any insurance co would be bankrupted by a major incident. They get bankrupted by far smaller disasters, or refuse to insure. Gov’t covering this is the same as gov’t funding in the first place, and worse: Gov’t only has costs in this suggested case.”
Well yes this is true, but I think you could still make an electricity market work and have nuclear power participate, which was the point I was getting at. Granted it would be convoluted, and I admit I’m not loving it. Often its about the lesser of the various evils.
——–
Al Bundy: We should remember free markets are just really shorthand for managed markets; there will always have to be some regulation to ensure markets are orderly and don’t devolve into monopolies but this doesn’t negate the advantages of competition and largely private sector decision making.
In the USA nuclear power stations are insured via American Nuclear Insurers. About one million dollars per year.
zebra @221 — I recommend studying all of
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/ebf483/
An introduction to electricity markets. ERCOT does a variation of all of this except that there is no capacity market.
No, not much more interstate transmission in the USA. The land for right-of-way is largely bespoke.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/08/17/climate-change-is-a-remorseless-threat-to-the-worlds-coasts
Some excerpts from the economist.com August 2019 on sea level rise, the science and mitigation including use of barriers. Well worth a read, if you subscribe you get a couple of articles of your choice for free. This article confirms some points I made elsewhere on the huge costs of barriers.
“The rising oceans. Climate change is a remorseless threat to the world’s coasts. The world is not ready for the sea levels it will face”
“There are some 1.6m kilometres of coastline shared between the 140 countries that face the sea. Along this they have strung two-thirds of the world’s large cities. A billion people now live no more than ten metres above sea level. And it is coming to get them. Global mean sea level (gmsl) ticked up by between 2.7mm and 3.5mm a year between 1993, when reliable satellite measurements began, and 2017 (see chart). ”
“That may not sound like much; but to raise gsml a centimetre means melting over 3trn tonnes of ice. And though forecasts of sea-level rise are vexed with uncertainties and divergences, there is a strong consensus that the rate is accelerating as the world warms up. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc), which assesses climate change for the un, says sea level rose by around 19cm in the 20th century. It expects it to rise by at least twice that much this century, and probably a good bit more. It is worth noting that last year the authors of a study looking at 40 years of sea-level-rise forecasts concluded that the ipcc’s experts consistently “err on the side of least drama”.
“Sea-level rises on the order of one metre—a bit above the ipcc range for 2100—will cost the world a lot. Leaving aside fatalities owing to storms and storm surges, whose effects are worse in higher seas, one estimate made in 2014 found that by 2100 the value of property at risk from marine flooding would be worth between $20trn and $200trn. The Union of Concerned Scientists, an American ngo, estimates that by that time 2.5m existing coastal properties in America, today worth $1.1trn, could be at risk of flooding every two weeks.”
“A lot of effort is devoted to engineering a way out of the problem. New York is paying almost $800m for the Big U, a necklace of parks, walls and elevated roads to shield lower Manhattan from another Sandy. Mumbai wants to build four huge and costly seawalls. Bangladesh, a delta country ten times more populous and one-thirtieth as rich as the Netherlands, is doubling its coastal embankment system and repairing existing infrastructure. Indonesia intends a $40bn wall in the shape of a giant mythical bird to seal Jakarta off from the seas.”
“Such schemes take decades to plan and execute, which means the conditions they end up facing are not necessarily those they were conceived for. When the Big U was first proposed, a year after Sandy, the worst-case scenario for sea-level rise on America’s east coast was one metre. When its environmental assessment report was eventually published this April, that looked closer to the best case.”
“London’s Thames Barrier—conceived, like the Dutch delta defences, after the floods of 1953—closed just eight times between its inauguration in 1982 and 1990. Since 2000 it has shut 144 times. In Venice mose, a system of flood barriers which cost a staggering €5.5bn, will be needed every day if the seas rise by 50cm. Such near-permanence will render moot the huge effort and expense that went into keeping it unobtrusively submerged when not in use. At one metre of sea-level rise it would be basically pointless. Even the resourceful Dutch only designed Maeslant with one metre of sea-level rise in mind.”
