Good news: your claim about wind energy is a much-debunked falsehood.
And since you know it, or at least *should* by now know it, it’s also a lie in your (metaphorical) mouth.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Show us the breakdown of energy input versus eneryg output for a monster wind turbine installation. Brief list of some, not all, of the inputs you’ll need to account for:
Site selection team spending YEARS finding a suitable site and fighting the NIMBY’s to get permits.
Design selection team effort to find the best Engineering bang for the buck.
Don’t forget the site visits and surveying team activities.
Mining to produce the monster concrete base, metals of all types in the entire thing.
Energy to produce the non-metal parts including mining, etc to get the raw materials.
Transportation of every bit of material from the mining site to the ore processing facility, to the metal refiners, to the manufacturing plant, to the job site, to lift and erect it on site.
Energy for maintenance over the life of the installation, and the energy to demolish it and return the land to pristine condition as required by the NIMBY’s.
Do we need to include the transmission wires and towers, required to get the power to the grid?
Good luck with your calculation and may the force be with you!
:)
Not sure what strange form of amnesia leads you to forget the many times this has been discussed here already, but–good news!–there’s no need for li’l ol’ me to do any of that, since, to quote environmental journalist Sara Peach:
People have studied, in detail, the amount of carbon pollution emitted during the life of a wind turbine.
In fact, this type of analysis constitutes an entire branch of research known as “life cycle assessment,” with its own handbooks, internationally agreed-upon standards, specialized software, and peer-reviewed journals.
Needless to say, she goes on to present the results of that work:
…it’s possible to calculate a carbon “payback” time for a wind turbine: the length of time it takes a turbine to produce enough clean electricity to make up for the carbon pollution generated during manufacture. One study put that payback time at seven months — not bad considering the typical 20- to 25-year lifespan of a wind turbine. Bottom line: Wind turbines are far from a joke. For the climate, they’re a deal too good to pass up.
Them’s the facts. But it was so pretty, the way you waved your hands…
What is your “practical way” of using the water for irrigation while at the same time _permanently_ (not just for a short while) sequestering an additional 430-odd cubic km on land next year as well?
Honestly? There is NO practical way to deal with a continued anthropogenic warming trend. It has to be stopped somehow. The question is how to either deal with its effects or reverse it, neither of which is trivial. We could reverse it by e.g. mineralizing gigatonnes of CO2 every year via dissolution of dunite into seawater. It appears doubtful that humanity has the resolve to do this.
Richard the Weaversays
EP: appears doubtful that humanity has the resolve to do this.
RtW: fortunately, humanity has been known to gather resolve in an instant. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to think of a stimulus other than something gawdawful, such as whatever happens during/after our first annual (after a stutter or two) Blue Ocean Event (no reservations required)
Killiansays
I’d just like to point out waiting till the first BOE will likely seal our long-term fate. The caveat being the few studies that have looked at an instantaneous or rapid return to @ 260 ppm can begin stabilizing the poles within a few decades.
The only realistic way of doing that is to drop OECD consumption by about 90% collectively over a very short time frame. The only way to do that is to remove the economic considerations from the solution set. Commons are the only way to equitably share resources and Economics, in the sense of how we manage “modern” economies since 10kya, are simply something we created out of thin air and can throw off instantly. All it would do is… make all things possible.
“People won’t!” is a bullshit response that applies *equally* to funding equitable energy and consumption within the current paradigm, so nigel, et al., just don’t bother with that nonsense.
K: The only realistic way of doing that is to drop OECD consumption by about 90% collectively over a very short time frame.
BPL: Good luck with that.
Killiansays
Indeed. Particularly with most on this board refusing to even consider it. How’s it feel to be complicit with Exxon, et al.?
nigeljsays
Killian,
“The only realistic way of doing that is to drop OECD consumption by about 90% collectively over a very short time frame.”
I have considered “it”. After considering “it” I have concluded the plan wont work as follows:
1) The plan is definitely going to be painful, and it definitely means life would become more labour intensive. I would suggest it could be life threatening or at least very unhealthy for a lot of people. This starts to look worse than the actual climate problem.
2) It will cause massive instability. With so much demand pulled out of the economy and relatively fast you would inevitably get mass unemployment and consequent poverty. Like in the 1930s depression but much worse.
3) Its so unlikely to happen at large scale voluntarily because the vast majority of people are materialistic.
You did suggest that we could avoid the process being destabilising if it was carefully planned but its hard to see how that could happen, because you would need top down planning by governments who are unlikely to buy into the whole idea.
So on balance such ideas look problematic to me. And given I’m not hugely materialistic this makes me thing others would be even more sceptical!.
A less ambitious version on a longer time frame might work, because as with many things we would have time to adapt and adaptation needs time.
I repeat that Joseph Tainter has also considered such ideas and decided they are unrealistic.
Doesn’t make us complicit with Exon, because we are NOT supporting continued use of fossil fuels. The way you use such twisted, misleading rhetoric will only make people resist your ideas even more strongly.
Nigel,
Again, you make sense. Rapist tendencies are at all levels. The kicker on whether to act on them could be opportunity, it could be perceived risk.
If Bill Cosby had washed out as a comic would he have been more likely to serially offend or less? And would his score be higher or lower?
But man, rape is soooo easy when you’ve got power.
Anyway, “rich vs poor” and “white vs blue collar” overlap, but rich dudes blue-collar rape via gun-to-head, too. I’m saying that if ya don’t need to display a gun you probably won’t, and you’re more likely to pull the trigger on the rape when you can do it with deniability. Might even get appointed to the Supreme Court
nigeljsays
Richard.
I see that you are trying to hook me back into this conversation about sexual assault yet again, by using flattery this time. Well I have an hour to kill before watching David Attenboroughs The Green Planet. (Normally I find nature documentaries a bit sleepy but this is simply stunning, and takes in the climate change issue as well. ) So here goes. Remember the research studies tend to show that white and blue collar workers commit about the same number of rapes (when adjusting for numbers in each group) so you seem to be saying the studies are wrong.
You seem to also be saying white collar workers would commit more rapes than blue collar workers and get away with more of them because they are smarter and have more power. Well they are going to get away with more of them because they are smart and can afford the best lawyers, thats a given. And I agree it probably would motivate them to take more risk.
Do white collar workers commit more rapes than blue collar workers? They probably could if they wanted, because they are smarter and have more power. But various things push in the other direction. Part of the reason to rape is likely to involve sexual frustration and white collar workers can afford prostitutes more easily. White collar workers also have reputations to protect, and get their power kicks from their jobs, or some by screwing people financially, or some bulling the lower classes. They don’t need to rape people.
For powerless blue collar workers rape is one of the few power things left to them apart from using their fists and storming the whitehouse like complete morons. Zebra would understand. And they dont have the money for prostitutes in abundance. So blue collar workers have a whole lot of reasons to commit rape and I’ve only picked a few things.
So I’m just inclined to think that on balance, the perpetrators of rape are probably no more likely to be white collar workers than blue collar workers. Its probably about the same.
Another thing. Working class women figure highly in the victim statistics. There could be various reasons and I can’t be bothered googling that, but it does suggest blue collar men are not exactly angels. Most victims are actually known to the perpetrators from what I’ve read.
Richard Creagersays
Moderators: Your desire to encourage free and open discussion of topics even tangentially related to climate science is admirable, but your willingness to provide a sort of self-therapy space for uninformed speculation on utterly unrelated topics is not infinitely tolerable. The way this site is managed does not reflect well on you. Please- moderate is a verb. FWIW, after more than fifteen years of regular readership and much knowledge gained, I will no longer be looking in. As well, I will choose another site to recommend to others for climate news and information. Thank-you.
nigeljsays
RC. There is nothing ‘uninformed’ about my comment. Its based on peer reviewed science and my studies of psychology at university.
You’re just a damn troll that likes to take a swipe at people without the guts or brains to back up your demeaning assessment with specifics. I suspect my comments disturb your world view. What a shame.
Please do stay away and don’t come back.
Mr. Know It Allsays
After reading just a few lines of that idiotic exchange between RtW and nigelj, I think you have made a wise choice. Please let us know if you find a suitable site for better dialogue on climate news.
It is true, that I only read a line or two of each comment before realizing it was crap and scrolling on down the page. So, if you don’t find a better site, I reommend doing as I do and scrolling past the drivel that is regularly spewed by those who seek to impress us with their with and their insults.
Carbomontanussays
To all and everyone exept to Mr. Know It All
About Mr.Know It All, behind his back
and on the levels and lines that he is not reading,…..
……
…..
…..
SANN!
Now, let us see whether he can get it.
James McDonaldsays
I agree that the level of discourse here has fallen into the toilet.
I used to come here to learn things, but now all I see are endless pointless arguments back and forth about nonsense where I don’t even know (or care) where the participants are coming from.
Yes, let us get this down to earth and down to politics and away from rapism that Perverse Participans PP only can dream of.
Diesel oil costs 25 Nkr / liter here. Formerly it was 15 Nkr/ liter. But that does not matter, since a good Diesel is Science` answer to the question and creme dela creme of engines with all the worlds records. It hardly drinks and smokes anymore.
Russian gas is a sad story. It was some of my highest hopes.
Bill Clinton has the blame. He could have bought the very soviet Union, like former qualified precidents bought Alaska and the fameous French colonies and settlements when it was cheaply for sale on the free market, instead of committing ADVLTERARE in office.
SIC!
The USA will never get any such chanse again. Just think of that, the very Soviet union offered for sale war surplus on the free market.
nigeljsays
Maybe Biden could still buy Russia. Apparently there is a real chance Russia wont be able to pay its foreign debts and could go bankrupt. So Biden might get Russia for a cheap price. He could install Donald Trump is dictator in chief of Russia. It would keep Trump away from Americas politics. Trump appears to love Russia. Might not happen, but its nice to dream.
Putin thinks that because he has Nuclear Weapons he can get away with anything. Things are more complicated than that. He has probably destroyed Russia’s fossil fuel exports. Europe will almost certainly reduce reliance on Russian gas now as others have pointed out. Putin has shot himself in his own big hairy foot.
Ray Ladburysays
Saw a tweet yesterday suggesting that the fall of the Ruble means a really bad quarter for Republican fundraising.
Nigel, surely you don’t think that having Trump in charge of nuclear weapons again would be a good idea..?
(Yeah, I know you’re not really serious.)
nigeljsays
KM. If America buys Russia, then obviously Russia doesn’t get to keep its nuclear weapons! That would be a condition of the sale and purchase agreement. But yeah I’m not being serious. about any of this.
nigeljsays
Kevin. Mind you it would be great if America did offer to buy Russia. Just to really piss off Putin.
Good points, Nigel. I wasn’t speaking of white collar rape as rich person rape but rape by power and position. Blue collar rape would be beating someone up or shoving a gun in their face. One rung up from the bottom can be a powerful position for a white collar rapist of exceedingly modest means.
Your working class woman who knows the perp victim profile – That’s what I’m talking about. And blue collar dudes can do a white collar style crime: insisting on sex from a woman who can’t afford to lose her job. Know a secret that could get her fired?
Richard the Weaversays
The book goes well, what with JWST continuing to progress and Putin getting his nose rubbed in the Ukranian carpet he bombed.
All that Potemkin Military (yachts ain’t cheap and Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s) volumed up with conscripts for Special Assignment is still massive. Tons and tons of steel. Crap designs, crap maintenance, crap newbie conscripts who tend to insist on eating. And without fuel they are all lines of static targets being Swiss cheesed into oblivion. Last estimate from somewhere in Ukraine was 8% destruction so far. Strategically take out 8% of all kinds of columns all using the same roads, with grandmothers tossing Molotovs and insults…
You were duped, BPL. Capitalist Russia is just as corrupt and worthless as Communist USSR. Maybe 90% of the USA’s “defense” spending since integrated circuits got involved was wasted. It’s fun watching our toys blow up Russian Capitalists, but what if we had instead been building productive toys that ended fossils? Putin wouldn’t have any customers.
Oops, looks like that’s happening anyway.
Want an America First policy? Set a national price for energy-related commodities. Letting rapacious asshats spike prices for the same product is crazy. We can use our Strategic reserves to balance supply and demand in the USA. WE will have a stable system. We will buy and sell fossils as a collective, and we are self-sufficient. Who can beat that?
And it’s not like we want advancements or efficiencies in fossil fuels, especially when “efficiency” is defined as efficiently shoving cash into lazy leeches’ pockets in exchange for zero work and zero positive directing of the economy.
The local Story is keeping pace. Who knows? We might survive.
Richard the Weaversays
Mrkia: Latest Brandon
RtW: Nobody reads anything that comes after some moron says “Brandon”.
Richard the Weaversays
Mrkia: Latest Brandon
RtW: Nobody reads anything that comes after some moron says “Brandon”. Yep, you’re a Brandonized Boy, boy.
All,
I’ve decided to go with the “fuck off” to capitalism by spewing my major Work out loud. Internal combustion was solved over a year ago and no new advances or quibbles or fears have occurred, so the Solution is obviously solid.
I wouldn’t have the guts to shred my potential IP if the Local Story, the Societal Story, the Scientific Story, and the Celestial Story didn’t harmonize.
But yeah, I’m taking your critiques to heart by rejecting rent-seeking. If someone wants to thank me for whatever I do, cool. But I ain’t being the thing I’m fighting anymore.
Mr. Know It Allsays
Is that you, Al Bundy?
Richard the Weaversays
Of course
Mr. Know It Allsays
EP Quote: “Honestly? There is NO practical way to deal with a continued anthropogenic warming trend. It has to be stopped somehow. The question is how to either deal with its effects or reverse it, neither of which is trivial.”
How long do we have to stop our emissions? Only 8 years left as AOC says? Let’s find out. We’ve raised the CO2 concentration 140 ppm from 280 to 420 ppm in ~300 years. It’s warmer now in most places, but we’re doing OK. If we can level off CO2 at another 140 ppm, that would be 560 ppm, or 2X pre-industrial. Can we do it? How long do we have?
Wild guess, say we maintain the 950/2400 ratio of atmospheric uptake to total emissions (wild guess), then atmospheric uptake will be ~ 50×950/2400 = 20EE9 tons per year. (BPL, whoop out the calc – how does this compare with the annual increase in CO2 we are measuring?) To add another 950EE9 tons to the atmosphere would take ballpark 950/20=47.5 years IF we average what we are doing now over those 47.5 years and if my calc is in the ballpark. (OK, other GHGs probably make it a little worse than that.)
Since we’re working on reducing emissions (slowly), and are even attempting to remove some CO2, we may have longer than that before we get to 560 ppm (double pre-industrial).
So, looks like it’s a problem, but perhaps achieveable. We’ve go wheels and concrete, gravel, and rip-rap trucks so the low-lying cities can start building dikes and moving to higher ground.
KIA: BPL, some day I’ll look at your planet-calculation page. Who is the intended audience?
BPL: People interested in planetary astronomy.
Carbomontanussays
We do not order or buy your planetary SPAM!, Gernosse, from SPiced and canned, industrialn hAM! off the factory assembly line where the earth is flat. For religious, racial military climatic nutrician and communal festival purposes.
Try Stoccafisso instead, and Surströmming. That is more autenic planetary and astronomical in the real climate. Or SmalaHAUD.
If we can level off CO2 at another 140 ppm, that would be 560 ppm, or 2X pre-industrial. Can we do it?
And you think that 560 ppm would be safe, or useful, because–?
(Reminder: the central estimate for ECS is still ~3 C per doubling…)
Off-topic, but MIT says natural CO2 emissions exceeds human emissions by ten times. Not saying this is correct…
Correct, but not very relevant to the topic of Forced Responses, since a) we don’t control natural emissions, and b) natural emissions aren’t forcing the observed trend. (This latter follows arithmetically from the fact that of anthropogenic emissions, only ~4/9ths stay in the atmosphere on annual timescales.)
We have been through this here, more than once. Just sayin’…
Mr. Know It Allsays
KM,
We’re doing OK at 420 pppm, 1.5X pre-industrial, so I think we’d be OK at 2X pre-industrial, 560 ppm.
Not optimum but we can handle it. Here’s why:
We can’t get to zero emissions today – we have to grow food, heat homes, run the world economy.
If we go away from all FFs we will welcome a warmer world in the winter. Solar and wind ain’t gonna cut it for many decades.
By the time we get to zero emissions, we will likely be able to start removing CO2 in meaningful quantities.
We have time to start building levees and sea walls where needed ASAP or moving people where needed.
None of these “reasons why we can handle it” actually bear on the point.
Carbomontanussays
Pofessor….
People are on moove now in Ukraina, and people have been on moove in the mediterraneans both from Africa and fro0m the middle east now for years.
And King Donald Grizny began building his great wall to make America great again, against people on moove from Mexico.
But, does it help?
Killiansays
Criminally negligent to suggest 560 ppm is a safe goal, or any sort of goal, for climate.
Observersays
New data on methane. In 2021, there was a record increase in the concentration of methane on average. However, something strange is happening in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Annual fluctuations in the concentration of methane began to change there at the end of 2019, which is confirmed by observatory data.
It is not known how much of the rise in mean methane concentrations is Arctic methane, but the trend is interesting. Its source is also unclear.
We all knew at some point, and sooner rather than later – well, those with any analytical skills whatsoever knew – the Arctic CH4 would rise above the noise. This looks like that moment has come.
Observersays
I wrote in the wrong topic, but here is an interesting study on underwater permafrost. It refers to thermokarst sinkholes 220 and 74 meters in size and 24 meters deep. Their size is impressive. This study is the first of its kind and it is not known how many such thermokarst sinkholes are around the world and how they are affected by climate change.
Rapid seafloor changes associated with the degradation of Arctic submarine permafrost
Temperature increases in Arctic regions have focused attention on permafrost degradation on land, whereas little is known about the dynamics of extensive glacial-age permafrost bodies now submerged under the vast Arctic Continental shelves. Repeated high-resolution bathymetric surveys show that extraordinarily rapid morphologic changes are occurring at the edge of the continental slope of the Canadian Beaufort Sea along what was once the seaward limit of relict Pleistocene permafrost. How widespread similar changes are on the Arctic shelves is unknown, as this is one of the first areas in the Arctic subjected to multiple multibeam bathymetric surveys. Rapid morphologic changes associated with active submarine permafrost thawing may be an important process in sculpturing the seafloor in other submarine permafrost settings.
And all those who understand basic climate science know you need more than one or two years data to be sure something has risen above the ‘noise.’.
Observersays
If you look at the data graphs of the Tiksi Observatory from the screenshot, then the first surge in methane concentration was in 2018. To be sure, you can wait another year or two
In December 2021, a record increase in the concentration of methane in the Arctic is seen. Around April 5, NOAA will release methane data for December 2021. Normally, the average concentration of methane around the world starts to fall around this time. If there are deviations from this trend in the NOAA chart, we will all see
Killiansays
And all those who actually do, know that the specific response of permafrost/clathrates isn’t climate. In fact, they both release CH4 regularly. That his happens isn’t special. What is is the rate of increase.
Those that do *also* know that every trend has a beginning and climate science has done a poor job of predicting/scenarioing the rate of change due to climate forcings even as it has nailed the GHG totals and temps. That is, sensitivity is at the very high end, not the low end or middle.
Those that *do* also know we are getting into some areas of climate change and effects having doubling times that are at 5-year to 20-year scales. That rate of doubling makes the 30 year metric absurdly inappropriate for some aspects of assessing climate changes.
Those that understand basic English, which is not you, knows that the phrase “looks like” is not definitive; it implies a caveat much like, “very possibly is” and so don’t troll others.
Anyone sanguine about Arctic CH4, as you are and have been, is playing a dangerous game of trying to time the market. From thermokarst lakes to pingoes to the blast craters found in Siberia to the infrastructure being ruined in Alaska to the new report above on sinkholes in the Arctic Ocean, things are changing and that is not going to slow down.
Only two years? If it’s the first two years of a ten-year doubling, it’s extremely bad news.
Stop trolling.
Observersays
There is also good news. Methane oxidizes in the atmosphere over 10 years into carbon dioxide. With an increase in the concentration of methane, its relative rate of oxidation decreases, but the rate at which a certain mass of methane is oxidized increases. The growth of methane concentration will stop when equilibrium is reached. The runaway greenhouse effect is unlikely
nigeljsays
So according to you pointing out you need more than one or two years of data to determine if something has risen above the noise is trolling? By your definition virtually every climate scientist is a troll. You’re an idiot.
Carbomontanussays
Stop trolling, Mr Killian, stop trolling
Orgies during Lent, Orgien während der Fastenzeit, Orgier i fastetiden!
That is not sustainable and it is not Permaculture.
Carbomontanussays
@ Killian
Pattern recognition seems not to be your strongest dicipline, Hr. Killian,
It tells us further of your lacking levels and horizons of experience,, enlighttment, training, and inauguration. Things that cannot be substituted and repaired by belongings missions and memberships.
Carbomontanussays
@ Killian
On pattern and tendency recognition
Can you try and take the subject a bit more serious, pleace?
To Your discussion of trends in time by smallwer or larger, countable catastrophic events,… and their further consequenses that follow and smooth out in time.
For that class of phaenomena I recommend poisson statistics, first developed by Poisson for the discussion of criminal statistics in Paris such as murders or fires pr month or pr year in Paris.. Further appliciable to catastrophic car collisions from A to B per year on your local highway.
In general, for the number of raindrops in a cup of coffee under open sky, in order to be able to say for sure, It is not raining now! Is it beginning to rain? Yes, it is raining! Does it rain more now? When will this end? I think it has stopped now! …….
……… When you are not allowed to look up.
Poisson statistics is also used for radioactive counting and for political election statristics such as the number of votes on the communist party from time to time in your local community. How and when can you tell that communism increasing or decreasing or whether it is steady?
The std at Poisson is the square root of the amplitude. By one event it might as well not have happened and you shall not lift your eyebrows again until you have 3 more such events. By 10 events std is slightly more than 3, but by 1000 events the std is 33, and you must lift your eyebrows again above 1100 and below 900, at 3 times the Std.
Then take a telescopic look at the moon. What is the rate and the tendency of meteorite and asteroide impacts there? That can be judged because by aging and erosion you can also judge the age of the craters and say for sure that the rate has fallen roughly exponentially fror the last 4.5 billion years. But, as we know from other reasons, such events may also occur in swarms just like deaths and fires in Paris.
The moon together with Paris is a very good reference example for many such discussions and we will soon be able also to use Ukraina as a referenjce for dramatic catastrophic chaotic events..
Then what about large methane blobs in the siberian permafrost tundra? I took a look with Google maps on the Yamal peninsula and found that it seems rather normal and regular. There are large round holes all the way there, and when you have determined the climate and soil premises, you can look over the very arctic fror the same. I have found several, similar old blob- fields. ( very flat and thick silt- fields with permafrost)
Then back to Poisson. The police, the Gendarmerie and the Paris fireward must also be constant for Poisson fully to come to his rights. Siberian blobs were hardly noticed and mentioned before the invention of the telegraph, and of Pravda.
Media interest and obsevance like the Paris gendarmerie is also a parameter to it. Before the geiger counter, radioactive poisson statistics was not on pensum. And before the fall 0f the soviet Union, those blobs were not mentioned at all in Western media.
Richard the Weaversays
Mrkia: How long do we have to stop our emissions? Only 8 years left as AOC says?
RtW: All this time here and you still think it is a light switch? Zero (minimal?) damage now or in the future as long as we act in 7.9 years and total destruction a month or so later?
Two sorts of people might treat a sound bite like a dissertation:
A total idiot, someone with a room- temperature IQ
Or a dissembler.
As if you started out in life as stupid as the logic trail that weaves to your stance from a call to action inspired by a published paper….
..and just too incurious to glance at the paper AOC was referring to…
So, I vote for the latter being the cause and the former being the sad effect we are witnessing today: a self-made moron.
nigeljsays
I would say KIA is an average guy being deliberately idiotic / stupid. Like you say a dissembler. However I suspect years of deliberate stupidity kill brain cells, so he better watch out..
Carbomontanussays
I have the impression that being hardnecked supid contrarian in one way most oftenly corelates to be hardnecked contrarian in another way7 and more thanj one way, but this next way cannot be carried out officially in fullmdaylight. Thus, ones contrarian deliberately stupid denial and contrarianism is as much as a steady, daily exercise for something worse and quiten more serious.
It may be their daily training on unimportant matters for them, for something quite much more serious for them, They are allways training on less serious matters for their assumed doubble- life with its necessary “doubble- think”.
That is called hypocricy in english and HEUCHELEI in German. Namely, allways having to say and to train saying something out of the mouth while meaning the opposite inwards into your heart.
That routine- exercise not only kills braincells each day. Much worse, Mr Knowitall; It wears down your CON-SCIENCE, that is organically identical , (nothing more and nothing less) than your very NERVUS VAGUS, your 7th nerve. .
Which is quite unhealthy. in the long run. I say that for good.
Is that really so and am I right, Mr. Knowitall?
Dansays
It is just as likely that he is far too insecure and coward to admit to being wrong. It is not rocket science. He flaunts his ignorance due to his insecurity but he gets the attention he craves while never making any effort to learn. Which reflects on how poorly educated he is as well..
Carbomontanussays
Yes, you say something
But there is more to it. I personally believe that most people are educated in any case, but on what? That seems to differ highly. And then, intelligence also shows high diversity. And there are types of intelligence and of characters.
Being able to forget and to ignore and to supress impressions and experience is also a necessary property of mentality and of talented intelligence, …. and has also to be learnt and can be falsely unluckily educated or diciplined.
Am I right also on this Mr. Knowitall?
We were told about intelligence tests at the inaugurating university studies, and “Adequate norming” of intelligence tests. And if that is not conscidered, different races , nations, and cultures may come out quite unequal, which is not biologically plausible..
My Uncle, Dr.Med and Scientist said: Yes, that is obviously so and it is not that easy ton compare apes to humans. Put an ape on an English Gentlemans problems, and the ape will fail and show very unintelligent. But put an Englishman (or any anglo- american knowitall) on an ape- problem in the jungle..!”
Wherefore I also mention apes and bears and trolls, slugs, cyclopes and Bonobos in the climate dispute, and mention their fore-paws.
How long do we have to stop our emissions? Only 8 years left as AOC says? Let’s find out.
I figure minus 30 years, give or take. We’ve already found out. We have already had extreme weather events and the full effects aren’t even being felt yet. We probably crossed the line at 350 ppm, maybe less.
We’ve raised the CO2 concentration 140 ppm from 280 to 420 ppm in ~300 years. It’s warmer now in most places, but we’re doing OK.
Tell that to the dying Great Barrier Reef, the droughts across the world and the exploding methane vents in the Arctic.
What can we do? I suggest mineralizing 2 tons of CO2 equivalent for every ton emitted until we’re back down to 350. This can be done by enhanced weathering of massive quantities of dunite and other mafic/ultramafic rocks, but whether humanity has the will to do this is an open question.
Off-topic, but MIT says natural CO2 emissions exceeds human emissions by ten times.
And natural CO2 uptake is much greater than that. Only the net matters, not the gross.
Richard the Weaversays
EP,
Yep, four decades ago the “entitled”, uh modern world was tiny. It ended up being rather damaging to metastasize the Western World before a reasonable system was designed.
Adam Leasays
A video on why we (the general public) don’t care about climate change.
Suggests that it has something to do with the way climate change is reported, and the lack of coverage it gets compared to other far more trivial subjects. Maybe reporting climate change and its consequences in a way that people can directly relate too, such as things that they can see and experience, will help.
nigeljsays
Good video, however the idea that lack of media coverage is the reason almost nobody is doing anything significant about the climate problem seems rather weak . Because surely virtually everyone knows the basics of the climate issue by now?
