It will be much, much more economic to make methane and diesel fuel from electricity and carbon dioxide and store them in existing storage tanks than it would be to build pumped storage.
PHS is about 75-80% efficient round-trip. How does e-gas compare?
It takes roughly 43 kWh (154.8 MJ) to electrolyze 1 kg of H2 from water. It takes 0.5 kg of H2 to make 1 kg of methane from CO2 by the Sabatier reaction:
0.5 kg H2 + 2.75 kg CO2 -> 1 kg CH4 + 2.25 kg H2O
The lower heating value of methane is 50.0 MJ/kg, so you get less than 2/3 of your 77.4 MJ back as fuel. But it gets worse! If you burn that methane in a CCGT at 60% efficiency you only get 30 MJ of electricity back out. That’s less than 40% round-trip efficiency… and you haven’t accounted for the energy required to capture the CO2. If your EROI of wind power is 15:1, the losses in e-gas reduce this to less than 6:1 BEFORE accounting for the energy cost of the e-gas system.
It’s nonsense like this which proves that “Green” schemes are the refuge of the innumerate. Oh, and Mark Z. Jacobson is a fraud, as proven by numerous analyses including by Clack et al.
Abbott 2011 showed that it is impossible to mine uranium from the ocean, for many reasons.
Some 6000 tons of uranium per year used in fast-breeder reactors would run the entire world. At $200/kg, that would only cost $1.2 billion. Compare to the $trillions changing hands for fossil fuels. We can’t afford NOT to.
And apropos of nothing:
if a two-week doldrums occurred, who wouldn’t relish two weeks of down time?
Now imagine that you can’t travel to go to the beach, slopes or campgrounds, that neither the heat nor the A/C work, all the food in the fridge goes bad and none gets to the stores, the pipes freeze and all the sewers back up.
I have a prediction – the UNFCCC / COP system is going to collapse. Because now globally everything is getting to the pointy end of dealing with AGW/CC or walking away. Too many nations are going to do a USA and walk away.
Leaving those who are left (at least half serious about it) with nothing to do that makes rational sense. It’s all in or none are in. Therefore it will be the latter by the look at it.
Not quite. There’s ONE thing that still makes rational sense: do what needs to be done on one’s own turf and prove that the sky doesn’t fall. If you have a successful example, everyone else will eventually take notice. No, you can’t avoid the consequences befalling everyone else… but you can show them what to do when they finally get out of denial, and somebody has to be first.
This might happen faster than you think. France, Poland and others successfully overrode the Germany/Austria/Luxembourg axis to get nuclear energy included at least as a provisional low-carbon energy source for EU financing guidelines. This is a major defeat for the Greens, and shows frustration with the failure of the Energiewende. For once, facts beat ideology.
Right now the best examples are Sweden and France (Norway and Iceland lucked into lots of hydropower), but neither one is trying to assert itself as a leader. France, with its automakers Peugot (soon to be united with FCA) and Citroen, has an opportunity to start decarbonizing its other sectors as a matter of policy. Transportation is an obvious target. Using off-peak nuclear electricity to charge plug-in vehicles (even if they are not completely electric) can start picking the low-hanging fruit there. The first increments are the easiest and cheapest, and can even pay for themselves in reduced imports. It’s time to get going.
FWIW I had to drive about 60 miles this afternoon/evening. I managed it on just over 1 gallon of liquid fuel despite cold temperatures killing my battery performance; I could have done MUCH better had charging been available at all my stops (only 2 out of 6 had any). It can be done.
Al Bundysays
xxx
Al Bundysays
One of my things is to print T-shirts, or more accurately, pay to have them printed. My latest is:
My Dad’s GOP
was all honor
Today’s GOP
Trumps Nixon
I wore it for the first time today. At the library one of the GOPpish regulars said with an incredible leerish grin that Trump will be president. His tone implied “for life”.
These guys are screaming about their loss and diving into fantasy so as to salve the pain. There is no debate with the 30% or so who are wallowing in the basket of deplorables.
On the ThanosTrump decapitating the opposition with a wave idea, I think I’d rather see something more entertaining. How about snapping my fingers and those three twits on the Fox and Friends couch grow souls and spines the next time Trump calls in? Instead of sitting there all deer-in-headlights they do their friggin’ job, eh? (Yeah, I know, I’m imposing the lie, “News” onto their job description, but hey, it’s my fantasy)
Al Bundysays
Mutually Assured Destruction was a policy based on the hypothesis that self-preservation trumps all.
But when what one defines as “self” is guaranteed to die, when the demographics ensure it unless Mutually Assured Destruction either ends everything or gives your side a victory like in “Ants”, where the ants won because all the termites died and a single ant survived, “One to Zero! We won!”,
then the game has changed. My suggestion is to play the new game. To win. Obama was a wimp. Biden and mayor Pete are wimps. Michael Moore is right. Democrats win when they man/woman up. If you want to win, support anybody except B&B.
Al Bundysays
KIA 159: Chinese detention camps
BPL: Have nothing whatsoever to do with immigration. They are simply and solely to intimidate and control ethnic minorities conquered by China, such as the Tibetans, Turkmen, and Uighurs.
AB: I’d use a different flavor: simply and solely to reprogram Others so they’ll be tolerable by/integrated into the Body (Star Trek reference).
BTW, Good News! Given China’s Great Leap Backward the USA can probably now brag about no longer imprisoning more of its citizens per capita by far than any other country.
Thomassays
Misc news – what the present and the future holds.
100% of NSW is drought declared
Heatwaves and active bushfires continue across the entire continent, in every state and territory except Tasmania.
Known fact: the #1 Global Killer by Natural Disaster are Heatwaves.
anecdote: 12th December – (it got far worse since then)
My family live in suburban Wollongong an hour south of Sydney.
Everything is bone dry, drier than any time in living memory. Though in a residential area they have made plans to evacuate if any fire comes down the mountain range as it’s plainly obvious that on a hot windy day stopping it just won’t be possible.
My brother in law and nephew work in a coal mine, yesterday production was stopped because the volume of smoke being sucked into the mine was causing the fire systems to trip and continuing without them was unsafe. Visibility at times has been as low as a few hundred metres it looks apocalyptic.
This years camping trip has been relocated because of the fires. The lawns that are always green are brown and dying along with my mother’s garden. All this and they either refuse to believe or just don’t want to know about climate change.
I used to think something like this would wake people up but no sign at all so far. Perhaps after this summer when the drought, fires and smoke are so visible but from their response so far I doubt it.
FOR SATURDAY 21ST
The NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) has warned it would be a “miracle” if more homes were not lost tomorrow amid a catastrophic fire danger warning across the south-eastern coast.
It is only the second time such a warning, the highest level of bushfire danger, has been issued for the Greater Sydney area since the rating system was introduced in 2009. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/nsw-bushfire-catastrophic-fire-danger-forecast-for-saturday/11818896
More records tumble as heatwave rolls on, scientists point finger at climate change
Bureau of Meteorology data suggests the national average maximum temperature reached 41.0 degrees Celsius on Thursday, after hitting 41.9C on Wednesday and 40.7C on Tuesday.
Before this week, the record of 40.3C had stood since January 2013.
But Victoria’s December record for an individual location was smashed today when it reached 47.9C at Hopetoun Airport and Horsham, well above the old mark of 46.6C set in 1976.
Adelaide (45.3C) and Canberra (39.3C) also broke December record temperatures on Thursday that had stood since 1994.
The SA capital suffered through its hottest December night on record, one of the deadliest parts of a heatwave — hot nights mean the body doesn’t have a chance to cool down and recover.
Yes, climate change is involved https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/finger-pointed-at-climate-change-as-heatwave-smashes-records/11817884
Fire burns through Seaford buildings as Victorian heat records tumble and emergency-level blazes burn
Residents have described hearing massive explosions and seeing shrapnel flying through the air at a fire in the Melbourne suburb of Seaford, where seven people required medical attention on Victoria’s hottest December day on record. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/hot-weather-victoria-heatwave-bushfire-smoke/11816230
Conclusion?
PROBABLY THE SAME IS COMING TO A PLACE NEAR WHERE YOU LIVE
IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE
KIA 194: Looks like they want to prevent them from migrating to other parts of China. So, nip the immigration problem in the bud. ;)
BPL: With concentration camps? You’re inconsistent. You used to be anti-Communist. The Commies adopt an inhumane policy you like, and suddenly you’re all, rah-rah China.
William Jacksonsays
#208 Ever notice that much of what KIA knows is wrong and most of the rest is irrelevant.
164 – Mal Adapted
“…Sure, there are social problems associated with illegal immigration,..”
Thanks for recognizing that. Only one major political party is willing to even give lip service to the problem, the other one does not want any borders at all. That’s a problem.
A patent strawman. Your delusion of cultural enemies crowding under your bed is the problem.
IAT:
“…Indeed, since our internal fertility rate is below replacement level, America’s continued security and prosperity depends on immigrants…..”
Today, govt population guess is 330MM. The population has nearly doubled just in my lifetime. We are waaaaaay beyond replacement.
Do you want to have the debate about economic growth as the engine of America’s prosperity now? The endemic depression resulting from a long-term contraction of our domestic market would perforce reduce our aggregate CO2 emissions, but that sounds like a sub-optimal decarbonization strategy to me. OTOH, it may be only us Americans who would care. Speaking for myself, at least.
IAT:
America was a FAR more prosperous place before our borders were overrun. Kids had jobs after school, in the summer, etc. Problems leftists created have cost us $trillions, probably cost us the country.
As natural born, Medicare card-carrying American citizen, I disconfirm both your nostalgic fantasy and your paranoid imaginings. IOW, they’re not intersubjectively verifiable. That makes your idées fixes the most serious problem America faces today. IMHO, of course.
We now have a claim that electron-beam welding can take as much as 85% of the cost out of building nuclear reactors (in no small part by reducing welding time by as much as a factor of 15):
Right now a lot of countries are going down the renewables route and relying on gas fired power to deal with intermittency issues, hoping it will become economic to replace this with storage.