” In the rich world such “managed retreat” is anathema. People see the government’s job as protecting them, not moving them. Relocating a neighbourhood in New York requires the consent of the residents; holdouts can block decisions for years. ”
“In Bangladesh, though, the Ashrayan project, run directly by the prime minister’s office, has relocated 160,000 families affected by cyclones, flooding and river erosion to higher ground at a total cost of $570m. Each family is housed in an army-built barracks and receives a loan …”
alan2102 @208 — This only confirms that Mark Jacobson fails to understand grid based electrical power systems. Briefly, without so-called backup generators, dispatchable in power engineering speak, massive amounts of energy storage is required. Nobody can afford so much. MIT has a recent research report about it, stating that the price of energy storage in the USA would have to fall by a factor of ten. I doubt that is possible.
Just ignore Jacobson and get on with it.
— solar district heating (SDH) with seasonal heat storage —
I just started a petition on the Berlin city parliament to create a giant solar district heating project. I really wonder how it will come out.
Contrary to electric energy, heat energy can be stored efficiently and cheaply in big thermally insulated basins (> 100.000 m³), even for months. In Denmark, a couple dozen SDH projects have been or are currently beeing realized with big solar collector fields (40.000 m²) plus heat storage basins, delivering heat at competitive prices. (Such basins can also be useful to temporary store excess heat of combined heat-power plants and could provide a heat sink for cooling purposes on hot summer days.)
We soon will have one airport too many, so we’ll have enough space for a 1 – 3 km² installation. Together with large scale insulation of buildings, a zero emission capital city is possible – at least concerning heat.
The cost of the heat energy delivered depends crucially on the interest rate – which is very low for the foreseeable future. This is holding for any renewable energy, where the capital expenditure is absolutely dominant.
The technical problems are no small ones, even if the basic technology can almost be baught off the shelf. The system has to be integrated into the existing district heating infrastructure, which have big power-heat-coupling power plants as a basis. The current temperature level of > 60 °C seems too high for a solar heating system, but we will see.
Everybody can discuss this as a possibility for her/his own town.
re 214 David B. Benson – it was related, albeit tangentially; and I should have noted that this was something I had come across a long time ago, might have been spurious, etc., nonetheless, … well it’s right there in the comment (hint I was not suggesting faster than light signaling).
Economy? Free market? Capitalist competition?
Shrug, will be over soon anyway. Cause it’s the Fire, the Fire, feel the Fire…
https://youtu.be/SU6NJE-q4E4
… actually, the idea of tension increasing thermal conductivity may make sense for otherwise slack polymer molecules; otherwise I’m guessing the relationship may go the otherway – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231536080_Effect_of_Pressure_and_Temperature_on_the_Thermal_Conductivity_of_Rocks
… and I guess(??) not a strong enough effect to be of any use for HVAC, http://eqseis.geosc.psu.edu/~cammon/HTML/Classes/IntroQuakes/Notes/waves_and_interior.html (seismic wave speed as a proxy (is that wise?) – significant depths within the Earth required to achieve significant variations (alghough temperature is also changing, but still…) – although the prior link notes more sensitivity at lower pressure, but I’m guessing not enough to be useful…)
… so forgetting that idea for now, … but it would be nice if they could find a way to achieve graphene-like properties in bulk material.
@nigelj, #229
” The world is not ready for…”
Oups, that wasn’t hard to foresee (if you understand the system), I knew it years ago, the world is not ready to stand the effects of it’s own deeds. First not ready for significant CO2 reduction (for how long now?) and now not ready for adaption- that’s the point where the return of cause and effect (the real pain) starts to pay off, sure, with some latency, but that’s the real pain in the ass, the latency of faustian bargains. It will only get worse day by day, year by year, decade by decade, mercyless, click clack tic tac.
We live in capitalist system. Who will pay countless and ever rising billions and trillions of dollars for adaption? The bankrupt nations of this globe? Just take a look at global national debts, all bankrupt. Or will the Deutsche Bank and Exxon Mobil et al pay for it? Muhahaha, will they pay for all the desastreous consequence of eco destruction and climate heating? Who will pay for the desastreous loss of habitats, animal populations ect ect ect?:
No one will pay for it. Or more precisely:
The human species will pay for it as a whole, not with dollars, but with flesh and bones.
Re #231 Dominik Lenné says — solar district heating (SDH) with seasonal heat storage —
I just started a petition on the Berlin city parliament to create a giant solar district heating project. I really wonder how it will come out.