You would have to be living under a rock with no human contact, no television or other media for the last 20 years to not be aware of the climate issue, including the fact that the climate is changing, that its due to fossil fuels and that its very serious. And surely virtually everyone knows what the main solutions are.
I would say the lack of progress solving the problem probably has multiple causes, including technological roadblocks, political factors, public fears about costs, and the denialists campaign, but I believe this following is the main reason:
“Humans Wired to Respond to Short-Term Problems : NPR. Humans Wired to Respond to Short-Term Problems Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert argues that humans are exquisitely adapted to respond to immediate problems, such as terrorism, but not so good at more probable, but distant dangers, like global warming.”
We don’t know how to change this. It makes me suspect that progress fixing the climate problem will be slow, and is not going to include things that most people find unpleasant, painful or hugely inconvenient . And the real world historical data is on my side. I don’t like this at all, but it appears to be the objective reality.
Of course there are things that would help nudge people more towards solutions. Obviously better media coverage of wildfires and hurricanes and their links to the climate issue would help rather than hinder. (like EP’s example) This sort of thing is fairly immediate. But we will probably need a lot more very obvious, drastic, and immediate climate problems to wake the world up.
Adam Leasays
I think the point the video was making was that on the regular everyday media feeds (e.g. TV news and newspapers), climate change and relating the climate change science to what is happening with the world’s weather typically takes up a very small amount of space compared to a ton of other things the media prefer to report which are better at stimulating feel-good emotions and selling newspapers. People can understand the fundamentals of climate change but not necessarily easily be able to relate it to their personal everyday lives. It said in the video that if climate change consequences are framed around a few polar bears dying or glaciers melting, people might say “so what”, because polar bears and glaciers do not feature tangibly into their lives (at least not in the wealthy West), but if it were framed around something that did directly affect them, such as the NW American heatwave (or any other deadly heatwave), or a rise in food prices because of a natural disaster in a normally highly productive farming region which are projected to get worse in the future, or a destructive extreme rainfall event, which are also projected to get worse/more frequent, people might take it a bit more seriously.
nigeljsays
Adam, yes I appreciate the video is saying those things. I guess I’m rather sceptical that if things were framed more around genuinely relevant natural disasters that it would make much difference. New Zealand media where I live have framed things in that way quite well over the last few years and it isn’t causing people to rush out and make big changes to their lives. and vote for the Green Party. But I agree with you it might “help a bit” and I’m maybe being too pessimistic.
FWIW, it’s my perception that it’s more common than previously to use CC impact framings that are apt to be relevant to the expected audience. Perhaps that’s one reason that we’re seeing opinion shift in a helpful direction.
Maybe reporting climate change and its consequences in a way that people can directly relate too, such as things that they can see and experience, will help.
Putting some emphasis on things like 175 wildfires in Texas in the past week can likely help:
I drove past a plume of smoke yesterday that had to have been 2 miles tall, given the distance from which it was visible. And that was just ONE fire, from the looks of it.
Carbomontanussays
Dr Genosse poet, 0n your engineering
At the same time there are wildfires in Norway and people to be evacuated
This is hardly due to climate change, but due to human settlements and mis- use, mis- interpretations of their landscapes and of setting fire to it in the seasons
. It is as antroåpogene as can be in the climate, and not due to cycle and cyclings but to ignorance and stupitity and to unqualified engineering.
We hope that a series of Texan gas and oilfields also will catch fire due to this, will show proof and be educative.
In Ukraina, the Russians ar now doing their very best to set fire to it and to cause wildfires also in densely, populated, suburban areas..
They have longrange rocket artillery with 2-3-4 Kg of TNT within conventional “barrels” of gasoline and diesel, 150 liters…… delivered to town and elsewhere.
That sets fire to it.
The worlde is discussing whether this will inhibit necessary climate responsibility and action.
You, as a presumably resposible engineer- poet, shoud be able to get and to discuss this first. We judge and discuss you and eventual further poetries on behalf. of this
Richard Mercersays
So, how is it that the wildfire season in California and across the West has expanded by at least a month, and two months in California, compared with the 1970s?
Carbomontanussays
That is easy to answer from where I live.
For some people it is so easy and so tempting and so adult and so professional and serious to set fire to it…… smile smile…….. and to go there and rake fires……. each year in the season….
It is simply archaic tradeitionjal, human Pyro- philia and Pyro- mania.
And the season comes earlier and earlier in spring and better and better and later in autumn.
It is as antropogene as can be. And CO2AGW improoves or expands theese seasons both in spring and in autumn.
I’ll let you answer Richard Mercer before I bother to answer you.
In short, ESAD.
Carbomontanussays
So, Engineer Poet does not get the point.
The summer season and growth season and season where it can burn at all has expanded at both ends in recent decades. Spring coming earlier, autumn coming later.
If people then are tradidionally eager to burn it all every season for traditional ceremonial psychological and moral political reasons being poetic engineers in that respect in order to feel nostalgic or something, then their due traditional moral political “bonjfires” may get out of control.
And they will deny it.
They even will blame me for not having understood them and for having to learn first.
So our stupid little pastor and preacherman is also a climate denier –
now your mercilessly meaningless comments finally seem to me in the right context.
Carbomontanussays
The stupid “holistic” sales agents, pastors and preachmen and systematic deniers…..
Do I have to mention more?
James McDonaldsays
On March 18, the Concordia-Dome C research station in East Antarctica recorded an anomaly 47 degrees C above normal.
Is that now the largest anomaly ever recorded anywhere on earth? If not, what was the largest (positive or negative)?
Richard the Weaversays
Nigel: the idea that lack of media coverage is the reason almost nobody is doing anything significant about the climate problem seems rather weak .
RtW: If the same percentage of the news coverage was about the death, destruction, losses, and inconvenience of likely-climate-related stuff as was given to war stuff during WW2 then ?
Richard the Weaversays
O yeah, that’s net news coverage. You have to subtract the GOPpish propaganda since it is inverse coverage.
nigeljsays
Richard, even if we had saturation media coverage of the climate issue, I don’t believe it would make much difference to what people do about it, and most people would probably change channels or turn the TV off. Because people have already heard about all aspects of the climate issue many times over the last 20 years or so and can only take so much. Even I don’t read every media article on climate change or watch every tv segment these days. It gets repetitive. The exception is this website, because they tend to tackle new technical issues and in depth and its just one or two new issues each month.
Imho the problem is not a lack af awareness. Instead people are in various forms of psychological denial. It will only change if theres something like a heatwave that kills millions.
Don’t get me wrong. One of our media outlets had virtually no climate coverage, and I’ve lobbied them hard to change that,
And I certainly don’t object if the media increase climate coverage. I guess I have just got a bit cynical about it all.
Richard Caldwellsays
Killian to Nigel: Only two years? If it’s the first two years of a ten-year doubling, it’s extremely bad news.
RtW: Denialists do “down the up escalator”. Your comment feels like one rung of “ladderizing the up escalator”. to me.
nigeljsays
Yes exactly Richard.
Adam Leasays
One thing we need to address if countries like the UK want to embrace renewable energy and become less dependant on FF and large energy price rises is the NIMBY factor:
“The government badly needs to generate more renewable energy to meet its emission targets and make the UK more energy independent.
But some of its own MPs are among those lining up against projects that could power hundreds of thousands of homes.
At least 20 have publicly spoken out against solar or wind projects in their own constituencies in the past two years.
Many of them say they fully support increasing energy from renewables.
But building wind turbines and solar panel farms on unspoilt English countryside can be deeply unpopular with their constituents. ”
They claim to support renewables, as long as they are not near them. The problem is, in the UK, if you eliminate all places where someone could object to the visual intrusion, and all areas of outstanding natural beauty, there aren’t many places left to put large scale renewable installations. Any thoughts as to how to address this?
I use RC and comments to refine my understanding of what’s likely to crash civilization if the tyrants can’t do it first.
But reading comments can be a waste of time sorting the wheat from the chaff.
RC blog could be rescued of course. RC’s rules are too polite. Conditions should be that comments shall be on-topic, Personal aspersions not tolerated, nor shall nonsense be run into the ground.
We can’t let the trolls destroy insight into climate change by corrupting public inquiry into what concerns us all;
or having citizens’ inquiry disappear because the denialists want to keep us confused.
Let me join with others saying that valuable explanations and tangential points to the initial discussion are revealed in a blog. I’ve observed that even the denialist trolls contribute in a way – by having their points demolished by the facts.
I don’t use Facebook or Twitter or any other social medium.
My vote’s to keep the blogs and toss the hogs.
Richard the Weaversays
A more draconian Bore Hole would be easy: place comment in BoreHole and place an ever-increasing suspension on the perp, maybe with a public notice, maybe not…
The volunteer moderator concept has legs. So does a weekly or twice a week batching of comments. And letting commenters edit or delete their not-yet-moderated comments would be a huge boon.
But some of its own MPs are among those lining up against projects that could power hundreds of thousands of homes.
At least 20 have publicly spoken out against solar or wind projects in their own constituencies in the past two years.
Many of them say they fully support increasing energy from renewables.
But building wind turbines and solar panel farms on unspoilt English countryside can be deeply unpopular with their constituents. ”
They claim to support renewables, as long as they are not near them.
After all, who could possibly object to square miles of black rectangles, or spires topped with blinking anti-collision lights which radiate harmful infrasound which will stand there for the rest of their lives?
Any thoughts as to how to address this?
It starts with Hinckley Point and Sizewell D, E, F and G. Minimal geographic footprint, no significant impact beyond the site itself, and no need for carbon-spewing “backup”.
National energy concerns do need to supercede local concerns when it comes to energy projects. It is legitimate to require each site to be surveyed for environmental impact, and to invite local comment. But that’s all. That said, here’s what we need to meet the crisis.
Electricity:
1. Ban all new drilling and mining of fossil fuels, immediately. All of it. Worldwide.
2. Ban all new coal, oil, and natural gas power plants, ditto.
3. Build out national and even international HVDC smart grids to distribute power where it’s needed over as large areas as possible.
4. Build out solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and wave power generation. Overbuild it to help take care of slack periods.
5. Build out pumped hydro, battery, compressed air, and other power backup as needed.
6. Electrify as much transportation and industry as possible. Upgrade rail transportation in every country, especially in countries with backward, third-world level rail systems. Like the United States.
7. Take fossil fuel power plants off-line as soon as they can be safely replaced with renewables.
Agriculture and forestry:
8. Promote use of biochar agriculture to take carbon dioxide out of the air, where we don’t want it, and put it in the soil, where we need it.
9. Remove subsidies for wasteful, monoculture agriculture and the overuse of fertilizers. Promote natural insecticides and arbori-agriculture (crops planted amidst trees, and yes, there are ways to do that without blocking all the sunlight).
10. Stop deforestation with appropriate legislation in every country. It’s okay to raise timber farms in areas already devoted to timber farms. It’s not okay to turn rain forests into hardpan.
General:
11. Promote home recycling everywhere. Remove perverse incentives. People shouldn’t have to pay to recycle; recycling should be the default. Disposing of recyclables should be made easy for households, as in Japan.
12. Promote recycling on an industry level. We need to reuse materials, not mine new ones. Mining should be shut down to a minimum level as soon as materials from recycling streams come on line. We need a circular economy, not an endless-growth economy.
13. Research safe, cheap nuclear power, if such a thing exists. Maybe it will exist in the future.
14. Research fusion power. In the future, this will be a good way to dispose of toxic wastes, by breaking them down into their elemental or small-molecule components.
Constructive comments welcome.
nigeljsays
Barton Paul Levenson
Totally agree with your list of climate solutions. They will be challenging but seem feasible.
Biochar might be limited by available land and biomass and pyrolitic ovens don’t come cheap, so additional solutions to sequester carbon are be needed. Both rock weathering and regenerative agriculture and direct air capture have potential to sequester carbon. None of these are perfect solutions either, or they face various challenges, but a combination of all these solutions starts to look very powerful and technically feasible and cost effective to me.
“Project Drawdown” has a nice sensible list of well researched climate solutions.
I should have included, in the long run, make contraception and abortion freely available in every country. Voluntary provision of contraception has already reduced fertility from seven children per women to three in Bangladesh, which was once thought to be a basket case. The world population is one its way to stabilizing around the year 2050, but if we can do it any faster, that would help. The fewer people consuming resources, the better.
And we need to welcome immigrants and refugees. For population to be mobile would help in all kinds of ways. For example, in the United States, or China, where social security systems are strained by the growing number of elderly people and the shrinking work force, it makes no sense whatsoever to keep young, working-age immigrants and children out.
Adam LEasays
“And we need to welcome immigrants and refugees.”
Good luck selling that to the UK population, which seems to be attempting to become a clone of America (and as COVID shows, repeating what others do will likely brings you the same results as them). The reason BREXIT got voted for was because of our toxic media framing immigrants as the primary cause of social ills in the UK.
I don’t understand the attitude that immigrants take jobs and increase the unemployment levels of the native population. Given the population is aging, and given elderly people retire from work, there should be plenty of jobs to go around if it is true the workforce population is shrinking.
1. Ban all new drilling and mining of fossil fuels, immediately. All of it. Worldwide.
3. Build out national and even international HVDC smart grids to distribute power where it’s needed over as large areas as possible.
4. Build out solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and wave power generation. Overbuild it to help take care of slack periods.
5. Build out pumped hydro, battery, compressed air, and other power backup as needed.
Blah, blah, blah.
You failed at the outset with 1. This is NOT going to happen, because you’ll have a world-wide repeat of the Texas blackouts only worse. Nobody will stand for it.
3 is something we don’t have working ANYWHERE. Worse, BPL ignores the massive vulnerabilities created by long supply lines and especially hostile suppliers; Germany is effectively a vassal state of Russia due to a bone-headed program to close all nuclear plants, creating dependence on Russian gas.
4 is crazy. Geothermal and tidal are very limited geographically, and wave-power machinery tends to get broken easily. None but geothermal has a life expectancy of more than 20-25 years, so you can expect to replace it at least 4-5 times a century. While the ultimate energy source might be renewable, the materials for the equipment are not.
5 posits that we can make storage systems which fight to become affordable even today will suddenly be widely available… in an energy-constrained world. That isn’t going to happen. AAMOF, the supply chains would collapse immediately when we no longer had the reliability of electric supply to run arc furnaces to process steel for e.g. wind-turbine towers.
Nobody pushing such nonsense has a clue, and they all need to be removed from any role in determining policy.
Engineer-Poet. I dont believe that BPL was suggesting stopping using fossil fuels immediately. He appeared to be suggesting don’t open up NEW oil fields or do further exploration. Most oil comes from big existing fileds that have many years life left in them. That would give us enough oil for the transition period to a new energy grid but would put some pressure on to get moving.
Yes, EP, we know your point of view. Renewables are awful, the only solution is nukes, nukes, and more nukes. Ignore their total failure so far. Ignore that no one will invest in them any more; that the only people still investing in them are totalitarian countries where opposition can be steamrollered. Ignore the fact that people are lining up to invest their money in solar and wind, which are still growing by double digits every year. In short, ignore reality.
” 5 posits that we can make storage systems that are already struggling to be affordable, will suddenly be ubiquitous… in an energy-constrained world. That will not happen. AAMOF, the supply chains would collapse immediately if we…
Nobody who spreads such nonsense has a clue. ”
— Storage systems, along with renewable energies, are pretty much the cheapest and safest strategy to ensure energy security. As an exception, I have to agree with the blind chicken bpl.
Apparently YOU have absolutely no idea what, for example, modern pumped storage systems can do and what degree of efficiency they achieve.
So you can safely delete the engineer from your user name.
Pump storage already achieves ~ 85% efficiency today. Above ground, however, the orographic possibilities have already been exhausted in many places.
For really gifted engineers without borders, it therefore continues underground, since only a difference in height and sufficient water masses are required for a pumped storage facility.
In disused mines there are often millions of m³ of volume available. The investments for expanding them into water reservoirs are significantly cheaper than above-ground dams due to the existing infrastructure. Invisible, they can be installed on any major river or lake if the geology of the location permits, and they do not disturb the landscape or the acceptance of the population.
A concept I developed combines such underground pump storage for storing electricity with compressed air storage, heat/cold storage and serves as excellent protection against drought and flood events all year round.
The overall efficiency is well over 100% and the underground compressed air caverns are the first in the world that can produce large quantities of compressed air up to 40 bar and a lot of heat without any compressor.
Due to the multifunctionality, they are highly profitable with a comparatively low investment. No lithium, cobalt or other rare metals – 100% recyclable.
I see further global, very large potential in river power plants, which have the same base load capacity as nuclear power plants.
So you can confidently stick your uranium rods where the sun never shines. At a time when nuclear power plants are being attacked by Russian artillery – your nuclear proposals are particularly ludicrous.
Carbomontanussays
To all and everyone exept Matthias Schürle from Karlsruhe
I found DATA, that sustain my climate understanding and model. the Tropopause, lapsrate, and Claussius Clappeyron- Aristoteles- theory.
That is much easier to comprehend.
It is the fameous Hiawatha- crater on Grønland, that has been shurly dated now. rather 50 million years old, in an arctic situation with tempered rain- forests on northern Grønland, that were due to much more CO2 in the atmosphere, thus it ruins many further, recent missions, projects, and beliefs.
The moral of it is that you shurly do not have to store water on land.
What matters is enough fossile carbon in the air, so you get ocean- temperatures and claussius clappeyron evaporations enough, and then Aristoteles What goes up must come down, also in the arctic where carbon sink was also consciderable at that time, very green rain forests with high diversity also of land animal life to eat all that green.
Then what about the sea levels and its eventual rise?
Well, ignore it. It is normal.
Do not be stupid at least but moove to lands and places where the earth is not flat, so that you only have to climb a bit higher up on the lands and cliffs and solid rocks, and up in the trees during the floods.
That is a better holistic vision, I must say, … and sell!
I dont believe that BPL was suggesting stopping using fossil fuels immediately. He appeared to be suggesting don’t open up NEW oil fields or do further exploration. Most oil comes from big existing fileds that have many years life left in them.
A great deal of oil now comes from fracked shale fields with very steep annual decline rates. These require on-going effort just to maintain production. Meanwhile, energy demand continues to rise.
That would give us enough oil for the transition period to a new energy grid but would put some pressure on to get moving.
The present surge in oil prices resulting from the effort to isolate Russia ought to be enough to convince you otherwise.
Building out an entirely new energy infrastructure is itself an energy-intensive activity. Right now we’re running on the legacy of once-cheap oil and lots of coal. We won’t be able to build a new energy grid with expensive energy; we first have to make energy cheap again. Specifically, we need to make low-carbon energy cheap. Until then, we have to use the grid we’ve got.
Renewables are awful, the only solution is nukes, nukes, and more nukes.
None other than Dr. James Hansen notes that the only decarbonization success stories use hydro and nuclear.
Name a place where wind and solar support the production of more wind and solar, without fossil backup. I’ll wait.
Ignore their total failure so far.
O RLY? Look at France and Ontario. Both of them decarbonized their grids almost entirely using… nuclear and hydro. France did it entirely by accident, as an effort to replace petroleum.
Ignore that no one will invest in them any more; that the only people still investing in them are totalitarian countries where opposition can be steamrollered.
Vogtle 3 and 4, Flamanville and Olkiluoto 3 are not in totalitarian countries. Neither is Watts Bar 2, which was completed this century.
Ignore the fact that people are lining up to invest their money in solar and wind, which are still growing by double digits every year.
We don’t want our million customers that don’t have solar to be buying it for 10.5 cents when we can turn it out for them at 4.5 cents. We don’t want the non-solar customers, of which there are a million, to be subsidizing the 17,000 solar customers. Solar customers are subsidized by the federal government, as we are through our wind and solar operations.
Pickens couldn’t duplicate his oil riches in renewable energy. In 2009, he scrapped plans for a huge Texas wind farm after running into difficulty getting transmission lines approved, and eventually his renewables business failed.
Your “renewables” aren’t economically viable without subsidies and can’t even support their own manufacturing by themselves. Most of the world’s polysilicon comes from China, where it’s made with massive amounts of coal!
In short, ignore reality.
Reality is that the storage required to to get reliable power from “renewables” makes them even more uneconomic than they already are, and drives the energy return on energy invested too low to run our society.
Reality is that we’ve been using wind and solar energy for thousands of years, and ought to know their shortcomings. They’re unfit for purpose.
Reality is that the energy density of “renewables” is measured in mere watts per square meter of total area required.
Reality is that nuclear energy went from the first detection of atomic fission in 1938 to the first commercial nuclear power station in Obninsk in 1954. That’s 16 years.
Reality is that the only near-total decarbonization success stories use hydro and nuclear, and nuclear is the only one we can scale up at will.
Reality is that the IPCC has declared that nuclear energy is required to decarbonize the world economy.
Vogtle 3 and 4, Flamanville and Olkiluoto 3 are not in totalitarian countries.
No, but they are all pretty good examples of the fine art of the “boondoggle.”
Vogtle 3 & 4: 14 years & $28 bn US (projected)
Flamanville 3: 14 years & 19 bn Euro (projected)
Olkiluoto: 17 years & 11 bn Euro (Estimated cost–electric generation started on the 12th of this month, with “regular” production expected in July.)
Hinkley Point C isn’t looking all that much better presently, with a project build time of 12 years and cost of over 22 bn Pounds. And of course the Summer 2 & 3 expansion failed altogether, at a cost of ~$9 bn US.
Nuclear has its points, but scalability isn’t one of them, and it won’t be in time to address the immediate climate crisis.
Carbomontanussays
Hr E.Poet
I must say it again. When it is that obvious and easy, why is n`t that done? Are there very serious secrets to it that cannot be betrayed?
I red it again on the internet that the thorium and molten salt reactor has worked indeed to all peoples satisfaction in the sixties allready, but was closed down and project ended because it did not deliver bomb plutonium.
Such obvious rumors must be betrayed and cleaned up first, and what I have seen of German protestamntism against nuclear power was thet they would not support and help any such madness and arms race again in their own land. Honest and serious antroposophers protestants and early musicians and vegetarians. They even eat salted Mackrel, but no Nuclear.
The thorium molten salt reactor would solve that, as far as I can understand, so why is it not being built? why the Hell those U 235 light water reactors again and again and again and now again on both sides in the French election campaighn?
Is there no Academie Francaise and no Ecole de polytchnique in Paris who can simply tell France and the very EU the same that you are trying to tell?
Is that because what you are trying to tell is not the whole truth?
Because I find no other natural and plausible explaination.
And why in the USA does N`t it come out through the CNN and through Scientific American and the National geographic Magazine at least, on trustful, civil level also for me to believe it??
— Storage systems, along with renewable energies, are pretty much the cheapest and safest strategy to ensure energy security.
Then why did California and New York install gas-fired generators to replace nuclear power plants?
Apparently YOU have absolutely no idea what, for example, modern pumped storage systems can do and what degree of efficiency they achieve.
I watched the upgrade project at the Ludington pumped hydro station in real time. It increased the gross power rating of the station from 1872 MW to 2172 MW. There’s only one such station in the state of Michigan, and its capacity is dwarfed by the 4 coal-fired plants across the state in Monroe (3400 MW).
In disused mines there are often millions of m³ of volume available.
Meaning there’s millions of m³ of spoils heaps which really ought to be put back down them as part of remediation, but let’s run with this.
A cubic meter of water is approximately one metric ton and can store roughly 9.8 MJ for each meter of ΔH. If your mine is 1 million m³ at a depth of 100 meters, your maximum possible energy storage is 980 TJ or 272 GWh; at 85% efficiency that becomes 231 GWh. This will power the USA’s average electric load for about 30 minutes; if you needed a week of storage, you’d need 336 such units. You have a restriction that you need to be near a source of water, and additional constraints on flow rates if you’re using a river as the ground-level supply. This will fly as a niche application but cannot do the heavy lifting.
Contrast to nuclear energy. A fuel reload is roughly 1/3 of a full core and typically runs for 17 months between fuelings. The soon-to-be-shut-down Palisades NPP 125 miles south of the Ludington PHS plant produces 231 GWh in roughly 287 hours or 12 days. Uranium gives energy storage beyond compare.
A concept I developed
So you’re tooting your own horn here. No surprise, I guess.
I see further global, very large potential in river power plants, which have the same base load capacity as nuclear power plants.
A whole 100 kW max. Do you have any idea how ridiculously inadequate that is? That’s 1/8050 of a Palisades.
At a time when nuclear power plants are being attacked by Russian artillery – your nuclear proposals are particularly ludicrous.
Russia knows better than to do that. The “attack” on Zaporizhzhia hit a building well away from the plant proper, which was never in danger. Don’t believe the propaganda the MSM is putting out.
So you can confidently stick your uranium rods where the sun never shines.
That was always the plan. The sun never shines in spent fuel pools or dry casks or deep bore holes.
MS: In disused mines there are often millions of m³ of volume available.
EP, attempting to refute MS: Meaning there’s millions of m³ of spoils heaps which really ought to be put back down them as part of remediation, but let’s run with this.
A cubic meter of water is approximately one metric ton and can store roughly 9.8 MJ for each meter of ΔH. If your mine is 1 million m³ at a depth of 100 meters, your maximum possible energy storage is 980 TJ or 272 GWh; at 85% efficiency that becomes 231 GWh. This will power the USA’s average electric load for about 30 minutes; if you needed a week of storage, you’d need 336 such units.
BPL: Apparently EP doesn’t think there are as many as 336 mines in the United States. Further down, he makes the same mistake again:
MS: I see further global, very large potential in river power plants, which have the same base load capacity as nuclear power plants.
EP: A whole 100 kW max. Do you have any idea how ridiculously inadequate that is? That’s 1/8050 of a Palisades.
BPL: And you don’t think they can find 8,050 rivers in the United States? You’ve never looked at a river map of a county, have you?
In short, EP is in love with big, centralized plants that generate multiple GWe, and thinks multiple plants that generate just as much somehow don’t count.
@EP – ” Then why did California and New York install gas-fired generators to replace nuclear power plants?
”
— Maybe because in your country it’s not the sane, intelligent people who call the shots, but dirty, corrupt and criminal oil and gas corporations.
You won’t be able to talk nuclear energy sane and cheap.
Who paid the billions to research nuclear energy?
Who will pay the unknown cost of final disposal over the next 50.000-100.000 years?
Who pays for the Fukushima or Chernobyl disaster?
Who pays for military operations, e.g. in Mali, when French & German
soldiers apparently secure Malian uranium production there? The taxpayer???
If these costs were priced into the production cost of a nuclear-generated KWh, then it would cost at least 10 times the KWh from wind energy.
It also looks like you don’t know at all how a power grid works. Especially when the inflexible nuclear power is used as a base load in a power grid, we need large storage capacities that absorb the excess nuclear power (at night, for example) in order to release it again during the day as a peak load.
EP.: – ” If your mine is 1 million m³ at a depth of 100 meters… ”
— My pump storage with 1000000m³ at a depth of 400m can absorb ~ 1GWh per day.
Battery storage at this scale costs ~$0.5-1 billion.
For a fraction of this sum you can expand the old mine.
EP.: – ” A whole 100 kW max. ”
— …can still produce a good 25GWh in 30 years.
In series production, such a power plant should not cost much more than $100,000.
So it produces sustainable, completely harmless electricity for 0.5 cents/KWh.
Your nuclear power is miles away from that.