As the saying goes, hope in one hand, shit in the other and see which one fills up first.
Hope is not a plan. “Someday” is not good enough when we are already 30 years too late and damage escalates with each day. If you can’t specify a schedule of GHG reductions down to zero with a high likelihood of being able to meet it and specifying the proven means you’ll use, you are literally planning to let the planet cook. I find this unacceptable.
Following the examples of proven failures should also be unacceptable. Germany’s one of them. Germany is proof that “renewables” cannot decarbonize an industrial economy, and ought to be on the list of cautionary tales.
If it isnt then nuclear power will become an inevitable sort of option anyway. However the other viable pathway is nuclear power from day one. The important thing is zero carbon energy, one way or the other.
Agreed. France and Ontario decarbonized their grids literally by accident; France was only trying to escape being a hostage to oil prices, but as the Zen proverb goes, “you cannot do just one thing.”
The key is the safety issue, You guys probably need to better explain levels of risk with nuclear power and without rubbishing the critics, or cherry picking information, because that will just make them more stubborn.
Nuclear is already the safest source of electric power in the world, almost 4x as safe as wind and vastly safer than any fossil fuel. Given this, why are we even thinking of building new wind capacity, let alone gas? (Mostly because of so many “safety” measures which really add no safety to plants, and make the public less safe by keeping more dangerous plants in operation by making nuclear “too expensive”.)
The problem is that propaganda has created a paranoia over nuclear energy and radiation in general. Everyone hears about the “disaster” of Chernobyl, in which the fatalities would fit on a bus. But does anyone go around claiming that Bhopal (at least 2259 fatalities and over half a million injuries) means we must shut down all chemical plants NOW? Or the Banqiao dam collapse means we must empty all hydro reservoirs? No, this paranoia is reserved for radiation.
The reality is that steady low-level radiation is harmless at worst. There are situations where it is proven to be healthful; we’ve known for 61 years that lab rats given a considerable daily dose of gamma radiation lived at least 25% longer than controls:
It’s impossible to square radiation paranoia with as much as 33% longer lifespan in rats. Had Tokyo used this information to determine who, if anyone, should have been evacuated from Fukushima, vast amounts of grief and well over 1500 lives could have been saved. Those people didn’t suffer and die from radiation; they suffered and died from fear. That fear came from propaganda, lies. Those liars have blood on their hands.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy@185
nigelj: The loss of forest area due to mining is small in terms of area compared to deforestation for agricultural land, and forests can at least be regrown.
AB: Sure, if you ignore all the toxic heavy metals mines release into the wider ecosystem. Heavy metals are gradually removed from the biosphere because they are heavy. Dredging them up sets the cleansing apparatus back thousands of years. In this instance I side with Killian.
Nigelj : I’m well aware of the heavy metals issue, and I never denied it.
Careful what you say about siding with Killian. He is on record as saying no more mining. Given your technology leanings this might be a problem for you. Simple question, do you think we should open more mines, yes or no?
As I said good mining practices can minimise the heavy metals problem. Do you agree, yes or no? Do you have another solution? If so what?
Like Zebra and yourself say, lets agree on a couple of basics first.
nigeljsays
Engineer Poet @189 says “And when leftist idiots don’t do their building code homework, you get whole renovated apartment towers going up in flames. 72 dead in THAT debacle because the housing council cheaped out instead of doing proper fireproofing.”
You provide no evidence leftists made those specific decisions. Plenty of right wing leaning councils and governments do things on the cheap. For example, our right wing National government in NZ downgraded the building code in the 1990s to save money, and it lead directly to a leaky homes disaster costing many hundreds of millions of dollars to fix. I could list hundreds of similar examples.
Not that I’m a fan of hiring people to try to achieve some sort of cultural balance. Agree with you about that. Hiring has to be on ability, and eventually this tends to achieve good cultural representation anyway.
nigeljsays
Regarding “Seawater yields first grams of yellowcake” posted by Engineer Poet. There are trillions of tons of at least 47 different minerals dissolved in sea water as follows. I posted this before.
This includes lithium which has already been extracted experimentally and reasonably economically . This is one reason I can’t buy into all this doom and gloom that there aren’t enough minerals for renewable energy and / or nuclear power, and that humanity will run out of minerals in the next 50 – 100 years, and so we should all go into a complete panic and start giving up on technology that most people take for granted these days.
Of course before people shove words in my mouth, minerals are obviously a finite resource and shouldn’t be wasted. Economic and population growth have to slow and stop eventually, or things will become problematic. What we also have to do is identify the minerals in really short supply, and ring fence some of them for important uses, namely medical applications.
—————
Al Bundy @206, that would be The Borg, a particularly distasteful species. Interesting bit of a political theme creeping into Star Trek!
Thomassays
@202 Engineer-Poet (the eternal optimist)
Thanks for the comment. After skimming a few comments I was thinking of passing on what came to mind: you’re like a swarm of wasps in a school pool change room. No one appreciates your presence.
Regarding your ‘positive spin’ on things possible I’m sorry but I am of the view that ‘the sky is already falling’ and my name is not chicken little.
Examples of “a successful example” exist everywhere already, and multitudes have be trying to “show them what to do” for decades with minimal effect or results to show for it – mixed in with Fools Gold Rent Seeking Schemes like Tesla, 100% BEVs, dreams of solar wind farms now coming with Lithium Batteries, and ETS/Carbon Taxes getting all the hype, cheap financing and tax payer funding instead.
Regarding “It’s time to get going.” That ‘time’ was 20-30 years ago not today. It’s past the point of being far too late. Look around. The world is already ‘mad’ racked with delusions. The inmates are running this asylum. On the one hand the science denying conservative RW nationalist religious patriots ilk and the bleeding heart mystical LW greenie socialists – both are clueless in my opinion.
meanwhile the rational scientists and ethical academics have about as much power and influence as you and my little finger does.
Thomassays
@E-Poet regarding your Blog article “Direct atmospheric remediation”
May I point out (in case it’s misunderstood) the paper/article you reference is all about Carbon Capture in-situ at CO2 emission sources such as in power generator exhaust stacks. That’s why their research focused on 6000ppm CO2 concentrations and not 400ppm. It’s not about open air DAC (direct air capture) from the atmosphere. Best to all.
Mr. Know It Allsays
183 – nigelj
“It said numerous studies show immigrants as a whole commit fewer crimes than native born Americans…”
Probably correct. The concern is mostly, but not exclusively, with those who did not enter legally.
FYI, I have no idea how many of those folks are here legally, but we can agree there is a pattern there. FACT: There are literally billions who want to come here because we are the absolute best on earth, imperfect as we are. FACT: We can’t take them all. FACT: All our side wants is to vet every immigrant so only good folks come here – we don’t want criminals – we need people here who will assimilate, love the country and make it stronger – not tear it down. Seems reasonable to me. Would you agree? Many do:
207 – Thomas
“PROBABLY THE SAME IS COMING TO A PLACE NEAR WHERE YOU LIVE
IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE”
Happens every year around the ‘Murican West – always has. Back in the 70s Alaskan fire fighters told me the fire smolders in the tundra under the snow in winter and starts up again the following summer. It is a problem when it gets close to towns/cities – it’s been in the news a lot the past couple of years.
208 – BPL
“You’re inconsistent. You used to be anti-Communist. The Commies adopt an inhumane policy you like, and suddenly you’re all, rah-rah China.”
I am anti-Communist; but even Communist nations must control immigration, and problem populations. I guess I’d be pro all countries – I hope they do well so their people can live better lives – maybe they’ll be like Hong Kong, want ‘Murican-style freedom, wave the ‘Murican flag, be pro-‘Murica, etc. As Marion Maréchal-Le Pen says at 2:54 in this outstanding video, every leader should want what is best for their nation.
When Trump acted similarly, taking weak, totally inadequate steps to solve the problem, libs heads exploded. They went out and screamed at the sky, and could not figure out which restroom to use. In other words, they literally lost their minds. They never recovered.
Yes, you have come across as somewhat depressed lately; I understand that this time of year has that effect on many people— I haven’t seen much in the way of “merry” and “jolly” for a long time, just mostly stress over the required social interactions.
I am very, very, lucky in being able to walk into some woods behind my house every day. And when the temp is around 20F, splitting firewood is just the ticket. It cracks like a diamond, and the maul never gets stuck…
Anyway, I thought the AB that shows up sometimes was the most likely person to appreciate how my little scenario illustrates that EP is pretty much a fraud. Lots of other smart people here but when it comes to actually applying physics, in detail, in the real world, thinking through the intricacies is not their thing.
Of course, EP has now demonstrated explicitly that he is incapable (for whatever reason) of working through the problem other than to repeat his rhetorical formula just like the Denialists. Not a thinker.
There’s been some discussion of “reactive power”, including the idea–or at least the suggestion–that it can’t possibly be supplied by renewable energy. Given the sophistications of modern power-handling electronics, that seemed very strange to me, so I’ve been doing some reading on that.
Here’s one of the better explanations I’ve found laying out the physical basics of reactive power:
And the ‘takeaway paragraph,’ concerning practical implications:
The issue in relation to renewables is that reactive power is readily supplied by synchronous generators, but non-synchronous generators have not traditionally provided this functionality to a great extent. However, modern power electronics now provide the capability to provide reactive support, but only where it is specifically designed, required, and implemented. Regardless, reactive power is as much a transmission and distribution network issue, and not just related to generation. With greater penetration of non-synchronous generators, there will be additional costs associated with reactive power, such as the use of synchronous condensers, but the costs are likely to be modest in relation to overall costs.
And, speaking of synchronous condensers, they are popping up in the Adelaide area even as we speak to support the South Australian grid, with its 50%+ RE power share:
But the same article explains that, as I thought (and as the previous article hinted), syncons are not the only answer:
Conventional synchronous plants respond naturally to changes in frequency with an immediate response. Synthetic inertia could also be provided to emulate the behaviour of synchronised spinning machines. It’s all about the response timing and the ability to operate in sub-seconds. Inverter settings of grid-connected renewables can be reprogrammed to emulate the behaviour of synchronised spinning machines. Synthetic inertia could also be provided by battery energy storage systems and other technologies, subject to the speed of the response to grid disturbances.
