A bimonthly open thread on climate solutions. Perhaps unsurprisingly this is always the most contentious comment thread on the site, but please try and be constructive and avoid going off on wild tangents.
Reader Interactions
554 Responses to "Forced Responses: May 2021"
Carbomontanussays
Ladies and Gentlemen
I just red a lot about industrial waste heat from nuclear plants, in large and long pipelines to both heat and to cool cities and urban settlements. Further, about how stupid that is.
Q: Have you really lost all your fantacies here?
Because I know of other methods.
A very traditional one is to saw the ice on special ice- pools and dams. Pack it in sawdust and sail it to London,…. where a piece of proper ice in their whiskey in august did cost their skirts.
Still, they could not withstand it, and paid!
So if you think in terms of profit and business…..try and think again and take a good example.
The same ice was further very vital for possible storing and distribution of fresh milk and of fish before electricity and the invention of the cooler machine.
Icecream in summer was also not possible without salted, natural ice.
But there are further methods for higher temperatures.
Na2SO4 . 10H2O is a solid cristalline substance, and that stoechiomewtric cristal water is a qvasi- ice. That melts and freezes at 38 celsius by consequently, record high entropies.
If salted, NaCl .Na2SO4 .10H2O, freeses and fuses slightly below 20 Celsius by an even higher entropy.
Thus heat can easily be stored and released and brought around by ships and waggons … at very practical temperatures. Which can also be combined with heat pumps driven by solar, windmills, or Nuclear.
And remember, it was a quite profitable industry based on natural ice, that could also be stored, freighted, and shipped.
Can someone tell me how to indent and italicize quotes?
I can–I guess obviously. To do these kinds of things on these, you must use HTML tags.
To quote: the “blockquote” tag (that’s what I used for your quote above).
To italicize: the “em” tag
To bold: the “b” tag
That’s also how you can insert links. (But I’m not sure what that tag is actually called. The “a” tag? The “href” tag?)
It’s a little tricky giving you examples, though, because if they’re in the text the blog will try to execute them! I know there’s an elegant way around that little difficulty because I’ve seen it done–Gavin used it years ago when he kindly introduced me to this stuff–but I don’t know what it is.
So I’m going to try what I think is a less elegant way, and we’ll just see how it turns out. The critical characters are what I’ll call a ‘left caret’ and a ‘right caret’. I can’t think of a way to show you the former, but the latter looks like this: > Its unwritable ‘left’ counterpart is found on an adjacent key on the bottom row of most keyboards. In these examples, I’ll use the ‘codes’ [LC] and [RC] to replace the actual carets you would type in.
To quote: [LC]blockquote[RC][content][LC]/blockquote[RC]
To italicize: [LC]em[RC][content][LC]/em[RC]
To bold: [LC]b[RC][content][LC]/b[RC]
To link: [LC]a href=”(URL)” rel=”nofollow”[RC][content][LC]/a[RC]
That seems to be correct in the preview, but looks a bit intimidating to my eye. It may be easier to refer to any of the several good online HTML references, many of which include the capability to try the code out interactively. Here’s just one:
Killian says “You doubt it. I presented Regenerative Governance to this site ten years ago. You have yet to engage meaningfully.”
Please provide a detailed description of regenerative governance!!!!!!!!! Not everyone was reading this website ten years ago or can remember what you said.
nigeljsays
zebra @45, ok good, smaller global population means less conflicts over resources and need for complex ownership laws, but you are still left with problems of local potential environmental degradation and pollution, which will require a system of laws and policing, (or something) and you still have to deal with the lengthy transition period.
Killiansays
Kevin and nigel,
For chrissakes, I gave you a SCALE-based, nested Commons, egalitarian model TEN years ago! Now, here you are discussing this article which discusses sub-optimal concepts when you have NEVER seriously engaged the model I produced?
Are you intentionally obtuse? Do you hate the idea that I might suggest the best option for humanity that you literally talk up sub-optimal solutions that have key aspects of my model rather than engage on a much better system?
I TOLD you ten goddamned years ago:
1. Nested Commons, i.e. Commons at various scales ranging from neighborhood to town to city to bio-region.
2. Egalitarian decision-making AT SCALE. See above for scales. E.g.: An empty lot is a neighborhood issue; city water supply (if any) is a city-wide issue; managing a watershed would be multi-level depending on the specific issue, but overall would be managed at the bio-regional level. Etc.
I have posted this so goddamned many times, yet here you salivate over near-garbage because it has features I presented… ten years ago… and discuss them as if you’ve never heard the ideas before.
TEN YEARS.
We do not have time for such continued self-inflicted foolishness. You’ve had a scale-based Commons-based governance model in your hands for a DECADE.
And nigel, that you need Kevin to explain to you a nuclear plant is **not** a locally-managed issue is a perfect example of why you should post a LOT less than you do. FYI, it would be a bio-regional issue primarily and, given the effects of a melt-down or other major disaster, even inter-bio-regional.
nigeljsays
M S Sweet makes a good point that if you have to install heating pipes in EXISTING roads it would obviously be very expensive. China is using waste heat from nuclear power to heat one of its cities with more planned. However the city already has a water reticulation system under the roads to heat homes and this was powered with coal. This was presumably installed as the city was built. They are replacing the coal fired power with nuclear power as its cleaner.
I believe I read the FCC has given them permits for 30,000 of these, and right now they are planning to eventually have 40-50,000. They supposedly will provide satellite internet service to rural areas mostly in the northern hemisphere. Rural areas already have satellite service – there are several such services available, but the speeds are not great – perhaps similar to or slightly slower than DSL. Other companies are also planning to deploy thousands more satellites for other purposes, or perhaps to compete with SpaceX.
I am sure there are folks watching the reaction to this night sky pollution with the thought of deploying large satellites to block the sun for purposes of reducing incoming solar energy due to the climate “emergency”.
39 – Susan Anderson
Nice video of Gavin you posted last month. He seems like a nice guy. I noticed that BPL replied to a few comments:
Carbomontanus: To my opinion now for a long time, the combustion engine has hardly drawn its last sigh. I truly admire that class of engines. They only need better fuel now, and that is a challenge rather for chemistery.
RC: No. The internal combustion engine can only improve significantly via a total rewrite.
Read my recent Forced Responses posts. Given combustion chamber walls seriously above ignition temperature and a low-to-medium pressure fuel injection system that fragments, vaporizes, and mixes the fuel far better than current high pressure designs,
The fuel is somewhat irrelevant. EP will tell you that methanol is superior. I agree. The oxygen atom that’s incorporated in the fuel tends to grab the fuel’s carbon, forming carbon monoxide.
Yeah, one doesn’t want CO as an end product, but with three strokes of combustion, and, subsequently, a catalyzed and extra-oxiginated secondary combustion phase, that CO will be fully consumed.
BPL: ROFLMAO! But you never passed a course in it, did you? Come on, Killian, ‘fess up.
Bill Hendersonsays
So whenever I visit the ‘discussion’ here at Forced Responses I’m always struck that there is rarely a post on supply-side climate policy solutions. It’s like only 100% renewables or other energy substitution for fossil fuels solutions exist.
What if you were reading a magazine article on great writing in America and every citation was a book of fiction by a white male? Would you maybe stop to consider what was wrong here?
So in a Covering Climate Now newsletter I found an article on moving to climate solutions in American climate journalism and every citation – WashPost, NYTimes, Bloomberg Green, etc. – was completely within orthodox decarbonixation.
????? Renewables out competing fossil fuels in existing markets, aided by carbon pricing or subsidies, etc., was always a stretch in the 2050 timeline – it’s not going to reduce emissions enough by 2030, not even close, not a chance in hell. But it seems no climate journalist in America even knows there are possible, extremely needed, supply-side policies that have to be implemented fast.
FYI: hope it interests – orthodox decarbinization or supply-side policies too?
Yes, I’m sort of tilting at (100% renewables) windmills but climate mitigation is wrapped in a fog of denial and climate journalism is part of the problem and we are running out of time. This oped is one of four on climate mitigation and denial written in the lead up to Biden’s climate summit – with one more to be published.
Do you really want to just stay happy mouthing allowed responses to climate change?
b fagansays
This comment isn’t about addressing climate change, but it’s a new couple of reasons we would probably want to keep permafrost cold longer. The article discusses (but doesn’t link to) a study suggesting increased radon emissions and release of mercury as permafrost thaws across the Arctic.
“Massive amounts of uranium are stored in high concentrations underground throughout the Arctic zone. A product of uranium decay is radon gas. Normally, radon is contained in the soil by layers of ground and snow atop of it. However, as permafrost thaws, the radioactive gas seeps out from underground and is released into the atmosphere.
The link between thawing permafrost and increased risk of lung cancer is presented by researchers with the Federal Center for Comprehensive Study of the Arctic with the Russian Academy of Science.”
Killiansays
Some bombs are good bombs, particularly implosion.
I can–I guess obviously. To do these kinds of things on these, you must use HTML tags
Thanks for the help. I don’t like italics so I left it normal font.
michael Sweetsays
Zebra at 49:
Thanks for the advice. I started reading here a few months ago. Someone has been repeating Engineer Poets claims at Skeptical Science and I wanted to see what he said. From your comments it seems the regulars here know that his “plans” are worth.
Your link was very informative. They used a small city with a 265 MW power plant as an example. That was larger than I had heard of. They use absorption chillers to cool when they only deliver heat. As I understand it, heat pumps can add/remove three times as much energy as they use to run. I.E. if you input 100 joules of energy you can move 300 joules.
Does anyone happen to know the efficiency of absorption chillers? I presume heat pumps are more efficient since that is what all the future plans I have seen use.
So we go from “That’s 1/4 the volume of Lake Erie!” to the rather less impressive “That’s more than 0.5% of the volume of the Great Lakes!”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all of them together don’t add up to one Lake Baikal either.
So what? That’s not the issue. You have to make UPPER reservoirs, hundreds or thousands of them, within some short distance of each lower reservoir. They have to be high enough above the lower reservoir because the energy stored is proportional to the ΔH. If the hydraulic head was not the arbitrarily specified 500 m but the 111 m of Ludington, it would take MORE than the volume of Lake Erie to store the specified amount of energy. Where can you put that much water? Pretty much nowhere in N. America within range of such lakes, and they have to be lakes because seawater would render much of the land below barren.
For all the PHS potential of the Great Lakes, Ludington is the only PHS plant on them. Even when the upgrades are complete, it will store less than 50 GWh of energy. You could store that much juice in a mere 2.5 gigaliters of liquid at Form Energy’s lower energy density bound of 20 Wh/l. That’s two and a half cubes, 100 meters on a side; a large-sized tank farm.
Barnard, citing an Australian study we’ve previously discussed here:
…there are 100 times the global requirement in sites with greater than 400 meter head heights, near transmission, off of waterways and off of protected lands.
Why aren’t they already in use by the dozen? It’s not like the need is new; peaking generation has been an issue for decades.