Hmmm… I wouldn’t. 1. Not sustainable. 2. Scale makes citizens vulnerable to vagaries of policies and pricing set by people who may or may not care whether they have heat.
If you were advocating smaller neighborhood-scale, I would be less hesitant.
Re #229 nigelj said Some excerpts from the economist.com August 2019 on sea level rise, the science and mitigation including use of barriers… This article confirms some points I made elsewhere on the huge costs of barriers.
“The rising oceans. Climate change is a remorseless threat to the world’s coasts. The world is not ready for the sea levels it will face”
“There are some 1.6m kilometres of coastline shared between the 140 countries that face the sea. Along this they have strung two-thirds of the world’s large cities.
The inability to adapt in place WRT SLR for most is a prima facie indisputable. This has been said for a very long time on these pages. Have we finished fixing New Orleans? NYC? ANY of the climate-related disaster locations? No? Hmmm… But we’re going to build out a nearly completely new energy infrastructure globally, pay for that infrastructure for the poorer 4~5 billion who have no or virtually no energy now, eliminate economic, et al., injustice by raising the consumption level of those 4~5B people and… and… and…
It’s mitigation or bend over and kyag.
This is and has been obvious. There is one and only one way to do this, if people actually wanted to have huamnity living decent lives globally:
Nested Commons globally (which eliminates any and all issues of $$ or economics from the equation) and simplifiction in which the wealthy vstly reduce consumption and the poor raise their comfort level importantly, but minimally consumptively.k
David B. Benson @230
“MIT has a recent research report about it, stating that the price of energy storage in the USA would have to fall by a factor of ten. I doubt that is possible.”
Stranger things have happened. The price of solar panels has dropped by more than a factor of 10 (below). There are a lot of disruptive battery technologies now under development that use commonly available materials that may achieve a price breakthrough.
I suppose its a question of timing, but there is some room to be positive because it will be 10 – 20 years realistically speaking before mass storage is really required in huge bulk leaving time for more development and prices to drop further.
I’m resisting the temptation to take a one sided view of the nuclear v renewables issue, because the world has enough groups of people screaming at each other, and I don’t want to add to this. And it’s not hard to work out that in the real world there may be a place for nuclear power in the mix.
https://cleantechnica.com/2014/09/04/solar-panel-cost-trends-10-charts/
The result of lots of wind generation and high summer temperatures was recently illustrated in ERCOT Texas:
https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/electric-power/081319-ercot-real-time-wholesale-power-prices-spend-hours-above-2000-mwh
Reached the limit of $9,000/MWh.
re my last… https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/469626/would-graphene-as-a-bulk-material-act-the-same-as-the-single-layer – turbostatic and intercalated graphite… interesting. I found a few other things… One idea I had was to take macroscopic layers of graphite and some other material (Al?), stacked, warmed to soften, passed through drums to thin, and then fold and repeat… 20 halvings would reduce layer to ~ 1 millionth the starting value… but that’s a lot of mechanical work, I suppose(?) (and no idea what the result would actually be)…
re 218 zebra – thank you; that makes sense. Are there studies supporting this? (I found something https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262095453_Immigration_to_the_UK_from_High-Fertility_Countries_Intergenerational_Adaptation_and_Fertility_Convergence , but didn’t have time to read it yet; the beginning mentions reduced fertility in countries of origin but it wasn’t clear whether any of this was attributed to migration or just happening independently. PS Given recent controversy, I might tend to be suspicious of anything that sounds like bad news, but that would lead to confirmation bias on my part, and this isn’t something I have much prior knowledge of, so I might not spot obvious bunk.)
re 224 Kevin McKinney – interesting, thank you.
nigelj @239 — From
https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/
we see a projection of battery prices of but $62/MWh in 2030. But from the MIT study, that is still 5–6 times too expensive for a renewables only grid.
N 184: “Germany is phasing out all 84 of its coal plants.”