As Australia transitions to increasing amounts of renewable generation, over time there will new technologies that can support the power system. But for now, expect the age of synchronous condensers to continue to enable the transition a lower emissions grid.
Note that the bit about “Synthetic inertia could also be provided by battery energy storage systems” is not just vaporware, either–that’s in fact the primary function of the Hornsdale storage unit Tesla put up in record time in 2017 in the same general area:
Tesla Powerpack fast ramping capability means that it can dispatch large amounts of power quickly and reliably. This means it can support the South Australian electricity grid by providing frequency control and short-term network security services.
It seems to be working, in that South Australia hasn’t had repetitions of the September 2017 system-wide failure which caused such hubbub–though they are certainly having more localized blackouts right now, as bushfires bring down transmission lines.
Incrementally encouraging news, via Science magazine:
A survey by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that almost 80% of Americans now agree that human activity is fueling global warming, and close to 40% call climate change a “crisis,” almost double the number willing to use that term 5 years ago. A Pew Research Center survey found a similar shift: Fifty-seven percent of Americans now consider climate change a “major threat” to the United States, up from about 40% in 2013…
Local governments in the United States are responding to public concerns. Although most Democratic politicians have long backed government action on climate change, most Republicans have not. But this year, many Republican officials publicly changed their tune. Florida’s Republican governor created a position for a science adviser to help figure out how the state should deal with rising seas and other climate-related challenges. The U.S. Congress, too, saw a glimmer of cross-party cooperation, with lawmakers in both the Senate and the House of Representatives establishing bipartisan caucuses to discuss climate.
Yet the Trump administration has forged ahead with a range of policies…
As a senior US citizen and voter, I’m glad enough of incremental encouragement. We’re still a long way from a carbon-neutral economy, though. We can start by voting some deniers out of office.
Killiansays
Cheran is showing up even in mainstream news like Yahoo! – via AFP (can’t find the original there, yet…)
Environmentalists use it to describe a no-holds-barred approach to wresting back control of a blighted environment.
I’m the only “environmentaist” I know of who has mentioned it, so good to that’s not the case. As far as modern municipalities go, this is the gold standard for #RegenerativeGovernance.
Yup, so it’s this bad at somewhere around +1C~… +1.3C?… and still it’s tech this, tech that, 2050 this, 2050 that…
It’s seriously funny. Deadly seriously funny.
There’s exactly one way to *rapidly* deal with climate: Rapid simplification.
I’ll be here when you all finally come around to reality.
nigeljsays
Mr KIA says “America was a FAR more prosperous place before our borders were overrun.” at the same time he claims Americas economy is the best its ever been under Trump! Look at that great gdp data! Hes obviously completely unaware of the contradiction but its true to form.
There is also the fact that America was far more prosperous under Obama than in previous decades. Immigration GENERATES prosperity. Doh! Although obviously you want to minimise illegals, but all administrations have worked to do that.
nigeljsays
Zebra says 2219, “my little scenario illustrates that EP is pretty much a fraud. Lots of other smart people here but when it comes to actually applying physics, in detail, in the real world, thinking through the intricacies is not their thing….Of course, EP has now demonstrated explicitly that he is incapable (for whatever reason) of working through the problem other than to repeat his rhetorical formula just like the Denialists. Not a thinker.”
EP has responded to a lot of criticisms and posted details and calculations to make his point including the issue Zebra refers to. That sure looks like hes trying to apply physics in detail to the real world to me. I haven’t actually seen Zebra work through the details and show us any errors. So who is doing the arm waving?
That said, I think both Zebra and EP add value.
Mike Robertssays
Mal Adapted,
We’re still a long way from a carbon-neutral economy, though. We can start by voting some deniers out of office.
I don’t think you needed the word “still”, as that implies that there are serious efforts underway to reach that target. As for voting deniers out of office, there was a good chance to do that in November last year. That the voters didn’t take that chance suggests that there is no environmental motivation driving voters, so I wouldn’t hold your breath about next year.
nigeljsays
Mr KIA @218 “All our side wants is to vet every immigrant so only good folks come here – we don’t want criminals – ” I couldn’t agree more, but America already does this, and very thoroughly:
So I just have no idea where you are coming from. Unless you mean whether to have skills categories, versus your random selection process. Hard to say. For small countries skills categories make sense, because specific skills are often in short supply. For America you guys have benefited from the more random selection process because you get a lot of low skilled cheap immigrant labour to fill certain jobs.
Studies also show immigration has had negligible effects on pushing wages down. Most of that is coming from automation and some from outsourcing manufacturing. If you guys had any sense, you would do what places like Finland do, where outsourcing has increased their wealth overall but depressed some wages: Give some government financial help to people on low wages.
And what China is doing with certain ethnic minorities is neither immigration or controlling problem populations. Its unjustified cultural and religious persecution in most cases. There are other words for it.
the paper/article you reference is all about Carbon Capture in-situ at CO2 emission sources such as in power generator exhaust stacks. That’s why their research focused on 6000ppm CO2 concentrations and not 400ppm. It’s not about open air DAC (direct air capture) from the atmosphere.
Yes, but there appears to be no inherent lower limit to the capture capabilities of polyanthraquinone. Extracting CO2 at lower concentrations means a greater reduction of entropy, meaning more entropy (heat) has to be rejected to the environment; that heat has to come from input energy. That’s why I guesstimated 2.5 GJ/ton for atmospheric capture. Entropy scales as the log of concentration so the difference between 6000 ppm and 400 ppm isn’t as big as it looks.
Carbon capture at plants and such cannot get to zero or sub-zero carbon emissions unless the exhaust stream is literally cleaner than the ambient air. Even if used with biofuels, the billion or so tons of CO2 taken up to make the available biomass stream in the US falls 10x short of what we need to remove from the atmosphere. Fortunately, 2.5 GJ/ton for capture is less than 1/10 as much as the energy required to reduce carbon to a fixed form such as hydrocarbons. It reduces the energy requirements from ludicrous to merely enormous, but “enormous” in this case is on the order of what we’re already generating. What we’re doing is in the realm of the doable by definition.
18 December 2019 Namibia’s power supply squeezed as drought hits hydropower plant
Namibia’s electricity generation has dropped to below 40% of its capacity as the worst drought in almost a century has hit the country’s own hydropower plant and others in the region reliant on water from dams and rivers.
The drought, plus power blackouts at South African power company Eskom, on which Namibia relies for 70% of its energy requirements, has put the security of the country’s electricity supply at risk.
Namibia can also fall back on renewable energy from independent power producers, one coal power station and an emergency diesel station, but its hydropower plant its biggest domestic power source.
The Kariba hydroelectric plant, which serves Zimbabwe and Zambia and is fed by the Zambezi river, has also been hit by a substantial fall in water levels.
Zambezi River Authority Chief Executive Munyaradzi Munadawafa said last week the Kariba might have to reduce generation drastically, perhaps even to the point where the plant shuts down.
zebra: Yes, you have come across as somewhat depressed lately ::snip:: I am very, very, lucky in being able to walk into some woods behind my house every day.
AB: Perceptive. Actually, it’s been a 2.5 year nightmare. I won’t go into the details here but a person in power violated me and the law horribly and other people in power are violating me and the law horribly because, well, a Nazi in a White Hat is wearing a White Hat and so is immune from sanction. We’re at the appeals court stage.
Call it the Trump Doctrine.
And I know what you mean about walking one’s land. I had 5 acres on Vancouver Island. Small mountains and ocean and islands. Killian’s regeneration includes us.
Al Bundysays
nigelj,
No, dude. I said “Star Trek”, as in pure real original Star Trek.
E-P: if a two-week doldrums occurred, who wouldn’t relish two weeks of down time?
Now imagine that you can’t travel to go to the beach, slopes or campgrounds, that neither the heat nor the A/C work, all the food in the fridge goes bad and none gets to the stores, the pipes freeze and all the sewers back up.
AB: LOLOLOL. Yeah, YOU REALLY BELIEVE that the electrical grid would be managed so as to burn through 100% of the storage as quickly as possible so that the whole system can crash. LOLOLOLOL.
Please refrain from turning off your seriously capable brain before responding to comments.
________
Thomas,
Condolences on the toasting of your country. But to answer your question, “winning” is more important than survival. This makes sense given human evolution. In a more localized world, such as the world where our barely-homo ancestors lived, losing a war meant extinction (other than the genes passed on by child-bearing women, who were often “spared”). So ignoring anything and everything except winning is a human adaptation. Eh, could be wrong. Thoughts?
__________
E-P: Nuclear is already the safest source of electric power in the world,
AB: Overstating one’s case is a grand way to hurt it. Ground level solar farms are way safer than nukes. Or am I wrong (I often am)?
_________
nigelj on mining,
Yep. We ain’t disagreeing but expanding and digging deeper.
________
Kevin McKinney’s way-good reference: It’s all about the response timing and the ability to operate in sub-seconds.
AB: Smaller. The ability to operate in small fractions of 1/60 of a second.
Al Bundysays
And yes, “E-P: if a two-week doldrums occurred, who wouldn’t relish two weeks of down time?” should have been typed:
E-P: “AB: if a two-week doldrums occurred, who wouldn’t relish two weeks of down time?”
E-P 212: Germany is proof that “renewables” cannot decarbonize an industrial economy
BPL: German CO2 emissions are down last year. I wonder why?
E-P: Everyone hears about the “disaster” of Chernobyl, in which the fatalities would fit on a bus
BPL: That’s the immediate fatalities. You assume the big plume of radiation and the release of I-131 had no effect on the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians it enveloped, whereas most studies put the eventual deaths in the tens of thousands. Not very honest.
KIA 218: All our side wants is to vet every immigrant so only good folks come here
BPL: Mentira. Your side wants to cut down on immigration by brown people, period. That’s why it’s putting legitimate asylum seekers in concentration camps and separating their families.
zebrasays
#220 Kevin McKinney,
Yes, but still so vague.