Linleysays
I am a pragmatist. As such I often wonder if more could be achieved quicker and cheaper by the rich countries paying for the poorer countries to clean up their electricity grids. This example has been overtaken by events rather as Germany has plenty to think about with its own energy supply, but put that aside for a minute. Poland is right next door to Germany. Poland has a very dirty electricity grid, if Germany helped them clean up their grid with some wind, solar and gas and close their dirty coal could emissions be reduced more readily than if Germany continue to build on their own wind and solar.
Another example, India want to build coal. If Britain helped them with wind, solar and gas instead of expanding their own wind turbines would more emissions reductions be achieved quicker and cheaper?
I have never seen anyone explore this thinking. If we all want to be good global citizens it seems to me to be worth some thought.
zebrasays
Thoughtful comment.
The issue, though, is that producing coal is part of their economies; I just did a quick check and India is #5 in the world in reserves and Poland is #9. So they would be giving up the value of their holdings (unless they sold it elsewhere.)
This is of course the problem with extractive economies in general, which is why getting off fossil fuels is so difficult.
That’s essentially the idea with the Green Climate Fund, which is under the UNFCCC–except that it’s multilateral, not bilateral. Their 2021 report is a bit of a slog, but basically they were pledge ~10 billion USD, got most of it and spent most of it on adaptation and mitigation projects around the world. There’s another “replenishment period” underway, and the “mobilization of funding” continues.
One of my critiques of the renewables movement is exactly this: Who pays for the poor people’s energy grids? It won’t ever happen. Despite Kevin’s cite of the GCF, the fact is the chance it solves the problem for the world’s 5 billion or more that can’t afford the transition – or any energy in many cases – is slim and none. Some? Sure. But what you’re going to see is the current inequalities cemented in place – even assuming the entire world got some electricity!
What will happen is, at best, Americans will get all the energy they want at the expense of the rest of the planet’s resources and sub-Saharan Africans, e.g., will get a tiny fraction in comparison. Why? Who’s going to pay for it? The same predatorty economic and political systems will result in the same essential conditions, Changing the type of energy will have zero effect on that.
Besides, renewables aren’t renewable, let alone sustainable, so should be anything but maximized, so the overall strategy is a massive fail. The change must be systemic, not hacking at leaves of the current system.
nigeljsays
Killians comments. So renewables movement should be criticised because poor people might not be able to afford renewables. I totally reject that idea. It takes the idea of fairness to the point of absurdity. Its like saying “if everyone cant have everything nobody should have anything.”
By that ‘logic’ you could say that adequate food, modern medical care, televisions, and smartphones should be criticised because poor people cant afford them. I find all that approach completely absurd.
Its the same approach to renewables taken in Michael Moores absurd video “Planet of the Humans”. Namely he attacks renewables (and he lies about them) on the basis that poor people miss out and corporations and rich people benefit from renewables.
The plight of poor people is concerning, and rich people should give them some help at least so they have the basics of life. This happens in some Scandinavian countries through taxes and wealth redistribution. But that is a socio-political issue. It clearly does not determine the value of a piece of technology and whether its development is desirable or not.
Killiansays
So renewables movement should be criticised because poor people might not be able to afford renewables.
Why do you respond to my posts? You literally never understand what you are responding to.
1. There was no criticism of renewables. There never has been. Never will be. It’s a technology. One may as well criticize a fishhook.
2. I provided a *critique* of the application of renewable energy and noted expected results of using it as a primary response to the problems we have. I said, “…so should be anything but maximized…” which does not mean never build another one, but does mean should be applied carefully, and only as *needed.* I have spoken on the necessity of needs-based decision-making for years.
Both of these are legitimate, neither is pejorative. Your use of “criticism” and the assignment of a reasoning you know to be false based on long repetition of these issues between you and me, and generally on this board, is pejorative and inappropriate. I have talked for years about renewables in these spaces and have repeatedly explained to you, directly, the application of Appropriate Technology.
Yet, you use a pejorative term in response to my comment and ascribe a reasoning to me that you *know* to be false. How is one to consider this anything other than trolling in this context?
By that ‘logic’ you could say that adequate food, modern medical care, televisions, and smartphones should be criticised because poor people cant afford them. I find all that approach completely absurd.
Yes, your use of Straw Man arguments is, as ever, absurd. However, that the wealthy exploit the resources of others and leave them poor and without the same opportunities to use them *is*, in fact, a legitimate critique of *any* ***use*** of a technology. (I have already clarified the absurdity of conflating this with a criticism of a technology itself.)
It clearly does not determine the value of a piece of technology
Of course, it does. If a resource is used for the exclusive use of a small group to the detriment of others, that absolutely does have an impact on the value of said technology to humanity. Opinions may vary on what that value effect is, but one cannot accurately claim there is no effect.
But you do. No surprise.
and whether its development is desirable or not.
Which is why I have never said it. I said nothing of the technology, only of policy/application.
Stop trolling via Straw Man arguments. Understand what you read before responding. Work to not allow your head worms to color your ability to comprehend and the nature of your responses.,
Ray Ladburysays
Actually, what is happening on the ground is quite different. Rural life in India is beginning to be transformed by the influx of cellular phones and cheap photovoltaics. On my two trips to Madagascar, 12 years apart, there was an astounding transition along similar lines. Now, even far off the main highways, you see photovoltaics charging cell phones. In a few villages, enterprising citizens have purchased refrigerators (again, powered by photovoltaics), where they can store medicines–for a price, food, etc.
Life is still quite hard. Hell, famine is a real possibility this years, and outbreaks of plague are a regular occurrence. However, technology is improving the lot of poor villagers–particularly those enterprising to be early adopters. One important shortcoming, though remains transport. It is still too intermittent and expensive, especially during rainy seasons.
nigeljsays
Killian.
Try to think about it like this. Right now only about 5% of new generation is renewables and there are only a small number of EV’s, so OBVIOULY a lot of people are missing out, poor people in particular. It takes time to scale things up. Eventually the majority of people will share in renewables, but very poor people (and countries) will probably STILL miss out.
Its the way of the world. Not everyone can have everything because resources are FINITE. You have a computer. Not everyone will own a computer even with mass production. I don’t know if I’ve explained this perfectly but surely you get the point.
The only practical thing we can do is some wealth redistribution within countries to help with the basics, but even that will not ensure everyone has renewables like an EV. or any car at all..
Poor countries only have themselves to blame for their lack of progress with renewables and other things. You cant go on blaming colonisation hundreds of years ago. They have had ample opportunity since then to get their act together and modernise their economies. The trouble is they have a lot of corrupt institutions and practices and don’t get themselves organised. Stop being so guilty about it all.
I say this as someone who doesn’t like greed, and supports government programmes to help poor people, but I recognise you are being very idealistic and totally unrealistic about what’s possible in this world.
nigeljsays
Killian
“There was no criticism of renewables. There never has been. Never will be”
Rubbish. You have been very critical of renewables. A couple of years ago you wrote that EV’s are “useless pieces of junk” or words close to that, and you have been very critical of solar and wind farms. You know it.
To clarify, the purpose of the GCF isn’t to do all the heavy lifting of economic development; it’s intended to assist poorer nations adapt to and/or mitigate climate change. It’s part pragmatics–deal-making between developed and less-developed nations (political pragmatism to get to the Paris Accord), plus speeding the clean energy transition (mitigation pragmatism)–and part compensation from the more developed nations to the less developed. But it was never envisioned as providing access to clean energy for everyone. For that purpose, $10 billion in 4 or 5 years would be frankly laughable.
Luckily, no-one is depending on the GCF to do it all. There are numerous other ‘pots of money’ available to do the work of transition–governmental (local revenues, international aid); NGOs of all sizes; and private capital. Without a doubt, Africa is the continent facing the greatest challenges in terms of energy access, so let’s focus our attention there for a moment. Here’s something a recent IRENA report had to say on the topic of energy in Africa:
This study argues that African countries, bolstered by active
engagement from their partners and mandated continental
and regional organisations such as the African Union, could
seize the opportunity to leapfrog fossil fuel technologies and
pursue a climate-friendly, needs-oriented power strategy aligned
with the Paris Agreement and low-carbon growth. The
levelised cost of electricity from solar PV decreased by 82
per cent between 2010 and 2019, while the cost of onshore wind
fell by 40 percent. This means that in 2020, renewable energy
is in most cases the least-cost option for new electricity generation
capacity globally. Technology solutions are abundant
and ready to be deployed to meet Africa’s growing energy de-
mand in an economically viable manner, while offering significant
opportunities for job creation and industrial development.
Importantly, energy-poor and unserved populations could get
universal access to electricity. In fact, Africa’s estimated potential
to generate renewable energy from existing technologies is
1,000 times larger than its projected demand for electricity in
2040…
The choice isn’t between renewable energy or nothing; Africa is going to keep on developing as long as we don’t crash civilization as a whole, so there will be some sort energy investment and deployment, no matter what. The question is, what sort? It’s very fortunate that the lowest LCOE option is also low emitting.
With abundant indigenous resources,
Africa is well placed to leverage this potential. However,
the potential and availability of cost-effective technologies
alone are not sufficient. Seizing this opportunity will require
strong political will, attractive investment frameworks and a
holistic policy approach to fully reap the benefits of renewable
energy. It also means that current average annual investments
in the African energy system must double by 2030 – to approximately
40-65 billion USD.
To re-emphasize, it said “to fully reap.” The current investment level, you will note, is thus $20-32 billion US annually. Even with this level, and with sub-optimal investment patterns (i.e., building expensive and dirty fossil fuel generation capacity), progress has been made:
The share of Africans with access to electricity in their homes
increased from 36 per cent in the year 2000 to 54 per cent in
2018 (IEA, 2019c), which is notable progress, especially considering
the significant population growth during that period and the large
investments required to connect people, particularly in rural and
peri-urban areas. Still, around 548 million people in Africa have no
access to electricity today. Of these, 472 million live in rural areas.
a) 5 billion are at risk of being “left behind” WRT energy access, or
b) that renewable energy is somehow the culprit in this putative risk. On the contrary, it promises to do a great deal to alleviate the problem of energy access by lowering energy costs.
P.S.
Killian: “Besides, renewables aren’t renewable, let alone sustainable…”
Me: Several centuries of ‘renewal capacity’ (using current technology) is lots for my taste.
Killiansays
To clarify…
While not intended as a Straw Man, this has the same function: Nobody said it was expected to do the heavy lifting. Why spend all those words on a non-issue?
quote and “The choice isn’t between…”
First, if we’re going to invest in Africa’s well-being while claiming to help them to “leapfrog fossil fuel technologies and pursue a climate-friendly, needs-oriented power strategy aligned
with the Paris Agreement and low-carbon growth….”, why do so with strategies that are not, in fact, needs-based and set them up for collapse later? How does this make sense, particularly when using the same funding would support magnitudes more change if put into regenerative systems?
You always react to my comments as if I am have spent all these years saying “renewables are evil!” It makes no sense. You know the framing I believe we need to use: There is not enough time for tech-based solutions, they don’t actually solve our problems, and there is a massive opportunity cost because virtually no money, in comparison, is going into options that actually get us to a safe, stable, healthy future in a time frame that gives us a pretty good chance of stabilizing the ecosystem within decades. I am not against renewables, I am for solutions – which renewables are a part of, but should not be the vast majority of our focus, energy and funding.
Why do you fight so hard for non-solutions and to consistently discount actual solutions? I am telling you, good enough is not good enough. Absolute guarantee.
Access to electricity
That’s some very privileged thinking there, isn’t it? My point, exactly, was that is what we will see: Access, not equality. Dear Africans, you get 0ne 200W solar panel, but Americans get 25! Ain’t that grand?! Progress is your metric? Do you sincerely believe this tech-based approach will ever lead to resource use equality?
I don’t believe that:
a) 5 billion are at risk of being “left behind” WRT energy access, or
b) that renewable energy is somehow the culprit in this putative risk.
LOL… they already are, always have been. How does your promotion of renewables change that? How does it alter the economic system? The political system? The injustices and inequalities? Electricty changes everything, is that what you think?
Do you not understand this conversation about electricity is serving as proxy for the way the entire system functions? We see all the same dynamics in all other parts of society/economics/politics.
This is not about belief, it’s about seeing what is in front of you, and has been your entire lifetime.
Killian: “Besides, renewables aren’t renewable, let alone sustainable…”
Me: Several centuries of ‘renewal capacity’ (using current technology) is lots for my taste.
That does not exist, particularly at a global level equal to that of even Europe, let alone the US. And given renewables solve nothing, there is zero chance we get a stable several centuries before collapse of the ecosystem and society. Zero. Your point is moot, and dangerously shortsighted, in not naive, imo.
nigeljsays
Killian
“You )Kevin) always react to my comments as if I am have spent all these years saying “renewables are evil!”
Because Killian has pretty much done exactly that even if he doesn’t intend to. I specifically recall Killian utterly rubbishing EV’s on several occasions and being critical of solar and wind farms. The ONLY positive thing I can recall him saying about renewables is that its “ok to use a single solar panel and car battery preferably used ones that people scavenge”. This is not exactly a ringing endorsement of renewables ( EV’s, wind power. solar power, hydro power etc)
So I have developed the impression he is largely anti renewables yet he acts all surprised. This man is his own worst enemy.
Killian needs to to be much CLEARER, and simpler in how he frames things, and definitely less contradictory, or multiple people misinterpreting him is going to continue, over and over.
And a solar panel and battery won’t come REMOTELY close to even meeting his OWN goals of some sort of functional technology backbone. So what’s the plan? Do solar farms or wind farms and EV’s have some place in this plan? Yes or no?
I’m all for minimising how many renewables we need to build. Killian makes a valid point there. Waste is never good, but I doubt we will be able to cut use of renewables to the bone.
And when Killian says “There is not enough time for tech-based solutions, they don’t actually solve our problems, and there is a massive opportunity cost because virtually no money, in comparison, is going into options that actually get us to a safe, stable, healthy future in a time frame that gives us a pretty good chance of stabilizing the ecosystem within decades. I am not against renewables” he is asking people to believe he is not against renewables when he has just vociferously argued against them on multiple levels! His statements are rhetorical bullshit.
“Dear Africans, you get 0ne 200W solar panel, but Americans get 25! ”
What does Killian expect? That America and China just give away billions of solar panels to Africa so each continent has the exact same number? Good luck with that idea. I’m sure the general public will be right behind it (sarc). Talk about a pie in the sky fantasy.
How about Africans get of their backsides and get rid of the corruption, and manufacture their own solar panels or otherwise earn some income so they can buy them.
I support progressive policies, and I support a moderate level of tax payer funded foreign aid enough to help people in Africa survive with the basics of life and help reduce poverty, but in no way do I feel obliged to make sure they have the exact same standard of living that I do (which is moderately high but not profligate). Why should I? I’m not responsible for them or their problems and corrupt systems.
Why should I give away half my stuff or money to people, many of whom will just completely waste it and then demand more? Heard of the term cargo cult mentality? Lets have some social realism and awareness in this debate please.
More later.
Killiansays
Since my other comment will likely get deleted for its intense accuracy, let’s go with this:
You )Kevin) always react to my comments as if I am have spent all these years saying “renewables are evil!”
Because Killian has pretty much done exactly that
Lie. No other word for it. Why you think this is how you should engage in the most important issue humanity has ever faced, I do not know. I am, however, beyond tired of the unrelenting dishonesty. No point in reading further. Any screed based on a lie is garbage.
Dear Readers, do remind yourselves anything I have ever said on renewables has been said in the context of Regenerative Design aka Permaculture. Truth? The claim is absolutely false as such design is done with the following clearly, firmly, unabashedly, necessarily in the rubric:
* Start from tabula rasa and let the design emerge. Do not dictate what is needed. (Corollary: Don’t dismiss anything “just because.” We do not design from bias.)
* Appropriate Technology: A. Use the best tech for the job. B Use unsustainable tech, when *needed*, to create regenerative systems.
* Bridge Technlogy: Use new unsustainable tech if needed to create a regenerative system.
The bias here? It’s in nigel’s Ad Hom’s Straw Men, dishonesty, etc.
The comment about “heavy lifting” WRT development was my wording, but I think the proverbial ‘reasonable person’ would recognize it as a fair shorthand tag for this:
One of my critiques of the renewables movement is exactly this: Who pays for the poor people’s energy grids? It won’t ever happen. Despite Kevin’s cite of the GCF, the fact is the chance it solves the problem for the world’s 5 billion or more that can’t afford the transition – or any energy in many cases – is slim and none.
But sure, let’s move on.
…why do so with strategies that are not, in fact, needs-based and set them up for collapse later?
Africa isn’t obliged to agree with your assessment of their needs, and increased access to electricity has been formally identified as such a need. As for the assertion that RE would somehow “set them up for collapse,” it’s unsupported, IMO.
Why do you fight so hard for non-solutions and to consistently discount actual solutions?
I didn’t say a word about your putative “actual solutions;” I’m not sure what you were thinking of when you wrote that.
And why do I “fight so hard” for RE? Because it’s a necessary part of addressing our climate crisis. I don’t claim it’s sufficient by itself, but it is necessary.
[Access to electricity] That’s some very privileged thinking there, isn’t it?
No, I don’t think it is–and in any case, it’s not my framing. It’s in common use internationally–as in the Sustainable Development Goals–and internally in Africa.
Do you sincerely believe this tech-based approach will ever lead to resource use equality?
Did I ever suggest that it might? I’m all for equality, and not in a merely theoretical manner, either. But IMO transforming energy generation around the world isn’t nearly as big an ‘ask’ as perfect ‘resource use equality.’ And the former is presently a hell of a lot more urgent, as well.
LOL… [5 billion] already are [being left behind WRT energy access], always have been.
That’s not what the data say. It’s perfectly true that the global ultra-rich are padding their economic lead as a class, but the developing world has by and large been ‘gaining’ on the developed world. If we take energy access as criterion, the number of people without electricity is less than 1 billion globally, and dropping.
Do you not understand this conversation about electricity is serving as proxy for the way the entire system functions?
Apparently you think that you can define the topic unilaterally. Talk about that if you like, but I’m talking about decarbonizing energy generation, and secondarily pointing out that a goodly number of smart folks see concomitant social gains (like better energy access) from deployment of RE.
[Several centuries of ‘renewal capacity’] does not exist, particularly at a global level equal to that of even Europe, let alone the US.
Not sure if you thought I meant “renewable capacity,” which of course does not exist *yet*–but assuming not, your assertion would again be unsupported. There have been a number of studies identifying roadmaps to the requisite capacity, and AFAIK nothing showing hard constraints on RE for timescales of a few centuries. (Continued economic growth, much less *energy* growth, of course, is another story.)
And given renewables solve nothing, there is zero chance we get a stable several centuries before collapse of the ecosystem and society.
RE is necessary to solve the problem of decarbonizing power generation globally in the shortest possible amount of time. Not, perhaps, sufficient–but very definitely necessary.
Your point is moot, and dangerously shortsighted, in not naive, imo.
Clearly it’s not moot, since here we are debating it. Your opinion is noted, but it’s mine that while ending our culture of waste and disposability is also necessary, it isn’t sufficient to address the current crisis, either. It’s also my related opinion–and I know I’m repeating myself here, but apparently I need to–that doing so will be much more difficult than transforming energy generation will.
(No offense intended, but that’s why I’d urge you to spend more time articulating your vision, and less slagging–intentionally or not–RE. Flow charts and principles are great, but not very intuitive for regular folk. Your occasional links to ‘example communities’ are good in that regard. We all need to know what sustainable looks like, and in many different settings.)
nigeljsays
Killian
I said you come across as saying renewables are evil. Deny it and call it a lie if you want but I gave you reasons why you come across like this namely ” I specifically recall Killian utterly rubbishing EV’s on several occasions and being critical of solar and wind farms., etcetera ”
Do you deny you have utterly rubbished EV’s on several occasions (calling them useless junk or words similar to that) and being critical of solar and wind farms.? And rarely ever said anything positive about renewables?
Remember regulars here may have read your past comments. Along with the moderators. They are stored in the archives for a very long time.
Killiansays
why do so with strategies that are not, in fact, needs-based and set them up for collapse later?
Africa isn’t obliged to agree with your assessment of their needs
Let’s avoid the nigel2-isms, eh? Leave the bizarre Straw Man arguments to him. I made zero assessment of Africa’s needs. I *did* point at what Africa would never get from the rest of the world and the dangers of building out an unsustainable energy system.
and increased access to electricity has been formally identified as such a nHed.
And who said it isn’t? Implied Straw Man. Perhaps you like that nigel2 appellation…
As for the assertion that RE would somehow “set them up for collapse,” it’s unsupported, IMO.
Zero analysis as to why. Hmm… 1. Limited resources. 2. Likely insufficient capital for replacements over time (if even possible given #1.) 3. Massive debt they will be forced to take on if full buildout occurs.
Why do you fight so hard for non-solutions and to consistently discount actual solutions?
I didn’t say a word about your putative “actual solutions;” I’m not sure what you were thinking of when you wrote that.
You very clearly emphasize renewables and undersell and critique regenerative solutions.
And why do I “fight so hard” for RE? Because it’s a necessary part of addressing our climate crisis. I don’t claim it’s sufficient by itself, but it is necessary.
Why? Where? The latest chapter of the IPCC report says we must slash emissions 80%ish. Can that be done solely by electrifying? No. It is utter nonsense to think the energy intensity of the current system can be massively reduced and production and consumption can remain the same. This thinking is the result of people not having any clarity on the nature of energy vis-a-vis work (physics, not jobs) being done.
I encourage you to improve your understanding of thermodynamics and why steady-state economics necessarily includes far less consumption. It is simply B.S. that one can simply electrify everything and that takes care of that. energy intensity and fungibility of resources is VITAL to this discussion. You, unfortunately, missed The Oil Drum, which leaves you ill-equipped for these discussions.
[Access to electricity] That’s some very privileged thinking there, isn’t it?
No, I don’t think it is–and in any case, it’s not my framing. It’s in common use internationally–as in the Sustainable Development Goals–and internally in Africa.
Yeah, it is, Kevin. Ignoring history and assuming the Great White Saviors are going to change their stripes is exceedingly privileged.
Do you sincerely believe this tech-based approach will ever lead to resource use equality?
Did I ever suggest that it might?
Yes. It is inherent in the ecofascist approach.
I’m all for equality, and not in a merely theoretical manner, either.
You are a technocopian, Kevin. Tech first, regenerative… um…. maybe? Continuing with current gov and econ is exactly the opposite of being ‘all for equality.”
But IMO transforming energy generation around the world isn’t nearly as big an ‘ask’ as perfect ‘resource use equality.’ And the former is presently a hell of a lot more urgent, as well.
So, the impossible is preferable to the necessary?
LOL… [5 billion] already are [being left behind WRT energy access], always have been.
That’s not what the data say.
Yes, it does. 95% have access? So, the other 5 billion use the same per capita energy as the US, Canada, Europe, et al.? C’mon… top rationalizing.
Do you not understand this conversation about electricity is serving as proxy for the way the entire system functions?
Apparently you think that you can define the topic unilaterally.
Another nigelism.
Talk about that if you like, but I’m talking about decarbonizing energy generation
You cannot sensibly silo these issues. That’s how we ended up where we are.
and secondarily pointing out that a goodly number of smart folks see concomitant social gains (like better energy access) from deployment of RE.
So… with economic equality at its greatest extent ever in the modern era, the poor are catching up and social gains are increasing… even as we hurtle towards utter destruction of the ecosystem. This line of thinking is sensible to you?
[Several centuries of ‘renewal capacity’] does not exist, particularly at a global level equal to that of even Europe, let alone the US.
Not sure if you thought I meant “renewable capacity,” which of course does not exist *yet*–but assuming not, your assertion would again be unsupported. There have been a number of studies identifying roadmaps to the requisite capacity,
And they are wrong. The math is clear. Only Econ gymnastics makes it possible to twist the reality into this fantasy. The resources aren’t there, the time frame needed does not exist and the wealthy are not going to simply give the poor free or even very inexpensive energy. Have never done it, will never do it. Pipedreams.
and AFAIK nothing showing hard constraints on RE for timescales of a few centuries. (Continued economic growth, much less *energy* growth, of course, is another story.)
Cement. Aluminum. Turbin blades. Rare Earths. Pretty much everything else in these machines. None of these things can be produced at the scale needed indefinitely. Even the recyclable stuff – and much isn’t – needs decades of capacity buildout. Fantasies.
And given renewables solve nothing, there is zero chance we get a stable several centuries before collapse of the ecosystem and society.
RE is necessary to solve the problem of decarbonizing power generation globally in the shortest possible amount of time.
GIGO. US has 3x the renewables it needs for degrowth. Europe is similar, and probably even higher. Why should barely industrialized people industrialize thier use of resources rather than go regenerative, which they can do **far faster**?
Not, perhaps, sufficient–but very definitely necessary.
Your point is moot, and dangerously shortsighted, in not naive, imo.
Clearly it’s not moot, since here we are debating it. Your opinion is noted, but it’s mine that while ending our culture of waste and disposability is also necessary, it isn’t sufficient to address the current crisis, either.
Agreed. Who said merely ending waste and disposability solves anything? Another nigelism.
It’s also my related opinion–and I know I’m repeating myself here, but apparently I need to–that doing so will be much more difficult than transforming energy generation will.
Assertion. No facts. No analysis. Simplification takes a fraction of the time of any other approach. Period. The logic behind saying building out multiple new industrial systems globally with limited resources and no funding using non-renewable resources, some of which will be depleted this century, is faster than just stopping the 80% of amkework we do is a special kind of denial.
(No offense intended, but that’s why I’d urge you to spend more time articulating your vision, and less slagging–intentionally or not–RE.
I have never slagged, intentionally or not, RE. It’s a Straw Man, aka nigelism. You and the others around here get all heated up by logical, accurate analysis and start distorting what I say. Have. Never. Slagged. RE. Ever. Good analysis is not slagging. but it scares all of you to think a regenerative future is *necessary,* so you are aggressive and intellectually dishonest about all this.
Killiansays
I said you come across as saying renewables are evil.
nigel, dear, you hearing what you want to hear and falsely characterizing what I *do* say is not me “coming across as” anything.
Straw Men, gaslights…. ugh… take responsibility for yourself.
BPL: The second largest continent in the world, renowned for its mines, with a huge labor supply, and vast investment being poured in from advanced industrial economies such as China, has limited resources. Thus it can’t build out renewables.
After he has said this, why should we take anything Killian says seriously on any subject at all?
There’s little to rebut in your last, Killian, as most of the retorts IMO simply miss the point.
However, I do have a couple of comments.
–You bizarrely accused me of “privilege” for simply using a widely accepted metric (access to electricity). More than a little ironic for the guy who wants to define the “need” in “need-based” not only for Africa, but for all the rest of the world, too. It’s the deepest problem with your vision: people *will* decide for themselves what they “need.”
–You claim I present “zero analysis” as to the prospects for RE in Africa. Wrong–I linked a 100-page report, including case studies of a dozen or so nations. You said, by way of “analysis”:
1. Limited resources. 2. Likely insufficient capital for replacements over time (if even possible given #1.) 3. Massive debt they will be forced to take on if full buildout occurs.
Forgive me if I’m a bit underwhelmed.
—
I *did* point at what Africa would never get from the rest of the world…
You mean the “Great White Saviors?” How about a little respect for Africa agency?
—
I have never slagged, intentionally or not, RE.
Well, congrats on the extraordinary clarity you have on what you ‘didn’t intend.” But you theoretically might give a tinker’s about how your communications are received, because clearly lots of folks, myself included, get a very clear impression that’s at odds with your intentions. Or non-intentions, as the case may be.
Killiansays
B,
I guess it is going to take you time to reboot to being polite. Ill-intended arcasm and Straw Men are not polite.
K: [Africa has] 1. Limited resources.