An interesting case in point is the Bath County PHES facility. Note that its water supply consists of only a couple of minor creeks
Those are NOT reservoirs. Those are makeup water for evaporation. They are different things.
Per Wikipedia, the Bath Co. PHS unit only stores 24 GWh of energy, or 8 hours at full power. The 2017-18 New England cold snap lasted FIFTEEN DAYS; BCPHS would need 45 times the reservoir capacity to have ridden out the dark, calm, cold conditions of a winter high-pressure system, and that only if it started with the upper reservoirs full. Not even Form Energy’s 150-hour flow battery would be adequate.
It’s far past time to admit that “renewables” are unable to supply reliable power capable of keeping an industrial economy up and running. They are unfit for that purpose. Their best role is probably as suppliers of energy to loads which can be managed on the demand side.
If I’m not mistaken, that raw number is bigger than average world electric load. I was just contrasting to the United States because it’s what I’m most familiar with.
World electric consumption in 2019 was 22823 TWh, an average of 2605 GW. Barnard’s projection for storage power is nearly 1.5 times this. Do I need to point out just how staggeringly huge a job that would be—especially for something that doesn’t actually generate a single joule? My all-nuclear economy would spend most of its money and resources building actual generators.
If we could engineer nuclear plants which operate at perhaps 1200°C
Did you notice the word “if” in that sentence?
I suspect I know how to make such a nuclear reactor: liquid uranium-plutonium fuel, silicon carbide containers, and lead coolant. It would have nothing under pressure in the coolant circuits and shut down spontaneously if cooling was lost due to expansion of the liquid fuel; in short, it would require only a minimal containment and be walk-away safe. The metallic fuel would be easily reprocessed by electrowinning in a molten salt bath.
At one time we could go from concept to test reactor in a few years. But until this country overcomes its inculcated paranoia over radiation (while ignoring radiation exposure from things like airplane flights), we’ll never see anything like this tested, let alone deployed at scale.
Meanwhile at post 23 here you say ” The system moves energy much more than matter; electrically-powered gasification units can be located anywhere that wires are, or can be run.”
Because that’s the baseline technology which also allows “renewables” to contribute to the effort on an equal footing, since it’s all electric.
You forgot where I found a more likely figure of 195.2 GW(th) for the gasification alone, which puts far less load on the electric grid. Once the biomass has been converted to pipeline-transportable materials and ash, the remainder of the processing can be done anywhere on the pipeline network.
I stumbled across another possibility from previous work which may further reduce the energy requirements at the site of initial processing. I need to dig into it to see what potential it may have.
To use process heat as you described you must co-locate the nuclear reactor and the bioliquids plant.
No, you need to co-locate the reactor and the gasification plant. If you e.g. convert part of the biomass to liquids and use them to pump the remaining solid carbon as a slurry, you can put the gasification elsewhere. This is one of the possibilities I need to check out. It won’t happen right away, as there aren’t enough hours in the day.
For your new district heat system all the millions of miles of road will have to be rebuilt.
I have just (as in the previous year or two) witnessed new water and natural gas lines being installed. The gas lines were run from one hole to another and drilled through the intervening soil. The water lines were installed using trucks which drilled through the soil and literally vacuumed it out of the ground. Only patches of pavement were disturbed.
The plan to use waste heat from thermal power plants to heat and cool a city is completely imaginary.
My alma mater heats most of its buildings with steam from its own power plant. That plant used to receive fuel via its own dedicated rail spur delivering coal, but since before I matriculated it has been fired by natural gas.
There is nothing in principle which prevents another conversion, e.g. to steam generated in a higher-temperature SMR such as one cooled by sodium or molten salt. For 30 years, EBR-II supplied steam to heat much of its campus. What you claim is impossible has already been done.
nigeljsays
Killian @55
“For chrissakes, I gave you a SCALE-based, nested Commons, egalitarian model TEN years ago! ”
I don’t think I was READING the comments section of this website ten years ago. You must be thinking of someone else. I have no recollection of your points 1 and 2. I do recall plenty of discussion on other aspects of the commons issue.
“1. Nested Commons, i.e. Commons at various scales ranging from neighborhood to town to city to bio-region.”
Ok, thanks this is informative. My criticism is it looks like a very complex structure to administer and to get people to agree on, and I’m just not persuaded that the means of production will work well handled as some sort of ‘commons’ as I’ve previously explained, if by commons you mean communally owned and run. I’m afraid we will have to agree to disagree. I can see it possibly working for the resource base such as the land and its below ground resources etc.
“2. Egalitarian decision-making AT SCALE. See above for scales. E.g.: An empty lot is a neighborhood issue; city water supply (if any) is a city-wide issue; managing a watershed would be multi-level depending on the specific issue, but overall would be managed at the bio-regional level. Etc.”
It is easy to see how egalitarian decision making would work for a group of for example twenty people. They could sit around a table to resolve things, by vote or consensus, ultimately. Each would have an equal voice. I assume that’s what you mean by “egalitarian decison making”. Modern partnership structures and family farms are often egalitarian like this. But get above about 20 people and it gets cumbersome.
How would egalitarian decision making work for a water supply? The entire public can’t sit around a table. Would the public vote for something like a board of directors and they have equal voice in final decisions? Or how would it work? Would this encompass ALL decisions? Because with no hierarchy at all, that would require a lot of decision making by committee. If not, do you see a place for a trimmed down hierarchy? What decisions should be left to a hierarchy of some sort? This could be routine daily operational decisions?
And what about a factory? Would just anyone make decisions? Normally for factories people with appropriate expertise are best to make decisions. This means not everyone could participate. I assume that is ok.
“And nigel, that you need Kevin to explain to you a nuclear plant is **not** a locally-managed issue is a perfect example of why you should post a LOT less than you do.”
No. I was criticising the article because it had no clarity about what would be local and what would be regional. I don’t like second guessing people. Its up to the writer to be clear, matter of fact, coherent and logical. I know what “I” think should be local or regional, and a nuclear plant should be dealt with at country level or wider.
In fact environmental impacts often spread well beyond the local so I suspect we will find you need a great many regional standards. This is why I’m a bit sceptical of all this localisation and how far it can go. New Zealand has tried localisation (within the conventional socio economic system) with for example numerous local body councils and boards, and its been so problematic they are now amalgamating those and going back to mostly regional and central government structures for most decision making. I’m not saying this is necessarily the right decision, but its how things are going.
Those are NOT reservoirs. Those are makeup water for evaporation. They are different things.
Correct, but as is often the case, beside the point. The Bath County reservoirs are both artificial. The point is that you don’t need either A) massive amounts of water, or B) reservoirs involving large bodies of water.
nigeljsays
Bill Henderson @60
“So whenever I visit the ‘discussion’ here at Forced Responses I’m always struck that there is rarely a post on supply-side climate policy solutions. It’s like only 100% renewables or other energy substitution for fossil fuels solutions exist.”
There has been plenty of discussion on cutting our personal carbon footprints. And all the ‘simplification’ ideas. And MMT. But IMO its just not realistic to expect people to make truly massive cuts to their consumption levels. People are mostly just concerned with their own survival and pleasures and interests. Read the book the selfish gene by Richard Dawkins. This is why the the priority has to be energy substitution at scale, and hopefully there will be some reduction in levels of consumption as a useful add on. Suggest you read Bill Gates new book on climate change. He gets it.
Piotrsays
Poet(66): If I’m not mistaken, that raw number is bigger than average world electric load.
Yes, you are mistaken, because you are comparing apples from 2020 with oranges from 2050, namely: you ridicule as absurdly high:
– the PEAK (of demand minus supply) load for 143 countries in 2050
– by “ contrasting it” with the …AVERAGE load, first …. in the US, then when challenged – with the world, in both cases not from 2050 but from today.
And you have done all that despite:
i) graduating from an Engineering school where they must have taught you the difference between providing the average load and the peak (demand-supply) load.
ii) me explaining to you this very difference in at least half a dozen of posts on RC, using words even a Poet should have understood
iii) you knowing that in 2050 the overall demand for electricity in the 100% decarbonized economy WOULD HAVE TO BE MUCH higher than it is today (electric heating instead of oil and gas furnaces, electric/hydrogen cars/trucks/ships/planes, non-fossil source of industrial heat, increase peak demand for air condition, etc…), and if so then you CAN’T “contrast” X from 2050 with Y from 2020.
In the discussed study (Jacobsen et al.), the total load for 2052 is: 40,544 GW. So let’s use the highest storage power bandied around here: “3,700 GW” for 2052. So in such case: 3,700/40,544 = 9% of the total power in 2052.
And if I read Jacobson Table 3 right, if we balance the demand with supply using storage in 24 regional grids instead 143 independent country grids – according to their simulations the storage power needed – can be REDUCED to … 702 GW.
In such case: 702 GW/40,544 GW = 1.7% of the total power in 2052.
Neither 1.7% nor even 9% are as patently absurdly high numbers as “1.5 TIMES the global” or “8 TIMES the US” load, on the height of which numbers our Poet based his derision toward others: “ F’rinstance, this little gem regarding storage power“.
The Sixth Law of Thermodynamics: “The arrogance of a body increases with its ignorance”.
=========================================
P.S. Poet(66) “ I was just contrasting to the United States because it’s what I’m most familiar with
So… you KNEW that we talked not about the US, but ~ GLOBAL storage load, and to show how absurdly high are these ~GLOBAL numbers, you “contrasted them” on purpose not with global, but with … the US numbers?
That will make quite an interesting precedent for the future discussions on any science blog. Say, on the RD (Real Diseases):
Louis Pasteur: “We have created a breakthrough treatment for disease X, capable to prevent worldwide 1 mln deaths a year!”
Epidemiologist-Poet: “This piece left me with more questions than I had before I read it. F’rinstance, this little gem: that Pasteur guy claims to be able to save 1 mln lives, which is 8 times more than the deaths on X in the US!”
And when challenged that “contrasting” is dishonest – our E-Poet would shrug it off with: “ I was just contrasting to the United States because it’s what I’m most familiar with“.
======================================
Killiansays
59 Barton Paul Levenson says:
9 May 2021 at 5:46 AM
K 43: unlike you, I understand Economics.
BPL: ROFLMAO! But you never passed a course in it, did you? Come on, Killian, ‘fess up.
Logical fallacy. Classes are not necessary for learning – and are often detrimental to it. Witness the “Chicago School” of Economics.
That said, I passed both the courses I took. 95% on my 2nd economics final. (Must’ve been micro?) Understanding the Laffer Curve made understanding Tainter’s Diminishing Returns on Complexity really easy – 24 years later. My conversation with him in 2010 was enlightening; it really helped me nail down the concept of complexity – which many seem to misunderstand, as I did somewhat till then. His curve is vital to understanding why tech responses to climate cannot succeed.
At the same conference, I made a claim that Steve Keen’s Minsky model of a steady-state economy couldn’t function as he claimed (though it spun neatly round and round) because it wasn’t accounting for profit and money equaling energy in the system, wealth functioning as hoarding and waste, and profit inherently requiring growth.