Here’s how it works, for ‘regular’ people to understand.
If you have an industrial facility with lots of electric motors… machine shop, cranes, and so on, the wires connecting the building to the source will experience more heating than if you were providing electricity to my group of houses from #173.
This is not some new big problem. The solution is local to the facility in question; traditionally capacitors have been installed to alleviate that condition. They store energy once the motors are going so it doesn’t have to be transmitted over the grid (wires).
Your house does not create such a problem; the amount of that kind of energy that is needed (e.g. for your refrigerator motor) is negligible— not non-existent, but utility companies traditionally don’t bother with it.
The reference to frequency control is also a bit misleading. The inverter that creates AC from your DC solar panels (or battery, or HVDC wind transmission) doesn’t change its frequency if you increase the load. That’s a problem for conventional generators, as I referenced back at #173 also.
I know you (Kevin) get the picture generally; as you said we are not going to have a 100% renewable national electric sector, just as we are not going to have 100% nuclear. I am, as usual, just trying to tailor the communication to ‘the public’ and point out that solutions are local because the problems are local.
That industrial facility needs to be subject to market principles even more than it already is; as do the houses. That’s how we improve efficiencies all around.
Killiansays
Nordhaus, the faux Nobel winner in economics for his disastrous work on climate economics…. eviscerated.
You provide no evidence leftists made those specific decisions.
Oh, please! Do you think rightists could get onto ANY council in London?! They’d be far more likely to be framed on some bogus charge of “racism” and threatened with jail.
If we don’t make fuzzy thinking a crime for public officials, we are going to go from our current bad situation to worse. Much, MUCH worse.
Thanks for the comment. After skimming a few comments I was thinking of passing on what came to mind: you’re like a swarm of wasps in a school pool change room. No one appreciates your presence.
183 – nigelj
“It said numerous studies show immigrants as a whole commit fewer crimes than native born Americans…”
Probably correct. The concern is mostly, but not exclusively, with those who did not enter legally.
Mass-murderer Maj. Nidal Hasan was born in the USA… of Palestinian immigrant parents. San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook was born in the USA of Pakistani immigrant parents. Just because someone gets US citizenship because of where they were born does not make them part of the American nation, or even part of US society. Their family, culture or religion can make them implacably, even murderously, opposed to it.
The “communities” from which such people come should be removed from the Americas and sent home; if they hate the people here, this place is anything but “home” to them. They have to go back.
I am very, very, lucky in being able to walk into some woods behind my house every day. And when the temp is around 20F, splitting firewood is just the ticket. It cracks like a diamond, and the maul never gets stuck.
Try having the maul bounce back with considerable force, because either ice or knots won’t let the wood split. Quite hard on the hands.
You reminded me that I had some firewood ready to hand, so I just lit my wood stove. Dead trees will displace fossil methane tonight. And I spotted a mouse fleeing my intrusion, so I put out a trap baited with peanut butter. I expect to find a dead mouse on the morrow.
I thought the AB that shows up sometimes was the most likely person to appreciate how my little scenario illustrates that EP is pretty much a fraud. Lots of other smart people here but when it comes to actually applying physics, in detail, in the real world, thinking through the intricacies is not their thing.
You’ve not posted a single equation, nor shown any understanding that heat is heat regardless of source and electricity is the same as burning fuel to a furnace. You are the one who is clueless about physics; I’ve aced every last course I took.
EP has now demonstrated explicitly that he is incapable (for whatever reason) of working through the problem other than to repeat his rhetorical formula just like the Denialists.
I repeat things until you get them. You haven’t gotten them yet, meaning I have not repeated myself ENOUGH. Be careful what you wish for, etc. etc.
There’s been some discussion of “reactive power”, including the idea–or at least the suggestion–that it can’t possibly be supplied by renewable energy.
Wrong. It’s not just “suggested” but undeniable that e.g. double-wound alternators CONSUME reactive power and cannot supply it. Until fairly recently, double-wound alternators were the typical generators on utility-scale wind plants.
Given the sophistications of modern power-handling electronics, that seemed very strange to me
That sophistication has been a fairly recent arrival. It’s welcome, but only addresses one of the deficiencies of wind power as a grid supplier. After reactive power, “firming” (buffering) is the next-most-immediate requirement. Either the “renewable” power has to be confirmed available until the fastest-starting generator can come on-line to replace it, or some other generator has to idle as “spinning reserve” to take over on as little as zero notice. “Spinning reserve” has monetary, energy and (for most sources) emissions cost.
“Renewables” have to internalize all of those costs, or they are quite literally lying about their “green-ness”.
speaking of synchronous condensers, they are popping up in the Adelaide area
Wonder of wonders! Now, who’s paying for them? The “renewables” which required them? Doubtful; they’re certainly being rolled into the general rate base.
Inverter settings of grid-connected renewables can be reprogrammed to emulate the behaviour of synchronised spinning machines.
Wrong. Inertia cannot be simulated by anything without energy-storage capabilities; that is the essential property of inertia. No one who does not implicitly grasp this has any business writing about the issue.
Cheran is showing up even in mainstream news like Yahoo!….
As far as modern municipalities go, this is the gold standard for #RegenerativeGovernance.
Great for the people of Cheran. Now, 4 questions for you:
1. Where/how does Cheran get its electricity, motor fuel, fertilizer, etc?
2. Is Cheran even remotely carbon-neutral?
3. Would a large, dense source of clean electric power not be as much a benefit to Cheran as to the rest of the world?
4. What do you think of American communities which have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” to take back their safety from distant, hostile state governments which e.g. allow drug smugglers and other criminal gangs to run rampant in their own capital cities? Are they not at least as legitimate in their desires and means as Cheran?
AB: LOLOLOL. Yeah, YOU REALLY BELIEVE that the electrical grid would be managed so as to burn through 100% of the storage as quickly as possible so that the whole system can crash.
You were the one who talked about weeks of lull, and by your own admission you’d have to go into conservation mode immediately. That means no going camping, to the beach….
Ground level solar farms are way safer than nukes. Or am I wrong (I often am)?
You’d apparently be wrong, but without breaking out flat-roof PV, sloped-roof PV and CSP into their own categories there’s no way to tell from this data. However, large flat-ground installations have their own dangers, including the voltages they have to use to keep system currents from being insanely high. There’s also far less of a safety culture in the construction of just about everything other than nuclear.
Everyone hears about the “disaster” of Chernobyl, in which the fatalities would fit on a bus
That’s the immediate fatalities. You assume the big plume of radiation and the release of I-131 had no effect on the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians it enveloped
The only illness associated with I-131 is thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer has a relatively short incubation time and a 99+% cure rate if treated properly. There were roughly 5000 cases detected in the populations under the plume, including many sub-clinical cancers which would likely never have progressed to disease. At 99% cure rate, the total fatalities were no more than 50.
most studies put the eventual deaths in the tens of thousands.
Those “studies” were projecting based on the proven-defective LNT model. Slightly elevated radiation levels are not associated with increased mortality or morbidity anywhere in the world.
There’s irrefutable evidence that chronic gamma-ray exposure can increase longevity. 0.8 rads/day (that’s about 2.9 Sieverts per year) increased the lifespan of Sprague-Dawley rats by a minimum of 25% over controls:
the wires connecting the building to the source will experience more heating than if you were providing electricity to my group of houses from #173.
It’s not the wires so much as the transformers, which cost a great deal more.
Let me see if I can get the concept of “power factor” across to you. If you feed AC power into a pure resistance, the current is always proportional to the voltage. If you integrate the product of instantaneous voltage and current over a full cycle, you get the same result as when you multiply the root mean square (RMS) values of both. The ratio of actual energy over the RMS product is 1.0, or unity power factor.
Most loads like induction motors (including your refrigerator) are inductive. Current is not proportional to voltage; it takes a while to get moving and time to stop again, like a flywheel. This means that the voltage and current curves don’t move in sync; current lags behind voltage. You can treat the current as a vector in phase-space and measure its in-phase component and its 90°-lagging component. The ratio of the in-phase current to the total current (the total length of the vector) is the power factor. It is always less than or equal to 1. However, the power delivered depends only on that in-phase component; the 90°-lagging component doesn’t transmit a single watt.
Why does this matter? Transformers are limited by current, not power. They are rated in volt-amperes, not watts (e.g. kVa or MVa). Further, they have losses in both the windings and the iron cores which increase with current. If you can reduce that 90°-lagging fraction of the current, you can reduce those losses, save energy & money and even use a smaller, cheaper transformer.
Note that the integral of voltage*current of that 90°-lagging fraction sums to 0 over an entire cycle. It transmits no power. And the beauty is that you can cancel it out with something that pulls current that leads voltage by 90°. If you do your balancing act right, you can get all the lagging and leading currents to add up to 0. This cuts the net current coming through your meter to just the part carrying real power (watts), and so on at the transformer.
The solution is local to the facility in question; traditionally capacitors have been installed to alleviate that condition. They store energy once the motors are going so it doesn’t have to be transmitted over the grid (wires).
Capacitors for power-factor correction are not energy storage devices per se. Energy stored in a capacitor is ½Cv²; their stored energy goes to zero twice every cycle when the line voltage crosses zero. However, that zero crossing is when voltage is changing the fastest, so the capacitors have their maximum current.
If you live in a typical neighborhood, the power-factor correction capacitors are back at the substation or even further upstream.
By the way, I largely agree with E-P on nuclear, with the assumption that molten salt thorium is the path taken. It’s about as safe and environmentally correct an energy as we’re likely to see this side of fusion. Wind and solar need more mines and so their damage/kill rate per megawatt hour are higher. More material requires more time so their minimum build-out period is probably longer. However…
Nobody’s built a mass-producible MSTR. Sure, once one is developed they can be cranked out in volume. But until then wind and solar and whatnot will have to do. I suppose we could build more solid-fuel reactors but that opens the whole Pandora’s Box of Stuff: Proliferation, waste, high-pressure low-temperature coolant with horrible characteristics (water), inefficiency, meltdown potential.