BPL: The second largest continent in the world, renowned for its mines, with a huge labor supply, and vast investment being poured in from advanced industrial economies such as China, has limited resources. Thus it can’t build out renewables.
I said nothing restricting the issue of resource limits to Africa because that makes no sense in the current context – or any context. That said,…
Dear Readers, having a lot of resources in a given location, region or on a given continent in no way invalidates the issue of resource limits and their impact on sustainability.
Adam Leasays
I think the idea of wealthy countries assisting poorer countries in transitioning to clean energy is a good idea in theory. The issue I see in my country (the UK) is that directly doing this would be extremely unpopular with the electorate. The UK has been one of the worlds worst affected countries by COVID which still isn’t over, the lack of investment in public services such as the NHS and public transport over the last half century is now coming home to roost, we are constabtly reminded of the strain COVID is and has put on an already stretched NHS, the UK state pension is reported as one of the worst in Europe, so handing millions or maybe even hundreds of millions of taxpayers money overseas for nothing tangible in return, which the public will very likely claim should be spent on UK people, and which will be hammered out by most of the influencial media, is not going to go down well.
Unfortunately, even with ambitious and expensive ideas which involve altruism and could be logically argued as ultimately beneficial to everyone, you can’t just ignore public opinion in a democratic country.
Maybe there is a way of raising the money through extra taxes on fossil fuel use, but I doubt that will go down well in the UK given the soaring price of fuel and gas has resulted in one of the worst costs of living crises in a century.
Adam, the US has a well-established solution to this, but we do it with military hardware, not solar panels.
Taxpayer money goes to other countries so they can buy our weapons systems, which benefits the defense-industrial complex. And that benefit is distributed to all the States through sub-contracting, so there’s zero problem getting the votes in Congress.
Tricky business to get there with renewables, as we are way behind China in the ability to produce renewable technology in quantity, as well as having the fossil fuel vested interests so powerful here.
carbomontanussays
Linley
I know a lot of theese discussions.
In connection to the fameous nobel price to Al Gore and IPCC Rajendra Pachauri in Oslo, the Norwegian state with Jens Stoltenberg also had to shown its scientificivity and progressive- ness, and told of a lot of things to be done and paid for elsewhere in “developing” coutries, and paid for with Norwegian oil and gas production andc earnings and engineering teaching and administration.
It is the very theory of russian oil an Yamal- gas and Nordstream 2. that shall displace german and polish dirty coal and brown coal burnt for open chimney at low efficiancy, russian and Adolph technology. political
All in all an eldorado of progressive hocuspocus and commercial cheating.
Another Hocuspocus political commercial El- dorado is electrification of the off- shore oil and gas platforms with hydroelectrics from land. So that gas can be saved at the platforms offshore and reduce the local CO2 national “footprints” and rather sold to the EU and burnt there so that they get the footprints. Instead of the much cheaper way, to sell hydroelectro by cables to Germany and Poland to stop their traditional coal burnings form open chimney. NBecessary electrics for the plastforms, drilling and pumping etc., can be done by offshore gas and steam turbines with plenty seawatrer cooling on the condensers. coal and nuclear suffer consciderably in the summer warmth due to lack of proper icy water cooling on the steam condensers.
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E.Poet
I do not quite believe in the Teslas either. Hydroelectro is much to valuable to be burnt away on the streets. That should run on “clean Diesel” with synthetic Carbo- hydrides. They drive like hell. “read the amperemeter!r” I instruct when sitting in electric cars, the Nissans. When rather aquainted to how to save gasoline and budget in traditional low compression cars, I have learnt that and couldv save and steal gallons of “gas” in military wehicles for my own use. The teslas never leant such things, economical driving to ones own advantage. Drive it like a soft, steam entine and avoid any accelleration. .
The traditional Volvo buseswith 6 cyl inline diesel were fashionable and comfortable, one could enjoy the engines and the voyage. They did hardly smoke and drink. Also the electric railway is comfortable and fashionable, they only have to keep up with and renew the railway restaurant. A railway system stands and falls with the railway restaurant.
The Nissans are exellent and fashionable. One can hear the wheels rolling on the road and the birdsongs outside. Its heavier weight does remind of the horse, that also must have some match- weight, and the horse is also a silent animal. Getting rid of th terrible motor sound feels like getting back on a proper diligence again.
There should be 3- wheeled electric Richa- taxies in town, and the Ford A and Ford T solution, really very fashionable, should be restored and electrified for taxies..
Apparently EP doesn’t think there are as many as 336 mines in the United States.
We’re talking abandoned mines, near suitable water supplies/reservoirs, which don’t have anything in them which would pollute said water, etc. etc.
MS declared that there are millions of m³ of caverns available. Turns out we’d likely need HUNDREDS of millions, depending on depth. Then on top of that, we’d need the “renewable” energy supplies to “charge” them and keep them charged against need.
Gravity is the weakest of the 4 fundamental forces. If we’ve got space underground and we need electric storage, we’d get a lot more bang per cubic meter storing energy via the electric force (e.g. Form Energy’s sulfur-based flow battery) than moving water up and down.
And you don’t think they can find 8,050 rivers in the United States? You’ve never looked at a river map of a county, have you?
Again, BPL fails at math. That’s 8050 units to equal the output of ONE small-ish nuclear plant, and only when a river flow rate of 4 m/sec is available. It would take something like 375 Palisades-equivalents to serve the US base load. That’s roughly 3 MILLION 100 kW RotR plants, cranking at maximum.
If you can’t do math, you can’t wrap your mind around the sheer scale of this problem. BPL demonstrably cannot.
EP is in love with big, centralized plants that generate multiple GWe
My current analysis project is a 3 GW(th) reactor driving a sulfur-iodine water-splitting plant, generating approximately 350,000 tons of H2 per year. One of my previous analysis projects was a 50 MW(e) NuScale reactor generating combined heat and power. Even that’s too big for my nearest city of significant size, but heating everything with heat to spare and powering a lot of the surrounding area is a virtue, not a vice.
and thinks multiple plants that generate just as much somehow don’t count
50 MW(e) is smaller than lots of wind farms, so who’s the big, centralized advocate now? And nuclear has virtues that “renewables” don’t:
1. It’s not dependent upon the weather or season.
2. It’s not affected by day/night cycles.
3. It can supply multiple needs at once (heat as well as electricity).
4. It’s compact and local, rather than a blight on the landscape.
5. It can be located near the point of use, rather than requiring long transmission lines from far-flung “farms”.
For reasons which elude reasoned analysis, BPL thinks these things don’t count.
@EP.: – ” reasons which elude reasoned analysis… ”
1. It is independent of weather or season.
– What happens if your nuclear power plant can no longer be cooled in summer due to drought and low water levels in the rivers?
2. It is not affected by day/night cycles.
– I just explained to you that the more inflexible the base load, the more highly flexible storage power plants the power grid needs.
3. It can meet multiple needs at the same time (both heat and power).
…and what do you do day and night with the heat in summer at 40°C?
4. It’s compact and local, rather than a nuisance to the landscape.
— Compact and local would be my own balcony power plant (2 water-cooled PV modules with 600Wp electric / 1200Wp thermal / in combination with water-cooled LED plant light as a heating system with negative CO² emissions and a water boiler with heat exchanger).
The components cost a total of less than €1000 and can be installed by any craftsman or do-it-yourself / without a voltage regulator, inverter or mains/grid connection.
5. It can be placed close to the point of use instead of requiring long transmission lines from distant “farms”.
— Millions of end users in the big cities of the world are enthusiastic and can hardly wait to welcome a nuclear power plant in the center or periphery.
As a reward, they will caress your cheeks until you drop dead.
You elegantly sweep Fukushima and Chernobyl under the rug because you (like D. Trump) believe that stupidity only needs to be repeated often enough to make it acceptable.
I look at your points 1,2,3,4,5 and find that they nare really not so convincing. It is modern times, but really not the most happy, healthy, sustrainable, intelligent, and natural, and economic way of life.
It is not the ideal of CARPE DIEM, live according to Nature, rather be economical, rather re- cycle, and get down to reality and respect the weather, climate, and the seasons.
It was first made possible by fossile fruels, the steam engine, and the rural and urban Ottomotor 4 stroke and 2 stroke.. All things that are to be avoided, ridiculed and heavily traxed in our days.
I can put i9t on a very simple formula, as a major reason for all the fameous climate problems. And that it is Stalin- ism and Mao- ism! I hope Killian as a drunken sailor can agree to this. It is not his Permaculture.
It takes and it wastes resources in ann unnecessary way. I have been told of, but I have allways been quite sceptic to that kind of life, and I ridicule and badger it wherever..
It is the modern industrialized and uniformed way of life off from seasons nweather nature locar proosibilities and resources, realities, and everything.
In short, it is the devils temptations to stupid people about his alternatives and his special paradise.
carbomontanussays
Hr. Poet
Mooving water up and down is very traditional, but can only work under special natural circumstances.
I saw a hydroelectric system where water falls down several hundred meters in tubes and drives turbines down at the fjord. Some of the electricity is then used to lift up much more water only 2-3 meters from a next sea with long and flat river draining system. Thus they have a shortway and steep high waterway and can use just a bit of that energy to lift up and make a much larger current or flow. the high and steep way, from another and rather useless lake and waterfall system.
There are also systems with reversible turbines, where overflow of danish wind energy can lift back and up turbine water to the high mountain reservoir, store it, and send it back to Denmark again when they have windstill there. The efficiency however of that systemma alltogether is hardly over 40-50%. 2 times through the turbines and all the frictions and losses elsewhere.
Compressing air and lifting of water is probably not the best “battery” storage at all. But modern hydroelectrics are discussed as possible “batteries”fror the whole integrated system that way..
Then I have looked i9nto the fameous recent Sulphur iodine method of oxygen hydrogen separation of water by heat only. Good greef what a corrosive system with needs for exotic materials. I can hardly immagine that it will compeat.
Then I believe more in high temperature eølectrolysis, where nuclear heat plus wind or solar electricity can do it. There are all in all a series of known industrial processes that were resigned on because it took too much valuable cokes from the coceries , eventually arabian oil. And that is rather where nuclear heat could be utilized. I think especially of syntetic oil and syntetic hydrogen.
I do not believe that the combustion engine has drawn its last sigh. Diesel today is really very exellent. It only needs better fuel, and that is where atomic heat can step in. Better keep the hydrogen compressed in a tank by chemical forces, than by compressors and mechanical forces.
carbomontanussays
PS
Reversible turbines I wrote,….
Is not that easy either.
We lost a bronse propellar and I could only afford a new home- made one, of welded soft steel, that can be really recommended. Today they are easily grinded, and can be finely adjusted and shapet in the blasted charcoal forge. I have made many model airplane and boat propellars before, and did think in terms of convex / concave model airplane wings. That did work splendidly better than ever forwards, but would not back at all.
Bernoulli must have had a point there.
So I took it back in the forge and re- shaped it finely bi- convex wing for wing at deep red hot. . Then it could back also but I lost some of the superbe low speed gliding airplane efficiency forward. Moral: In order to loop with an airplane, they must be given bi- convex wings, and you will loose motor efficiency forward by it, it will co0st you more fuel…
And that tells it. It will not be that cheap and easy just to reverse the propellars and turbines in order to lift up the water and then let it flow down again in the same tubes over the same turbines, at that full and superbe efficiency well above 90 % in updated hydroelectric system
Also take a look at the new propellars of “stealthy” silent submarines. They are really advanced, elegant, smooth, fashionable minimum splash and noise and max efficiency.. Those boats can hardly back out at the same speed, I believe.
Similar basic problems of reversible systems at roughly acceplable prices and efficiencies are there everywhere in battery and energy storage systems..
And o be known by everyone, who dream of permacultures, re- cyclings and ” green” sustainable lifestyles. And of modern re- chargeable batteries of all kinds. Trans- formation of energy costs.
nigeljsays
Engineer – Poet. Yes sure, America’s fracking fields dry up quickly, so you would need to open up more of them and yes there has to be a orderly transition from fossil fuels to a new energy grid. But in general global terms it may be a good idea to ban new oil fields providing existing fields are capable of providing enough oil for an orderly transition. It will help push things along.
Otherwise we are just giving a huge green light to a fossil fuel future. The oil companies will explore and open up fields and then argue after all that effort they should be allowed to contine to use them. They will be under no pressure to change and diversify their operations into other forms of energy.
What happens if your nuclear power plant can no longer be cooled in summer due to drought and low water levels in the rivers?
You use cooling towers and pump makeup water from wells. You refill the aquifer during the wet season.
I just explained to you that the more inflexible the base load, the more highly flexible storage power plants the power grid needs.
No, you asserted it. Worse, “renewables” are not merely inflexible, they’re unreliable. You can do something with “inflexible” power that’s always-on; you can’t do anything with power that isn’t there.
This little piece by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers might enlighten you: an all-nuclear grid requires far less storage than all-wind or all-solar. https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/presentations/real-cost-electrical-energy.pdf Of course, the OSPE analysis was done before the Natrium and Moltex designs (incorporating thermal storage to follow daily load cycles) were published.
…and what do you do day and night with the heat in summer at 40°C?
You sure don’t air-condition at night with PV, and heat waves are typically due to high-pressure systems which cause “wind droughts”.
Compact and local would be my own balcony power plant (2 water-cooled PV modules with 600Wp electric / 1200Wp thermal / in combination with water-cooled LED plant light as a heating system with negative CO² emissions and a water boiler with heat exchanger).
The components cost a total of less than €1000 and can be installed by any craftsman or do-it-yourself / without a voltage regulator, inverter or mains/grid connection.
Okay, let’s assume a generous 15% capacity factor for your PV. That’s 90 watts average. Europe consumes 636 watts per capita, some 7 times as much. European demand peaks in winter; PV output peaks in summer. There is no way that your €1000 system either meets your entire needs or includes months of battery storage.
You elegantly sweep Fukushima and Chernobyl under the rug because you (like D. Trump) believe that stupidity only needs to be repeated often enough to make it acceptable.
Chernobyl was the result of a badly-flawed design and even worse operator misconduct. No one is ever going to build another RBMK reactor.
Fukushima was just as bad. The first error was failing to note the sendai stones which record the heights of historical tsunamis when designing the plant. Second, PM Naoto Kan practically ordered the meltdowns when he commanded the plant personnel to delay venting the reactor containments (so that water could be added) until he’d held a press conference. Compounding that stupdity, he ordered panicky evacuations which killed at least 1000 people outright, when they would have been perfectly safe sheltering in place. Ultimately there was ONE fatality attributed to Fukushima, and given that it was due to lung cancer and the Japanese penchant for smoking, it probably had nothing to do with the meltdowns.
I notice you don’t mention Three Mile Island. That’s because there were no casualties. Tsunamis don’t affect the USA much, and don’t affect inland areas period. Meanwhile, the fossil backup required by “renewables” kills people through air emissions, and methane leakage from the natural gas system aggravates climate change. Nuclear power does none of this.
You are obviously teaching us that cxonsumer goods and values have a price in western hard cash, by 4 valids chiffers, PERIOD!
But
Durch nichts ställt sich die Mangel an matematrische Bildung deutlicher zur Schau, wie durch mass- losse Genauigheit in den Zahlenrechnereien..
As a student allready, I examined it and thought it over, judged and compareds 3 very popular consumer goods.
1, a brand new colour TV
2, a brand new 4 cyl low compression air cooled 4 stroke Volkswagen with 5 seats.
3, a brand new “flat” where you can take in and live privately with your fiancee.
The prices for those 3 popular consumer- goods were in the proportions 1 : 10 : 100 allthough material costs and productiom trickiness and complexity should entail rather equal price, or maybe even the opposite proportions.
Conclusion: The Public and the consumers are being cheated to pay!
I shall never forget that qualified conclusion of mine, thus I am able further to give a damn to your Zahlentrechnereien d/ o. along with Friedsrich Gauss, who was very bright indeeds.
===========000
There are fameous hydroelectrics well over 100 years old. It did cost, but then it pays. The prices are now well down near to one cent / Kwh. And further costs and paints is but cheating.
properly designed and manufactured turbines and electromachinery can run and run and run and run for 100 years without any wear and tear.
I have 2 chairs from my grand- grandmother. They were inherited by my grandmotrher ands my mother, used, and kept.
I took them over and restored them for my children 50 years ago the best we could in the same tradition and style. They seem well ready for keeping for another 100 years now, and allthough the did cost a bitb first, they are now becoming really very cheap. You are probably ignoring the value and capital of culture skill and knowledge.
And that is making your speculations and zahlenrechnereien in-valid.
carbomontanussays
EP
Stupidity is also a reality. ERRARE HVMANVM EST
and yo.u have given examples both from Cernobyl and Fukoshima. And what about the war in Ukraina, if that is not a reality and sheere stupid?
As far as I can judge, the Germans know especially much about Stupidity and ERRARE duen to WW1 and ww2, , and that is why they fear nuclear energy.. Because however reasonable, as E.Poet allways tells that it is, there may also come times of war when rather SATAN is in charge and for serious. Nuclear also has the much greater potenbcials of falling into wrong hands and being misused.
Putin menti9oned it quite recently that “Why worry so much about the Ayatollas in Iran and embargo them? Rather be aware that the Ukrainians now will have a quite easy way to atomic bombs!”
It has a core of reality in it. Ukraina did set highly on atomic power in the sovietb period, they gave back their atomic bombs by the fall of the soviet empire, but they sit further with Europes largest nuclear power stations at the moment and that is a worry even for the UN due to that unlucky war, where SATAN has re- appeared. As if law and orderv reason and hygiene is followed during war? How can de- armament be necessary if humanity is reasonable?
The Germans are somehow fed up with social and politrical madness and craziness and aware that it even may happen in their quite especially and fameous, civil, poetric, and engineering land, wherefor they want no “nukes”! also in addition to it.
The Japs are feeling and thinking similar as a quite especially civil, poetic and engineereing people having also had Hiroshima. and their own unlucky episode of collective social and political and technical psychosis and sheere crazi- ness even during the cherryblossoms and with all their geisha girls.
Murphys law 1: What can go wrong will go wrong
Murphys 2nd law, What has gone wrong will get worse!
is rather hygienic and reasonable thinking.
Murphy 1&2 was delivered by poetic engineers who got to the moon and safely back.
MS: What happens if your nuclear power plant can no longer be cooled in summer due to drought and low water levels in the rivers?
EP: You use cooling towers and pump makeup water from wells. You refill the aquifer during the wet season.
BPL: And somehow there wasn’t enough water from the wells when the plant was built, so that they had it being cooled with river water, yet the water from the wells is suddenly adequate when the river fails.
Carbomontanussays
Levenson
Some years ago, the mass media reported that European nuclear electrics were complaining for loss of efficiency and earnings during a very hot summer. They were using air- cooling towers. The same is mostly seen at coalheated plants also, and it is not the best..
Near Strassbourg in France we came through a huge, electric factory with transformer plants and very long glass- iso0lators for high voltage on the outgoing leads. And a tiny river was running next by in that ratherv flat landscape. My wife screamed: ” Get the hell out from here, That is Nuclear. They cannot make all that electricity by that tiny creek!”
But they can use it for steam condenser cooling. But, given 30 Celsius summer warmth, that tiny creek will keep 26 deg bathing water. The forellers and salamandris cannot have it hotter. So you will make a dramatic impact to the waterway økosystem if you cool mega and gigawatts with that and this is problematic Wherefore very huge and expensive cool towers are seen all over the EU. “Heat po0llusion” is being discussed.
Indeed, . A proper glacial creek would be really very valuable for many large industries, for the necessary cooling of it also.
They have oil heated gas and steam turbine combination at sea. The cool seawater intake is very essencial then. when they have to go to Australia or to Singapore and back burning cheapest ship bunkers ” heavy” waste oil as economically as possible.
in general global terms it may be a good idea to ban new oil fields providing existing fields are capable of providing enough oil for an orderly transition. It will help push things along.
This is extremely dangerous. You can’t simply command a massive change in the world’s energy economy; things take time, effort and energy to get done. How much that is can’t be determined except in hindsight, and if energy supplies fall short of immediate needs the first things to be sacrificed will be the investments. When you start sacrificing investment to the point where you fall behind, you will have a collapse.
The only feasible way to get such a transition done is via taxation of emissions, directly or indirectly. Return the taxes to the public so that government has no incentive to sustain fossil fuel consumption as a revenue source. This gets the public to buy low- and zero-emission energy and energy products if they are available, and gives industry incentives to produce as many such products as it can. A $100/ton tax on CO2 emissions would almost instantly make every nuclear plant in the USA profitable, for example, and give the public a strong incentive to buy nuclear electricity rather than gas. (This is probably why it has proven politically impossible thus far.)
Otherwise we are just giving a huge green light to a fossil fuel future.
You have to recognize that such changes cannot be done overnight without collapsing the system upon which so many lives depend. We have to approach this as an “as-able” process and employ remedial measures such as enhanced weathering to begin the process of restoring the atmosphere immediately rather than waiting until we’ve got emissions fully under control. Crossing even one tipping point like firing the “clathrate gun” would be disastrous, so we must act there as soon as we can and even without world-wide agreements.
Thomas Fullersays
1. 70% of oil reserves are owned by government
2. Banning production would create the biggest black market in history
3. Those who violated the bans would be the big winners, economically.
nigeljsays
Engineer Poet, so just give oil companies the green light to drill everywhere even the arctic? Its a hard pill to swallow.
I’m still inclined to think there should be some controls over oil exploration. It should be possible to come up with a realistic or even generous estimate of how much oil we will need for the transition, and then have at least some limits on exploration or areas that can be drilled..
However I agree about carbon tax and dividend and rock weathering. You would do that as well. Canada has carbon tax and dividend schemes that have worked quite well.
Feel free to vote it into YOUR back yard. The people who actually have to suffer the presence of industrial wind turbines and massive PV farms do not like them.
I’d LOVE to have a nuclear plant in my back yard; if silly fears cut my property taxes in half, GREAT!
EP: Feel free to vote it into YOUR back yard. The people who actually have to suffer the presence of industrial wind turbines and massive PV farms do not like them.
BPL: Wrong. I doubt you know any. I do. My cousins in Ontario almost literally have a wind turbine in their back yard, and they love it. Not their wind turbine; one belonging to the local power utility.
I would gladly live next to a wind turbine. A nuke, not so much.
Adam Leasays
There is a difference between a single private wind turbine providing renewable energy to a household, and an industrial wind farrm. The latter is the visual blot on the landscape many people object to.
The links above suggest at least there is some discussion on the subject of electricity generation and the need to wean the UK off fossil fuels, rather than a blanket opposition to wind farms.
“There is a difference between a single private wind turbine providing renewable energy to a household, and an industrial wind farrm. The latter is the visual blot on the landscape many people object to.”
I think more people would object to having agriculture collapse and starving to death.
Original poster: “There is a difference between a single private wind turbine providing renewable energy to a household, and an industrial wind farrm [sic]. The latter is the visual blot on the landscape many people object to.”
BPL: I think more people would object to having agriculture collapse and starving to death.
K: Hyperbole, though.
BPL: Right. This blog is pretty much concerned with a false issue. Global warming? Who cares, right?
Killiansays
K: Hyperbole, though.
BPL: Right. This blog is pretty much concerned with a false issue. Global warming? Who cares, right?
Enough, B. Time to get back to pre-2015 gentility. Nasty sarcasm isn’t that.
For folks not clicking the links, here’s the lead ‘graf’ on the first:
Tory government decisions to cut “green crap” and block “unsightly” new onshore wind farms are now costing households an extra £140 a year on their energy bills amid soaring gas prices, according to a new estimate.
Customers face paying £3.9bn more this year than they would if ministers had not axed environmental policies including financial support for new onshore wind turbines between 2015 and 2020, Tim Lord, an analyst at the Tony Blair Institute calculated.
Clearly, some people do consider them a “visual blot,” though many others (including myself, FWIW) do not. But I can’t help but wonder how much opposition results from other factors, such as insufficient local involvement in planning and/or insufficient local benefit; political partisanship; and FUD resulting from propaganda ginning up exaggerated fears about infrasound, shadow flicker, and/or wildlife mortality.
I do. My cousins in Ontario almost literally have a wind turbine in their back yard, and they love it. Not their wind turbine; one belonging to the local power utility.
There’s a tiny (obsolete, down for years because spare parts are no longer produced) wind turbine to the west of my local conurbation. I’m sure it’s relatively benign. It’s not like the sixty-story monsters I’ve seen along I-69 in Indiana. There, you can see red anti-collision lights blinking on and off in synchrony covering half the horizon.
I would gladly live next to a wind turbine. A nuke, not so much.
I’d buy nuclear electricity and steam/hot water for DHW and space heat if I could. Being insulated from price surges in the natural gas market would be almost as good as going carbon-free for almost everything I do.
EP: Robert Bryce keeps a database of communities which have restricted or rejected wind projects. It’s now up to 317 entries.
BPL: DIshonest. You know damn well there is a concerted effort to bring actions against wind projects in the United States, backed by the Koch organization and other rival energy sector powers. This is evidence of exactly nothing. People who show up to blather about how awful wind power is at municipal hearings are almost always later shown to be from out of town.
Ray Ladburysays
Hmmm, it appears EP and Cheetolini suffer from the same phobia–fear of windmills. Is there a name for this? Is in recognized in the DSM?
Carbomontanussays
Hr Poet
I have the impression that in Denmark and furtherv south in Germany, they like windmills traditionally and have one on their own land and farm.
When it blows, it gives free electricity and when it blows too much, they van sell it out ton the net and cash, and when thereb is no wind theyn mustb buy it from the net. So what is wrong? Why did they set up that windmill at all? the nuclears and the gas and coal is not their business, so why worry?
You are making problems where there is none, and they hardly like “nukes” on, or next to their lands.
What I find more silly is when I traveled through Westfriesland over the Groningen gas field. It is an extreemly flat land with wide industrial ackers and only a tiny poor “farm” here and there, a house and a next one, a recycled car anda Tractor. And next to that, a high pole with ann unstable flame.
Why not set up a tiny greenhouse also and grow tomatoes also, andc heat it now and then with that burning flame. Where no gas comes, they could order it from the stable net. But “flacking” it for the crows in the air like that over a most fameous gasfield is not poetic engineering. And it could be seen several flacking flames at the same time over that allmost empty, very fameous field.
The Dutch are not stupid. Quite on the contrary, rural Calvinism and Protestantismm is known for scraping the last drop of milk out of the bitty and live with piggy bank on the fridge.
The EV revolution is almost complete in Norway, by the market share criterion at least:
Norway, the leading nation for EV adoption, saw plugin autos take a market share of 91.94% in March, with 86.1% being full battery electrics.
As for fleet composition, that will naturally take a bit longer:
On the current trendline, by mid 2026 at the latest, half of Norway’s fleet will be plugins (mostly BEVs). It could potentially come towards the end of 2025… I would estimate that by 2030 road fuel demand will be under 10% of pre-transition quantities, and dwindling.
The Titanic was a great new innovation, too. but it didn’t solve the problems of hubris and icebergs.
Carbomontanussays
Killian
I use the word “Titanic quality” of iron from that period, of quite criminal quality. Re- cycled nails for instance that hardly can be bentt over, they break. And they are loosing their head. It is early industry, fast and cheap assembly line production with primitive methods.
Titanic was 1″ rolled iron plates,, seamed with nails on iron ribs. It has been found again. There is no large hole in the starbord hull. It is rather broken like a “Flatbrød” just by a smooth bump alongside from a small iceberg.
Modern ships is like modern cars, welded, and it curls up without cracking, like a smooth iron tin can by collision. That is quality, pure ferrum reductum.