His model now is based on energy flows/thermodynamics.
*sarc*
So, gosh, no, guess I don’t understand anything about economics.
*/sarc*
Get back to me when you’ve made a significant contribution to the field of Economics, eh?
There’s nothing difficult about the concepts within economics. Anybody can master them with ease unless, like you, their ideology prevents it.
Killiansays
53 nigelj says:
8 May 2021 at 4:30 PM
Killian says “You doubt it. I presented Regenerative Governance to this site ten years ago. You have yet to engage meaningfully.”
Please provide a detailed description of regenerative governance!!!!!!!!! Not everyone was reading this website ten years ago or can remember what you said.
I have done so repeatedly since you started posting here. Pay attention. I’m getting tired of you all drooling over concepts I tried to get through your skulls already.
Why you do not build out a massive new infrastructure for a resource that will be gone in less than a century if you do:
The group also modeled eight future demand scenarios, factoring in variables including EV adoption, battery second-life uses and recycling and vehicle-to-grid integration. Using the two sets of scenarios, the researchers came up with 18 outcomes, each of which highlighted a different year when lithium supplies would run dry.
Supply and demand would stay balanced for the next decade in all scenarios, the LUT-Augsburg group found, and supply would even exceed demand up to mid century but from that point on, shortages will kick in.
The scenario which assumes 73 Mt of lithium supply left, best policies (recycling, V2G, second-life) implemented and around 3 billion EVs on the road sees lithium fully depleted a few years beyond 2100. If the same policies and number of cars were matched with just 26 Mt of lithium, but recycling efforts would only grow slowly, battery manufacturers will close shops even before 2040.
If, however, we simplify, we have abundant lithium – relatively. More importantly, we have time to create the recycling infrastructure to be able to leave most of the lithium untouched. that would avoid things like this:
Another source said we’ll need 42 x the amount mined in 2020 to meet the Paris agreement – which is woefully inadequate, so the number would be considerably higher. Imagine Theim’s buckwheat over and over and over… and that’s just for ONE mineral. What about the rest of the periodic table needed for consumption to prop up mass consumption…
Simplify. No other choice.
Carbomontanussays
Ladies and Gentlemen.
Dr.13 writes that the best defence against this climate anxiety / distress / grief is denialism. Simply deny and ignore the climate.
That religion is not my one.
My belief and experience is that our very best defence
Against chemicals is chemistery.
Against mechanisms is mechanics.
Against drugs is pharmacy.
Against electricity is proper qualified electricians.
Against leaking tubes, honest and qualified plumbers,..
Against God is theology,
Against nuclear war radiology and atomic physics,
Against weather meteorology.
Against Mammon / Money economy.
Thus, our very best defence against climate ought to be similar.
A special example is Florence Nightinggale.
She said: “Sickness… ignore it!”
=Apparently denialism but…..
…. what she actually seemes to have understood and represented is to take to enlighted qualified, quite elementary and rudimentary care and medicine in the worst situations, plus another important rule: “Allways approach and treat the patient from his healthy side!”
I have red that also fromthe Red Cross as an official doctrine, but I can remember to have understood the same spontaneously by intuition and proper learnings allready 11 years old, when I had to approach and to treat our wild cat for severe and painful abscesses due to dog or fox bites, without opiates.
It took hours, and I shall never forget it. The cat quite efficiantly forbade any approach from the painful side.
And had and used one and only one claw into my hand for control, as I opened and drained the abscess by blunt operation.
Maybe that is further what we have to learn and to understand when we further have to treat and to care for and to cure climate denialism and surrealism.
Proper curing and tratment against trolls and fear, distress, and grief is neither ignorance and denialism nor cosmetics, deodorants and spray, not even pills.
The patient must first be rescued if unable to escape from the situation.
And then carefully told to avoid what has caused and still causes the pain or distress.
He must be admitted and given a chanse to relax and to recover.
Then told to do or to focus on something quite opposite to what caused the fear or the pain or feever or distress.
And then enlightment, slowly and carefully as proper awakening and appetite comes back..
Then, the patient can be let to live and to run further by him / herself.
This shows to be quite close to St.a Hildegard von Bingens philosophy, and she cured the popes in her days. I found it by myself, but hardly without autentic facultary enlightment also.
When the sun goes up, those monsters and trolls show to be just quite common boulders and mosses and old dead rotten trees, that one can easily tacle and live with just by some enlightment about nature and reality.
zebrasays
Michael Sweet #64,
WRT heat pumps, I don’t think you can usefully compare efficiencies because, remember, the energy input for the absorption tech is thermal energy that would otherwise be lost to the environment. But this has some very detailed info on the technology, including efficiencies.
For me, the details are best left to the actual engineers who do the work. But it does illustrate the point I was trying to make previously… in the real world, application/design is going to be specific to locality and end use(s). And that varies a lot.
But do carry on with that useless crap as the world burns.
Piotrsays
Richard Caldwell (36): “ A pontificator who brings up a topic that they didn’t have to, only to declare themself to be ignorant, sure smells like “integrity” to me. How about you?”
In general, yes, in _this_ case, not sure: for when I have read EP saying:”How much energy can be recovered depends on questions of chemistry that I simply don’t have answers to” – my jaw dropped..
You see, in our previous encounter on the subject, EP seemed to be very much an … expert on “how much energy that can be recovered“, and in fact was lecturing on that starting with :“ Piotr gets it backwards AGAIN“ and ending with:” And this ends the chemistry lesson”
So, quite a change compared to today’s chemistry humility. Was it something I said? :-)
A pontificator who brings up a topic that they didn’t have to, only to declare themself to be ignorant, sure smells like “integrity” to me.
Integrity is admitting when you don’t have the answer to something, and you should know by now that I do a lot of thinking out loud.
On the other hand, one can infer things. I’ve not seen any commentary about the removal of carbon buildup in wood or coal gasifiers; plenty of stuff about syngas cooling (including the problematic nature of radiant gas coolers), but nothing about carbon buildup. This leads me to believe that it’s not a problem.
Richard Caldwellsays
Piotr: iii) you knowing that in 2050 the overall demand for electricity in the 100% decarbonized economy WOULD HAVE TO BE MUCH higher than it is today (electric heating instead
RC: Why? Nuclear and renewables can store and transport energy chemically. Methanol and biogas are plug in replacements for fossils. So, really, why is it “KNOWN”, as opposed to supposed?
Richard Caldwellsays
Piotr,
Of course it was partly “something you said”.
EP is observant enough to see that you add ever so much here. Top five for sure…
…even if conversing with your rapier sharp wit sometimes requires a bit of virtual first aid.
nigeljsays
Regarding discussion on lithium supplies potentially running out:
“The scenario which assumes 73 Mt of lithium supply left, best policies (recycling, V2G, second-life) implemented and around 3 billion EVs on the road sees lithium fully depleted a few years beyond 2100.”
The 73 Mt lithium reserves looks much too pessimistic. Appears to make no or minimal provision for future discoveries of lithium. And sea water contains billions of tons of lithium which they appear to be excluding from their numbers, and we know how to extract this:
“The world’s oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium. ”
Extraction is not yet economic, but considerable progress is being made and has realistic potential. And remember the “Limits to Growth” report in the 1970s that assumed various mineral reserves and that we would run out completely by 1995? So much for that modelling.
And there’s this:
“Growing interest in lithium in recent years has seen the world’s largest-known reserves increase significantly, as exploration activities accelerate. According the US Geological Survey (USGS), there are around 80 million tonnes of identified reserves globally as of 2019. That’s up almost 30% compared to a year earlier.”
Notice how quickly the estimates went up. Of course there are limits. Lithium is obviously a finite and scarce resource (compared to iron for example) and we will probably run out eventually, but it looks like there’s enough to scale up plenty of generations of electric vehicles, and of course there are other options like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. And yes we should attack the scarcity problem with recycling, and by limiting the numbers of electric cars etc that we need for whats most essential, and by encouraging public transport, walking and cycling etc. However many of our cities are built to be dependent on cars. Rebuilding entire cities will be neither easy or quick, so we will need plenty of electric cars.
Piotrsays
Richard Caldwell (83) “ Why? Methanol and biogas are plug in replacements for fossils.”
Yes, Richard, but what % of it? Methanol and biogas have an inherent limitation – in their production: as they compete for the limited land with the increasing demand for food, and with carbon sequestration (by living biomass and soil).
And we will have to replace NOT only fossil fuels from electricity generation, but ALSO from transportation (cars and trucks, planes, ships, replacement of diesel-run trains), home heating (replacement of all oil and gas furnaces), and in industrial applications.
RC: Nuclear and renewables can store and transport energy chemically
I am not 100% sure what you mean by storing and transporting their energy chemically – if you mean that we can use electricity to produce energy-rich chemicals – say: H2, then the electricity needed to do that – is the part of the projected large increase in the electricity production.
And even if our Poet had any doubts that we will need more installed power in the future – then BEFORE cockily (“this little gem“) DISCREDITING as absurdly high the global storage in 2052, he should have checked the discussed here source:
one can ridicule global storage in 2052 ONLY by showing that it is absurdly high compared to the total power projected in the same year, NOT by “contrasting” the projected 2052 global storage with … average demand in 2020 in the US only .
Killiansays
68 nigelj says:
10 May 2021 at 9:02 PM
Killian @55
“For chrissakes, I gave you a SCALE-based, nested Commons, egalitarian model TEN years ago! ”
I don’t think I was READING the comments section of this website ten years ago. You must be thinking of someone else.
Don’t be obtuse. Obviously, I have done so in the years you have been here.
I have no recollection of your points 1 and 2.
Indicating you have little understanding of what is important.
I do recall plenty of discussion on other aspects of the commons issue.
“1. Nested Commons, i.e. Commons at various scales ranging from neighborhood to town to city to bio-region.”
Ok, thanks this is informative.
Yes, as it has been since 2011.
My criticism is it looks like a very complex structure to administer
You cannot criticize what you have zero understanding of. You are barking words. It is the opposite of complex and nothing is “adminstered”; there is no hierarchy.
and to get people to agree on
Moot. Any change to the current system, which *must* change requires the same.
and I’m just not persuaded that the means of production will work well handled as some sort of ‘commons’
“…because I think so…” is what children say. History says it works extremely well.
if by commons you mean communally owned and run. I’m afraid we will have to agree to disagree. I can see it possibly working for the resource base such as the land and its below ground resources etc.
Again, “because I think so” means nothing to anyone but you.
“2. Egalitarian decision-making AT SCALE. See above for scales…
It is easy to see how egalitarian decision making would work for a group of for example twenty people… But get above about 20 people and it gets cumbersome.
See previous. You have zero experience with this, yet think you have a legitimate point of view. As I said, post less. Much less.
How would egalitarian decision making work for a water supply? The entire public can’t sit around a table.
No shit? Think.
with no hierarchy at all, that would require a lot of decision making by committee.