So until China, India, or a corporation finish their development work, wind and solar are the way to go. Afterwards? Dunno, but diversity brings strength, resiliency, and adaptability.
nigeljsays
Al Bundy “So ignoring anything and everything except winning is a human adaptation. Eh, could be wrong. Thoughts?”
You are not wrong. Winning is a powerful motivation, enough to make us wreck relationships. It takes a big effort of will and reasonable smarts to sort out which contexts are ok for winning and which aren’t.
Winning is instinctive, and instincts conflict with intellect time and time again.
And this deep seated winning impulse is why I’m so sceptical about egalitarianism and all this “simplification” stuff.
“Overstating one’s case (nuclear power) is a grand way to hurt it. Ground level solar farms are way safer than nukes. Or am I wrong (I often am)?
I keep telling EP that. Given he is pretty smart I think he will get it. Actually erecting solar panels causes more injuries per mw/ hr than nuclear power even with the explosions. Read a couple of studies on this a while back.
Michael Sweet also removes all doubt @111:
PHS is about 75-80% efficient round-trip. How does e-gas compare?
It takes roughly 43 kWh (154.8 MJ) to electrolyze 1 kg of H2 from water. It takes 0.5 kg of H2 to make 1 kg of methane from CO2 by the Sabatier reaction:
0.5 kg H2 + 2.75 kg CO2 -> 1 kg CH4 + 2.25 kg H2O
The lower heating value of methane is 50.0 MJ/kg, so you get less than 2/3 of your 77.4 MJ back as fuel. But it gets worse! If you burn that methane in a CCGT at 60% efficiency you only get 30 MJ of electricity back out. That’s less than 40% round-trip efficiency… and you haven’t accounted for the energy required to capture the CO2. If your EROI of wind power is 15:1, the losses in e-gas reduce this to less than 6:1 BEFORE accounting for the energy cost of the e-gas system.
It’s nonsense like this which proves that “Green” schemes are the refuge of the innumerate. Oh, and Mark Z. Jacobson is a fraud, as proven by numerous analyses including by Clack et al.
In 2018 PNNL demonstrated cost-effective absorption mining of uranium from seawater using treated acrylic fibers, and this year ORNL announced an improved version. The PNNL method is not specific for uranium and co-captures other useful metals like vanadium.
Some 6000 tons of uranium per year used in fast-breeder reactors would run the entire world. At $200/kg, that would only cost $1.2 billion. Compare to the $trillions changing hands for fossil fuels. We can’t afford NOT to.
And apropos of nothing:
Now imagine that you can’t travel to go to the beach, slopes or campgrounds, that neither the heat nor the A/C work, all the food in the fridge goes bad and none gets to the stores, the pipes freeze and all the sewers back up.
Thomas puts this nugget among the black pills @154:
Not quite. There’s ONE thing that still makes rational sense: do what needs to be done on one’s own turf and prove that the sky doesn’t fall. If you have a successful example, everyone else will eventually take notice. No, you can’t avoid the consequences befalling everyone else… but you can show them what to do when they finally get out of denial, and somebody has to be first.
This might happen faster than you think. France, Poland and others successfully overrode the Germany/Austria/Luxembourg axis to get nuclear energy included at least as a provisional low-carbon energy source for EU financing guidelines. This is a major defeat for the Greens, and shows frustration with the failure of the Energiewende. For once, facts beat ideology.
Right now the best examples are Sweden and France (Norway and Iceland lucked into lots of hydropower), but neither one is trying to assert itself as a leader. France, with its automakers Peugot (soon to be united with FCA) and Citroen, has an opportunity to start decarbonizing its other sectors as a matter of policy. Transportation is an obvious target. Using off-peak nuclear electricity to charge plug-in vehicles (even if they are not completely electric) can start picking the low-hanging fruit there. The first increments are the easiest and cheapest, and can even pay for themselves in reduced imports. It’s time to get going.
FWIW I had to drive about 60 miles this afternoon/evening. I managed it on just over 1 gallon of liquid fuel despite cold temperatures killing my battery performance; I could have done MUCH better had charging been available at all my stops (only 2 out of 6 had any). It can be done.
xxx
One of my things is to print T-shirts, or more accurately, pay to have them printed. My latest is:
My Dad’s GOP
was all honor
Today’s GOP
Trumps Nixon
I wore it for the first time today. At the library one of the GOPpish regulars said with an incredible leerish grin that Trump will be president. His tone implied “for life”.
These guys are screaming about their loss and diving into fantasy so as to salve the pain. There is no debate with the 30% or so who are wallowing in the basket of deplorables.
On the ThanosTrump decapitating the opposition with a wave idea, I think I’d rather see something more entertaining. How about snapping my fingers and those three twits on the Fox and Friends couch grow souls and spines the next time Trump calls in? Instead of sitting there all deer-in-headlights they do their friggin’ job, eh? (Yeah, I know, I’m imposing the lie, “News” onto their job description, but hey, it’s my fantasy)
Mutually Assured Destruction was a policy based on the hypothesis that self-preservation trumps all.
But when what one defines as “self” is guaranteed to die, when the demographics ensure it unless Mutually Assured Destruction either ends everything or gives your side a victory like in “Ants”, where the ants won because all the termites died and a single ant survived, “One to Zero! We won!”,
then the game has changed. My suggestion is to play the new game. To win. Obama was a wimp. Biden and mayor Pete are wimps. Michael Moore is right. Democrats win when they man/woman up. If you want to win, support anybody except B&B.
KIA 159: Chinese detention camps
BPL: Have nothing whatsoever to do with immigration. They are simply and solely to intimidate and control ethnic minorities conquered by China, such as the Tibetans, Turkmen, and Uighurs.
AB: I’d use a different flavor: simply and solely to reprogram Others so they’ll be tolerable by/integrated into the Body (Star Trek reference).
BTW, Good News! Given China’s Great Leap Backward the USA can probably now brag about no longer imprisoning more of its citizens per capita by far than any other country.
Misc news – what the present and the future holds.
2 x NSW RFS Volunteers Killed
https://mobile.twitter.com/NSWRFS/status/1207784485158187008
100% of NSW is drought declared
Heatwaves and active bushfires continue across the entire continent, in every state and territory except Tasmania.
Known fact: the #1 Global Killer by Natural Disaster are Heatwaves.
anecdote: 12th December – (it got far worse since then)
My family live in suburban Wollongong an hour south of Sydney.
Everything is bone dry, drier than any time in living memory. Though in a residential area they have made plans to evacuate if any fire comes down the mountain range as it’s plainly obvious that on a hot windy day stopping it just won’t be possible.
My brother in law and nephew work in a coal mine, yesterday production was stopped because the volume of smoke being sucked into the mine was causing the fire systems to trip and continuing without them was unsafe. Visibility at times has been as low as a few hundred metres it looks apocalyptic.
This years camping trip has been relocated because of the fires. The lawns that are always green are brown and dying along with my mother’s garden. All this and they either refuse to believe or just don’t want to know about climate change.
I used to think something like this would wake people up but no sign at all so far. Perhaps after this summer when the drought, fires and smoke are so visible but from their response so far I doubt it.
PS They’re now planning next year’s O/S holidays.
Dog help us all.
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1368.msg240413.html#msg240413
Sydney smoke at its ‘worst ever’ with air pollution in some areas 12 times ‘hazardous’ threshold
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-10/sydney-smoke-returns-to-worst-ever-levels/11782892
Meet the scientists trying to understand the world’s worst wildfires
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614915/wildfires-have-changed-its-time-the-science-did-too/
Sydney’s drinking water could be polluted by bushfire ash in Warragamba Dam catchment, expert says
Large deposits of sediment and ash in reservoir which supplies 80% of the city’s drinking water creates ‘serious situation’
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/15/sydneys-drinking-water-could-be-polluted-by-bushfire-ash-in-warragamba-dam-catchment-expert-says
FOR SATURDAY 21ST
The NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) has warned it would be a “miracle” if more homes were not lost tomorrow amid a catastrophic fire danger warning across the south-eastern coast.
It is only the second time such a warning, the highest level of bushfire danger, has been issued for the Greater Sydney area since the rating system was introduced in 2009.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/nsw-bushfire-catastrophic-fire-danger-forecast-for-saturday/11818896
More records tumble as heatwave rolls on, scientists point finger at climate change
Bureau of Meteorology data suggests the national average maximum temperature reached 41.0 degrees Celsius on Thursday, after hitting 41.9C on Wednesday and 40.7C on Tuesday.
Before this week, the record of 40.3C had stood since January 2013.
But Victoria’s December record for an individual location was smashed today when it reached 47.9C at Hopetoun Airport and Horsham, well above the old mark of 46.6C set in 1976.
Adelaide (45.3C) and Canberra (39.3C) also broke December record temperatures on Thursday that had stood since 1994.
The SA capital suffered through its hottest December night on record, one of the deadliest parts of a heatwave — hot nights mean the body doesn’t have a chance to cool down and recover.
Yes, climate change is involved
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/finger-pointed-at-climate-change-as-heatwave-smashes-records/11817884
Fire burns through Seaford buildings as Victorian heat records tumble and emergency-level blazes burn
Residents have described hearing massive explosions and seeing shrapnel flying through the air at a fire in the Melbourne suburb of Seaford, where seven people required medical attention on Victoria’s hottest December day on record.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-20/hot-weather-victoria-heatwave-bushfire-smoke/11816230
Conclusion?
PROBABLY THE SAME IS COMING TO A PLACE NEAR WHERE YOU LIVE
IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE
KIA 194: Looks like they want to prevent them from migrating to other parts of China. So, nip the immigration problem in the bud. ;)
BPL: With concentration camps? You’re inconsistent. You used to be anti-Communist. The Commies adopt an inhumane policy you like, and suddenly you’re all, rah-rah China.
#208 Ever notice that much of what KIA knows is wrong and most of the rest is irrelevant.