A next iron quality is Opel 52 and furtherv industrial irons from that period. It is re- cycled tanks and ships made in an uttermost hurry with no capacity or time to sort it and blast it clean. It rusts quite terribly and In could compare with good blacksmith delivery of the same irons from 1850. That keeps outdoor painted. But that war surplus material is rusted through.
Titanic was big business and intense propaganda, criminal in many details. They had it new delivered on high loans and took on board full load of paying passengers on 1st 2nd and 3rd class, and hardly lifeboats and rafts even for the 1st class.
Then they even had fire on board and knew it, the large load of coal in many rooms had partly self ignited and was slowly burning, but they kept qu8iet and took the risk and counted on being able to shuffle allready glowing coal it fast enough. Plates and walls may have softened and bent also inboard due to that, and helped the result.
Calling all that a “great new innovation” is ugly defence of the bluddy brittes, a typical example of Transatlantic big business and monopoly capitalism from 1910.
By the way, it now comes out that re- cycled ironware from the Brjesnjev period for the russian army is of similar, very characteristic quality.
nigeljsays
Carbomontanus. You’re right about the Titanic. There was an in depth television programme investigating the sinking of the Titanic about ten years ago. There were several contributing causes but the main cause was a fire in the coal bunker. These were actually quite common in ships at the time, or at least not rare. They knew about it but continued to sail because it was such a high profile voyage. The fire softened the metal hull and it was this exact area opposite the smoldering coal bunker that ruptured. They looked at the issue in detail.
So it was not so much “technological hubris” that ended the Titanic but recklessness and foolishness in addition to what you say.
Killians philosophy of life comes across as: “Humans technology isn’t perfect, and cant solve every problem, so its useless”. I truly despair at this sort of cynical, twisted, view.
A more useful philosophy is: “Dont make the perfect the enemy of the good” (Voltaire)
Carbomontanussays
Nigelj
About Voltaires theorem:
I learnt about persian carpets and have checked up an seen it for myself, that there is allways one and only one obvious error in the whole muster. Because only Allah is perfect and makes it all perfect. For humans to try the same would be blasphemic.
And believe it or not, have heard and learnt of and seen the same in proper autentic, gothic cathedrals.
SHATAN they call him, must also be shown to his place clearly visible so he can be shown to and referred to.
Which is further a very vital rule of Mastership of craft and art. The devil must also be shown on the wall and in a corner somewhere, else he will dissolve and spread over the very room and make the very situation into Hell.
Which is very practical and healthy.
There will allways be devil- worshipers and ShATANists among us, those who are looking quite fanatically for errors everywhere. They must have a niche with their favourite ICON in the universal holistic situation and cathedral, so we know where we have them , because therev they will assemble and worship. There must also be something left clearly unfinished out of order where certain people can assemble and damn and swear.
It rules for cars, it rules for violins, there must also be a “Wolf” im Ton somewhere, and it rules for radios and wind instruments and even for women.
Carbomontanussays
K McK
I live there and it is not the whole picture. It may rule for new cars and the reason why Tesla had such a tremendous success was extreemly cheap hydroelectrics and subvention of electric cars. Both those privileges are now over..
In addition, there has been enough of older gasoline and diesel cars still in order, for purposes where electrics can hardly compeat.
nigeljsays
Carbomontanus. There is not much that electric cars cannot now do. The teslas have considerable range and towing ability, and they have prototype electric trucks and either tesla or Toyota (cant recall which) have prototype electric utility vehicles for builders and other tradespeople, that will be on the market in the next five years.
There are large hydrogen fuel cell trucks already available and operating.
Diesel has good fuel economy, but it has high carbon emissions and is a dirty sort of fuel. The gains in economy are cancelled out by high use of the fuel for high milage trucking. Can’t see many positives with diesal. Not sure where you are going promoting diesel.
Carbomontanussays
Nigelj
I immagine that diesel engines can also run on hydrogen, since they have been shown able to run on CH4 natural gas. I saw an experiment, a large 12 cyl ship engine could run on a dash of “high cetan” fuel followed by CH4 injection in each stroke. And even more promising, Di metyl eter is shown to be the very best diesel fuel.
If hydtogen can be synthetized into that by the bhelpmof nuclear or solar heat, , severely high pressurized hydrogen and its dangerous filling and transport can be avoided. A next advantage is that it is oxidized by common air. An electric car must also carry the heavy and expensive oxidizer in syntetic form.
Thus I promote: “Diesel has got all the worlds records and can hardly be improoved anymore. It only needs better fuel now!”
And I believe chemistery will be able to solve that. I even believe that it is more promising than trying to improove and to scale up the Tesla and Nissan battery solution for everyman worldwide..
I am really impressed by the litium battery solution and thought it was impossible until I had a strong and practical battery electrical drill in hand. Then I changed my mind totally.
I allways had carburetor sparkplug gas engines 2 stroke and 4 stroke and got virtuos on it, . But after having become…. and learnt.. 4 stroke pre- chamber 2 cyl Yanmar diesel in our boat, I am totally convinced of Diesel. 3 cyl Turbo 2 stroke diesel with common rail will be the very best at sea and inn airplanes.. It only needs better fuel now.
The NOx- problem is solved, simply piss inn the exhaust manifold. Urea into there takes it.
The smell of nitrous gases behind every diesel car tells us that it is a really superbe, clean diesel. The smell of nitration acid, the mixture of cons. HNO3 + H2SO4 tells that they are cheating taxes with cheapest heavy ship bunkers oil.
nigeljsays
Carbomantanus. Yes you could possibly run diesel engines on hydrogen. Trouble is making hydrogen using power from renewables is a fairly inefficient process compared to using renewables to charge lithium batteries.
If running ICE engines on hydrogen was a great idea and profitable I suspect the car companies would already have tried it. You also have the hydrogen fuel tank to put somewhere. Perhaps that’s why car companies have gone with hydrogen fuel cell cars, where everything can be designed from the basics and optimised.
Don’t have a lithium battery electric drill but the lithium battery line trimmer does a good job. Plenty of power.
Yes, that story was about *market share*, so by definition “for new cars.” The linked article addresses the point:
…my analysis is that BEVs now make up right around 17.1% of Norway’s fleet, and their fleet share is growing by 1.25% per quarter. Meanwhile PHEV share of fleet is slightly under 6.5% (and growing 0.25% per quarter).
As of now, plugin share thus comprises 23.5% of Norway’s fleet. Share of the fleet is currently growing by almost 6% per year (equating to an average age of vehicle retirement of around 17 years)…
…
–Cheap hydroelectrics are now over? Do tell.
–“subvention of electric cars” is over? Did you mean “subsidization?” The latest story on that that I saw was from last summer, and concerned 3 economists advocating putting limits on subsidies, especially for high-end BEVs. Are you saying the new government has now followed through on this?
–“for purposes where electrics can hardly compeat.” Such as?
prlsays
“Subvention” means “subsidy” (and “Subventionierung” is “subsidisation”) in German, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was similar in Danish.
No, but it’s possibly also similar in both Norwegian and Swedish. I’ve pretty much given up trying to guess where Carbomontanus comes from, or even trying to work out whether his posts have any actual content.
Carbomontanussays
Hr Prt
In New England they first took me for Canadian. When they grasped that I am no american at all, they got uttely confused and betrayed very little knowledge of European geography and kingdoms.
the danes say subsidieret. We say subsidiert. The swedes say subventionerad. The Germans say subventioniert. The bluddy brittes say subsidized. In Holland gesubsidieerd.
prlsays
” The bluddy brittes say subsidized”
So since you are writing in English, and know the English word “subsidised”, why didn’t you use it?
Carbomontanussays
Dr.prt
I come to think that if you have to take minute linguistic and grammatic ortographic correctures by someone and anybody else, then it is because you cannot read and write.
You are owned and regulated bodily by someone “!native of the blood” above you in the grades because of your more bastard blood and your furs, You must submit to an owner and teacher, professwional native bloody TUTOR and CURATOR in charge.
All because you are yet unable to be resposible for your own perfrormance and correspondance and must learn first,…..
This is a basic reason for why I do not use virtual linguistic and orthographic correctures. It would not be honest from my side. I could not be myself.
You, and many more, are probably not yet aware that this is also a systematic scientific way by which we judge and detemine honesty and autenticity.
The intelligent and experienced reader of proper facultary order will easily see who I am, where I come from and what I represent. I am wearing my native and natural feathers and furs in the climate.
The crooky criminal KADREs and influencers from Ljeningrad Thinktank with an agenda cannot do that. They must performj in a thorroughly qvasi national and intellectual fraud and industrial ideologically linguistically sterilized way.
And by that, they betray themselves and are quite easily seen and sorted out.
This is as old as secret service and military and academic intelligence itself. ” but… senor Simon… you are talking a Gallilean socialect and dialect having not yet adapted and learnt that here in Jerusalem all the people……!”
Your idiosyncratic spelling and strange use of non-English words in your posts doesn’t help you get your message across, but even ignoring that, I often struggle to find much of a point in a lot of what you post.
Killiansays
Maybe have your partner do all the editing rather than just their posts? They do just fine. You are largely unintelligible.
nigeljsays
“Onshore windfarms more popular than thought, UK poll finds”
“Some 73% of the British public polled by ComRes support onshore windfarms in contrast with government decisions to block them”
“Wind turbines are also far more popular than fracking or nuclear power, contrasting with the UK government’s decision to block onshore windfarms but back shale gas exploration and new nuclear power plants.”
“The ComRes poll, conducted for climate change charity 10:10, found that 73% of the British public supported onshore windfarms, with just 17% opposed, and the rest not sure. Strong support remained even when only considering the views of those from rural areas, who might live near windfarms: 65% support versus 25% against.”
Nigel: “ even when only considering the views of those from rural areas, who might live near windfarms: 65% support versus 25% against”
And I suspect the support would be even higher, if their financial benefits were spread around the community.
In fact, there seem to be much more complaints about the negative health effects of wind turbines in systems where the financial benefits accrue only to the investor and the farmer on whose land the wind towers are built, and the guy living next door gets nothing. That’s …understandable – if I had my view affected by the turbines, yet I was getting no money from that, while my neighbour was getting a fat cheque, I would feel ill too. And soon it can change into an actual negative health impact – the effect of a negative placebo.
I remember reading a book that compared the health of victims of car accidents 6 months after the accident. In Sweden, whiplash translated into a big insurance payout, and a Baltic country (Lithuania ?) where it did not. Guess where the whiplash symptoms lasted for much longer…
However, the author argued that it is more complicated – it wasn’t not _only_ because of insurance cheats – he argued that many of the longer symptoms were real: most of us can’t think about ourselves as cheats – so we find way to not feel this uncomfortable way: if I my suffering was validated with a big cheque the society gave me, I would carefully “listen” to my body for the pain that must be somewhere there, I would probably also stiffen my neck muscles to protect against possible pain or re-injury. Having muscles stiffen all the time, and feeling constant stress – may actually translate into physical symptoms and extend the period of recovery compared to the people from the other country, who knowing that they don’t pay much for whiplash, shrug their arms – “ there is no point in dwelling on the things you can’t change” and go about their lives much quicker than the car accident victims in Sweden.
In Poland, the ruling populist party, in addition to being right of centre, i.e. automatically hostile to the environmental concerns, perceived as leftist agenda, has mostly rural electoral base, and quickly
bent over to accommodate their complaints about the wind power: they introduced the “10H rule” – you can’t build a wind turbine tower, if it would be closer than 10xthe tower’s height from any houses or farm buildings. This effectively scuttled the development of onshore wind power, and made Poland even more dependent on gas and coal, which, as we know has little to no health impact …
BTW – the rule has been recently relaxed, allowing the local communities to opt out of it. I applaud this democratic impulse to transfer the decisions from the ruling party to the communities, and I am sure that it had nothing to do with the unexpected effect of the rule – yes, you couldn’t build new wind turbines within 1oH of existing homes, but also you couldn’t build new homes within 10H distance of the existing (or preapproved earlier) wind towers … ;-)
All which tells you how important is to get a local “buy-in” for the onshore wind power farms. And how conservative politicians, in Poland and UK, are trying to be holier than their electorate … And how past ideological anti-environmentalism has put them in a tight geopolitical spot given the Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas.
nigeljsays
Piotr. I believe all that sounds true.
Those on the right of politics often seem to hate the appearance of wind farms, from blog comments, but I suspect its possibly their anti environmentalism talking or dislike of wind farms being imposed on them. Texas seems supportive of wind farms yet is a right leaning State, so perhaps they had good local buy in for whatever reason. Or perhaps it was because the wind farms were built or erected by local people that lean towards The Republican Party. Tribalism talking.
I don’t mind the appearance of wind farms, but I’ve asked myself whether that is partly because I dont have to live next door to one, or because I lean towards environmentalism. However I don’t think I would like them being on every single ridge line if Im honest. But that is following a general principle that you can have too much of a good thing and total uniformity can become boring visually.
Obviously there are no perfect, pain free solutions to the climate issue, and wind farms are generally fine by me.
You might like a little book called Quirkology by Professor Richard Wiseman because of the psychology angle in our daily lives.
Adam Leasays
Were the people in this poll representitive of the population as a whole?
If your sample is biased to people who read the Guardian, it will give a different result than if the sample is biased to people who read the Daily Mail, for example. If you browse a walking forum you will not find many singing the praises of wind farms or hydro in the UK’s areas of outstanding natural beauty. Who participated in the poll and how can we be sure it is representitive of the population?
I think wind farms have a part to play, but you cannot brush aside the visual intrusion as though it doesn’t matter, because it does. You wouldn’t get 73% of people agreeing to put a lot wind farms on the Lake District fells or the Scottish highlands (they wouldn’t survive the upland climate anyway).
You know damn well there is a concerted effort to bring actions against wind projects in the United States, backed by the Koch organization and other rival energy sector powers.
They’re not putting wind farms in Malibu where rich people live.
People who show up to blather about how awful wind power is at municipal hearings are almost always later shown to be from out of town.
Yes, they would be. They’re probably people like Esther Wrightman (forced to move after NextEra put a wind farm next to her house in Kerwood, ON), Dave and Rose Enz, who abandoned their house in Denmark, WI, when wind turbines made it impossible to sleep in their own home.
I have the impression that in Denmark and furtherv south in Germany, they like windmills traditionally and have one on their own land and farm.
Traditional wind turbines have blade spans of perhaps 15 meters, not the 150 meters of today’s monsters. They turn too fast to generate the infrasound which appears to be the major factor in WTS.
When it blows, it gives free electricity and when it blows too much, they van sell it out ton the net and cash, and when thereb is no wind theyn mustb buy it from the net.
The grid is not a battery. You can’t just shove energy into it and withdraw it when it’s convenient. It might look like that at low levels of use, but the problems are already substantial and will only get worse as laws and regulations based on this mistaken idea allow the problematic generation to grow its share.
The problems caused by “renewables” exist and are growing rapidly. Germany just found out the hard way that the dependence upon Russian natural gas for “balancing” comes at a steep price.
they hardly like “nukes” on, or next to their lands.
We’ll see if this attitude continues after this winter. Nukes guarantee energy security and can store years of fuel on-site. If it comes to a decision between nukes or freezing in the dark, people will choose nukes.
Why not set up a tiny greenhouse also and grow tomatoes also, andc heat it now and then with that burning flame.
I’ve read about enterprising people setting up gas-turbine generators at well sites to burn this gas and using the electricity to mine cryptocurrency. If there was water available, then you could use the waste heat to heat greenhouses too.
Note that your greenhouse idea won’t work if the flare stacks are needed to burn off surges of combustible gases from e.g. chemical plant system upsets.
This is probably the last time I will reply to you.
Carbomontanussays
“This is probably the last time I will reply to you”
Are you feeli9ng troubble? Do not blame me for that!
The normal conventional and traditional way in Denmark and elsewhere is to have 1, ,2 or even 3 additional sources or “options”. They have the basic heat and even cooling in the house, and then close or open the windows for regulation. And an ability to lit the stove if necessary, and take on … and off a pullover or jacket.. This has been so since stoneage. Then a sack of coal in the celler and / or a stock of wood outside. Even the trees in the park ar left in peace and to growlarge for the case of war.
In rural Denmark there is / was allways tight and high bushes and trees around the house for thermal purposes, to break the storm and for heating, and for 1-2 deg higher microclimate with wine and tomatoes in the garden. The same style is seen also in rural Germany and in New England.
with industrialized collective arcitecture, central heating and worst of all the thermostat and air conditioning, all this is forgotten and ridiculed and I am given the blame only because I have to be “Santa”. I have had to fight quite a lot for those better and cheaper and more healthy methods.
In modern New England it was moist and chill in the early morning and I thought immediately of finding some twigs and litting a fire. But, they had no chimny. Only a very strange and ugly device in the wall with a turning knob graded in Faradays, and one could look right through it and out. And behind there I saw BIG COAL! and even BIG NUKE. So I rather went out as soon as the sun came up and found a windstill “niche” where I could dry and warm up for the day.
Solar, you see.
Pope Francis has preached that Air Condition is sinful!
That BIG COAL and BIG NUKE souds terribly. by a big fan humming on 120 Volt 60 Hz in the homes.
It obviously blunts peoples thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and feelings. Just look at yourself. That is not poetic engineering.
Whereas here, we lit a flush on the stove if necessary, open and close the doors and take on and off a pullover and a jacket and get much more pleasant temperatures and sounds and smells. The central chimney with some heat now and then also ventilates the house, and even cools during wet summers..
Putin sits on the turning knob of BIG GAS, so people begin to hate that also.
What I would say, we have hydroelectrics that can be turned consciously in steps. Ban a thermostate. If a door or a window opens, the thermostate will adjust for that and you feel nothing. It makes you blunt and unconscious.
We manage at below 3000 watt, often down to 1000. Then if we feel a bit chill or uncomfortable , we do something against it on conscios level, Lit the stove for instance. Or take on a jacket or pullover or run after firewood
Run in the chill and relax at the stove.
And ban a thermostat. Which is is what really costs and makes you blunt and stupid..
nigeljsays
From “The Conversation” website: How a few geothermal plants could solve America’s lithium supply crunch and boost the EV battery industry.
Geothermal energy has long been the forgotten member of the clean energy family, overshadowed by relatively cheap solar and wind power, despite its proven potential. But that may soon change – for an unexpected reason.
Geothermal technologies are on the verge of unlocking vast quantities of lithium from naturally occurring hot brines beneath places like California’s Salton Sea, a two-hour drive from San Diego.
Lithium is essential for lithium-ion batteries, which power electric vehicles and energy storage. Demand for these batteries is quickly rising, but the U.S. is currently heavily reliant on lithium imports from other countries – most of the nation’s lithium supply comes from Argentina, Chile, Russia and China. The ability to recover critical minerals from geothermal brines in the U.S. could have important implications for energy and mineral security, as well as global supply chains, workforce transitions and geopolitics……..
……..Geothermal brines are the concentrated liquid left over after heat and steam are extracted at a geothermal plant. In the Salton Sea plants, these brines contain high concentrations – about 30% – of dissolved solids………
Lots of cool stuff goes on, is going on – but none of it sustainable. So, then, if we *must* get to sustainable, then *interesting* stuff is cool and all, but… So, does a new supply of lithium enable more pipedreams of a tech future overcoming nature and reality?
nigeljsays
Killian.
“Lots of cool stuff goes on, is going on – but none of it sustainable. So, then, if we *must* get to sustainable, then *interesting* stuff is cool and all, but… ”
Regarding sustainability. Nothing lasts forever. So sustainability is all a bit relative.
I acknowledge that humanity will eventually run short of lithium and at least some other materials. This is obviously concerning, however I don’t worry excessively over this. Studies show we wont have a big problem for about two centuries. Lithium is already being recycled by companies like Veolia. This will extend the availability of lithium perhaps another couple of centuries.
After that people will have learn live simply without as much technology. This is roughly what Killian promotes anyway, so I just don’t know why he agonises over materials shortages. There might be a big migration back to country living. Nobody knows for sure. So in terms of materials I don’t see a reason that we should strictly limit using lithium NOW (or anything else).
Obviously recycling should be encouraged. And I’m not promoting PROFLIGATE use of technology either,. Anything people can do to reduce their levels of consumption of energy and materials would help but there comes a point where it gets unhealthy and painful and could lead to mass unemployment.
That leaves the problem of impacts of mining and industry waste and pollution on the environment. Many of these can be mitigated by processing wastes more carefully. New Zealand now has strict controls on that. This is far more likely to be adopted than some sort of fantasy dream of planned de-industrialisation or massive levels of de-growth.
That leaves mining and industrial complexes causing biodiversity loss. This is concerning but is considerably less than loss of biodiversity caused by conversion of natural habitat to farming as a result of 7.9 billion people. I’m not persuaded that loss of biodiversity related to industry and mining justifies some sort of massive and rapid de-growth and de-industrialisation programme which would be painful, even life threatening for some people and could cause massive levels of unemployment.
Regarding your concerns that poor people / countries wont share in technology as much as rich people / countries. Life will never be perfectly fair. Resources are finite so its not possible for everyone to have everything. Trying to arrange that every human being has the exact same number of solar panels is just not a workable, useful idea.
Developed countries would however be wise to help poor countries to SOME extent just for basic humanitarian reasons and as a global insurance policy. Likewise any progressive county should help its own poor people at least afford the basics of life, but I don’t believe that extends to trying to make everyone the same materially and economically. I don’t believe its even practically possible to do so.
“So, does a new supply of lithium enable more pipedreams of a tech future overcoming nature and reality?”
I find this sort of rhetoric tiresome. I don’t have dreams of technology “overcoming” nature. I believe we can have technology AND nature. The challenge is to reduce the negative impacts of industry on nature but without some crazy, massive, rapid. planned de-industrialisation plan that wont happen anyway.
Ray Ladburysays
OK. Let me just say that Killian raises a very good point–and he expressed it concisely and without any personal attacks. It deserves a substantive, thoughtful response.
I would note, also, that what he is saying echoes a finding by some of the studies by Club of Rome (Limits to Growth…). They found that even if energy supplies were unlimited and free, you would eventually have collapse due to pollution… Eventually, we will have to develop a society that can live within limits. That has to be the ultimate goal.
Right now, we have to look toward making things better–less damaging to the planet’s fragile ecosystems. That might involve things that would not be sustainable in the long term. However, the ultimate goal has to be sustainability. We have to concentrate on “interesting stuff” that moves us toward that goal.
Killiansays
However, the ultimate goal has to be sustainability. We have to concentrate on “interesting stuff” that moves us toward that goal.
Yes. This is the point I have been making for over a decade on these pages. I don’t understand why anyone still argues against this, as per nigel’s response, or in any diminishes it. It’s simply framing for rational decision-making. It demonizes nothing, it dismisses nothing.
Unfortunately, we *still* get statements like this:
“So, does a new supply of lithium enable more pipedreams of a tech future overcoming nature and reality?”
I find this sort of rhetoric tiresome.
Of course, he’s using rhetoric in its pejorative sense, but the question is absolutely appropriate and addresses the single biggest problem we have in making the transition: That question exactly frames what is currently the dominant approach to climate.
But it’s tiresome rhetoric?
It’s frightening.
I don’t believe that extends to trying to make everyone the same materially and economically. I don’t believe its even practically possible to do so.
Whole societies live this way. All societies did for 290k years. nigel has been told this over and over. Don’t believe me, ask Dr, Peter Gray, Dr. Helga Vierich, indigenous peoples all over the planet. David Graeber, et al. Newer communities living this way number in the thousands globally. See: GEN, Via Campesina, Transition Towns, IC.org, 100+ uncontacted tribes, Ecosystem Restoration Camps, kibuttzim, Aurora, Mondragon, Findhorn, The Farm, etc.
One wonders why, but we simply get the claim with no reasoning, no logic revealed. It’s just because.
Etc.
Nice to be back to civil discourse, Ray. It reminds me of these boards pre-2015.
nigeljsays
Killian:
You may have misinterpreted what RL is saying. When he is saying “However, the ultimate goal has to be sustainability. We have to concentrate on “interesting stuff” that moves us toward that goal” the “interesting stuff” that moves us towards the goal it looks like he is referring to renewables at scale. You have just said “Yes. This is the point I have been making for over a decade on these pages” So are you sure you agree with EVERYTHING he just said?
I also didn’t argue that the ultimate goal isn’t sustainability. We all want sustainability. The difficulty is defining what a workable, modern, technology based sustainable society looks like. Although I’ve indicated some features of it in my comments.
When I say “I don’t believe that extends to trying to make everyone the same materially and economically. I don’t believe its even practically possible to do so it” should be self evident from the CONTEXT that I’m talking about within modern industrial society.
Its well known that some societies have lived by sharing things, eliminating private property, and people being the same materially and economically. I have never denied that. This does not mean its appropriate or even possible for OUR MODERN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY to do the same. . Its basic logic that that A does not always imply B is going to work. I’ve tried to explain in detail why several times, and I’ve given you examples of dozens of failed MODERN attempts.
This is not a criticism of those older societies per se.
nigeljsays
Killian
“No, it is how we do sustainability – which you have argued against for six years now.”
I’ve always promoted “sustainability”, including in comments in this page. Just not your particular version of sustainability. which I still find unclear. So I challenge you to do this: Define a sustainable modern society in a couple of paragraphs or with bullet points. One page maximum. I’m not talking about quoting examples of hunter gatherer societies or “The Farm” (if you think that is sustainable). Define a model sustainable modern society. or provide a link to a definition that is consistent with my presentation criteria.
“How? You are a Capitalism fanatic. How do they *make*them? (power companies recycle renewables) Again, and always, you fail to consider the full context.”
Governments could force them with legislation or encourage them with subsidies or tax breaks. Its coming anyway. Our government is doing this with some things already. Its been growing and will obviously grow further. Polls show people are mostly supportive of recycling, and are prepared to pay some costs.
RL: even if energy supplies were unlimited and free, you would eventually have collapse due to pollution…
BPL: Agreed. But there’s no reason renewable energy can’t be part of a circular economy. And they certainly reduce pollution.
Susan Andersonsays
It’s so simple and so difficult:
we will have to develop a society that can live within limits. That has to be the ultimate goal.
Right now, we have to look toward making things better–less damaging to the planet’s fragile ecosystems. That might involve things that would not be sustainable in the long term.
Somehow, the world’s promotional and educational apparatus has to be dismantled, so people can slow down and give up on cleverly disguised greed and envy, malice and all uncharitableness, as the good book puts it.
Mikesays
You are right, Susan. It is simple and it appears that we just can’t/won’t do it. We can live as if our actions matter,, as if we are part of a global movement that develops society that lives within limits. I think that’s all we can do. I am told that human extinction is unlikely. If that was all we aspired to, things might look rosy.
Cheers
Mike
Eventually, we will have to develop a society that can live within limits.
Yes, we do.
And AFAICT we need a much more rigorous determination of what they are, precisely. Herman Daly pointed out that classical economics left untouched the problem of matching the scale of the human economy to the underlying physical realities–since it essentially posited that the former could grow without any limit at all. Ray didn’t really make clear the underlying assumptions of the CoR finding, but I don’t see how it could be otherwise than “For some scale of economic activity, even if energy supplies were unlimited and free, you would eventually have collapse due to pollution.”
Assuming that’s correct, it would also seem that the question isn’t technology-agnostic, because different sorts of technologies have different pollution outputs. (Just by way of hypothetical illustration, consider what a pollution problems might attend a society primarily reliant on highly advanced genetic programming to grow tools, devices and products through a sort of agricultural ‘manufacture.’ Would all be well, simply because all that stuff would presumably be biodegradable? Probably not, but what would the actual problems be as economic scale increased? Eutrophication, maybe? What else?)