There are a number of egalitarian systems. Those decisions are made by the people in those places.
If not, do you see a place for a trimmed down hierarchy?
No. Others may choose such stupidity.
What decisions should be left to a hierarchy of some sort?
See previous.
And what about a factory?
Up to those involved.
Would just anyone make decisions?
Stopping here. I knew I was wasting my time, but this is ridiculous.
Mr. Know It Allsays
4- nigelj
““Report: All new cars and trucks in U.S. could be electric by 2035”.”
So, when would 50% of the current stock of ICE vehicles be off the road? 75%?
6- Gary Rucinski
“Boston University will be hosting a virtual conference on carbon pricing…”
I have heard they do have an economics department:
17 – BPL
“BPL: And if all the railroad track mileage in the United States were laid end to end, it would stretch more than halfway to the Moon!”
That’s OK, if the train was going fast enough it could coast the rest of the way to the moon. I’ll bet Elon Musk has a plan for it already!
:)
25 – Kevin McKinney
I think the best location for pumped hydro is at existing hydro-electric dams. Just need to pump some water back up and over. Massive quantities of new dams ain’t gonna happen in the USA. Greenies will not allow it, and the CO2 footprint of new concrete dams is YUUUUUGE!
27 – Robert M
“So when it stops raining, like now, electricity prices go through the roof and our last remaining coal-fired power station makes big profits burning cheap Indonesian coal.”
Killian, did you read that? NZ is ground zero for climate criminals! nigelj has been touting the virtues of NZ hydro all these years and not giving the whole story! I’m shocked!
:)
K 72: Get back to me when you’ve made a significant contribution to the field of Economics, eh?
BPL: Never published a paper in it. But Milton Friedman liked the stuff I sent him informally. I’m satisfied with that.
Ric Merrittsays
nigelj currently #85: “And remember the “Limits to Growth” report in the 1970s that assumed various mineral reserves and that we would run out completely by 1995?”
I suspect imprecision and urban legends. Do you have a link for that citation? Or a copy of the book you can quote from? (I’ve occasionally thought of getting a copy of the 1972 original. They don’t seem highly available.)
nigeljsays
Killian @87
You accuse me of barking words and not understanding, or not having “experience” but that is all just empty rhetoric. This hasn’t falsified anything I said and you don’t even answer half the questions. I think that’s so obvious to people here it doesn’t need me making a more forensically detailed reply of the Piotr variety.
But here your comments are particularly bizarre. I said “How would egalitarian decision making work for a water supply? The entire public can’t sit around a table.” You said “No shit? Think.” This is despite the fact I had gone on to say “Would the public vote for something like a board of directors and they have equal voice in final decisions? ” So you are just either a very stupid man, or don’t have any actual answers, or are quoting me selectively to try to discredit me, a nasty trollish thing to do. But I leave it to others to decide which. Simpler still you should just desist from these tactics in future.
Common ownership has only worked at scale in hunter gather cultures etc, and with things like traditional farming and whether that’s an ideal model is still open to debate. You cannot imprint that on the modern ownership of things like industry. Experiments trying to do this have failed, eg the Soviet Union. The UK in the 1970s. At best it will be very messy and inefficient.
Reading your comments and reply I find the whole regenerative governance idea will be difficult to make work and scale up. Most alternative (intentional communities) that try these sorts of things fail. This is easily googled. Some have worked reasonably long term but all this doesn’t give me much confidence the idea is realistic and scaleable. It would need some modification at the very least.
Some other elements of simplification are clearly helpful, workable and scaleable such as the circular economy, passive solar housing and no till farming etc.
nigeljsays
Ric Merritt @90
“I suspect imprecision and urban legends. Do you have a link for that citation? Or a copy of the book you can quote from? (I’ve occasionally thought of getting a copy of the 1972 original. They don’t seem highly available.)”
I don’t have the book and I cant find the article I read, about ten years ago. But the wikipedia entry for the book has relevant information that backs up my recollection. It has part of the commodity reserve extrapolation table for some minerals like gold, lead and oil based on estimates of reserves made in 1972 and has them running out by about 1995 (varies for each one and based on an exponential growth in use). It also has data assuming 5x more reserve and when that would run out.
And I should care because–? AFAICT, you’ve not even bothered to read what we’ve been saying here, let alone the links.
Astringentsays
Reinforcing Ric@90. The original text of ‘Limits for Growth ‘ is easily available online. The section on minerals says ‘At the present rate of expansion . . . silver, tin, and uranium may be in short supply even at higher prices by the turn of the century. By the year 2050, several more minerals may be exhausted if the current rate of consumption continues.’ The only occurrence of the date 1995 in the text is in a statement about DDT persistence in fish!
The essential message of the book is that any finite resource will run out if exploitation increases exponentially – and that isn’t contentious, it’s just arithmetic.
Killiansays
89 Barton Paul Levenson says:
13 May 2021 at 7:42 AM
K 72: Get back to me when you’ve made a significant contribution to the field of Economics, eh?
BPL: Never published a paper in it. But Milton Friedman liked the stuff I sent him informally. I’m satisfied with that.
Good for you. But I *changed* the entire basis of heterodox economics with one simple observation. But, again, I guess I don’t understand Econ…
I also have been calling for Jubilee as a necessary condition for a shift to equitable economics, dealing with climate, etc., and now that’s gaining traction.
In fact, I called for a total shut down and essentially UBI (they call it stimulus) to get the pandemic over within two months – back in early March 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE0qANFxp90
I wasn’t the first to suggest jubilee as part of a long-term societal shift, but part of effective analysis is knowing when others have got something right. I can’t remember whom I first heard that idea from, but it was likely on The Oil Drum, so possibly the people behind the Automatic Earth who originally were posting at TOD.
Having come to understand regenerative systems, it became clear to me if you want to *smoothly* shift from Capitalism, or at least get to a far more equitable form of it, some degree of Jubilee would be needed. (UBI or Fee & Dividend can serve similar functions if broad enough.)
Killiansays
85 nigelj says:
12 May 2021 at 9:49 PM
Regarding discussion on lithium supplies potentially running out:
“The scenario which assumes 73 Mt of lithium supply left, best policies (recycling, V2G, second-life) implemented and around 3 billion EVs on the road sees lithium fully depleted a few years beyond 2100.”
The 73 Mt lithium reserves looks much too pessimistic.
You didn’t read the article? Range was from 39 to 80. They took 73 bc they thought the 80 analysis was unconvincing. They used a well-supported number from the high range and that was “far too pessimistic.”
Appears to make no or minimal provision for future discoveries of lithium.
The boost from 39 to 80 is VERY recent, so, yeah, new discoveries are included. However, they are not stupid, so are basing their analysis on the known, not magical or wishful thinking, unlike he Who Should Not Be Posting.
And sea water contains billions of tons of lithium which they appear to be excluding from their numbers, and we know how to extract this:
“The world’s oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium. ”
So… the oceans are already being
* polluted with chemicals at massive scales
* polluted with plastic at massive scales
* rapidly losing foraminefera
* rapidly losing oxygen
* rapidly warming
* rapidly acidifying
etc., but we should further chemically castrate the oceans by removing the lithium.
Extraction is not yet economic
Thus, it doesn’t exist in intelligent forward-looking analyses *until it is economic.*
And remember the “Limits to Growth” report in the 1970s that assumed various mineral reserves and that we would run out completely by 1995? So much for that modelling.
Lie. 1. They made no predictions. 2. They didn’t even use specific resources and their limits, they used a “non-renewable resources” algorithm. 3. None of the scenarios shows an end to any resource by 1995.
JUST. STOP. POSTING.
Or, at least do us all a favor and stop responding to anything I post. Too much time is wasted debunking virtually everything you have to say.
Killiansays
89 Barton Paul Levenson says:
BPL: Never published a paper in it. But Milton Friedman liked the stuff I sent him informally. I’m satisfied with that.
Dear gods, I just caught this. Milton Friedman? Of the Chicago School? One of the most destructive minds of the 20th century? Let me know when Trump pats you on the back, too.
He’s *proud* of that. This is Victor-, KIA-level bad.
Killiansays
Just in case anyone thought I was blowing smoke about talking about Jubilee as being a necessity… 12 years ago.
Killian @96 “So… the oceans are already being, polluted with chemicals at massive scales etc, but we should further chemically castrate the oceans by removing the lithium.”
Nobody is going to chemically castrate the oceans by removing dissolved lithium if its done properly. Removing lithium dissolved in the ocean’s involves various extraction processes done in factories. It doesn’t involve injecting dangerous chemicals into the oceans. Its far lower risk than other forms of mining like the sea bed.
“And remember the “Limits to Growth” report in the 1970s that assumed various mineral reserves and that we would run out completely by 1995? So much for that modelling.”
“Lie. 1. They made no predictions. 2. They didn’t even use specific resources and their limits….”
Wrong. Refer to my comment @ 92: “But the wikipedia entry for the book (limits to growth) has relevant information that backs up my recollection. It has part of the commodity reserve extrapolation table for some minerals like gold, lead and oil based on estimates of reserves made in 1972 and has them running out by about 1995 (varies for each one and based on an exponential growth in use)……” Proving what I said: Limits to growth was too pessimistic with its estimates.
And refer to Astringent @94 where he mentions that limits to growth predicted “silver, tin, and uranium may be in short supply even at higher prices by the turn of the century (2000)” Clearly this didn’t happen so backs up my comment that it was all too pessimistic.
“JUST. STOP. POSTING. Or, at least do us all a favor and stop responding to anything I post. Too much time is wasted debunking virtually everything you have to say.”
YOU criticised me for not engaging over the regenerative governance issue so I engaged, somewhat reluctantly . Make up your mind what you want. You have debunked nothing I say. The debunking only exists in your mind.
Piotrsays
In his (96), Killian, in his classic understatement accuses Nigel of wanting to
“castrate the oceans” by extracting lithium from seawater for EVs.
Let’s see what “castration” means in the Great Killian’s Dictionary (2 ed., Oxford University Press, with a foreword by William Jefferson “It depends upon what ‘is’ is” Clinton):
i) Nigel(85): demand for lithium in the next 85(?) years: 73 Mt
ii) Nigel(85): estimate of lithium in the ocean water: 180 Gt
So if all lithium in the next 85 years came from the ocean, lithium concentration in the oceans would crash to … 99.96% of its current values, which to our Killian constitutes … “chemical castration of the oceans”.
[The applicants for Italian church singer positions wipe the sweat off their brows and breathe (only a slightly higher pitched) sigh of relief… ]
Ladies and Gentlemen
I just red a lot about industrial waste heat from nuclear plants, in large and long pipelines to both heat and to cool cities and urban settlements. Further, about how stupid that is.
Q: Have you really lost all your fantacies here?
Because I know of other methods.
A very traditional one is to saw the ice on special ice- pools and dams. Pack it in sawdust and sail it to London,…. where a piece of proper ice in their whiskey in august did cost their skirts.
Still, they could not withstand it, and paid!