Mr. Ironically Anosognosic Typist:
A patent strawman. Your delusion of cultural enemies crowding under your bed is the problem.
IAT:
Do you want to have the debate about economic growth as the engine of America’s prosperity now? The endemic depression resulting from a long-term contraction of our domestic market would perforce reduce our aggregate CO2 emissions, but that sounds like a sub-optimal decarbonization strategy to me. OTOH, it may be only us Americans who would care. Speaking for myself, at least.
IAT:
As natural born, Medicare card-carrying American citizen, I disconfirm both your nostalgic fantasy and your paranoid imaginings. IOW, they’re not intersubjectively verifiable. That makes your idées fixes the most serious problem America faces today. IMHO, of course.
We now have a claim that electron-beam welding can take as much as 85% of the cost out of building nuclear reactors (in no small part by reducing welding time by as much as a factor of 15):
https://analysis.nuclearenergyinsider.com/electron-beam-welding-could-cut-reactor-build-costs-85
This is likely to work best with a factory-construction model, meaning SMRs.
nigelj writes @167:
As the saying goes, hope in one hand, shit in the other and see which one fills up first.
Hope is not a plan. “Someday” is not good enough when we are already 30 years too late and damage escalates with each day. If you can’t specify a schedule of GHG reductions down to zero with a high likelihood of being able to meet it and specifying the proven means you’ll use, you are literally planning to let the planet cook. I find this unacceptable.
Following the examples of proven failures should also be unacceptable. Germany’s one of them. Germany is proof that “renewables” cannot decarbonize an industrial economy, and ought to be on the list of cautionary tales.
Agreed. France and Ontario decarbonized their grids literally by accident; France was only trying to escape being a hostage to oil prices, but as the Zen proverb goes, “you cannot do just one thing.”
Nuclear is already the safest source of electric power in the world, almost 4x as safe as wind and vastly safer than any fossil fuel. Given this, why are we even thinking of building new wind capacity, let alone gas? (Mostly because of so many “safety” measures which really add no safety to plants, and make the public less safe by keeping more dangerous plants in operation by making nuclear “too expensive”.)
The problem is that propaganda has created a paranoia over nuclear energy and radiation in general. Everyone hears about the “disaster” of Chernobyl, in which the fatalities would fit on a bus. But does anyone go around claiming that Bhopal (at least 2259 fatalities and over half a million injuries) means we must shut down all chemical plants NOW? Or the Banqiao dam collapse means we must empty all hydro reservoirs? No, this paranoia is reserved for radiation.
The reality is that steady low-level radiation is harmless at worst. There are situations where it is proven to be healthful; we’ve known for 61 years that lab rats given a considerable daily dose of gamma radiation lived at least 25% longer than controls:
http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/1958,%2013th%20session%20%28Suppl.%20No.17%29/1958final-3_unscear.pdf#page=30
It’s impossible to square radiation paranoia with as much as 33% longer lifespan in rats. Had Tokyo used this information to determine who, if anyone, should have been evacuated from Fukushima, vast amounts of grief and well over 1500 lives could have been saved. Those people didn’t suffer and die from radiation; they suffered and died from fear. That fear came from propaganda, lies. Those liars have blood on their hands.
Al Bundy@185
nigelj: The loss of forest area due to mining is small in terms of area compared to deforestation for agricultural land, and forests can at least be regrown.
AB: Sure, if you ignore all the toxic heavy metals mines release into the wider ecosystem. Heavy metals are gradually removed from the biosphere because they are heavy. Dredging them up sets the cleansing apparatus back thousands of years. In this instance I side with Killian.
Nigelj : I’m well aware of the heavy metals issue, and I never denied it.
Careful what you say about siding with Killian. He is on record as saying no more mining. Given your technology leanings this might be a problem for you. Simple question, do you think we should open more mines, yes or no?
As I said good mining practices can minimise the heavy metals problem. Do you agree, yes or no? Do you have another solution? If so what?
Like Zebra and yourself say, lets agree on a couple of basics first.
Engineer Poet @189 says “And when leftist idiots don’t do their building code homework, you get whole renovated apartment towers going up in flames. 72 dead in THAT debacle because the housing council cheaped out instead of doing proper fireproofing.”
You provide no evidence leftists made those specific decisions. Plenty of right wing leaning councils and governments do things on the cheap. For example, our right wing National government in NZ downgraded the building code in the 1990s to save money, and it lead directly to a leaky homes disaster costing many hundreds of millions of dollars to fix. I could list hundreds of similar examples.
Not that I’m a fan of hiring people to try to achieve some sort of cultural balance. Agree with you about that. Hiring has to be on ability, and eventually this tends to achieve good cultural representation anyway.
Regarding “Seawater yields first grams of yellowcake” posted by Engineer Poet. There are trillions of tons of at least 47 different minerals dissolved in sea water as follows. I posted this before.
http://www.miningweekly.com/article/over-40-minerals-and-metals-contained-in-seawater-their-extraction-likely-to-increase-in-the-future-2016-04-01
This includes lithium which has already been extracted experimentally and reasonably economically . This is one reason I can’t buy into all this doom and gloom that there aren’t enough minerals for renewable energy and / or nuclear power, and that humanity will run out of minerals in the next 50 – 100 years, and so we should all go into a complete panic and start giving up on technology that most people take for granted these days.
Of course before people shove words in my mouth, minerals are obviously a finite resource and shouldn’t be wasted. Economic and population growth have to slow and stop eventually, or things will become problematic. What we also have to do is identify the minerals in really short supply, and ring fence some of them for important uses, namely medical applications.
—————
Al Bundy @206, that would be The Borg, a particularly distasteful species. Interesting bit of a political theme creeping into Star Trek!
@202 Engineer-Poet (the eternal optimist)
Thanks for the comment. After skimming a few comments I was thinking of passing on what came to mind: you’re like a swarm of wasps in a school pool change room. No one appreciates your presence.
Regarding your ‘positive spin’ on things possible I’m sorry but I am of the view that ‘the sky is already falling’ and my name is not chicken little.
Examples of “a successful example” exist everywhere already, and multitudes have be trying to “show them what to do” for decades with minimal effect or results to show for it – mixed in with Fools Gold Rent Seeking Schemes like Tesla, 100% BEVs, dreams of solar wind farms now coming with Lithium Batteries, and ETS/Carbon Taxes getting all the hype, cheap financing and tax payer funding instead.
Regarding “It’s time to get going.” That ‘time’ was 20-30 years ago not today. It’s past the point of being far too late. Look around. The world is already ‘mad’ racked with delusions. The inmates are running this asylum. On the one hand the science denying conservative RW nationalist religious patriots ilk and the bleeding heart mystical LW greenie socialists – both are clueless in my opinion.
meanwhile the rational scientists and ethical academics have about as much power and influence as you and my little finger does.
@E-Poet regarding your Blog article “Direct atmospheric remediation”
May I point out (in case it’s misunderstood) the paper/article you reference is all about Carbon Capture in-situ at CO2 emission sources such as in power generator exhaust stacks. That’s why their research focused on 6000ppm CO2 concentrations and not 400ppm. It’s not about open air DAC (direct air capture) from the atmosphere. Best to all.
183 – nigelj
“It said numerous studies show immigrants as a whole commit fewer crimes than native born Americans…”
Probably correct. The concern is mostly, but not exclusively, with those who did not enter legally.
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/murders
https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cac
FYI, I have no idea how many of those folks are here legally, but we can agree there is a pattern there. FACT: There are literally billions who want to come here because we are the absolute best on earth, imperfect as we are. FACT: We can’t take them all. FACT: All our side wants is to vet every immigrant so only good folks come here – we don’t want criminals – we need people here who will assimilate, love the country and make it stronger – not tear it down. Seems reasonable to me. Would you agree? Many do:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/australian-government-created-bizarre-horoscope-scare-illegal-aliens
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/31/austria-fence-slovenia-wire-europe-refugees
207 – Thomas
“PROBABLY THE SAME IS COMING TO A PLACE NEAR WHERE YOU LIVE
IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE”
Happens every year around the ‘Murican West – always has. Back in the 70s Alaskan fire fighters told me the fire smolders in the tundra under the snow in winter and starts up again the following summer. It is a problem when it gets close to towns/cities – it’s been in the news a lot the past couple of years.
208 – BPL
“You’re inconsistent. You used to be anti-Communist. The Commies adopt an inhumane policy you like, and suddenly you’re all, rah-rah China.”
I am anti-Communist; but even Communist nations must control immigration, and problem populations. I guess I’d be pro all countries – I hope they do well so their people can live better lives – maybe they’ll be like Hong Kong, want ‘Murican-style freedom, wave the ‘Murican flag, be pro-‘Murica, etc. As Marion Maréchal-Le Pen says at 2:54 in this outstanding video, every leader should want what is best for their nation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcIfcjQfJKY
Even Obama took small steps to control those same problem populations, although the steps he took were very weak.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/us/politics/us-expands-restrictions-on-visa-waiver-program-for-visitors.html
When Trump acted similarly, taking weak, totally inadequate steps to solve the problem, libs heads exploded. They went out and screamed at the sky, and could not figure out which restroom to use. In other words, they literally lost their minds. They never recovered.
On communism/capitalism/etc:
https://mises.org/wire/capitalist-revolution
#185 Al Bundy,
“I was probably drunk and stoned”
Yes, you have come across as somewhat depressed lately; I understand that this time of year has that effect on many people— I haven’t seen much in the way of “merry” and “jolly” for a long time, just mostly stress over the required social interactions.
I am very, very, lucky in being able to walk into some woods behind my house every day. And when the temp is around 20F, splitting firewood is just the ticket. It cracks like a diamond, and the maul never gets stuck…
Anyway, I thought the AB that shows up sometimes was the most likely person to appreciate how my little scenario illustrates that EP is pretty much a fraud. Lots of other smart people here but when it comes to actually applying physics, in detail, in the real world, thinking through the intricacies is not their thing.
Of course, EP has now demonstrated explicitly that he is incapable (for whatever reason) of working through the problem other than to repeat his rhetorical formula just like the Denialists. Not a thinker.