Returning to something like the real world, it would seem to me, then, that we urgently need analytic tools that would let us analyze the impacts of potential technological pathways across a realistic economic size spectrum. (We also need the political will to use those tools, which seems in general to be an even harder puzzle.)
Killiansays
B,
You acknowledge the problem then *seem* to ignore it. There is a *lot* of waste in RE. There is a *lot* of non-circularity in RE. How are waste and non-circularity part of circularity?
Can you explain this?
There may be some reality in what you say, but I suspect what *I* am thinking in that regard and what *you* are thinking in that regard are not the same thing.
S,
the world’s promotional and educational apparatus has to be dismantled, so people can slow down and give up on cleverly disguised greed and envy, malice and all uncharitableness,
Don’t fight the old way, create a better one that makes it obsolete. – B. Fuller, paraphrased
Regenerative Governance.
nigeljsays
Regarding Killians posts on the “regenerative governance” idea.
“Regenerative governance” apparently equals shared ownership of pretty much everything or in the case of the biosphere nobody owns anything, and it involves shared and equal decision making. It involves the elimination of private property and the elimination all hierarchies, according to Killian’s comments previously.
To me this looks similar to socialism or even communism, and experiments with socialism at wide scale in modern technology based societies have mostly been abject failures. Examples are obvious. from the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, to Venezuela, to Cuba to thousands of alternative (intentional) communities that have failed after a few years. Its an issue easily googled. Sure there are some longer lasting examples of modern regenerative governance or something similar like “The Farm” in America run by a few enthusiasts but overall the regenerative governance idea doesn’t look like a compelling, scalable model for the whole world.
In hunter gatherer society and similar societies people are equal and property is community owned or in the case of the biosphere nobody owns it.. Just because something works for hunter gatherer society doesn’t logically mean it would work in other societies, that have different cultures, population sizes, and reliance on technology.
Not closed to the ideas but very sceptical.
Happy to hear alternative views provided they are coherent.
nigeljsays
Killian
“There is a *lot* of waste in RE. There is a *lot* of non-circularity in RE. How are waste and non-circularity part of circularity”
This is a lot of waste with RE, but its largely laziness and because materials are still plentiful and recycling adds costs, and because government’s don’t insist materials be recycled. This could change and I believe it is slowly changing. Veolia recycle lithium batteries.
The lack of recycling is not a valid argument against building renewables. Its only an argument against lack of recycling. If governments stopped renewables because of a lack of recycling that would be illogical , because they could equally make generating companies recycle renewables. Which is probably what should happen.
Killiansays
Regarding Killians posts on the “regenerative governance” idea.
“Regenerative governance” apparently equals shared ownership of pretty much everything or in the case of the biosphere nobody owns anything, and it involves shared and equal decision making. It involves the elimination of private property and the elimination all hierarchies, according to Killian’s comments previously.
To me this looks similar to socialism or even communism,
Your ignorance in these matters is only exceeded by your arrogance and hubris in trying to critique something you know nothing about. “Communism” as practiced by Russia, China, Vietnam, NK, Cuba, etc., is totalitarianism. How is this in any way like Regen Gov? Beyond ignorant…
Killiansays
Killian
“There is a *lot* of waste in RE. There is a *lot* of non-circularity in RE. How are waste and non-circularity part of circularity”
This is a lot of waste with RE, but its largely laziness and because materials are still plentiful
LOL… no, they are not. Ask the yeast. (Are we dumber than yeast? Some of us clearly are.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73xdpoQFLQk&t=27s Pay attention to what the resource base looks like just two doublings before they are gone. (Hint: 3/4 remain.)
and recycling… it is slowly changing. Veolia recycle lithium batteries.
And what is the risk analysis on the irreversibility of climate change and ecosystem destruction? Your analysis, such as it is, is always frighteningly simplistic. which is dangerous as hell.
The lack of recycling is not a valid argument against building renewables.
Of course it is. We should keep producing mountains of waste rather than adjust production to our ability to manage it? This is just absurd.
If governments stopped renewables because of a lack of recycling that would be illogical
No, it is how we do sustainability – which you have argued against for six years now. Your denialism of simplicity and sustainability is offensive.
because they could equally make generating companies recycle renewables.
How? You are a Capitalism fanatic. How do they *make*them? Again, and always, you fail to consider the full context.
Geothermal technologies are on the verge of unlocking vast quantities of lithium from naturally occurring hot brines beneath places like California’s Salton Sea, a two-hour drive from San Diego.
Not just geothermal brines, ALL brines. New ion-exchange resins are about to increase lithium recovery from all sources from ~40% to ~80%, and make the process much faster and weather-independent besides (no waiting for evaporation ponds to do their thing). Here’s two companies in the field:
I don’t have dreams of technology “overcoming” nature. I believe we can have technology AND nature.
I’d say we NEED both technology and nature. We definitely need lots of technology to support 7-plus billion bodies.
The challenge is to reduce the negative impacts of industry on nature but without some crazy, massive, rapid. planned de-industrialisation plan that wont happen anyway.
I believe we are in danger of this happening in an un-planned way, from the effects of climate change piling on damage faster than we can cope.
The solution is to reduce our impacts upon nature, with climate as just one facet of it. This means decoupling our energy and material demands from nature as much as practically possible. Getting all our energy from biomass and other “renewables” is precisely the WRONG approach, as this requires taking vast tracts of land away from nature, disturbing large amounts of tidal flows, etc. This is why I’m so gung-ho about nuclear energy. Nature has no apparent use for actinides. None. We can extract uranium from the earth using solution mining which doesn’t disturb the surface, or ion-exchange capture from seawater. Nuclear plants generate a great deal of power from a very small area of land, and can be pretty much placed wherever we want (though availability of natural heat sinks is desirable).
Something I need to get back to is my analysis of the sulfur-iodine cycle for thermochemical production of hydrogen. It requires about 1/3 of its heat input at ~1000°C to crack H2SO4 into H2O, SO2 and ½O2, and the other 2/3 at about 450°C to drive the 2 HI -> H2 + I2 reaction. If we could get it into production at scale with a nuclear heat source, it could replace essentially all consumption of natural gas, allow the production of vehicle fuel from CO2, replace coal as a reductant for reduction of metal oxides, and pretty much replace all the fossil fuels we use today for tasks which are too difficult to electrify.
If the numbers I have are accurate, a single 3 GW(t) reactor could produce hydrogen equivalent to around 350 million gallons of gasoline per year. We’d need several hundred to replace the ~9 million barrels of gasoline the USA consumes per day, but that’s dosable.
Now, if you would, imagine replacing ALL of the footprint of the oil industry in the USA—extraction, shipping, refining, shipping of refined products, storage in tank farms, trucking to delivery points, and dispensing—with perhaps 40,000 acres of plants plus the distribution pipelines to ship the product where needed. Some geologic storage would be required, such as solution-mined cavities in salt deposits. We know how to do this.
We all want a sustainable society. The trouble is defining exactly what a modern, technology based sustainable society looks like. I would define a sustainable society like this minimised to the key essentials and leaving out social definitions of sustainability:
1) We have to stop emitting CO2 as a priority and renewables and perhaps some nuclear power are the only realistic and responsible way (over simplifying the issue for brevity). If that fails it leaves geoengineering which is very risky.
2) The circular / recycling economy is a useful, workable idea that is likely to become well adopted. Minerals wont last forever so we just have to recycle what we have and use them prudently. So a sustainable mineral using society should last a long time but it probably wont be forever.
3) Protection of all endangered species and over hunted and over fished species.
4) Stop or dramatically reduce all environmental pollution and waste. I believe this is plausible without stopping industry per se.
5) Get population growth to stop asap to protect whats left of the natural habitats etc, etc.
In hindsight I believe BPL may have said something similar. If you can’t write a definition of a sustainable modern society is a short list of bullet points like this, I don’t think you HAVE one, or know what you are talking about.
Killian seems to define a modern sustainable society as a hybrid civilisation that lives like subsistence farmers / hunter gatherers in terms of farming and socio economic systems, but that has a little bit of just the most essential modern technology added on. He argues that we adopt this society very rapidly. I ONLY write all this because I cant recall him ever posting a definition of a modern sustainable society, despite all his many words.
Humans could obviously get by with less technology to a point, but overall Killians version of a sustainable society doesn’t look workable to me in multiple ways. But don’t take my word for it. The respected anthropologist Joseph Tainter argues much the same about similar sorts of plans.
There are other definitions of sustainable societies such as the United Nations framework of “sustainable development goals” that seem useful, but over complicated and not entirely well resolved. But that’s because its difficult. There are no “silver bullets” as Piotr mentioned.
Carbomontanussays
Sustainables and permacultures should have been better defined here, and Killian is not the man to do it. I am being brought up with it before I coulds even trhink, and before I learnt anything else.. The deep roots of US american management and possible pioneering going on on the basis of what we have and how to go on in the new world and for the future are preserved and written down here where I live, inn the National state churchesn and in the University librareies up- stairs back in Europe where they came from.
Killian is bringing sand to Sahara and Codsfish to Lofoten and teaching the Hens how to lay egs in a very arrogant intolerant manner.
There is a fameousn irish song on what we shallm do with the drunken sailor, and they had then 9- tailed cat also at hand on board.
=============0000
We shall take the boat now for launching. I have scraped the propellar and bought a new cooling water inlet. They are cheating with common freshwater plumber brass, that “rots” in seawater. What only keeps is “gunmetal” 8% tin bronse or “naval brass” that has got less zink andc a 2% content of tin.
Iron does also keep surprizingly well if burnt off with lipid oil and protected wit zink anodes.
nigeljsays
Carbomantanus. Permaculture is largely about the circular economy and eliminating waste and using mineral resources prudently which I already mentioned. I firmly believe we need to move to some form of regenerative agriculture and permaculture, but the ‘doctrinaire’ versions of this dont look realistic to me. The advocates fail to consider full context or acknowledge the downsides of their theories.
Carbomontanussays
Nigel
I am thinking of the term “Permaculture”, that is quite brand new! It may “further” the same ERROR, that it is thought to make and end to, namely allways having to have it brand new from the shops on the free market.
Why not take up and use something rather traditional from the ideological and linguistic junkyard or museum, restore it brush it up and repair it and use that further instead?
I think it over, we rather say gjen- bruk. That also has got its traditions, they could not afford anything else but “Gjenbruk” is also quite and art and a lifestyle.
It litterally means to use again.
When the deers throw off their antlers, you can pick it up, take it, see what it is good for, and use it further for something else. And why buy a brand new brick when you can take an old one and rinse it and use it again? Or why take a burnt brick at all when you can rather take a choisest stone from common rubbish and sediments in your local environment? When there ar really plenty enough of natural stones, why heat up and make artificial ones?
Bricks have ben re- taken and re- cycled for the last 3000 years ever since UR in Caldea. It has been the towns “Capital” savings and heritage. Making a new one costs scarce firewood. And worst of all, mounting it the brand new way with ” Cement” = highly burnt calsium and silica and alumina will ruin all your very valuable good old bricks and stones and marbles, and give stones, that cannot be rinsed restored and re- cycled anymore. 3000 years of brick and Tegula history will end up on the junkyard and landfillings.
Instead, mount it caefully with choisest sand and clay in wooden framework that can easily be restored and repaired, Use lime mortar & gypsum and irons only on the most critical sites.
I learnt this from a swedisch church- mason, who had all the troubbles of brand new recent mis- use of “modern progressive and rational” materials and methods in very old and fine buildings, that were cunningly and carefully designed to be easily repairable in those days styles and technologies..
I am more aquainted to woodwork and wooden architecture, then Leonardo da Vinci and Sttradivarii technology and lifestyle.
and there we have the same. Keep and repair and restore it successively as it rots and falls down, “If it ain`t broken, don`t mend it..” and whatever you buy, also think of how to get rid of it again, that mentioned swedish Mason said.
See that you can burn it at least and use the ashes, or compost it. See that you can grow apples on it after all and that your mushroms and rainworms willthrive on it. Because, Pears and plums and wines grow especially well on old urban sediments.
There comes new EU rules now, that only strong and repairable qualities of textiles will be permitted in the shops and on the free market. “Lumps” were once extreemly valuable and re- cycled for lump paper.
Also glass must be produced clean and the sorts kept apart for possible re- cycling.
Modern IT and electro- material with all those very exotic and higly refined materials mixed up together,…. is some worst kind of a mess.
Today I shall try and repair and restore a garden- chair that is allready made from re- cycled wreckwood. Only its feet are rotten. There I must do something. In any case, it must be carefully set on natural stones and not on earth, after having been properly oiled andc tarred..
The same is the art of mideival wooden church masonry that has stood for 1000 years and can stand for another 1000 years or rather till Doomesday according to their ideas.
There have been very high quality products also in recent years, think of the Cassini- sonde to Saturnus. or those Mars- vehicles.
By looking carefully at the iron nails in the viking ships and thinking it over, I found how to stop the rust on Renault cars the rather well known, ckeap and easy way. Whereas vulgar expert folklores on car cosmetics were how to make them rust and decay as fast as possible. “Buy yourself a personality” is sinful. Be a personality is devine and holy. !.
EP: Radiation is far less dangerous than you think
BPL: It’s good for you. Swallow lots of medical cobalt-60, kids.
Ray Ladburysays
So has anybody polled the Russian grunts who camped out at Chernobyl lately?
Radiation poses a threat. The risk posed by the threat depends on the mitigation. Mitigations can fail, especially when stupid and ignorant people get involved.
Carbomontanussays
Sustainables and permacultures should have been better defined here, and Killian is not the man to do it. I am being brought up with it before I coulds even trhink, and before I learnt anything else.. The deep roots of US american management and possible pioneering going on on the basis of what we have and how to go on in the new world and for the future are preserved and written down here where I live, inn the National state churchesn and in the University librareies up- stairs back in Europe where they came from.
Killian is bringing sand to Sahara and Codsfish to Lofoten and teaching the Hens how to lay egs in a very arrogant intolerant manner.
There is a fameousn irish song on what we shallm do with the drunken sailor, and they had then 9- tailed cat also at hand on board.
=============0000
We shall take the boat now for launching. I have scraped the propellar and bought a new cooling water inlet. They are cheating with common freshwater plumber brass, that “rots” in seawater. What only keeps is “gunmetal” 8% tin bronse or “naval brass” that has got less zink andc a 2% content of tin.
Iron does also keep surprizingly well if burnt off with lipid oil and protected wit zink anodes.
Carbomontanussays
Different from Titanic quality, that does not keep at sea and in the climate..
nigeljsays
Killian
I will post this again. It got a bit lost in comments above.
“No, it is how we do sustainability – which you have argued against for six years now.”
I’ve always promoted “sustainability”, including promoting it in comments in this page. Just not your particular version of doing sustainability, which I still find unclear. So I challenge you to do this: Define a sustainable modern society in a couple of paragraphs or with bullet points. One page maximum.
I’m not talking about quoting examples of hunter gatherer societies or “The Farm” (if you think that is sustainable). Define a model of a sustainable modern society. or provide a link to a definition that is consistent with my presentation criteria (a concise definition that just summarises key points).
Just quoting permaculture is not enough either.
“How? You are a Capitalism fanatic. How do they *make*them? (power companies recycle renewables) Again, and always, you fail to consider the full context.”
Governments could force them with legislation or encourage them with subsidies or tax breaks. Its coming anyway. Our government is doing this with some things already. Its been growing and will obviously grow further. Polls show people are mostly supportive of recycling, and are prepared to pay some costs.
I’m not a capitalism fanatic. I’m a critic of capitalism. It needs to change in some way, but without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Adam Leasays
Once this sustainable modern society has been described, I would be interested to see a roadmap of how we get from the current situation, to the global population living this sustainable lifestyle within the time we have left before we reach the point of no return.
Killiansays
I’ve always promoted “sustainability”
No, you haven’t. First, you have no idea what that is, so how can you promote it? Second, you cannot claim to “promote sustainability,” but champion primarily the unsustainable and insult and denigrate most of what is sustainable, or at best pay it lip service while completely misrepresenting it. What was it you called regenerative living, primitive? Yeah, that’s “supporting” sustainability.
Goodness…
You bark words about sustainability, and that is all. Six years and you have yet to make a cogent, sensical comment on the issue. You do a disservice to Dear Readers here by refusing to self-edit and limit your responses to your areas of expertise, if any. Lurk more, post less is my suggestion to you.
Just quoting permaculture is not enough either.
Straw Man. (Gee, what a surprise.) I do not “just quote permaculture.” It’s an absurd distortion of my years on these forums. I repeat, lurk more, post less. Definitely stop being dishonest.
nigeljsays
See how Killian STILL doesn’t take up my challenge to define a sustainable modern society, summarised in a couple of paragraphs or list of bullet points. How can any of us take what he writes seriously if he can’t or won’t even do that?
nigeljsays
Killian. My depiction of ancient regenerative societies like hunter gatherers as primitives is entirely accurate. Oxford dictionary defines primitive as: “relating to, denoting, or preserving the character of an early stage in the evolutionary or historical development of something” “a person belonging to a preliterate, non-industrial society.” So my description is entirely accurate.
I also called hunter gatherers primitive peoples merely as shorthand to keep comments brief. You are reading too much into what people say, and looking for insults that aren’t even there. The context would have told you I did not mean it an an insult or put down. Haven’t called them primitives since you first raised the issue, yet you dredge up ancient history and bear grudges. It won’t get you anywhere in life doing that.
nigeljsays
This looks promising: “Seasonal Storage for Renewable Energy”
EMMETEnergy is developing an affordable, large-scale storage for renewable energy based on methane (CH4). By using methane as energy carrier, the current natural gas storage capacity, is ready and available for storing months of energy production.
In combination with for example a windfarm, EMMETEnergy fully replaces current power plants (slide on the picture to get an impression).
For the Netherlands a storage capacity of 20 TWh and a load/unload capacity of 10 GW is calculated. This system serves 3 purposes:
Covering fluctuations in renewable energy production and demand (intermittency)
Preventing the need for and management of overcapacity of renewable energy production (curtailment)
Serving as a strategic energy reserve
With an estimated (to be engineered!) roundtrip efficiency of 53%, the system is an economic viable storage solution for seasonal fluctuations in energy production on national level.
A pilot system is being built in coöperation with the Technical University of Eindhoven.
Humor me, do a little thought experiment: What if none of it cost anything, and were just done? How does that change things?
nigeljsays
The storage scheme helps give people reliable, zero carbon, clean electricity to heat their homes and cook their meals, for as long as possible in the long term. Unless you are suggesting we just burn wood? And choking on the smoke? And finding enough wood for the needs of 10 billion people?
Carbomontanussays
Nigelj
Charging litium batteries,…. where will you have the electricity from?
The very best Internal combustion engines have an efficiency of … hardly more than 55%. 2 stroke turbo diesel at optimal speed and load, large ship diesel or electrical plants, or gas- turbine with steam boiler and turbine, and cooled condenser on the exhaust.
Hydroelectric manages well above 90% both on hydro and electro. , the square of that gives us slightly below 90%
In Germany they do not like Tesla because electricity is too epensive and comes from putins coal and gas. Windmill electricity is better invested for heat- pumps.
We suddenly have electricity prices here on EU- level due to hydroelectric export. People are beginning to regret their electric cars. Even worse, peasants with large tractors, and swinery poultry industry complain over electric and diesel- prices. And those huge baggers and wheel loaders drink 30 liters of diesel per hour. Strange, because my boat with Yanmar 2 gm20 drank only 3 liters last summer. It also matters the way you drive. Plan your driving and drive carefully. Offroad on wheels, I would not have electric. And offroad & in the snow, the waggon or wehicle should also rather be light enough, thus rather air cooled turbo diesel there.
And inn the air something must also be done. Electric airplanes will hardly win. I saw they are launching 4 cyl air cooled boxer Diesel for small propellar airplanes because of fuel efficiency and gasoline costs..
Try and find and read about the Renault 2cyl 2 stroke turbo diesel for cars. It is simply the very best, but the basic problem with 2 stroke they say is pollution, clean exhaust.
But that is only when you demand high flexibliity and high acceleration. If it only can run at steady tours with optimal load,m you hardly need even catalyzers and particle filters at the exhaust.
What seems conscidered for serious is NH3 by the Haber Bosch method liquified on tanks under preessure for airplanes and for trans-oceanic shipping, as a method of getting enough hydrogen compressed in a tank. Such quantities of liquid ammonia are not un- dangerous, so I do rather think in terms of synthetic hydrocarbons based on re- cycled CO2 by nuclear heat and electricity.
Both fuel cells and batteries have to carry the oxidizer with them. That is where the combustion engine is superiour. It oxidizes by air.
prlsays
Both fuel cells and batteries have to carry the oxidizer with them. That is where the combustion engine is superiour. It oxidizes by air.
Can you name any commercially available fuel cell powered car that doesn’t use air as the oxidiser?
Carbomantaus, I admit to an instinctive attraction to battery electric automobiles. I like their quietness, low running costs and potential high reliability. Even if the generation source is only partly renewables, you still get a lower emissions than petrol or diesel. Plenty of studies on that. Range of battery EV’s is not an issue for me because I dont do many very long trips these days. So for me and EV is a good overall package.
Having said that, EV’s are not perfect, there are other options like hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids, and ICE engines can in theory run on hydrogen like you mentioned. Its probably too early to know which one would dominate the market. It may depend on supplies and costs of lithium when the market really takes off.
It may be that we end up with several types of low or zero emissions vehicles. Hybrids and PHEVs are still very popular for example.
Carbomontanussays
Of all theese solutions maybe I like hybrids least. But even hybrids are traditional. The large diesel locomotives are diesel- electric. And many ships are also. It reduces the need for gears, and are easier and more smooth to regulate
I think I will never buy an electric car for myself but maybe one for our granddaugther who can drive us.
The direct use of hydrogen I think is only relevant where one can build gas pipelines. Also that is traditional Big scale coal and water gasification C + 2H2O -> 2H2 + CO2 in Ruhrgebiet and pipeline to Ludwigshafen for the Haber Bosch Ammonium- production.
The easier freight with less CO2 is LNG Metan . CH4 + 2H2O -> CO2 + 4H2.
Both reactions are endotherm and could be supported by nuclear heat. Today they burn cokes or further LNG for it.
Maybe Solar could deliver a bit more from Sahara.
There is hardly any cubic meter of hydrogen left over for cars in the world because 60% or more of the worlds production goes for the Haber Bosch- synthesis.
In the recent French precident election campaighn, the only thing they agree on is still more french nuclear electricity, where it supports most of the needs allready, and Belgia has changed its mind and will restore their nuclear plants again.
Germany and Polen are now heating up with coal again to avoid Putins gas.
But all in all I believe that both for cars and airplanes and ships, some re- cycling of CO2 and re- synthesis of carbo- hydrids and hydrates from that like it happens in nature by solar, is the way to go.
Good news: COVID is getting smaller in the rear view mirror as Nov elections approach.
Bad news: WWIII is just getting started.
Good news: Nuclear winter will put an end to AGW. Yippeeee! :)
Bad news on wind energy:
https://americasbestpics.com/picture/in-case-you-did-not-know-about-this-a-two-AjUz7xqK9
More bad news – Brandon pushing for more domestic oil production:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/white-house-quietly-calls-us-oil-companies-increase-production
More bad news: New Yorkers pissed at electric bills:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/new-yorkers-lash-out-conedison-over-soaring-electricity-bills
Good news: your claim about wind energy is a much-debunked falsehood.
And since you know it, or at least *should* by now know it, it’s also a lie in your (metaphorical) mouth.
Show us the breakdown of energy input versus eneryg output for a monster wind turbine installation. Brief list of some, not all, of the inputs you’ll need to account for:
Site selection team spending YEARS finding a suitable site and fighting the NIMBY’s to get permits.
Design selection team effort to find the best Engineering bang for the buck.
Don’t forget the site visits and surveying team activities.
Mining to produce the monster concrete base, metals of all types in the entire thing.
Energy to produce the non-metal parts including mining, etc to get the raw materials.
Transportation of every bit of material from the mining site to the ore processing facility, to the metal refiners, to the manufacturing plant, to the job site, to lift and erect it on site.
Energy for maintenance over the life of the installation, and the energy to demolish it and return the land to pristine condition as required by the NIMBY’s.
Do we need to include the transmission wires and towers, required to get the power to the grid?
Good luck with your calculation and may the force be with you!
:)
Brief overview of the on-site erection process:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vE6QkvcV-s
This one is amazing and, in one part, shows another one of the lifts to put the machinery on top of the tower:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR8nD_BgF1Y
Environmental impact of wind turbines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsswrLKlinU
Mr. KIA, This is a family blog. Talk of erections is inappropriate! ;-)
Not sure what strange form of amnesia leads you to forget the many times this has been discussed here already, but–good news!–there’s no need for li’l ol’ me to do any of that, since, to quote environmental journalist Sara Peach:
Needless to say, she goes on to present the results of that work:
Them’s the facts. But it was so pretty, the way you waved your hands…
Quoth jgnfld:
I don’t have one at this time. Why do you think I said “finding practical ways” if I did not think they were yet to be found?
There are some tantalizing hints, though. Selective radiation surfaces have demonstrated the ability to cool below ambient temperature even under full sunlight. If we could cover e.g. Greenland’s ice sheets with such stuff, we could perhaps turn ice loss into ice gain. Perhaps other kinds of solar radiation management could halt or reverse ice loss in both Greenland and Antarctica. Whether we’d actually do it is another question.
Honestly? There is NO practical way to deal with a continued anthropogenic warming trend. It has to be stopped somehow. The question is how to either deal with its effects or reverse it, neither of which is trivial. We could reverse it by e.g. mineralizing gigatonnes of CO2 every year via dissolution of dunite into seawater. It appears doubtful that humanity has the resolve to do this.
EP: appears doubtful that humanity has the resolve to do this.
RtW: fortunately, humanity has been known to gather resolve in an instant. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to think of a stimulus other than something gawdawful, such as whatever happens during/after our first annual (after a stutter or two) Blue Ocean Event (no reservations required)
I’d just like to point out waiting till the first BOE will likely seal our long-term fate. The caveat being the few studies that have looked at an instantaneous or rapid return to @ 260 ppm can begin stabilizing the poles within a few decades.
The only realistic way of doing that is to drop OECD consumption by about 90% collectively over a very short time frame. The only way to do that is to remove the economic considerations from the solution set. Commons are the only way to equitably share resources and Economics, in the sense of how we manage “modern” economies since 10kya, are simply something we created out of thin air and can throw off instantly. All it would do is… make all things possible.
“People won’t!” is a bullshit response that applies *equally* to funding equitable energy and consumption within the current paradigm, so nigel, et al., just don’t bother with that nonsense.
K: The only realistic way of doing that is to drop OECD consumption by about 90% collectively over a very short time frame.
BPL: Good luck with that.
Indeed. Particularly with most on this board refusing to even consider it. How’s it feel to be complicit with Exxon, et al.?
Killian,
“The only realistic way of doing that is to drop OECD consumption by about 90% collectively over a very short time frame.”
I have considered “it”. After considering “it” I have concluded the plan wont work as follows:
1) The plan is definitely going to be painful, and it definitely means life would become more labour intensive. I would suggest it could be life threatening or at least very unhealthy for a lot of people. This starts to look worse than the actual climate problem.
2) It will cause massive instability. With so much demand pulled out of the economy and relatively fast you would inevitably get mass unemployment and consequent poverty. Like in the 1930s depression but much worse.
3) Its so unlikely to happen at large scale voluntarily because the vast majority of people are materialistic.