So if you think in terms of profit and business…..try and think again and take a good example.
The same ice was further very vital for possible storing and distribution of fresh milk and of fish before electricity and the invention of the cooler machine.
Icecream in summer was also not possible without salted, natural ice.
But there are further methods for higher temperatures.
Na2SO4 . 10H2O is a solid cristalline substance, and that stoechiomewtric cristal water is a qvasi- ice. That melts and freezes at 38 celsius by consequently, record high entropies.
If salted, NaCl .Na2SO4 .10H2O, freeses and fuses slightly below 20 Celsius by an even higher entropy.
Thus heat can easily be stored and released and brought around by ships and waggons … at very practical temperatures. Which can also be combined with heat pumps driven by solar, windmills, or Nuclear.
And remember, it was a quite profitable industry based on natural ice, that could also be stored, freighted, and shipped.
Michael Sweet, #47–
I can–I guess obviously. To do these kinds of things on these, you must use HTML tags.
To quote: the “blockquote” tag (that’s what I used for your quote above).
To italicize: the “em” tag
To bold: the “b” tag
That’s also how you can insert links. (But I’m not sure what that tag is actually called. The “a” tag? The “href” tag?)
It’s a little tricky giving you examples, though, because if they’re in the text the blog will try to execute them! I know there’s an elegant way around that little difficulty because I’ve seen it done–Gavin used it years ago when he kindly introduced me to this stuff–but I don’t know what it is.
So I’m going to try what I think is a less elegant way, and we’ll just see how it turns out. The critical characters are what I’ll call a ‘left caret’ and a ‘right caret’. I can’t think of a way to show you the former, but the latter looks like this: > Its unwritable ‘left’ counterpart is found on an adjacent key on the bottom row of most keyboards. In these examples, I’ll use the ‘codes’ [LC] and [RC] to replace the actual carets you would type in.
To quote: [LC]blockquote[RC][content][LC]/blockquote[RC]
To italicize: [LC]em[RC][content][LC]/em[RC]
To bold: [LC]b[RC][content][LC]/b[RC]
To link: [LC]a href=”(URL)” rel=”nofollow”[RC][content][LC]/a[RC]
That seems to be correct in the preview, but looks a bit intimidating to my eye. It may be easier to refer to any of the several good online HTML references, many of which include the capability to try the code out interactively. Here’s just one:
https://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/default.ASP
Killian says “You doubt it. I presented Regenerative Governance to this site ten years ago. You have yet to engage meaningfully.”
Please provide a detailed description of regenerative governance!!!!!!!!! Not everyone was reading this website ten years ago or can remember what you said.
zebra @45, ok good, smaller global population means less conflicts over resources and need for complex ownership laws, but you are still left with problems of local potential environmental degradation and pollution, which will require a system of laws and policing, (or something) and you still have to deal with the lengthy transition period.
Kevin and nigel,
For chrissakes, I gave you a SCALE-based, nested Commons, egalitarian model TEN years ago! Now, here you are discussing this article which discusses sub-optimal concepts when you have NEVER seriously engaged the model I produced?
Are you intentionally obtuse? Do you hate the idea that I might suggest the best option for humanity that you literally talk up sub-optimal solutions that have key aspects of my model rather than engage on a much better system?
I TOLD you ten goddamned years ago:
1. Nested Commons, i.e. Commons at various scales ranging from neighborhood to town to city to bio-region.
2. Egalitarian decision-making AT SCALE. See above for scales. E.g.: An empty lot is a neighborhood issue; city water supply (if any) is a city-wide issue; managing a watershed would be multi-level depending on the specific issue, but overall would be managed at the bio-regional level. Etc.
I have posted this so goddamned many times, yet here you salivate over near-garbage because it has features I presented… ten years ago… and discuss them as if you’ve never heard the ideas before.
TEN YEARS.
We do not have time for such continued self-inflicted foolishness. You’ve had a scale-based Commons-based governance model in your hands for a DECADE.
And nigel, that you need Kevin to explain to you a nuclear plant is **not** a locally-managed issue is a perfect example of why you should post a LOT less than you do. FYI, it would be a bio-regional issue primarily and, given the effects of a melt-down or other major disaster, even inter-bio-regional.
M S Sweet makes a good point that if you have to install heating pipes in EXISTING roads it would obviously be very expensive. China is using waste heat from nuclear power to heat one of its cities with more planned. However the city already has a water reticulation system under the roads to heat homes and this was powered with coal. This was presumably installed as the city was built. They are replacing the coal fired power with nuclear power as its cleaner.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1170222.shtml#:~:text=Haiyang%20in%20East%20China's%20Shandong,plant%2C%20an%20environmentally%20friendly%20way.&text=The%20heating%20system%20uses%20non,the%20city's%20centralized%20heating%20systems.
My fellow space travelers, we are being invaded by more space travelers. They might scare you if you see them and are not aware of what they are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgysWWwESfU&t=52s
They are starlink satellites, and many people are not happy about them ruining their view of the night sky:
https://earthsky.org/human-world/will-spacex-starlink-satellites-ruin-stargazing
I believe I read the FCC has given them permits for 30,000 of these, and right now they are planning to eventually have 40-50,000. They supposedly will provide satellite internet service to rural areas mostly in the northern hemisphere. Rural areas already have satellite service – there are several such services available, but the speeds are not great – perhaps similar to or slightly slower than DSL. Other companies are also planning to deploy thousands more satellites for other purposes, or perhaps to compete with SpaceX.
I am sure there are folks watching the reaction to this night sky pollution with the thought of deploying large satellites to block the sun for purposes of reducing incoming solar energy due to the climate “emergency”.
39 – Susan Anderson
Nice video of Gavin you posted last month. He seems like a nice guy. I noticed that BPL replied to a few comments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrJJxn-gCdo
Carbomontanus: To my opinion now for a long time, the combustion engine has hardly drawn its last sigh. I truly admire that class of engines. They only need better fuel now, and that is a challenge rather for chemistery.
RC: No. The internal combustion engine can only improve significantly via a total rewrite.
Read my recent Forced Responses posts. Given combustion chamber walls seriously above ignition temperature and a low-to-medium pressure fuel injection system that fragments, vaporizes, and mixes the fuel far better than current high pressure designs,
The fuel is somewhat irrelevant. EP will tell you that methanol is superior. I agree. The oxygen atom that’s incorporated in the fuel tends to grab the fuel’s carbon, forming carbon monoxide.
Yeah, one doesn’t want CO as an end product, but with three strokes of combustion, and, subsequently, a catalyzed and extra-oxiginated secondary combustion phase, that CO will be fully consumed.
K 43: unlike you, I understand Economics.
BPL: ROFLMAO! But you never passed a course in it, did you? Come on, Killian, ‘fess up.
So whenever I visit the ‘discussion’ here at Forced Responses I’m always struck that there is rarely a post on supply-side climate policy solutions. It’s like only 100% renewables or other energy substitution for fossil fuels solutions exist.
What if you were reading a magazine article on great writing in America and every citation was a book of fiction by a white male? Would you maybe stop to consider what was wrong here?
So in a Covering Climate Now newsletter I found an article on moving to climate solutions in American climate journalism and every citation – WashPost, NYTimes, Bloomberg Green, etc. – was completely within orthodox decarbonixation.
????? Renewables out competing fossil fuels in existing markets, aided by carbon pricing or subsidies, etc., was always a stretch in the 2050 timeline – it’s not going to reduce emissions enough by 2030, not even close, not a chance in hell. But it seems no climate journalist in America even knows there are possible, extremely needed, supply-side policies that have to be implemented fast.
Only Allowed Solutions? https://countercurrents.org/2021/05/only-allowed-solutions/
FYI: hope it interests – orthodox decarbinization or supply-side policies too?
Yes, I’m sort of tilting at (100% renewables) windmills but climate mitigation is wrapped in a fog of denial and climate journalism is part of the problem and we are running out of time. This oped is one of four on climate mitigation and denial written in the lead up to Biden’s climate summit – with one more to be published.
Three recent articles underpin my op-ed:
Net zero is a dangerous trap
https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368
The (Canadian) Liberal climate action plan is a recipe for failure
https://seniorsforclimateactionnow.org/source/The%20Liberal%20Climate%20Action%20Formula%20-%20March%202021.pdf
And Alex Steffen’s blockbuster Last Hurrah blogpost
https://alexsteffen.substack.com/p/the-last-hurrah
Do you really want to just stay happy mouthing allowed responses to climate change?
This comment isn’t about addressing climate change, but it’s a new couple of reasons we would probably want to keep permafrost cold longer. The article discusses (but doesn’t link to) a study suggesting increased radon emissions and release of mercury as permafrost thaws across the Arctic.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/climate-crisis/2021/05/scientists-fear-more-lung-cancer-radon-released-thawing-permafrost
“Massive amounts of uranium are stored in high concentrations underground throughout the Arctic zone. A product of uranium decay is radon gas. Normally, radon is contained in the soil by layers of ground and snow atop of it. However, as permafrost thaws, the radioactive gas seeps out from underground and is released into the atmosphere.
The link between thawing permafrost and increased risk of lung cancer is presented by researchers with the Federal Center for Comprehensive Study of the Arctic with the Russian Academy of Science.”
Some bombs are good bombs, particularly implosion.
https://cooldesign.medium.com/the-great-pause-week-60-demographic-time-bombs-ff43fc949e95
Kevin McKinney at 52:
You said
Thanks for the help. I don’t like italics so I left it normal font.
Zebra at 49:
Thanks for the advice. I started reading here a few months ago. Someone has been repeating Engineer Poets claims at Skeptical Science and I wanted to see what he said. From your comments it seems the regulars here know that his “plans” are worth.
Your link was very informative. They used a small city with a 265 MW power plant as an example. That was larger than I had heard of. They use absorption chillers to cool when they only deliver heat. As I understand it, heat pumps can add/remove three times as much energy as they use to run. I.E. if you input 100 joules of energy you can move 300 joules.
Does anyone happen to know the efficiency of absorption chillers? I presume heat pumps are more efficient since that is what all the future plans I have seen use.
@25:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all of them together don’t add up to one Lake Baikal either.
So what? That’s not the issue. You have to make UPPER reservoirs, hundreds or thousands of them, within some short distance of each lower reservoir. They have to be high enough above the lower reservoir because the energy stored is proportional to the ΔH. If the hydraulic head was not the arbitrarily specified 500 m but the 111 m of Ludington, it would take MORE than the volume of Lake Erie to store the specified amount of energy. Where can you put that much water? Pretty much nowhere in N. America within range of such lakes, and they have to be lakes because seawater would render much of the land below barren.
For all the PHS potential of the Great Lakes, Ludington is the only PHS plant on them. Even when the upgrades are complete, it will store less than 50 GWh of energy. You could store that much juice in a mere 2.5 gigaliters of liquid at Form Energy’s lower energy density bound of 20 Wh/l. That’s two and a half cubes, 100 meters on a side; a large-sized tank farm.