There’s been some discussion of “reactive power”, including the idea–or at least the suggestion–that it can’t possibly be supplied by renewable energy. Given the sophistications of modern power-handling electronics, that seemed very strange to me, so I’ve been doing some reading on that.
Here’s one of the better explanations I’ve found laying out the physical basics of reactive power:
https://georgejetson.org/renewables-and-reactive-power/
And the ‘takeaway paragraph,’ concerning practical implications:
And, speaking of synchronous condensers, they are popping up in the Adelaide area even as we speak to support the South Australian grid, with its 50%+ RE power share:
https://www.energynetworks.com.au/news/energy-insider/age-syncons/
But the same article explains that, as I thought (and as the previous article hinted), syncons are not the only answer:
Note that the bit about “Synthetic inertia could also be provided by battery energy storage systems” is not just vaporware, either–that’s in fact the primary function of the Hornsdale storage unit Tesla put up in record time in 2017 in the same general area:
https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/overview/
It seems to be working, in that South Australia hasn’t had repetitions of the September 2017 system-wide failure which caused such hubbub–though they are certainly having more localized blackouts right now, as bushfires bring down transmission lines.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/21/australian-bushfires-death-toll-rises-as-temperatures-soar-in-severe-heatwave
Incrementally encouraging news, via Science magazine:
As a senior US citizen and voter, I’m glad enough of incremental encouragement. We’re still a long way from a carbon-neutral economy, though. We can start by voting some deniers out of office.
Cheran is showing up even in mainstream news like Yahoo! – via AFP (can’t find the original there, yet…)
I’m the only “environmentaist” I know of who has mentioned it, so good to that’s not the case. As far as modern municipalities go, this is the gold standard for #RegenerativeGovernance.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mexican-indigenous-towns-environmental-revolt-014830408.html
Yup, so it’s this bad at somewhere around +1C~… +1.3C?… and still it’s tech this, tech that, 2050 this, 2050 that…
It’s seriously funny. Deadly seriously funny.
There’s exactly one way to *rapidly* deal with climate: Rapid simplification.
I’ll be here when you all finally come around to reality.
Mr KIA says “America was a FAR more prosperous place before our borders were overrun.” at the same time he claims Americas economy is the best its ever been under Trump! Look at that great gdp data! Hes obviously completely unaware of the contradiction but its true to form.
There is also the fact that America was far more prosperous under Obama than in previous decades. Immigration GENERATES prosperity. Doh! Although obviously you want to minimise illegals, but all administrations have worked to do that.
Zebra says 2219, “my little scenario illustrates that EP is pretty much a fraud. Lots of other smart people here but when it comes to actually applying physics, in detail, in the real world, thinking through the intricacies is not their thing….Of course, EP has now demonstrated explicitly that he is incapable (for whatever reason) of working through the problem other than to repeat his rhetorical formula just like the Denialists. Not a thinker.”
EP has responded to a lot of criticisms and posted details and calculations to make his point including the issue Zebra refers to. That sure looks like hes trying to apply physics in detail to the real world to me. I haven’t actually seen Zebra work through the details and show us any errors. So who is doing the arm waving?
That said, I think both Zebra and EP add value.
Mal Adapted,
I don’t think you needed the word “still”, as that implies that there are serious efforts underway to reach that target. As for voting deniers out of office, there was a good chance to do that in November last year. That the voters didn’t take that chance suggests that there is no environmental motivation driving voters, so I wouldn’t hold your breath about next year.
Mr KIA @218 “All our side wants is to vet every immigrant so only good folks come here – we don’t want criminals – ” I couldn’t agree more, but America already does this, and very thoroughly:
https://www.legallanguage.com/legal-articles/immigration-background-checks/
So I just have no idea where you are coming from. Unless you mean whether to have skills categories, versus your random selection process. Hard to say. For small countries skills categories make sense, because specific skills are often in short supply. For America you guys have benefited from the more random selection process because you get a lot of low skilled cheap immigrant labour to fill certain jobs.
Studies also show immigration has had negligible effects on pushing wages down. Most of that is coming from automation and some from outsourcing manufacturing. If you guys had any sense, you would do what places like Finland do, where outsourcing has increased their wealth overall but depressed some wages: Give some government financial help to people on low wages.
And what China is doing with certain ethnic minorities is neither immigration or controlling problem populations. Its unjustified cultural and religious persecution in most cases. There are other words for it.
Thomas wrote @217:
Yes, but there appears to be no inherent lower limit to the capture capabilities of polyanthraquinone. Extracting CO2 at lower concentrations means a greater reduction of entropy, meaning more entropy (heat) has to be rejected to the environment; that heat has to come from input energy. That’s why I guesstimated 2.5 GJ/ton for atmospheric capture. Entropy scales as the log of concentration so the difference between 6000 ppm and 400 ppm isn’t as big as it looks.
Carbon capture at plants and such cannot get to zero or sub-zero carbon emissions unless the exhaust stream is literally cleaner than the ambient air. Even if used with biofuels, the billion or so tons of CO2 taken up to make the available biomass stream in the US falls 10x short of what we need to remove from the atmosphere. Fortunately, 2.5 GJ/ton for capture is less than 1/10 as much as the energy required to reduce carbon to a fixed form such as hydrocarbons. It reduces the energy requirements from ludicrous to merely enormous, but “enormous” in this case is on the order of what we’re already generating. What we’re doing is in the realm of the doable by definition.
And thanks for checking out my blog.
Water Thieves Steal 80,000 Gallons in Australia as Our Mad Max-Style Future Becomes Reality – it feels like Australia is living in the future. That future, unfortunately, looks a lot like Mad Max.
https://earther.gizmodo.com/water-thieves-steal-80-000-gallons-in-australia-as-our-1840549648?IR=T
Coming thick and fast from all quarters.
18 December 2019 Namibia’s power supply squeezed as drought hits hydropower plant
Namibia’s electricity generation has dropped to below 40% of its capacity as the worst drought in almost a century has hit the country’s own hydropower plant and others in the region reliant on water from dams and rivers.
The drought, plus power blackouts at South African power company Eskom, on which Namibia relies for 70% of its energy requirements, has put the security of the country’s electricity supply at risk.
Namibia can also fall back on renewable energy from independent power producers, one coal power station and an emergency diesel station, but its hydropower plant its biggest domestic power source.
The Kariba hydroelectric plant, which serves Zimbabwe and Zambia and is fed by the Zambezi river, has also been hit by a substantial fall in water levels.
Zambezi River Authority Chief Executive Munyaradzi Munadawafa said last week the Kariba might have to reduce generation drastically, perhaps even to the point where the plant shuts down.
Officials blame the drop in water levels on climate change and a five-year drought in southern Africa.
http://news.trust.org/item/20191218101311-y6fjr/
zebra: Yes, you have come across as somewhat depressed lately ::snip:: I am very, very, lucky in being able to walk into some woods behind my house every day.
AB: Perceptive. Actually, it’s been a 2.5 year nightmare. I won’t go into the details here but a person in power violated me and the law horribly and other people in power are violating me and the law horribly because, well, a Nazi in a White Hat is wearing a White Hat and so is immune from sanction. We’re at the appeals court stage.
Call it the Trump Doctrine.
And I know what you mean about walking one’s land. I had 5 acres on Vancouver Island. Small mountains and ocean and islands. Killian’s regeneration includes us.
nigelj,
No, dude. I said “Star Trek”, as in pure real original Star Trek.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_Archons
________
E-P: if a two-week doldrums occurred, who wouldn’t relish two weeks of down time?
Now imagine that you can’t travel to go to the beach, slopes or campgrounds, that neither the heat nor the A/C work, all the food in the fridge goes bad and none gets to the stores, the pipes freeze and all the sewers back up.
AB: LOLOLOL. Yeah, YOU REALLY BELIEVE that the electrical grid would be managed so as to burn through 100% of the storage as quickly as possible so that the whole system can crash. LOLOLOLOL.
Please refrain from turning off your seriously capable brain before responding to comments.
________
Thomas,
Condolences on the toasting of your country. But to answer your question, “winning” is more important than survival. This makes sense given human evolution. In a more localized world, such as the world where our barely-homo ancestors lived, losing a war meant extinction (other than the genes passed on by child-bearing women, who were often “spared”). So ignoring anything and everything except winning is a human adaptation. Eh, could be wrong. Thoughts?
__________
E-P: Nuclear is already the safest source of electric power in the world,
AB: Overstating one’s case is a grand way to hurt it. Ground level solar farms are way safer than nukes. Or am I wrong (I often am)?
_________
nigelj on mining,
Yep. We ain’t disagreeing but expanding and digging deeper.
________
Kevin McKinney’s way-good reference: It’s all about the response timing and the ability to operate in sub-seconds.
AB: Smaller. The ability to operate in small fractions of 1/60 of a second.
And yes, “E-P: if a two-week doldrums occurred, who wouldn’t relish two weeks of down time?” should have been typed:
E-P: “AB: if a two-week doldrums occurred, who wouldn’t relish two weeks of down time?”
Egad, another typo! The shame, the shame….
E-P 212: Germany is proof that “renewables” cannot decarbonize an industrial economy
BPL: German CO2 emissions are down last year. I wonder why?
E-P: Everyone hears about the “disaster” of Chernobyl, in which the fatalities would fit on a bus
BPL: That’s the immediate fatalities. You assume the big plume of radiation and the release of I-131 had no effect on the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians it enveloped, whereas most studies put the eventual deaths in the tens of thousands. Not very honest.
KIA 218: All our side wants is to vet every immigrant so only good folks come here
BPL: Mentira. Your side wants to cut down on immigration by brown people, period. That’s why it’s putting legitimate asylum seekers in concentration camps and separating their families.
#220 Kevin McKinney,
Yes, but still so vague.
Here’s how it works, for ‘regular’ people to understand.
If you have an industrial facility with lots of electric motors… machine shop, cranes, and so on, the wires connecting the building to the source will experience more heating than if you were providing electricity to my group of houses from #173.