You did suggest that we could avoid the process being destabilising if it was carefully planned but its hard to see how that could happen, because you would need top down planning by governments who are unlikely to buy into the whole idea.
So on balance such ideas look problematic to me. And given I’m not hugely materialistic this makes me thing others would be even more sceptical!.
A less ambitious version on a longer time frame might work, because as with many things we would have time to adapt and adaptation needs time.
I repeat that Joseph Tainter has also considered such ideas and decided they are unrealistic.
Doesn’t make us complicit with Exon, because we are NOT supporting continued use of fossil fuels. The way you use such twisted, misleading rhetoric will only make people resist your ideas even more strongly.
K: How’s it feel to be complicit with Exxon, et al.?
BPL: How’s it feel to feel snottily superior to everybody else in the world who doesn’t realize how magnificent and important you are?
How you heard of Project Meer https://www.meerreflection.com/home
Nigel,
Again, you make sense. Rapist tendencies are at all levels. The kicker on whether to act on them could be opportunity, it could be perceived risk.
If Bill Cosby had washed out as a comic would he have been more likely to serially offend or less? And would his score be higher or lower?
But man, rape is soooo easy when you’ve got power.
Anyway, “rich vs poor” and “white vs blue collar” overlap, but rich dudes blue-collar rape via gun-to-head, too. I’m saying that if ya don’t need to display a gun you probably won’t, and you’re more likely to pull the trigger on the rape when you can do it with deniability. Might even get appointed to the Supreme Court
Richard.
I see that you are trying to hook me back into this conversation about sexual assault yet again, by using flattery this time. Well I have an hour to kill before watching David Attenboroughs The Green Planet. (Normally I find nature documentaries a bit sleepy but this is simply stunning, and takes in the climate change issue as well. ) So here goes. Remember the research studies tend to show that white and blue collar workers commit about the same number of rapes (when adjusting for numbers in each group) so you seem to be saying the studies are wrong.
You seem to also be saying white collar workers would commit more rapes than blue collar workers and get away with more of them because they are smarter and have more power. Well they are going to get away with more of them because they are smart and can afford the best lawyers, thats a given. And I agree it probably would motivate them to take more risk.
Do white collar workers commit more rapes than blue collar workers? They probably could if they wanted, because they are smarter and have more power. But various things push in the other direction. Part of the reason to rape is likely to involve sexual frustration and white collar workers can afford prostitutes more easily. White collar workers also have reputations to protect, and get their power kicks from their jobs, or some by screwing people financially, or some bulling the lower classes. They don’t need to rape people.
For powerless blue collar workers rape is one of the few power things left to them apart from using their fists and storming the whitehouse like complete morons. Zebra would understand. And they dont have the money for prostitutes in abundance. So blue collar workers have a whole lot of reasons to commit rape and I’ve only picked a few things.
So I’m just inclined to think that on balance, the perpetrators of rape are probably no more likely to be white collar workers than blue collar workers. Its probably about the same.
Another thing. Working class women figure highly in the victim statistics. There could be various reasons and I can’t be bothered googling that, but it does suggest blue collar men are not exactly angels. Most victims are actually known to the perpetrators from what I’ve read.
Moderators: Your desire to encourage free and open discussion of topics even tangentially related to climate science is admirable, but your willingness to provide a sort of self-therapy space for uninformed speculation on utterly unrelated topics is not infinitely tolerable. The way this site is managed does not reflect well on you. Please- moderate is a verb. FWIW, after more than fifteen years of regular readership and much knowledge gained, I will no longer be looking in. As well, I will choose another site to recommend to others for climate news and information. Thank-you.
RC. There is nothing ‘uninformed’ about my comment. Its based on peer reviewed science and my studies of psychology at university.
You’re just a damn troll that likes to take a swipe at people without the guts or brains to back up your demeaning assessment with specifics. I suspect my comments disturb your world view. What a shame.
Please do stay away and don’t come back.
After reading just a few lines of that idiotic exchange between RtW and nigelj, I think you have made a wise choice. Please let us know if you find a suitable site for better dialogue on climate news.
It is true, that I only read a line or two of each comment before realizing it was crap and scrolling on down the page. So, if you don’t find a better site, I reommend doing as I do and scrolling past the drivel that is regularly spewed by those who seek to impress us with their with and their insults.
To all and everyone exept to Mr. Know It All
About Mr.Know It All, behind his back
and on the levels and lines that he is not reading,…..
……
…..
…..
SANN!
Now, let us see whether he can get it.
I agree that the level of discourse here has fallen into the toilet.
I used to come here to learn things, but now all I see are endless pointless arguments back and forth about nonsense where I don’t even know (or care) where the participants are coming from.
The big question is now how the Ukraine war will impact greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere.
Imho, possibly in the short term a rise, then accelerated adoption of renewables coupled with more people driving electric cars.
Context
Swap Russian gas for renewables, EU tells member states https://www.climatechangenews.com/2022/03/08/swap-russian-gas-for-renewables-eu-tells-member-states/
Climate change: EU unveils plan to end reliance on Russian gas https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60664799
Yes, let us get this down to earth and down to politics and away from rapism that Perverse Participans PP only can dream of.
Diesel oil costs 25 Nkr / liter here. Formerly it was 15 Nkr/ liter. But that does not matter, since a good Diesel is Science` answer to the question and creme dela creme of engines with all the worlds records. It hardly drinks and smokes anymore.
Russian gas is a sad story. It was some of my highest hopes.
Bill Clinton has the blame. He could have bought the very soviet Union, like former qualified precidents bought Alaska and the fameous French colonies and settlements when it was cheaply for sale on the free market, instead of committing ADVLTERARE in office.
SIC!
The USA will never get any such chanse again. Just think of that, the very Soviet union offered for sale war surplus on the free market.
Maybe Biden could still buy Russia. Apparently there is a real chance Russia wont be able to pay its foreign debts and could go bankrupt. So Biden might get Russia for a cheap price. He could install Donald Trump is dictator in chief of Russia. It would keep Trump away from Americas politics. Trump appears to love Russia. Might not happen, but its nice to dream.
Putin thinks that because he has Nuclear Weapons he can get away with anything. Things are more complicated than that. He has probably destroyed Russia’s fossil fuel exports. Europe will almost certainly reduce reliance on Russian gas now as others have pointed out. Putin has shot himself in his own big hairy foot.
Saw a tweet yesterday suggesting that the fall of the Ruble means a really bad quarter for Republican fundraising.
I have a feeling it’s going to be much more than a quarter.
Nigel, surely you don’t think that having Trump in charge of nuclear weapons again would be a good idea..?
(Yeah, I know you’re not really serious.)
KM. If America buys Russia, then obviously Russia doesn’t get to keep its nuclear weapons! That would be a condition of the sale and purchase agreement. But yeah I’m not being serious. about any of this.
Kevin. Mind you it would be great if America did offer to buy Russia. Just to really piss off Putin.
Latest Brandon administration news on EVs:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/biden-elevates-ford-gm-and-now-siemens-but-not-tesla-in-big-ev-push-152156398.html
So now you are flaunting your ignorance by calling the president puerile names like a 12 year old? Hint: “Brandon” won! Big.
Nah, Dan, he didn’t. Here’s a tip of the iceberg for you to start your journey on finding out the truth. I know, YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
https://hereistheevidence.com/
k[…And here are the crickets…]
Good points, Nigel. I wasn’t speaking of white collar rape as rich person rape but rape by power and position. Blue collar rape would be beating someone up or shoving a gun in their face. One rung up from the bottom can be a powerful position for a white collar rapist of exceedingly modest means.
Your working class woman who knows the perp victim profile – That’s what I’m talking about. And blue collar dudes can do a white collar style crime: insisting on sex from a woman who can’t afford to lose her job. Know a secret that could get her fired?
The book goes well, what with JWST continuing to progress and Putin getting his nose rubbed in the Ukranian carpet he bombed.
All that Potemkin Military (yachts ain’t cheap and Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s) volumed up with conscripts for Special Assignment is still massive. Tons and tons of steel. Crap designs, crap maintenance, crap newbie conscripts who tend to insist on eating. And without fuel they are all lines of static targets being Swiss cheesed into oblivion. Last estimate from somewhere in Ukraine was 8% destruction so far. Strategically take out 8% of all kinds of columns all using the same roads, with grandmothers tossing Molotovs and insults…
You were duped, BPL. Capitalist Russia is just as corrupt and worthless as Communist USSR. Maybe 90% of the USA’s “defense” spending since integrated circuits got involved was wasted. It’s fun watching our toys blow up Russian Capitalists, but what if we had instead been building productive toys that ended fossils? Putin wouldn’t have any customers.
Oops, looks like that’s happening anyway.
Want an America First policy? Set a national price for energy-related commodities. Letting rapacious asshats spike prices for the same product is crazy. We can use our Strategic reserves to balance supply and demand in the USA. WE will have a stable system. We will buy and sell fossils as a collective, and we are self-sufficient. Who can beat that?
And it’s not like we want advancements or efficiencies in fossil fuels, especially when “efficiency” is defined as efficiently shoving cash into lazy leeches’ pockets in exchange for zero work and zero positive directing of the economy.
The local Story is keeping pace. Who knows? We might survive.
Mrkia: Latest Brandon
RtW: Nobody reads anything that comes after some moron says “Brandon”.
Mrkia: Latest Brandon
RtW: Nobody reads anything that comes after some moron says “Brandon”. Yep, you’re a Brandonized Boy, boy.
All,
I’ve decided to go with the “fuck off” to capitalism by spewing my major Work out loud. Internal combustion was solved over a year ago and no new advances or quibbles or fears have occurred, so the Solution is obviously solid.
I wouldn’t have the guts to shred my potential IP if the Local Story, the Societal Story, the Scientific Story, and the Celestial Story didn’t harmonize.
But yeah, I’m taking your critiques to heart by rejecting rent-seeking. If someone wants to thank me for whatever I do, cool. But I ain’t being the thing I’m fighting anymore.
Is that you, Al Bundy?
Of course
EP Quote: “Honestly? There is NO practical way to deal with a continued anthropogenic warming trend. It has to be stopped somehow. The question is how to either deal with its effects or reverse it, neither of which is trivial.”
How long do we have to stop our emissions? Only 8 years left as AOC says? Let’s find out. We’ve raised the CO2 concentration 140 ppm from 280 to 420 ppm in ~300 years. It’s warmer now in most places, but we’re doing OK. If we can level off CO2 at another 140 ppm, that would be 560 ppm, or 2X pre-industrial. Can we do it? How long do we have?
Since 1850 we’ve emitted 2.4EE12 tons of CO2 and 950EE9 tons of that went into the atmosphere. That’s 2,400 and 950 Gigatons or billion tons for you folks in Rio Linda. Source:
https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/climate-change/global-warming/global-co2-emissions/story
Each year humans add 34EE9 tons of CO2, and counting ALL GHGs we emit 50EE9 tons CO2 equaivalent, CO2e. Source:
https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions#:~:text=Today%2C%20we%20collectively%20emit%20around,were%20around%2035%20billion%20tonnes.
Wild guess, say we maintain the 950/2400 ratio of atmospheric uptake to total emissions (wild guess), then atmospheric uptake will be ~ 50×950/2400 = 20EE9 tons per year. (BPL, whoop out the calc – how does this compare with the annual increase in CO2 we are measuring?) To add another 950EE9 tons to the atmosphere would take ballpark 950/20=47.5 years IF we average what we are doing now over those 47.5 years and if my calc is in the ballpark. (OK, other GHGs probably make it a little worse than that.)
Since we’re working on reducing emissions (slowly), and are even attempting to remove some CO2, we may have longer than that before we get to 560 ppm (double pre-industrial).
So, looks like it’s a problem, but perhaps achieveable. We’ve go wheels and concrete, gravel, and rip-rap trucks so the low-lying cities can start building dikes and moving to higher ground.
Off-topic, but MIT says natural CO2 emissions exceeds human emissions by ten times. Not saying this is correct, but here it is FYI:
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does-earth-naturally-absorb
LOOK! REAL MITIGATION: Africans are removing CO2 from the atmosphere:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/africas-great-green-wall-begins-rise
BPL, some day I’ll look at your planet-calculation page. Who is the intended audience?
KIA: BPL, some day I’ll look at your planet-calculation page. Who is the intended audience?
BPL: People interested in planetary astronomy.
We do not order or buy your planetary SPAM!, Gernosse, from SPiced and canned, industrialn hAM! off the factory assembly line where the earth is flat. For religious, racial military climatic nutrician and communal festival purposes.
Try Stoccafisso instead, and Surströmming. That is more autenic planetary and astronomical in the real climate. Or SmalaHAUD.
bpl:
You probably mean lonely hikers who stumbled into your borehole due to a lack of house number lighting.
ms: You probably mean lonely hikers who stumbled into your borehole due to a lack of house number lighting.
BPL: If there were some context to this jibe, people could figure out what you were talking about.
And you think that 560 ppm would be safe, or useful, because–?
(Reminder: the central estimate for ECS is still ~3 C per doubling…)
Correct, but not very relevant to the topic of Forced Responses, since a) we don’t control natural emissions, and b) natural emissions aren’t forcing the observed trend. (This latter follows arithmetically from the fact that of anthropogenic emissions, only ~4/9ths stay in the atmosphere on annual timescales.)
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle/page1.php
We have been through this here, more than once. Just sayin’…
KM,
We’re doing OK at 420 pppm, 1.5X pre-industrial, so I think we’d be OK at 2X pre-industrial, 560 ppm.
Not optimum but we can handle it. Here’s why:
We can’t get to zero emissions today – we have to grow food, heat homes, run the world economy.
If we go away from all FFs we will welcome a warmer world in the winter. Solar and wind ain’t gonna cut it for many decades.
By the time we get to zero emissions, we will likely be able to start removing CO2 in meaningful quantities.
We have time to start building levees and sea walls where needed ASAP or moving people where needed.
None of these “reasons why we can handle it” actually bear on the point.
Pofessor….
People are on moove now in Ukraina, and people have been on moove in the mediterraneans both from Africa and fro0m the middle east now for years.
And King Donald Grizny began building his great wall to make America great again, against people on moove from Mexico.
But, does it help?
Criminally negligent to suggest 560 ppm is a safe goal, or any sort of goal, for climate.
New data on methane. In 2021, there was a record increase in the concentration of methane on average. However, something strange is happening in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Annual fluctuations in the concentration of methane began to change there at the end of 2019, which is confirmed by observatory data.
It is not known how much of the rise in mean methane concentrations is Arctic methane, but the trend is interesting. Its source is also unclear.
Pictures are attached
https://ibb.co/LZNC54t
https://ibb.co/GHw285j
We all knew at some point, and sooner rather than later – well, those with any analytical skills whatsoever knew – the Arctic CH4 would rise above the noise. This looks like that moment has come.
I wrote in the wrong topic, but here is an interesting study on underwater permafrost. It refers to thermokarst sinkholes 220 and 74 meters in size and 24 meters deep. Their size is impressive. This study is the first of its kind and it is not known how many such thermokarst sinkholes are around the world and how they are affected by climate change.
Rapid seafloor changes associated with the degradation of Arctic submarine permafrost
Temperature increases in Arctic regions have focused attention on permafrost degradation on land, whereas little is known about the dynamics of extensive glacial-age permafrost bodies now submerged under the vast Arctic Continental shelves. Repeated high-resolution bathymetric surveys show that extraordinarily rapid morphologic changes are occurring at the edge of the continental slope of the Canadian Beaufort Sea along what was once the seaward limit of relict Pleistocene permafrost. How widespread similar changes are on the Arctic shelves is unknown, as this is one of the first areas in the Arctic subjected to multiple multibeam bathymetric surveys. Rapid morphologic changes associated with active submarine permafrost thawing may be an important process in sculpturing the seafloor in other submarine permafrost settings.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2119105119
And all those who understand basic climate science know you need more than one or two years data to be sure something has risen above the ‘noise.’.
If you look at the data graphs of the Tiksi Observatory from the screenshot, then the first surge in methane concentration was in 2018. To be sure, you can wait another year or two
In December 2021, a record increase in the concentration of methane in the Arctic is seen. Around April 5, NOAA will release methane data for December 2021. Normally, the average concentration of methane around the world starts to fall around this time. If there are deviations from this trend in the NOAA chart, we will all see
And all those who actually do, know that the specific response of permafrost/clathrates isn’t climate. In fact, they both release CH4 regularly. That his happens isn’t special. What is is the rate of increase.
Those that do *also* know that every trend has a beginning and climate science has done a poor job of predicting/scenarioing the rate of change due to climate forcings even as it has nailed the GHG totals and temps. That is, sensitivity is at the very high end, not the low end or middle.
Those that *do* also know we are getting into some areas of climate change and effects having doubling times that are at 5-year to 20-year scales. That rate of doubling makes the 30 year metric absurdly inappropriate for some aspects of assessing climate changes.
Those that understand basic English, which is not you, knows that the phrase “looks like” is not definitive; it implies a caveat much like, “very possibly is” and so don’t troll others.
Anyone sanguine about Arctic CH4, as you are and have been, is playing a dangerous game of trying to time the market. From thermokarst lakes to pingoes to the blast craters found in Siberia to the infrastructure being ruined in Alaska to the new report above on sinkholes in the Arctic Ocean, things are changing and that is not going to slow down.
Only two years? If it’s the first two years of a ten-year doubling, it’s extremely bad news.
Stop trolling.
There is also good news. Methane oxidizes in the atmosphere over 10 years into carbon dioxide. With an increase in the concentration of methane, its relative rate of oxidation decreases, but the rate at which a certain mass of methane is oxidized increases. The growth of methane concentration will stop when equilibrium is reached. The runaway greenhouse effect is unlikely
So according to you pointing out you need more than one or two years of data to determine if something has risen above the noise is trolling? By your definition virtually every climate scientist is a troll. You’re an idiot.
Stop trolling, Mr Killian, stop trolling
Orgies during Lent, Orgien während der Fastenzeit, Orgier i fastetiden!
That is not sustainable and it is not Permaculture.
@ Killian
Pattern recognition seems not to be your strongest dicipline, Hr. Killian,
It tells us further of your lacking levels and horizons of experience,, enlighttment, training, and inauguration. Things that cannot be substituted and repaired by belongings missions and memberships.
@ Killian
On pattern and tendency recognition
Can you try and take the subject a bit more serious, pleace?
To Your discussion of trends in time by smallwer or larger, countable catastrophic events,… and their further consequenses that follow and smooth out in time.
For that class of phaenomena I recommend poisson statistics, first developed by Poisson for the discussion of criminal statistics in Paris such as murders or fires pr month or pr year in Paris.. Further appliciable to catastrophic car collisions from A to B per year on your local highway.
In general, for the number of raindrops in a cup of coffee under open sky, in order to be able to say for sure, It is not raining now! Is it beginning to rain? Yes, it is raining! Does it rain more now? When will this end? I think it has stopped now! …….
……… When you are not allowed to look up.
Poisson statistics is also used for radioactive counting and for political election statristics such as the number of votes on the communist party from time to time in your local community. How and when can you tell that communism increasing or decreasing or whether it is steady?
The std at Poisson is the square root of the amplitude. By one event it might as well not have happened and you shall not lift your eyebrows again until you have 3 more such events. By 10 events std is slightly more than 3, but by 1000 events the std is 33, and you must lift your eyebrows again above 1100 and below 900, at 3 times the Std.
Then take a telescopic look at the moon. What is the rate and the tendency of meteorite and asteroide impacts there? That can be judged because by aging and erosion you can also judge the age of the craters and say for sure that the rate has fallen roughly exponentially fror the last 4.5 billion years. But, as we know from other reasons, such events may also occur in swarms just like deaths and fires in Paris.
The moon together with Paris is a very good reference example for many such discussions and we will soon be able also to use Ukraina as a referenjce for dramatic catastrophic chaotic events..
Then what about large methane blobs in the siberian permafrost tundra? I took a look with Google maps on the Yamal peninsula and found that it seems rather normal and regular. There are large round holes all the way there, and when you have determined the climate and soil premises, you can look over the very arctic fror the same. I have found several, similar old blob- fields. ( very flat and thick silt- fields with permafrost)
Then back to Poisson. The police, the Gendarmerie and the Paris fireward must also be constant for Poisson fully to come to his rights. Siberian blobs were hardly noticed and mentioned before the invention of the telegraph, and of Pravda.
Media interest and obsevance like the Paris gendarmerie is also a parameter to it. Before the geiger counter, radioactive poisson statistics was not on pensum. And before the fall 0f the soviet Union, those blobs were not mentioned at all in Western media.
Mrkia: How long do we have to stop our emissions? Only 8 years left as AOC says?
RtW: All this time here and you still think it is a light switch? Zero (minimal?) damage now or in the future as long as we act in 7.9 years and total destruction a month or so later?
Two sorts of people might treat a sound bite like a dissertation:
A total idiot, someone with a room- temperature IQ
Or a dissembler.
As if you started out in life as stupid as the logic trail that weaves to your stance from a call to action inspired by a published paper….
..and just too incurious to glance at the paper AOC was referring to…
So, I vote for the latter being the cause and the former being the sad effect we are witnessing today: a self-made moron.
I would say KIA is an average guy being deliberately idiotic / stupid. Like you say a dissembler. However I suspect years of deliberate stupidity kill brain cells, so he better watch out..
I have the impression that being hardnecked supid contrarian in one way most oftenly corelates to be hardnecked contrarian in another way7 and more thanj one way, but this next way cannot be carried out officially in fullmdaylight. Thus, ones contrarian deliberately stupid denial and contrarianism is as much as a steady, daily exercise for something worse and quiten more serious.
It may be their daily training on unimportant matters for them, for something quite much more serious for them, They are allways training on less serious matters for their assumed doubble- life with its necessary “doubble- think”.
That is called hypocricy in english and HEUCHELEI in German. Namely, allways having to say and to train saying something out of the mouth while meaning the opposite inwards into your heart.
That routine- exercise not only kills braincells each day. Much worse, Mr Knowitall; It wears down your CON-SCIENCE, that is organically identical , (nothing more and nothing less) than your very NERVUS VAGUS, your 7th nerve. .
Which is quite unhealthy. in the long run. I say that for good.
Is that really so and am I right, Mr. Knowitall?
It is just as likely that he is far too insecure and coward to admit to being wrong. It is not rocket science. He flaunts his ignorance due to his insecurity but he gets the attention he craves while never making any effort to learn. Which reflects on how poorly educated he is as well..
Yes, you say something
But there is more to it. I personally believe that most people are educated in any case, but on what? That seems to differ highly. And then, intelligence also shows high diversity. And there are types of intelligence and of characters.
Being able to forget and to ignore and to supress impressions and experience is also a necessary property of mentality and of talented intelligence, …. and has also to be learnt and can be falsely unluckily educated or diciplined.
Am I right also on this Mr. Knowitall?
We were told about intelligence tests at the inaugurating university studies, and “Adequate norming” of intelligence tests. And if that is not conscidered, different races , nations, and cultures may come out quite unequal, which is not biologically plausible..
My Uncle, Dr.Med and Scientist said: Yes, that is obviously so and it is not that easy ton compare apes to humans. Put an ape on an English Gentlemans problems, and the ape will fail and show very unintelligent. But put an Englishman (or any anglo- american knowitall) on an ape- problem in the jungle..!”
Wherefore I also mention apes and bears and trolls, slugs, cyclopes and Bonobos in the climate dispute, and mention their fore-paws.
Quoth Mr. Know It All:
I figure minus 30 years, give or take. We’ve already found out. We have already had extreme weather events and the full effects aren’t even being felt yet. We probably crossed the line at 350 ppm, maybe less.
Tell that to the dying Great Barrier Reef, the droughts across the world and the exploding methane vents in the Arctic.
What can we do? I suggest mineralizing 2 tons of CO2 equivalent for every ton emitted until we’re back down to 350. This can be done by enhanced weathering of massive quantities of dunite and other mafic/ultramafic rocks, but whether humanity has the will to do this is an open question.
And natural CO2 uptake is much greater than that. Only the net matters, not the gross.
EP,
Yep, four decades ago the “entitled”, uh modern world was tiny. It ended up being rather damaging to metastasize the Western World before a reasonable system was designed.
A video on why we (the general public) don’t care about climate change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK7g6pgaC7I&lc=UgwkMG2GFitrjv0-7eB4AaABAg.9ZnRPZt-uwO9ZnyqF_U8TM
Suggests that it has something to do with the way climate change is reported, and the lack of coverage it gets compared to other far more trivial subjects. Maybe reporting climate change and its consequences in a way that people can directly relate too, such as things that they can see and experience, will help.
Good video, however the idea that lack of media coverage is the reason almost nobody is doing anything significant about the climate problem seems rather weak . Because surely virtually everyone knows the basics of the climate issue by now?
You would have to be living under a rock with no human contact, no television or other media for the last 20 years to not be aware of the climate issue, including the fact that the climate is changing, that its due to fossil fuels and that its very serious. And surely virtually everyone knows what the main solutions are.
I would say the lack of progress solving the problem probably has multiple causes, including technological roadblocks, political factors, public fears about costs, and the denialists campaign, but I believe this following is the main reason:
“Humans Wired to Respond to Short-Term Problems : NPR. Humans Wired to Respond to Short-Term Problems Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert argues that humans are exquisitely adapted to respond to immediate problems, such as terrorism, but not so good at more probable, but distant dangers, like global warming.”
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5530483#:~:text=Humans%20Wired%20to%20Respond%20to%20Short%2DTerm%20Problems%20%3A%20NPR&text=Humans%20Wired%20to%20Respond%20to%20Short%2DTerm%20Problems%20Harvard%20psychology,distant%20dangers%2C%20like%20global%20warming.
We don’t know how to change this. It makes me suspect that progress fixing the climate problem will be slow, and is not going to include things that most people find unpleasant, painful or hugely inconvenient . And the real world historical data is on my side. I don’t like this at all, but it appears to be the objective reality.
Of course there are things that would help nudge people more towards solutions. Obviously better media coverage of wildfires and hurricanes and their links to the climate issue would help rather than hinder. (like EP’s example) This sort of thing is fairly immediate. But we will probably need a lot more very obvious, drastic, and immediate climate problems to wake the world up.
I think the point the video was making was that on the regular everyday media feeds (e.g. TV news and newspapers), climate change and relating the climate change science to what is happening with the world’s weather typically takes up a very small amount of space compared to a ton of other things the media prefer to report which are better at stimulating feel-good emotions and selling newspapers. People can understand the fundamentals of climate change but not necessarily easily be able to relate it to their personal everyday lives. It said in the video that if climate change consequences are framed around a few polar bears dying or glaciers melting, people might say “so what”, because polar bears and glaciers do not feature tangibly into their lives (at least not in the wealthy West), but if it were framed around something that did directly affect them, such as the NW American heatwave (or any other deadly heatwave), or a rise in food prices because of a natural disaster in a normally highly productive farming region which are projected to get worse in the future, or a destructive extreme rainfall event, which are also projected to get worse/more frequent, people might take it a bit more seriously.
Adam, yes I appreciate the video is saying those things. I guess I’m rather sceptical that if things were framed more around genuinely relevant natural disasters that it would make much difference. New Zealand media where I live have framed things in that way quite well over the last few years and it isn’t causing people to rush out and make big changes to their lives. and vote for the Green Party. But I agree with you it might “help a bit” and I’m maybe being too pessimistic.
FWIW, it’s my perception that it’s more common than previously to use CC impact framings that are apt to be relevant to the expected audience. Perhaps that’s one reason that we’re seeing opinion shift in a helpful direction.