Why aren’t they already in use by the dozen? It’s not like the need is new; peaking generation has been an issue for decades.
Those are NOT reservoirs. Those are makeup water for evaporation. They are different things.
Per Wikipedia, the Bath Co. PHS unit only stores 24 GWh of energy, or 8 hours at full power. The 2017-18 New England cold snap lasted FIFTEEN DAYS; BCPHS would need 45 times the reservoir capacity to have ridden out the dark, calm, cold conditions of a winter high-pressure system, and that only if it started with the upper reservoirs full. Not even Form Energy’s 150-hour flow battery would be adequate.
It’s far past time to admit that “renewables” are unable to supply reliable power capable of keeping an industrial economy up and running. They are unfit for that purpose. Their best role is probably as suppliers of energy to loads which can be managed on the demand side.
@26:
If I’m not mistaken, that raw number is bigger than average world electric load. I was just contrasting to the United States because it’s what I’m most familiar with.
World electric consumption in 2019 was 22823 TWh, an average of 2605 GW. Barnard’s projection for storage power is nearly 1.5 times this. Do I need to point out just how staggeringly huge a job that would be—especially for something that doesn’t actually generate a single joule? My all-nuclear economy would spend most of its money and resources building actual generators.
Sourpuss again @47:
Did you notice the word “if” in that sentence?
I suspect I know how to make such a nuclear reactor: liquid uranium-plutonium fuel, silicon carbide containers, and lead coolant. It would have nothing under pressure in the coolant circuits and shut down spontaneously if cooling was lost due to expansion of the liquid fuel; in short, it would require only a minimal containment and be walk-away safe. The metallic fuel would be easily reprocessed by electrowinning in a molten salt bath.
At one time we could go from concept to test reactor in a few years. But until this country overcomes its inculcated paranoia over radiation (while ignoring radiation exposure from things like airplane flights), we’ll never see anything like this tested, let alone deployed at scale.
Because that’s the baseline technology which also allows “renewables” to contribute to the effort on an equal footing, since it’s all electric.
You forgot where I found a more likely figure of 195.2 GW(th) for the gasification alone, which puts far less load on the electric grid. Once the biomass has been converted to pipeline-transportable materials and ash, the remainder of the processing can be done anywhere on the pipeline network.
I stumbled across another possibility from previous work which may further reduce the energy requirements at the site of initial processing. I need to dig into it to see what potential it may have.
No, you need to co-locate the reactor and the gasification plant. If you e.g. convert part of the biomass to liquids and use them to pump the remaining solid carbon as a slurry, you can put the gasification elsewhere. This is one of the possibilities I need to check out. It won’t happen right away, as there aren’t enough hours in the day.
I have just (as in the previous year or two) witnessed new water and natural gas lines being installed. The gas lines were run from one hole to another and drilled through the intervening soil. The water lines were installed using trucks which drilled through the soil and literally vacuumed it out of the ground. Only patches of pavement were disturbed.
My alma mater heats most of its buildings with steam from its own power plant. That plant used to receive fuel via its own dedicated rail spur delivering coal, but since before I matriculated it has been fired by natural gas.
There is nothing in principle which prevents another conversion, e.g. to steam generated in a higher-temperature SMR such as one cooled by sodium or molten salt. For 30 years, EBR-II supplied steam to heat much of its campus. What you claim is impossible has already been done.
Killian @55
“For chrissakes, I gave you a SCALE-based, nested Commons, egalitarian model TEN years ago! ”
I don’t think I was READING the comments section of this website ten years ago. You must be thinking of someone else. I have no recollection of your points 1 and 2. I do recall plenty of discussion on other aspects of the commons issue.
“1. Nested Commons, i.e. Commons at various scales ranging from neighborhood to town to city to bio-region.”
Ok, thanks this is informative. My criticism is it looks like a very complex structure to administer and to get people to agree on, and I’m just not persuaded that the means of production will work well handled as some sort of ‘commons’ as I’ve previously explained, if by commons you mean communally owned and run. I’m afraid we will have to agree to disagree. I can see it possibly working for the resource base such as the land and its below ground resources etc.
“2. Egalitarian decision-making AT SCALE. See above for scales. E.g.: An empty lot is a neighborhood issue; city water supply (if any) is a city-wide issue; managing a watershed would be multi-level depending on the specific issue, but overall would be managed at the bio-regional level. Etc.”
It is easy to see how egalitarian decision making would work for a group of for example twenty people. They could sit around a table to resolve things, by vote or consensus, ultimately. Each would have an equal voice. I assume that’s what you mean by “egalitarian decison making”. Modern partnership structures and family farms are often egalitarian like this. But get above about 20 people and it gets cumbersome.
How would egalitarian decision making work for a water supply? The entire public can’t sit around a table. Would the public vote for something like a board of directors and they have equal voice in final decisions? Or how would it work? Would this encompass ALL decisions? Because with no hierarchy at all, that would require a lot of decision making by committee. If not, do you see a place for a trimmed down hierarchy? What decisions should be left to a hierarchy of some sort? This could be routine daily operational decisions?
And what about a factory? Would just anyone make decisions? Normally for factories people with appropriate expertise are best to make decisions. This means not everyone could participate. I assume that is ok.
“And nigel, that you need Kevin to explain to you a nuclear plant is **not** a locally-managed issue is a perfect example of why you should post a LOT less than you do.”
No. I was criticising the article because it had no clarity about what would be local and what would be regional. I don’t like second guessing people. Its up to the writer to be clear, matter of fact, coherent and logical. I know what “I” think should be local or regional, and a nuclear plant should be dealt with at country level or wider.
In fact environmental impacts often spread well beyond the local so I suspect we will find you need a great many regional standards. This is why I’m a bit sceptical of all this localisation and how far it can go. New Zealand has tried localisation (within the conventional socio economic system) with for example numerous local body councils and boards, and its been so problematic they are now amalgamating those and going back to mostly regional and central government structures for most decision making. I’m not saying this is necessarily the right decision, but its how things are going.
E-P, #65–
Correct, but as is often the case, beside the point. The Bath County reservoirs are both artificial. The point is that you don’t need either A) massive amounts of water, or B) reservoirs involving large bodies of water.
Bill Henderson @60
“So whenever I visit the ‘discussion’ here at Forced Responses I’m always struck that there is rarely a post on supply-side climate policy solutions. It’s like only 100% renewables or other energy substitution for fossil fuels solutions exist.”
There has been plenty of discussion on cutting our personal carbon footprints. And all the ‘simplification’ ideas. And MMT. But IMO its just not realistic to expect people to make truly massive cuts to their consumption levels. People are mostly just concerned with their own survival and pleasures and interests. Read the book the selfish gene by Richard Dawkins. This is why the the priority has to be energy substitution at scale, and hopefully there will be some reduction in levels of consumption as a useful add on. Suggest you read Bill Gates new book on climate change. He gets it.
Poet(66): If I’m not mistaken, that raw number is bigger than average world electric load.
Yes, you are mistaken, because you are comparing apples from 2020 with oranges from 2050, namely: you ridicule as absurdly high:
– the PEAK (of demand minus supply) load for 143 countries in 2050
– by “ contrasting it” with the …AVERAGE load, first …. in the US, then when challenged – with the world, in both cases not from 2050 but from today.
And you have done all that despite:
i) graduating from an Engineering school where they must have taught you the difference between providing the average load and the peak (demand-supply) load.
ii) me explaining to you this very difference in at least half a dozen of posts on RC, using words even a Poet should have understood
iii) you knowing that in 2050 the overall demand for electricity in the 100% decarbonized economy WOULD HAVE TO BE MUCH higher than it is today (electric heating instead of oil and gas furnaces, electric/hydrogen cars/trucks/ships/planes, non-fossil source of industrial heat, increase peak demand for air condition, etc…), and if so then you CAN’T “contrast” X from 2050 with Y from 2020.
In the discussed study (Jacobsen et al.), the total load for 2052 is: 40,544 GW. So let’s use the highest storage power bandied around here: “3,700 GW” for 2052. So in such case: 3,700/40,544 = 9% of the total power in 2052.
And if I read Jacobson Table 3 right, if we balance the demand with supply using storage in 24 regional grids instead 143 independent country grids – according to their simulations the storage power needed – can be REDUCED to … 702 GW.
In such case: 702 GW/40,544 GW = 1.7% of the total power in 2052.
Neither 1.7% nor even 9% are as patently absurdly high numbers as “1.5 TIMES the global” or “8 TIMES the US” load, on the height of which numbers our Poet based his derision toward others: “ F’rinstance, this little gem regarding storage power“.
The Sixth Law of Thermodynamics: “The arrogance of a body increases with its ignorance”.
=========================================
P.S. Poet(66) “ I was just contrasting to the United States because it’s what I’m most familiar with
So… you KNEW that we talked not about the US, but ~ GLOBAL storage load, and to show how absurdly high are these ~GLOBAL numbers, you “contrasted them” on purpose not with global, but with … the US numbers?
That will make quite an interesting precedent for the future discussions on any science blog. Say, on the RD (Real Diseases):
Louis Pasteur: “We have created a breakthrough treatment for disease X, capable to prevent worldwide 1 mln deaths a year!”
Epidemiologist-Poet: “This piece left me with more questions than I had before I read it. F’rinstance, this little gem: that Pasteur guy claims to be able to save 1 mln lives, which is 8 times more than the deaths on X in the US!”
And when challenged that “contrasting” is dishonest – our E-Poet would shrug it off with: “ I was just contrasting to the United States because it’s what I’m most familiar with“.
======================================
59 Barton Paul Levenson says:
9 May 2021 at 5:46 AM
K 43: unlike you, I understand Economics.
BPL: ROFLMAO! But you never passed a course in it, did you? Come on, Killian, ‘fess up.
Logical fallacy. Classes are not necessary for learning – and are often detrimental to it. Witness the “Chicago School” of Economics.
That said, I passed both the courses I took. 95% on my 2nd economics final. (Must’ve been micro?) Understanding the Laffer Curve made understanding Tainter’s Diminishing Returns on Complexity really easy – 24 years later. My conversation with him in 2010 was enlightening; it really helped me nail down the concept of complexity – which many seem to misunderstand, as I did somewhat till then. His curve is vital to understanding why tech responses to climate cannot succeed.
At the same conference, I made a claim that Steve Keen’s Minsky model of a steady-state economy couldn’t function as he claimed (though it spun neatly round and round) because it wasn’t accounting for profit and money equaling energy in the system, wealth functioning as hoarding and waste, and profit inherently requiring growth.
His model now is based on energy flows/thermodynamics.
*sarc*
So, gosh, no, guess I don’t understand anything about economics.
*/sarc*
Get back to me when you’ve made a significant contribution to the field of Economics, eh?
There’s nothing difficult about the concepts within economics. Anybody can master them with ease unless, like you, their ideology prevents it.