This is not some new big problem. The solution is local to the facility in question; traditionally capacitors have been installed to alleviate that condition. They store energy once the motors are going so it doesn’t have to be transmitted over the grid (wires).
Your house does not create such a problem; the amount of that kind of energy that is needed (e.g. for your refrigerator motor) is negligible— not non-existent, but utility companies traditionally don’t bother with it.
The reference to frequency control is also a bit misleading. The inverter that creates AC from your DC solar panels (or battery, or HVDC wind transmission) doesn’t change its frequency if you increase the load. That’s a problem for conventional generators, as I referenced back at #173 also.
I know you (Kevin) get the picture generally; as you said we are not going to have a 100% renewable national electric sector, just as we are not going to have 100% nuclear. I am, as usual, just trying to tailor the communication to ‘the public’ and point out that solutions are local because the problems are local.
That industrial facility needs to be subject to market principles even more than it already is; as do the houses. That’s how we improve efficiencies all around.
Nordhaus, the faux Nobel winner in economics for his disastrous work on climate economics…. eviscerated.
Learn something, ya dupes.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/there-must-be-in-32539821
nigelj wrote @214:
Oh, please! Do you think rightists could get onto ANY council in London?! They’d be far more likely to be framed on some bogus charge of “racism” and threatened with jail.
If we don’t make fuzzy thinking a crime for public officials, we are going to go from our current bad situation to worse. Much, MUCH worse.
Thomas wrote @216:
My goals inevitably result in you hating me, so it’s not something I worry about; it comes with the territory.
Mr. Know It All wrote @218:
Mass-murderer Maj. Nidal Hasan was born in the USA… of Palestinian immigrant parents. San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook was born in the USA of Pakistani immigrant parents. Just because someone gets US citizenship because of where they were born does not make them part of the American nation, or even part of US society. Their family, culture or religion can make them implacably, even murderously, opposed to it.
The “communities” from which such people come should be removed from the Americas and sent home; if they hate the people here, this place is anything but “home” to them. They have to go back.
zebra bloviated @219:
Try having the maul bounce back with considerable force, because either ice or knots won’t let the wood split. Quite hard on the hands.
You reminded me that I had some firewood ready to hand, so I just lit my wood stove. Dead trees will displace fossil methane tonight. And I spotted a mouse fleeing my intrusion, so I put out a trap baited with peanut butter. I expect to find a dead mouse on the morrow.
You’ve not posted a single equation, nor shown any understanding that heat is heat regardless of source and electricity is the same as burning fuel to a furnace. You are the one who is clueless about physics; I’ve aced every last course I took.
I repeat things until you get them. You haven’t gotten them yet, meaning I have not repeated myself ENOUGH. Be careful what you wish for, etc. etc.
Kevin McKinney writes @220:
Wrong. It’s not just “suggested” but undeniable that e.g. double-wound alternators CONSUME reactive power and cannot supply it. Until fairly recently, double-wound alternators were the typical generators on utility-scale wind plants.
That sophistication has been a fairly recent arrival. It’s welcome, but only addresses one of the deficiencies of wind power as a grid supplier. After reactive power, “firming” (buffering) is the next-most-immediate requirement. Either the “renewable” power has to be confirmed available until the fastest-starting generator can come on-line to replace it, or some other generator has to idle as “spinning reserve” to take over on as little as zero notice. “Spinning reserve” has monetary, energy and (for most sources) emissions cost.
“Renewables” have to internalize all of those costs, or they are quite literally lying about their “green-ness”.
Wonder of wonders! Now, who’s paying for them? The “renewables” which required them? Doubtful; they’re certainly being rolled into the general rate base.
Wrong. Inertia cannot be simulated by anything without energy-storage capabilities; that is the essential property of inertia. No one who does not implicitly grasp this has any business writing about the issue.
Mal Adapted writes @221:
MUCH faster, please.
We are a vast distance therefrom, sadly. To get there, we must decide on and carry out an order of execution on the coal, oil and gas extraction and transport industries regardless of what replaces them.
If those in office are not willing and able to put that order of execution into law, they have failed by definition.
Results matter. ONLY results matter, and IDGAF if you hate me for it. GET RESULTS.
Killian writes @222:
Great for the people of Cheran. Now, 4 questions for you:
1. Where/how does Cheran get its electricity, motor fuel, fertilizer, etc?
2. Is Cheran even remotely carbon-neutral?
3. Would a large, dense source of clean electric power not be as much a benefit to Cheran as to the rest of the world?
4. What do you think of American communities which have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” to take back their safety from distant, hostile state governments which e.g. allow drug smugglers and other criminal gangs to run rampant in their own capital cities? Are they not at least as legitimate in their desires and means as Cheran?
Al Bundy writes @232:
You were the one who talked about weeks of lull, and by your own admission you’d have to go into conservation mode immediately. That means no going camping, to the beach….
You’d apparently be wrong, but without breaking out flat-roof PV, sloped-roof PV and CSP into their own categories there’s no way to tell from this data. However, large flat-ground installations have their own dangers, including the voltages they have to use to keep system currents from being insanely high. There’s also far less of a safety culture in the construction of just about everything other than nuclear.
BPL wrote @234:
1. German CO2 emissions are still way above the (now suspended) 2020 goal of 40% below 1990, and way WAY above the level required to stabilize CO2… which is itself WAY above the levels required to stabilize temperature.
2. It was the first drop after 4 years of stagnation.
3. German per-capita CO2 emissions are running about 2x those of France. France is still way too high, but we need to follow and build on the successes, not the failures.
The only illness associated with I-131 is thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer has a relatively short incubation time and a 99+% cure rate if treated properly. There were roughly 5000 cases detected in the populations under the plume, including many sub-clinical cancers which would likely never have progressed to disease. At 99% cure rate, the total fatalities were no more than 50.
Those “studies” were projecting based on the proven-defective LNT model. Slightly elevated radiation levels are not associated with increased mortality or morbidity anywhere in the world.
There’s irrefutable evidence that chronic gamma-ray exposure can increase longevity. 0.8 rads/day (that’s about 2.9 Sieverts per year) increased the lifespan of Sprague-Dawley rats by a minimum of 25% over controls:
http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/1958,%2013th%20session%20%28Suppl.%20No.17%29/1958final-3_unscear.pdf#page=30
Given this evidence, there is no basis for assuming harm from small amounts of Sr-90 and radiocesium.
No, you aren’t.
zebra removes all doubt yet again @236:
It’s not the wires so much as the transformers, which cost a great deal more.
Let me see if I can get the concept of “power factor” across to you. If you feed AC power into a pure resistance, the current is always proportional to the voltage. If you integrate the product of instantaneous voltage and current over a full cycle, you get the same result as when you multiply the root mean square (RMS) values of both. The ratio of actual energy over the RMS product is 1.0, or unity power factor.
Most loads like induction motors (including your refrigerator) are inductive. Current is not proportional to voltage; it takes a while to get moving and time to stop again, like a flywheel. This means that the voltage and current curves don’t move in sync; current lags behind voltage. You can treat the current as a vector in phase-space and measure its in-phase component and its 90°-lagging component. The ratio of the in-phase current to the total current (the total length of the vector) is the power factor. It is always less than or equal to 1. However, the power delivered depends only on that in-phase component; the 90°-lagging component doesn’t transmit a single watt.
Why does this matter? Transformers are limited by current, not power. They are rated in volt-amperes, not watts (e.g. kVa or MVa). Further, they have losses in both the windings and the iron cores which increase with current. If you can reduce that 90°-lagging fraction of the current, you can reduce those losses, save energy & money and even use a smaller, cheaper transformer.
Note that the integral of voltage*current of that 90°-lagging fraction sums to 0 over an entire cycle. It transmits no power. And the beauty is that you can cancel it out with something that pulls current that leads voltage by 90°. If you do your balancing act right, you can get all the lagging and leading currents to add up to 0. This cuts the net current coming through your meter to just the part carrying real power (watts), and so on at the transformer.
Capacitors for power-factor correction are not energy storage devices per se. Energy stored in a capacitor is ½Cv²; their stored energy goes to zero twice every cycle when the line voltage crosses zero. However, that zero crossing is when voltage is changing the fastest, so the capacitors have their maximum current.
If you live in a typical neighborhood, the power-factor correction capacitors are back at the substation or even further upstream.
Here’s an intriguing idea. Wood wind turbines: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/wooden-wind-turbines.html
By the way, I largely agree with E-P on nuclear, with the assumption that molten salt thorium is the path taken. It’s about as safe and environmentally correct an energy as we’re likely to see this side of fusion. Wind and solar need more mines and so their damage/kill rate per megawatt hour are higher. More material requires more time so their minimum build-out period is probably longer. However…
Nobody’s built a mass-producible MSTR. Sure, once one is developed they can be cranked out in volume. But until then wind and solar and whatnot will have to do. I suppose we could build more solid-fuel reactors but that opens the whole Pandora’s Box of Stuff: Proliferation, waste, high-pressure low-temperature coolant with horrible characteristics (water), inefficiency, meltdown potential.
So until China, India, or a corporation finish their development work, wind and solar are the way to go. Afterwards? Dunno, but diversity brings strength, resiliency, and adaptability.
Al Bundy “So ignoring anything and everything except winning is a human adaptation. Eh, could be wrong. Thoughts?”
You are not wrong. Winning is a powerful motivation, enough to make us wreck relationships. It takes a big effort of will and reasonable smarts to sort out which contexts are ok for winning and which aren’t.
Winning is instinctive, and instincts conflict with intellect time and time again.
And this deep seated winning impulse is why I’m so sceptical about egalitarianism and all this “simplification” stuff.
“Overstating one’s case (nuclear power) is a grand way to hurt it. Ground level solar farms are way safer than nukes. Or am I wrong (I often am)?
I keep telling EP that. Given he is pretty smart I think he will get it. Actually erecting solar panels causes more injuries per mw/ hr than nuclear power even with the explosions. Read a couple of studies on this a while back.