Sure, in 2038, that’s 20 years from now:”
Coal is in:
2019:
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/716347646/why-is-china-placing-a-global-bet-on-coal
2017:
https://climatechangedispatch.com/1600-new-coal-power-plants-being-built-around-the-world/
Climate change debate is out per the Huffington Puffington Post:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dnc-rejects-climate-debate_n_5d5cb8f0e4b05f62fbd7067d
Breitbart agrees with HuffPo:
https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2019/08/22/dnc-nixes-climate-change-debate-despite-pressure-from-youth-movement/
231 – Dominik
“— solar district heating (SDH) with seasonal heat storage —
I just started a petition on the Berlin city parliament to create a giant solar district heating project. I really wonder how it will come out.”
Do you have a link to schematics or diagrams of such a system?
222 & 223 Kevin
Good answers. You should be able to give property (of any type) to your children or to anyone else you want. Property rights are good – people are more likely to take care of property that is theirs; the commons – maybe not. See rivers on fire, etc.
224 – Kevin
“For the US, “From 2005 to 2015, the United States saw an average of 1,079,377 immigrants becoming permanent per year.” That’s only ~1/300th of the US population.”
Those numbers are for legal immigration only. Illegal immmigration is even larger, but exact numbers are not known for obvious reasons. The US illegal population is probably > 100×10^6 and does include some Canadians. ;)
On Canadians in the US:
http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/canada-population/
“Around 1 million Canadians live in the United States. The next most popular destination is Hong Kong, where approximately 300,000 Canadians are based.”
Those enamored of so-called renewables are encouraged to follow
http://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/678/australian-grid?page=2#post-5849
and the link therein to the AEMO sponsored report on the state of the Australian grid. Notice the way in which renewables are chided.
DVB, #243–
“…that is still 5–6 times too expensive for a renewables only grid.”
Just to reiterate: IMO, a renewables-only grid is a bit of a strawman–especially if “renewables-only” is taken (as it sometimes is) is exclude hydro. There will be nuclear capacity on the grid for decades, in all probability. And, from what I’ve read, it appears that even 5% makes variable RE integration a whole lot easier than in the 100% wind-and-solar case.
We should be focusing on rapid decarbonization–I know, that’s a news flash!–which means retiring FF capacity as quickly and economically as possible. I think that means, inter alia, speeding up the deployment of wind and solar. Attention to ‘firming’ capacity, including nuclear and various forms of storage, is needed on an ongoing basis to do that successfully. 100% RE may be a useful benchmark for research, but is not, I think, the best direction from which to approach the determination of some optimized decarbonization “glide path.”
#240 David Benson,
The reference you give provides an excellent way to understand my free-market approach, although the use of industry jargon tends to obfuscate a pretty simple concept.
What you need there is an even more robust market environment, where even individual households can, with smart metering, be compensated for reducing their usage, just like the big guys:
“ERCOT can reduce system demand by interrupting power for large industrial customers who have contractually agreed for such contingencies.”
But what this really illustrates is that there is no reason someone couldn’t just build a nuclear plant (maybe SMR) and sell their product, if it is so much in demand, as long as the grid operator treats everyone fairly. Those for whom the risk/benefit of being subject to power reduction or interruption is unacceptable would just contract with that nuclear plant, at a price that makes the plant a good investment.
What’s the problem?
Death is for everyone, even billionaires:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/david-koch-dead/index.html
I’m sure, he didn’t take a single cent with him.
Killian: The inability to adapt in place WRT SLR for most is a prima facie indisputable.
AB: true, but there’s lots of profit to be made by trying. Of course, the profit earned by those who matter is offset many times over by debt and loss to those who don’t.
___________
David B. Benson: MIT has a recent research report about it, stating that the price of energy storage in the USA would have to fall by a factor of ten. I doubt that is possible.
AB: An electrical backbone bypasses the majority of storage requirements, especially if it’s global.
David B. Benson @243, thanks and interesting, but we wont have a renewables only grid by 2030 anyway so prices will have fallen more by the point we need mass storage, perhaps to something close enough to being acceptable. There is also pumped hydro, but I confess those costs wont be dropping much. And its good to know we have options like nuclear power that could form part of the mix if battery technology is still not cost competitive enough.
I do confess its questionable whether there is enough lithium for large scale grid storage, and it may require other battery technologies. Its easy to over hype technology, but there are so many technologies under development its reasonable to be optimistic about it. Something fyi:
https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2019/01/10-disruptive-battery-technologies-trying-to-compete-with-lithium-ion-batteries/