53 nigelj says:
8 May 2021 at 4:30 PM
Killian says “You doubt it. I presented Regenerative Governance to this site ten years ago. You have yet to engage meaningfully.”
Please provide a detailed description of regenerative governance!!!!!!!!! Not everyone was reading this website ten years ago or can remember what you said.
I have done so repeatedly since you started posting here. Pay attention. I’m getting tired of you all drooling over concepts I tried to get through your skulls already.
Prejudice is bad. Don’t do prejudice.
E-P 65: “renewables” are unable to supply reliable power capable of keeping an industrial economy up and running.
BPL: No matter how many times you stay it, it still won’t be true.
Pun intended.
Why you do not build out a massive new infrastructure for a resource that will be gone in less than a century if you do:
The group also modeled eight future demand scenarios, factoring in variables including EV adoption, battery second-life uses and recycling and vehicle-to-grid integration. Using the two sets of scenarios, the researchers came up with 18 outcomes, each of which highlighted a different year when lithium supplies would run dry.
Supply and demand would stay balanced for the next decade in all scenarios, the LUT-Augsburg group found, and supply would even exceed demand up to mid century but from that point on, shortages will kick in.
The scenario which assumes 73 Mt of lithium supply left, best policies (recycling, V2G, second-life) implemented and around 3 billion EVs on the road sees lithium fully depleted a few years beyond 2100. If the same policies and number of cars were matched with just 26 Mt of lithium, but recycling efforts would only grow slowly, battery manufacturers will close shops even before 2040.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/09/15/how-long-will-the-lithium-supply-last/
If, however, we simplify, we have abundant lithium – relatively. More importantly, we have time to create the recycling infrastructure to be able to leave most of the lithium untouched. that would avoid things like this:
Bye-bye, Thiem’s buckwheat:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/10/cars/evs-species-extinct-nevada/index.html
Another source said we’ll need 42 x the amount mined in 2020 to meet the Paris agreement – which is woefully inadequate, so the number would be considerably higher. Imagine Theim’s buckwheat over and over and over… and that’s just for ONE mineral. What about the rest of the periodic table needed for consumption to prop up mass consumption…
Simplify. No other choice.
Ladies and Gentlemen.
Dr.13 writes that the best defence against this climate anxiety / distress / grief is denialism. Simply deny and ignore the climate.
That religion is not my one.
My belief and experience is that our very best defence
Against chemicals is chemistery.
Against mechanisms is mechanics.
Against drugs is pharmacy.
Against electricity is proper qualified electricians.
Against leaking tubes, honest and qualified plumbers,..
Against God is theology,
Against nuclear war radiology and atomic physics,
Against weather meteorology.
Against Mammon / Money economy.
Thus, our very best defence against climate ought to be similar.
A special example is Florence Nightinggale.
She said: “Sickness… ignore it!”
=Apparently denialism but…..
…. what she actually seemes to have understood and represented is to take to enlighted qualified, quite elementary and rudimentary care and medicine in the worst situations, plus another important rule: “Allways approach and treat the patient from his healthy side!”
I have red that also fromthe Red Cross as an official doctrine, but I can remember to have understood the same spontaneously by intuition and proper learnings allready 11 years old, when I had to approach and to treat our wild cat for severe and painful abscesses due to dog or fox bites, without opiates.
It took hours, and I shall never forget it. The cat quite efficiantly forbade any approach from the painful side.
And had and used one and only one claw into my hand for control, as I opened and drained the abscess by blunt operation.
Maybe that is further what we have to learn and to understand when we further have to treat and to care for and to cure climate denialism and surrealism.
Proper curing and tratment against trolls and fear, distress, and grief is neither ignorance and denialism nor cosmetics, deodorants and spray, not even pills.
The patient must first be rescued if unable to escape from the situation.
And then carefully told to avoid what has caused and still causes the pain or distress.
He must be admitted and given a chanse to relax and to recover.
Then told to do or to focus on something quite opposite to what caused the fear or the pain or feever or distress.
And then enlightment, slowly and carefully as proper awakening and appetite comes back..
Then, the patient can be let to live and to run further by him / herself.
This shows to be quite close to St.a Hildegard von Bingens philosophy, and she cured the popes in her days. I found it by myself, but hardly without autentic facultary enlightment also.
When the sun goes up, those monsters and trolls show to be just quite common boulders and mosses and old dead rotten trees, that one can easily tacle and live with just by some enlightment about nature and reality.
Michael Sweet #64,
WRT heat pumps, I don’t think you can usefully compare efficiencies because, remember, the energy input for the absorption tech is thermal energy that would otherwise be lost to the environment. But this has some very detailed info on the technology, including efficiencies.
https://www.cibsejournal.com/cpd/modules/2016-03-chil/
For me, the details are best left to the actual engineers who do the work. But it does illustrate the point I was trying to make previously… in the real world, application/design is going to be specific to locality and end use(s). And that varies a lot.
Lazard levelized cost of energy analysis, 2020:
nuclear…. $163
coal……. $112
natural gas $59
wind……. $40
solar…… $37
This is about all the energy the insipid, repetitive, pointless, boring conversation about nuclear energy deserves:
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10161162623269768&set=a.10153576990929768
That pretty much ends the debate, too.
But do carry on with that useless crap as the world burns.
Richard Caldwell (36): “ A pontificator who brings up a topic that they didn’t have to, only to declare themself to be ignorant, sure smells like “integrity” to me. How about you?”
In general, yes, in _this_ case, not sure: for when I have read EP saying:”How much energy can be recovered depends on questions of chemistry that I simply don’t have answers to” – my jaw dropped..
You see, in our previous encounter on the subject, EP seemed to be very much an … expert on “how much energy that can be recovered“, and in fact was lecturing on that starting with :“ Piotr gets it backwards AGAIN“ and ending with:” And this ends the chemistry lesson”
So, quite a change compared to today’s chemistry humility. Was it something I said? :-)
Piotr(87) in June
@37:
Integrity is admitting when you don’t have the answer to something, and you should know by now that I do a lot of thinking out loud.
On the other hand, one can infer things. I’ve not seen any commentary about the removal of carbon buildup in wood or coal gasifiers; plenty of stuff about syngas cooling (including the problematic nature of radiant gas coolers), but nothing about carbon buildup. This leads me to believe that it’s not a problem.
Piotr: iii) you knowing that in 2050 the overall demand for electricity in the 100% decarbonized economy WOULD HAVE TO BE MUCH higher than it is today (electric heating instead
RC: Why? Nuclear and renewables can store and transport energy chemically. Methanol and biogas are plug in replacements for fossils. So, really, why is it “KNOWN”, as opposed to supposed?
Piotr,
Of course it was partly “something you said”.
EP is observant enough to see that you add ever so much here. Top five for sure…
…even if conversing with your rapier sharp wit sometimes requires a bit of virtual first aid.
Regarding discussion on lithium supplies potentially running out:
“The scenario which assumes 73 Mt of lithium supply left, best policies (recycling, V2G, second-life) implemented and around 3 billion EVs on the road sees lithium fully depleted a few years beyond 2100.”
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/09/15/how-long-will-the-lithium-supply-last/
The 73 Mt lithium reserves looks much too pessimistic. Appears to make no or minimal provision for future discoveries of lithium. And sea water contains billions of tons of lithium which they appear to be excluding from their numbers, and we know how to extract this:
“The world’s oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium. ”
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/seawater-could-provide-nearly-unlimited-amounts-critical-battery-material#:~:text=The%20world's%20oceans%20contain%20an,selectively%20extract%20lithium%20from%20seawater.
Extraction is not yet economic, but considerable progress is being made and has realistic potential. And remember the “Limits to Growth” report in the 1970s that assumed various mineral reserves and that we would run out completely by 1995? So much for that modelling.
And there’s this:
“Growing interest in lithium in recent years has seen the world’s largest-known reserves increase significantly, as exploration activities accelerate. According the US Geological Survey (USGS), there are around 80 million tonnes of identified reserves globally as of 2019. That’s up almost 30% compared to a year earlier.”
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/six-largest-lithium-reserves-world/#:~:text=Growing%20interest%20in%20lithium%20in,compared%20to%20a%20year%20earlier.
Notice how quickly the estimates went up. Of course there are limits. Lithium is obviously a finite and scarce resource (compared to iron for example) and we will probably run out eventually, but it looks like there’s enough to scale up plenty of generations of electric vehicles, and of course there are other options like hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. And yes we should attack the scarcity problem with recycling, and by limiting the numbers of electric cars etc that we need for whats most essential, and by encouraging public transport, walking and cycling etc. However many of our cities are built to be dependent on cars. Rebuilding entire cities will be neither easy or quick, so we will need plenty of electric cars.
Richard Caldwell (83) “ Why? Methanol and biogas are plug in replacements for fossils.”
Yes, Richard, but what % of it? Methanol and biogas have an inherent limitation – in their production: as they compete for the limited land with the increasing demand for food, and with carbon sequestration (by living biomass and soil).
And we will have to replace NOT only fossil fuels from electricity generation, but ALSO from transportation (cars and trucks, planes, ships, replacement of diesel-run trains), home heating (replacement of all oil and gas furnaces), and in industrial applications.
RC: Nuclear and renewables can store and transport energy chemically
I am not 100% sure what you mean by storing and transporting their energy chemically – if you mean that we can use electricity to produce energy-rich chemicals – say: H2, then the electricity needed to do that – is the part of the projected large increase in the electricity production.
And even if our Poet had any doubts that we will need more installed power in the future – then BEFORE cockily (“this little gem“) DISCREDITING as absurdly high the global storage in 2052, he should have checked the discussed here source:
one can ridicule global storage in 2052 ONLY by showing that it is absurdly high compared to the total power projected in the same year, NOT by “contrasting” the projected 2052 global storage with … average demand in 2020 in the US only .
68 nigelj says:
10 May 2021 at 9:02 PM
Killian @55
“For chrissakes, I gave you a SCALE-based, nested Commons, egalitarian model TEN years ago! ”
I don’t think I was READING the comments section of this website ten years ago. You must be thinking of someone else.
Don’t be obtuse. Obviously, I have done so in the years you have been here.
I have no recollection of your points 1 and 2.
Indicating you have little understanding of what is important.
I do recall plenty of discussion on other aspects of the commons issue.
“1. Nested Commons, i.e. Commons at various scales ranging from neighborhood to town to city to bio-region.”
Ok, thanks this is informative.
Yes, as it has been since 2011.
My criticism is it looks like a very complex structure to administer
You cannot criticize what you have zero understanding of. You are barking words. It is the opposite of complex and nothing is “adminstered”; there is no hierarchy.
and to get people to agree on
Moot. Any change to the current system, which *must* change requires the same.
and I’m just not persuaded that the means of production will work well handled as some sort of ‘commons’
“…because I think so…” is what children say. History says it works extremely well.
if by commons you mean communally owned and run. I’m afraid we will have to agree to disagree. I can see it possibly working for the resource base such as the land and its below ground resources etc.
Again, “because I think so” means nothing to anyone but you.
“2. Egalitarian decision-making AT SCALE. See above for scales…
It is easy to see how egalitarian decision making would work for a group of for example twenty people… But get above about 20 people and it gets cumbersome.
See previous. You have zero experience with this, yet think you have a legitimate point of view. As I said, post less. Much less.
How would egalitarian decision making work for a water supply? The entire public can’t sit around a table.
No shit? Think.
with no hierarchy at all, that would require a lot of decision making by committee.
There are a number of egalitarian systems. Those decisions are made by the people in those places.
If not, do you see a place for a trimmed down hierarchy?
No. Others may choose such stupidity.
What decisions should be left to a hierarchy of some sort?
See previous.
And what about a factory?
Up to those involved.
Would just anyone make decisions?
Stopping here. I knew I was wasting my time, but this is ridiculous.
4- nigelj
““Report: All new cars and trucks in U.S. could be electric by 2035”.”
So, when would 50% of the current stock of ICE vehicles be off the road? 75%?
6- Gary Rucinski
“Boston University will be hosting a virtual conference on carbon pricing…”
I have heard they do have an economics department:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjcMG5Ed3o
:)
17 – BPL
“BPL: And if all the railroad track mileage in the United States were laid end to end, it would stretch more than halfway to the Moon!”
That’s OK, if the train was going fast enough it could coast the rest of the way to the moon. I’ll bet Elon Musk has a plan for it already!
:)
25 – Kevin McKinney
I think the best location for pumped hydro is at existing hydro-electric dams. Just need to pump some water back up and over. Massive quantities of new dams ain’t gonna happen in the USA. Greenies will not allow it, and the CO2 footprint of new concrete dams is YUUUUUGE!
27 – Robert M
“So when it stops raining, like now, electricity prices go through the roof and our last remaining coal-fired power station makes big profits burning cheap Indonesian coal.”
Killian, did you read that? NZ is ground zero for climate criminals! nigelj has been touting the virtues of NZ hydro all these years and not giving the whole story! I’m shocked!
:)
K 72: Get back to me when you’ve made a significant contribution to the field of Economics, eh?
BPL: Never published a paper in it. But Milton Friedman liked the stuff I sent him informally. I’m satisfied with that.
nigelj currently #85: “And remember the “Limits to Growth” report in the 1970s that assumed various mineral reserves and that we would run out completely by 1995?”
I suspect imprecision and urban legends. Do you have a link for that citation? Or a copy of the book you can quote from? (I’ve occasionally thought of getting a copy of the 1972 original. They don’t seem highly available.)
Killian @87
You accuse me of barking words and not understanding, or not having “experience” but that is all just empty rhetoric. This hasn’t falsified anything I said and you don’t even answer half the questions. I think that’s so obvious to people here it doesn’t need me making a more forensically detailed reply of the Piotr variety.
But here your comments are particularly bizarre. I said “How would egalitarian decision making work for a water supply? The entire public can’t sit around a table.” You said “No shit? Think.” This is despite the fact I had gone on to say “Would the public vote for something like a board of directors and they have equal voice in final decisions? ” So you are just either a very stupid man, or don’t have any actual answers, or are quoting me selectively to try to discredit me, a nasty trollish thing to do. But I leave it to others to decide which. Simpler still you should just desist from these tactics in future.
Common ownership has only worked at scale in hunter gather cultures etc, and with things like traditional farming and whether that’s an ideal model is still open to debate. You cannot imprint that on the modern ownership of things like industry. Experiments trying to do this have failed, eg the Soviet Union. The UK in the 1970s. At best it will be very messy and inefficient.
Reading your comments and reply I find the whole regenerative governance idea will be difficult to make work and scale up. Most alternative (intentional communities) that try these sorts of things fail. This is easily googled. Some have worked reasonably long term but all this doesn’t give me much confidence the idea is realistic and scaleable. It would need some modification at the very least.
Some other elements of simplification are clearly helpful, workable and scaleable such as the circular economy, passive solar housing and no till farming etc.
Ric Merritt @90
“I suspect imprecision and urban legends. Do you have a link for that citation? Or a copy of the book you can quote from? (I’ve occasionally thought of getting a copy of the 1972 original. They don’t seem highly available.)”
I don’t have the book and I cant find the article I read, about ten years ago. But the wikipedia entry for the book has relevant information that backs up my recollection. It has part of the commodity reserve extrapolation table for some minerals like gold, lead and oil based on estimates of reserves made in 1972 and has them running out by about 1995 (varies for each one and based on an exponential growth in use). It also has data assuming 5x more reserve and when that would run out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
#88, KIA–
I think the best location for pumped hydro is…
And I should care because–? AFAICT, you’ve not even bothered to read what we’ve been saying here, let alone the links.
Reinforcing Ric@90. The original text of ‘Limits for Growth ‘ is easily available online. The section on minerals says ‘At the present rate of expansion . . . silver, tin, and uranium may be in short supply even at higher prices by the turn of the century. By the year 2050, several more minerals may be exhausted if the current rate of consumption continues.’ The only occurrence of the date 1995 in the text is in a statement about DDT persistence in fish!
The essential message of the book is that any finite resource will run out if exploitation increases exponentially – and that isn’t contentious, it’s just arithmetic.
89 Barton Paul Levenson says:
13 May 2021 at 7:42 AM
K 72: Get back to me when you’ve made a significant contribution to the field of Economics, eh?
BPL: Never published a paper in it. But Milton Friedman liked the stuff I sent him informally. I’m satisfied with that.
Good for you. But I *changed* the entire basis of heterodox economics with one simple observation. But, again, I guess I don’t understand Econ…
I also have been calling for Jubilee as a necessary condition for a shift to equitable economics, dealing with climate, etc., and now that’s gaining traction.
In fact, I called for a total shut down and essentially UBI (they call it stimulus) to get the pandemic over within two months – back in early March 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE0qANFxp90
I wasn’t the first to suggest jubilee as part of a long-term societal shift, but part of effective analysis is knowing when others have got something right. I can’t remember whom I first heard that idea from, but it was likely on The Oil Drum, so possibly the people behind the Automatic Earth who originally were posting at TOD.
Having come to understand regenerative systems, it became clear to me if you want to *smoothly* shift from Capitalism, or at least get to a far more equitable form of it, some degree of Jubilee would be needed. (UBI or Fee & Dividend can serve similar functions if broad enough.)
85 nigelj says:
12 May 2021 at 9:49 PM
Regarding discussion on lithium supplies potentially running out:
“The scenario which assumes 73 Mt of lithium supply left, best policies (recycling, V2G, second-life) implemented and around 3 billion EVs on the road sees lithium fully depleted a few years beyond 2100.”
The 73 Mt lithium reserves looks much too pessimistic.
You didn’t read the article? Range was from 39 to 80. They took 73 bc they thought the 80 analysis was unconvincing. They used a well-supported number from the high range and that was “far too pessimistic.”
Appears to make no or minimal provision for future discoveries of lithium.
The boost from 39 to 80 is VERY recent, so, yeah, new discoveries are included. However, they are not stupid, so are basing their analysis on the known, not magical or wishful thinking, unlike he Who Should Not Be Posting.
And sea water contains billions of tons of lithium which they appear to be excluding from their numbers, and we know how to extract this:
“The world’s oceans contain an estimated 180 billion tons of lithium. ”
So… the oceans are already being
* polluted with chemicals at massive scales
* polluted with plastic at massive scales
* rapidly losing foraminefera
* rapidly losing oxygen
* rapidly warming
* rapidly acidifying
etc., but we should further chemically castrate the oceans by removing the lithium.
Extraction is not yet economic
Thus, it doesn’t exist in intelligent forward-looking analyses *until it is economic.*
And remember the “Limits to Growth” report in the 1970s that assumed various mineral reserves and that we would run out completely by 1995? So much for that modelling.
Lie. 1. They made no predictions. 2. They didn’t even use specific resources and their limits, they used a “non-renewable resources” algorithm. 3. None of the scenarios shows an end to any resource by 1995.
JUST. STOP. POSTING.
Or, at least do us all a favor and stop responding to anything I post. Too much time is wasted debunking virtually everything you have to say.
89 Barton Paul Levenson says:
BPL: Never published a paper in it. But Milton Friedman liked the stuff I sent him informally. I’m satisfied with that.
Dear gods, I just caught this. Milton Friedman? Of the Chicago School? One of the most destructive minds of the 20th century? Let me know when Trump pats you on the back, too.
He’s *proud* of that. This is Victor-, KIA-level bad.
Just in case anyone thought I was blowing smoke about talking about Jubilee as being a necessity… 12 years ago.
http://theoildrum.com/node/5378#comment-504409
Killian @96 “So… the oceans are already being, polluted with chemicals at massive scales etc, but we should further chemically castrate the oceans by removing the lithium.”
Nobody is going to chemically castrate the oceans by removing dissolved lithium if its done properly. Removing lithium dissolved in the ocean’s involves various extraction processes done in factories. It doesn’t involve injecting dangerous chemicals into the oceans. Its far lower risk than other forms of mining like the sea bed.
“And remember the “Limits to Growth” report in the 1970s that assumed various mineral reserves and that we would run out completely by 1995? So much for that modelling.”
“Lie. 1. They made no predictions. 2. They didn’t even use specific resources and their limits….”
Wrong. Refer to my comment @ 92: “But the wikipedia entry for the book (limits to growth) has relevant information that backs up my recollection. It has part of the commodity reserve extrapolation table for some minerals like gold, lead and oil based on estimates of reserves made in 1972 and has them running out by about 1995 (varies for each one and based on an exponential growth in use)……” Proving what I said: Limits to growth was too pessimistic with its estimates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
And refer to Astringent @94 where he mentions that limits to growth predicted “silver, tin, and uranium may be in short supply even at higher prices by the turn of the century (2000)” Clearly this didn’t happen so backs up my comment that it was all too pessimistic.
“JUST. STOP. POSTING. Or, at least do us all a favor and stop responding to anything I post. Too much time is wasted debunking virtually everything you have to say.”
YOU criticised me for not engaging over the regenerative governance issue so I engaged, somewhat reluctantly . Make up your mind what you want. You have debunked nothing I say. The debunking only exists in your mind.
In his (96), Killian, in his classic understatement accuses Nigel of wanting to
“castrate the oceans” by extracting lithium from seawater for EVs.
Let’s see what “castration” means in the Great Killian’s Dictionary (2 ed., Oxford University Press, with a foreword by William Jefferson “It depends upon what ‘is’ is” Clinton):
i) Nigel(85): demand for lithium in the next 85(?) years: 73 Mt
ii) Nigel(85): estimate of lithium in the ocean water: 180 Gt
So if all lithium in the next 85 years came from the ocean, lithium concentration in the oceans would crash to … 99.96% of its current values, which to our Killian constitutes … “chemical castration of the oceans”.
[The applicants for Italian church singer positions wipe the sweat off their brows and breathe (only a slightly higher pitched) sigh of relief… ]