Quoth Adam Lea:
Putting some emphasis on things like 175 wildfires in Texas in the past week can likely help:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/21/us/texas-wildfires-monday/
I drove past a plume of smoke yesterday that had to have been 2 miles tall, given the distance from which it was visible. And that was just ONE fire, from the looks of it.
Dr Genosse poet, 0n your engineering
At the same time there are wildfires in Norway and people to be evacuated
This is hardly due to climate change, but due to human settlements and mis- use, mis- interpretations of their landscapes and of setting fire to it in the seasons
. It is as antroåpogene as can be in the climate, and not due to cycle and cyclings but to ignorance and stupitity and to unqualified engineering.
We hope that a series of Texan gas and oilfields also will catch fire due to this, will show proof and be educative.
In Ukraina, the Russians ar now doing their very best to set fire to it and to cause wildfires also in densely, populated, suburban areas..
They have longrange rocket artillery with 2-3-4 Kg of TNT within conventional “barrels” of gasoline and diesel, 150 liters…… delivered to town and elsewhere.
That sets fire to it.
The worlde is discussing whether this will inhibit necessary climate responsibility and action.
You, as a presumably resposible engineer- poet, shoud be able to get and to discuss this first. We judge and discuss you and eventual further poetries on behalf. of this
So, how is it that the wildfire season in California and across the West has expanded by at least a month, and two months in California, compared with the 1970s?
That is easy to answer from where I live.
For some people it is so easy and so tempting and so adult and so professional and serious to set fire to it…… smile smile…….. and to go there and rake fires……. each year in the season….
It is simply archaic tradeitionjal, human Pyro- philia and Pyro- mania.
And the season comes earlier and earlier in spring and better and better and later in autumn.
It is as antropogene as can be. And CO2AGW improoves or expands theese seasons both in spring and in autumn.
@Carbomontanus,
I’ll let you answer Richard Mercer before I bother to answer you.
In short, ESAD.
So, Engineer Poet does not get the point.
The summer season and growth season and season where it can burn at all has expanded at both ends in recent decades. Spring coming earlier, autumn coming later.
If people then are tradidionally eager to burn it all every season for traditional ceremonial psychological and moral political reasons being poetic engineers in that respect in order to feel nostalgic or something, then their due traditional moral political “bonjfires” may get out of control.
And they will deny it.
They even will blame me for not having understood them and for having to learn first.
@carbonito – ” This is hardly due to climate change… ”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-climate-change-is-affecting-wildfires-around-the-world
So our stupid little pastor and preacherman is also a climate denier –
now your mercilessly meaningless comments finally seem to me in the right context.
The stupid “holistic” sales agents, pastors and preachmen and systematic deniers…..
Do I have to mention more?
On March 18, the Concordia-Dome C research station in East Antarctica recorded an anomaly 47 degrees C above normal.
Is that now the largest anomaly ever recorded anywhere on earth? If not, what was the largest (positive or negative)?
Nigel: the idea that lack of media coverage is the reason almost nobody is doing anything significant about the climate problem seems rather weak .
RtW: If the same percentage of the news coverage was about the death, destruction, losses, and inconvenience of likely-climate-related stuff as was given to war stuff during WW2 then ?
O yeah, that’s net news coverage. You have to subtract the GOPpish propaganda since it is inverse coverage.
Richard, even if we had saturation media coverage of the climate issue, I don’t believe it would make much difference to what people do about it, and most people would probably change channels or turn the TV off. Because people have already heard about all aspects of the climate issue many times over the last 20 years or so and can only take so much. Even I don’t read every media article on climate change or watch every tv segment these days. It gets repetitive. The exception is this website, because they tend to tackle new technical issues and in depth and its just one or two new issues each month.
Imho the problem is not a lack af awareness. Instead people are in various forms of psychological denial. It will only change if theres something like a heatwave that kills millions.
Don’t get me wrong. One of our media outlets had virtually no climate coverage, and I’ve lobbied them hard to change that,
And I certainly don’t object if the media increase climate coverage. I guess I have just got a bit cynical about it all.
Killian to Nigel: Only two years? If it’s the first two years of a ten-year doubling, it’s extremely bad news.
RtW: Denialists do “down the up escalator”. Your comment feels like one rung of “ladderizing the up escalator”. to me.
Yes exactly Richard.
One thing we need to address if countries like the UK want to embrace renewable energy and become less dependant on FF and large energy price rises is the NIMBY factor:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60878403
“The government badly needs to generate more renewable energy to meet its emission targets and make the UK more energy independent.
But some of its own MPs are among those lining up against projects that could power hundreds of thousands of homes.
At least 20 have publicly spoken out against solar or wind projects in their own constituencies in the past two years.
Many of them say they fully support increasing energy from renewables.
But building wind turbines and solar panel farms on unspoilt English countryside can be deeply unpopular with their constituents. ”
They claim to support renewables, as long as they are not near them. The problem is, in the UK, if you eliminate all places where someone could object to the visual intrusion, and all areas of outstanding natural beauty, there aren’t many places left to put large scale renewable installations. Any thoughts as to how to address this?
I use RC and comments to refine my understanding of what’s likely to crash civilization if the tyrants can’t do it first.
But reading comments can be a waste of time sorting the wheat from the chaff.
RC blog could be rescued of course. RC’s rules are too polite. Conditions should be that comments shall be on-topic, Personal aspersions not tolerated, nor shall nonsense be run into the ground.
We can’t let the trolls destroy insight into climate change by corrupting public inquiry into what concerns us all;
or having citizens’ inquiry disappear because the denialists want to keep us confused.
Let me join with others saying that valuable explanations and tangential points to the initial discussion are revealed in a blog. I’ve observed that even the denialist trolls contribute in a way – by having their points demolished by the facts.
I don’t use Facebook or Twitter or any other social medium.
My vote’s to keep the blogs and toss the hogs.
A more draconian Bore Hole would be easy: place comment in BoreHole and place an ever-increasing suspension on the perp, maybe with a public notice, maybe not…
The volunteer moderator concept has legs. So does a weekly or twice a week batching of comments. And letting commenters edit or delete their not-yet-moderated comments would be a huge boon.
Quoth Adam Lea:
After all, who could possibly object to square miles of black rectangles, or spires topped with blinking anti-collision lights which radiate harmful infrasound which will stand there for the rest of their lives?
It starts with Hinckley Point and Sizewell D, E, F and G. Minimal geographic footprint, no significant impact beyond the site itself, and no need for carbon-spewing “backup”.
EP is SO concerned with the visual impact of renewables. NIMBY is just awful!
Except, of course, when it’s local opposition to nukes. Then it’s uninformed anti-science Communists holding back progress.
National energy concerns do need to supercede local concerns when it comes to energy projects. It is legitimate to require each site to be surveyed for environmental impact, and to invite local comment. But that’s all. That said, here’s what we need to meet the crisis.
Electricity:
1. Ban all new drilling and mining of fossil fuels, immediately. All of it. Worldwide.
2. Ban all new coal, oil, and natural gas power plants, ditto.
3. Build out national and even international HVDC smart grids to distribute power where it’s needed over as large areas as possible.
4. Build out solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and wave power generation. Overbuild it to help take care of slack periods.
5. Build out pumped hydro, battery, compressed air, and other power backup as needed.
6. Electrify as much transportation and industry as possible. Upgrade rail transportation in every country, especially in countries with backward, third-world level rail systems. Like the United States.
7. Take fossil fuel power plants off-line as soon as they can be safely replaced with renewables.
Agriculture and forestry:
8. Promote use of biochar agriculture to take carbon dioxide out of the air, where we don’t want it, and put it in the soil, where we need it.
9. Remove subsidies for wasteful, monoculture agriculture and the overuse of fertilizers. Promote natural insecticides and arbori-agriculture (crops planted amidst trees, and yes, there are ways to do that without blocking all the sunlight).
10. Stop deforestation with appropriate legislation in every country. It’s okay to raise timber farms in areas already devoted to timber farms. It’s not okay to turn rain forests into hardpan.
General:
11. Promote home recycling everywhere. Remove perverse incentives. People shouldn’t have to pay to recycle; recycling should be the default. Disposing of recyclables should be made easy for households, as in Japan.
12. Promote recycling on an industry level. We need to reuse materials, not mine new ones. Mining should be shut down to a minimum level as soon as materials from recycling streams come on line. We need a circular economy, not an endless-growth economy.
13. Research safe, cheap nuclear power, if such a thing exists. Maybe it will exist in the future.
14. Research fusion power. In the future, this will be a good way to dispose of toxic wastes, by breaking them down into their elemental or small-molecule components.
Constructive comments welcome.
Barton Paul Levenson
Totally agree with your list of climate solutions. They will be challenging but seem feasible.
Biochar might be limited by available land and biomass and pyrolitic ovens don’t come cheap, so additional solutions to sequester carbon are be needed. Both rock weathering and regenerative agriculture and direct air capture have potential to sequester carbon. None of these are perfect solutions either, or they face various challenges, but a combination of all these solutions starts to look very powerful and technically feasible and cost effective to me.
“Project Drawdown” has a nice sensible list of well researched climate solutions.
https://drawdown.org/
Agree also with your comments on contraception etcetera.
I should have included, in the long run, make contraception and abortion freely available in every country. Voluntary provision of contraception has already reduced fertility from seven children per women to three in Bangladesh, which was once thought to be a basket case. The world population is one its way to stabilizing around the year 2050, but if we can do it any faster, that would help. The fewer people consuming resources, the better.
And we need to welcome immigrants and refugees. For population to be mobile would help in all kinds of ways. For example, in the United States, or China, where social security systems are strained by the growing number of elderly people and the shrinking work force, it makes no sense whatsoever to keep young, working-age immigrants and children out.
“And we need to welcome immigrants and refugees.”
Good luck selling that to the UK population, which seems to be attempting to become a clone of America (and as COVID shows, repeating what others do will likely brings you the same results as them). The reason BREXIT got voted for was because of our toxic media framing immigrants as the primary cause of social ills in the UK.
I don’t understand the attitude that immigrants take jobs and increase the unemployment levels of the native population. Given the population is aging, and given elderly people retire from work, there should be plenty of jobs to go around if it is true the workforce population is shrinking.
BPL goes off the deep end:
Blah, blah, blah.
You failed at the outset with 1. This is NOT going to happen, because you’ll have a world-wide repeat of the Texas blackouts only worse. Nobody will stand for it.
3 is something we don’t have working ANYWHERE. Worse, BPL ignores the massive vulnerabilities created by long supply lines and especially hostile suppliers; Germany is effectively a vassal state of Russia due to a bone-headed program to close all nuclear plants, creating dependence on Russian gas.
4 is crazy. Geothermal and tidal are very limited geographically, and wave-power machinery tends to get broken easily. None but geothermal has a life expectancy of more than 20-25 years, so you can expect to replace it at least 4-5 times a century. While the ultimate energy source might be renewable, the materials for the equipment are not.
5 posits that we can make storage systems which fight to become affordable even today will suddenly be widely available… in an energy-constrained world. That isn’t going to happen. AAMOF, the supply chains would collapse immediately when we no longer had the reliability of electric supply to run arc furnaces to process steel for e.g. wind-turbine towers.
Nobody pushing such nonsense has a clue, and they all need to be removed from any role in determining policy.
Meanwhile, the USA is sitting on enough depleted uranium to run the entire country for centuries without mining another ounce. You want an end to mining of fossil fuels? There’s your solution; it’s been in front of you the whole time.
Engineer-Poet. I dont believe that BPL was suggesting stopping using fossil fuels immediately. He appeared to be suggesting don’t open up NEW oil fields or do further exploration. Most oil comes from big existing fileds that have many years life left in them. That would give us enough oil for the transition period to a new energy grid but would put some pressure on to get moving.
Yes, EP, we know your point of view. Renewables are awful, the only solution is nukes, nukes, and more nukes. Ignore their total failure so far. Ignore that no one will invest in them any more; that the only people still investing in them are totalitarian countries where opposition can be steamrollered. Ignore the fact that people are lining up to invest their money in solar and wind, which are still growing by double digits every year. In short, ignore reality.
@EP
” 5 posits that we can make storage systems that are already struggling to be affordable, will suddenly be ubiquitous… in an energy-constrained world. That will not happen. AAMOF, the supply chains would collapse immediately if we…
Nobody who spreads such nonsense has a clue. ”
— Storage systems, along with renewable energies, are pretty much the cheapest and safest strategy to ensure energy security. As an exception, I have to agree with the blind chicken bpl.
Apparently YOU have absolutely no idea what, for example, modern pumped storage systems can do and what degree of efficiency they achieve.
So you can safely delete the engineer from your user name.
Pump storage already achieves ~ 85% efficiency today. Above ground, however, the orographic possibilities have already been exhausted in many places.
For really gifted engineers without borders, it therefore continues underground, since only a difference in height and sufficient water masses are required for a pumped storage facility.
In disused mines there are often millions of m³ of volume available. The investments for expanding them into water reservoirs are significantly cheaper than above-ground dams due to the existing infrastructure. Invisible, they can be installed on any major river or lake if the geology of the location permits, and they do not disturb the landscape or the acceptance of the population.
A concept I developed combines such underground pump storage for storing electricity with compressed air storage, heat/cold storage and serves as excellent protection against drought and flood events all year round.
The overall efficiency is well over 100% and the underground compressed air caverns are the first in the world that can produce large quantities of compressed air up to 40 bar and a lot of heat without any compressor.
Due to the multifunctionality, they are highly profitable with a comparatively low investment. No lithium, cobalt or other rare metals – 100% recyclable.
I see further global, very large potential in river power plants, which have the same base load capacity as nuclear power plants.
https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/schwimmende-kleinkraftwerke-erobern-donau-rhein/
So you can confidently stick your uranium rods where the sun never shines. At a time when nuclear power plants are being attacked by Russian artillery – your nuclear proposals are particularly ludicrous.
To all and everyone exept Matthias Schürle from Karlsruhe
I found DATA, that sustain my climate understanding and model. the Tropopause, lapsrate, and Claussius Clappeyron- Aristoteles- theory.
That is much easier to comprehend.
It is the fameous Hiawatha- crater on Grønland, that has been shurly dated now. rather 50 million years old, in an arctic situation with tempered rain- forests on northern Grønland, that were due to much more CO2 in the atmosphere, thus it ruins many further, recent missions, projects, and beliefs.
The moral of it is that you shurly do not have to store water on land.
What matters is enough fossile carbon in the air, so you get ocean- temperatures and claussius clappeyron evaporations enough, and then Aristoteles What goes up must come down, also in the arctic where carbon sink was also consciderable at that time, very green rain forests with high diversity also of land animal life to eat all that green.
Then what about the sea levels and its eventual rise?
Well, ignore it. It is normal.
Do not be stupid at least but moove to lands and places where the earth is not flat, so that you only have to climb a bit higher up on the lands and cliffs and solid rocks, and up in the trees during the floods.
That is a better holistic vision, I must say, … and sell!
@carbonito – ” so that you only have to climb a bit higher up on the lands and cliffs and solid rocks, and up in the trees during the floods. ”
— Tell your plans to the subway of New York – but take your magic pills before.
Quoth nigelj:
A great deal of oil now comes from fracked shale fields with very steep annual decline rates. These require on-going effort just to maintain production. Meanwhile, energy demand continues to rise.
The present surge in oil prices resulting from the effort to isolate Russia ought to be enough to convince you otherwise.
Building out an entirely new energy infrastructure is itself an energy-intensive activity. Right now we’re running on the legacy of once-cheap oil and lots of coal. We won’t be able to build a new energy grid with expensive energy; we first have to make energy cheap again. Specifically, we need to make low-carbon energy cheap. Until then, we have to use the grid we’ve got.
EP: Specifically, we need to make low-carbon energy cheap.
BPL: Wind and solar have been cheaper than fossil fuels for several years now.
Quoth BPL:
None other than Dr. James Hansen notes that the only decarbonization success stories use hydro and nuclear.
Name a place where wind and solar support the production of more wind and solar, without fossil backup. I’ll wait.
O RLY? Look at France and Ontario. Both of them decarbonized their grids almost entirely using… nuclear and hydro. France did it entirely by accident, as an effort to replace petroleum.
Vogtle 3 and 4, Flamanville and Olkiluoto 3 are not in totalitarian countries. Neither is Watts Bar 2, which was completed this century.
Ignore the fact that, according to Warren Buffett,
None other than T. Boone Pickens got his ass handed to him in the wind biz:
Your “renewables” aren’t economically viable without subsidies and can’t even support their own manufacturing by themselves. Most of the world’s polysilicon comes from China, where it’s made with massive amounts of coal!
Reality is that the storage required to to get reliable power from “renewables” makes them even more uneconomic than they already are, and drives the energy return on energy invested too low to run our society.
Reality is that we’ve been using wind and solar energy for thousands of years, and ought to know their shortcomings. They’re unfit for purpose.
Reality is that the energy density of “renewables” is measured in mere watts per square meter of total area required.
Reality is that nuclear energy went from the first detection of atomic fission in 1938 to the first commercial nuclear power station in Obninsk in 1954. That’s 16 years.
Reality is that the only near-total decarbonization success stories use hydro and nuclear, and nuclear is the only one we can scale up at will.
Reality is that the IPCC has declared that nuclear energy is required to decarbonize the world economy.
Start living in reality.
EP: Reality is that the energy density of “renewables” is measured in mere watts per square meter of total area required.
BPL: Reality is that nobody cares about “energy density” but nuke freaks.
No, but they are all pretty good examples of the fine art of the “boondoggle.”
Vogtle 3 & 4: 14 years & $28 bn US (projected)
Flamanville 3: 14 years & 19 bn Euro (projected)
Olkiluoto: 17 years & 11 bn Euro (Estimated cost–electric generation started on the 12th of this month, with “regular” production expected in July.)
Hinkley Point C isn’t looking all that much better presently, with a project build time of 12 years and cost of over 22 bn Pounds. And of course the Summer 2 & 3 expansion failed altogether, at a cost of ~$9 bn US.
Nuclear has its points, but scalability isn’t one of them, and it won’t be in time to address the immediate climate crisis.
Hr E.Poet
I must say it again. When it is that obvious and easy, why is n`t that done? Are there very serious secrets to it that cannot be betrayed?
I red it again on the internet that the thorium and molten salt reactor has worked indeed to all peoples satisfaction in the sixties allready, but was closed down and project ended because it did not deliver bomb plutonium.
Such obvious rumors must be betrayed and cleaned up first, and what I have seen of German protestamntism against nuclear power was thet they would not support and help any such madness and arms race again in their own land. Honest and serious antroposophers protestants and early musicians and vegetarians. They even eat salted Mackrel, but no Nuclear.
The thorium molten salt reactor would solve that, as far as I can understand, so why is it not being built? why the Hell those U 235 light water reactors again and again and again and now again on both sides in the French election campaighn?
Is there no Academie Francaise and no Ecole de polytchnique in Paris who can simply tell France and the very EU the same that you are trying to tell?
Is that because what you are trying to tell is not the whole truth?
Because I find no other natural and plausible explaination.
And why in the USA does N`t it come out through the CNN and through Scientific American and the National geographic Magazine at least, on trustful, civil level also for me to believe it??
Tell us also why Elon Musk does not buy it.
Quoth macias shurly:
Then why did California and New York install gas-fired generators to replace nuclear power plants?
I watched the upgrade project at the Ludington pumped hydro station in real time. It increased the gross power rating of the station from 1872 MW to 2172 MW. There’s only one such station in the state of Michigan, and its capacity is dwarfed by the 4 coal-fired plants across the state in Monroe (3400 MW).
Meaning there’s millions of m³ of spoils heaps which really ought to be put back down them as part of remediation, but let’s run with this.
A cubic meter of water is approximately one metric ton and can store roughly 9.8 MJ for each meter of ΔH. If your mine is 1 million m³ at a depth of 100 meters, your maximum possible energy storage is 980 TJ or 272 GWh; at 85% efficiency that becomes 231 GWh. This will power the USA’s average electric load for about 30 minutes; if you needed a week of storage, you’d need 336 such units. You have a restriction that you need to be near a source of water, and additional constraints on flow rates if you’re using a river as the ground-level supply. This will fly as a niche application but cannot do the heavy lifting.
Contrast to nuclear energy. A fuel reload is roughly 1/3 of a full core and typically runs for 17 months between fuelings. The soon-to-be-shut-down Palisades NPP 125 miles south of the Ludington PHS plant produces 231 GWh in roughly 287 hours or 12 days. Uranium gives energy storage beyond compare.
So you’re tooting your own horn here. No surprise, I guess.
A whole 100 kW max. Do you have any idea how ridiculously inadequate that is? That’s 1/8050 of a Palisades.
Russia knows better than to do that. The “attack” on Zaporizhzhia hit a building well away from the plant proper, which was never in danger. Don’t believe the propaganda the MSM is putting out.
That was always the plan. The sun never shines in spent fuel pools or dry casks or deep bore holes.
MS: In disused mines there are often millions of m³ of volume available.
EP, attempting to refute MS: Meaning there’s millions of m³ of spoils heaps which really ought to be put back down them as part of remediation, but let’s run with this.
A cubic meter of water is approximately one metric ton and can store roughly 9.8 MJ for each meter of ΔH. If your mine is 1 million m³ at a depth of 100 meters, your maximum possible energy storage is 980 TJ or 272 GWh; at 85% efficiency that becomes 231 GWh. This will power the USA’s average electric load for about 30 minutes; if you needed a week of storage, you’d need 336 such units.
BPL: Apparently EP doesn’t think there are as many as 336 mines in the United States. Further down, he makes the same mistake again:
MS: I see further global, very large potential in river power plants, which have the same base load capacity as nuclear power plants.
https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/schwimmende-kleinkraftwerke-erobern-donau-rhein/
EP: A whole 100 kW max. Do you have any idea how ridiculously inadequate that is? That’s 1/8050 of a Palisades.
BPL: And you don’t think they can find 8,050 rivers in the United States? You’ve never looked at a river map of a county, have you?
In short, EP is in love with big, centralized plants that generate multiple GWe, and thinks multiple plants that generate just as much somehow don’t count.
@EP – ” Then why did California and New York install gas-fired generators to replace nuclear power plants?
”
— Maybe because in your country it’s not the sane, intelligent people who call the shots, but dirty, corrupt and criminal oil and gas corporations.
You won’t be able to talk nuclear energy sane and cheap.
Who paid the billions to research nuclear energy?
Who will pay the unknown cost of final disposal over the next 50.000-100.000 years?
Who pays for the Fukushima or Chernobyl disaster?
Who pays for military operations, e.g. in Mali, when French & German
soldiers apparently secure Malian uranium production there? The taxpayer???
If these costs were priced into the production cost of a nuclear-generated KWh, then it would cost at least 10 times the KWh from wind energy.
It also looks like you don’t know at all how a power grid works. Especially when the inflexible nuclear power is used as a base load in a power grid, we need large storage capacities that absorb the excess nuclear power (at night, for example) in order to release it again during the day as a peak load.
EP.: – ” If your mine is 1 million m³ at a depth of 100 meters… ”
— My pump storage with 1000000m³ at a depth of 400m can absorb ~ 1GWh per day.
Battery storage at this scale costs ~$0.5-1 billion.
For a fraction of this sum you can expand the old mine.
EP.: – ” A whole 100 kW max. ”
— …can still produce a good 25GWh in 30 years.
In series production, such a power plant should not cost much more than $100,000.
So it produces sustainable, completely harmless electricity for 0.5 cents/KWh.
Your nuclear power is miles away from that.
I am a pragmatist. As such I often wonder if more could be achieved quicker and cheaper by the rich countries paying for the poorer countries to clean up their electricity grids. This example has been overtaken by events rather as Germany has plenty to think about with its own energy supply, but put that aside for a minute. Poland is right next door to Germany. Poland has a very dirty electricity grid, if Germany helped them clean up their grid with some wind, solar and gas and close their dirty coal could emissions be reduced more readily than if Germany continue to build on their own wind and solar.
Another example, India want to build coal. If Britain helped them with wind, solar and gas instead of expanding their own wind turbines would more emissions reductions be achieved quicker and cheaper?
I have never seen anyone explore this thinking. If we all want to be good global citizens it seems to me to be worth some thought.
Thoughtful comment.
The issue, though, is that producing coal is part of their economies; I just did a quick check and India is #5 in the world in reserves and Poland is #9. So they would be giving up the value of their holdings (unless they sold it elsewhere.)
This is of course the problem with extractive economies in general, which is why getting off fossil fuels is so difficult.
Thank you for your enlightening reply.
That’s essentially the idea with the Green Climate Fund, which is under the UNFCCC–except that it’s multilateral, not bilateral. Their 2021 report is a bit of a slog, but basically they were pledge ~10 billion USD, got most of it and spent most of it on adaptation and mitigation projects around the world. There’s another “replenishment period” underway, and the “mobilization of funding” continues.
https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/GCF_Tenth%20report%20of%20the%20GCF%20to%20the%20COP%20of%20the%20UNFCCC_final.pdf
Thank you. Very interesting.
One of my critiques of the renewables movement is exactly this: Who pays for the poor people’s energy grids? It won’t ever happen. Despite Kevin’s cite of the GCF, the fact is the chance it solves the problem for the world’s 5 billion or more that can’t afford the transition – or any energy in many cases – is slim and none. Some? Sure. But what you’re going to see is the current inequalities cemented in place – even assuming the entire world got some electricity!
What will happen is, at best, Americans will get all the energy they want at the expense of the rest of the planet’s resources and sub-Saharan Africans, e.g., will get a tiny fraction in comparison. Why? Who’s going to pay for it? The same predatorty economic and political systems will result in the same essential conditions, Changing the type of energy will have zero effect on that.
Besides, renewables aren’t renewable, let alone sustainable, so should be anything but maximized, so the overall strategy is a massive fail. The change must be systemic, not hacking at leaves of the current system.
Killians comments. So renewables movement should be criticised because poor people might not be able to afford renewables. I totally reject that idea. It takes the idea of fairness to the point of absurdity. Its like saying “if everyone cant have everything nobody should have anything.”
By that ‘logic’ you could say that adequate food, modern medical care, televisions, and smartphones should be criticised because poor people cant afford them. I find all that approach completely absurd.
Its the same approach to renewables taken in Michael Moores absurd video “Planet of the Humans”. Namely he attacks renewables (and he lies about them) on the basis that poor people miss out and corporations and rich people benefit from renewables.
The plight of poor people is concerning, and rich people should give them some help at least so they have the basics of life. This happens in some Scandinavian countries through taxes and wealth redistribution. But that is a socio-political issue. It clearly does not determine the value of a piece of technology and whether its development is desirable or not.
So renewables movement should be criticised because poor people might not be able to afford renewables.
Why do you respond to my posts? You literally never understand what you are responding to.
1. There was no criticism of renewables. There never has been. Never will be. It’s a technology. One may as well criticize a fishhook.
2. I provided a *critique* of the application of renewable energy and noted expected results of using it as a primary response to the problems we have. I said, “…so should be anything but maximized…” which does not mean never build another one, but does mean should be applied carefully, and only as *needed.* I have spoken on the necessity of needs-based decision-making for years.
Both of these are legitimate, neither is pejorative. Your use of “criticism” and the assignment of a reasoning you know to be false based on long repetition of these issues between you and me, and generally on this board, is pejorative and inappropriate. I have talked for years about renewables in these spaces and have repeatedly explained to you, directly, the application of Appropriate Technology.
Yet, you use a pejorative term in response to my comment and ascribe a reasoning to me that you *know* to be false. How is one to consider this anything other than trolling in this context?
By that ‘logic’ you could say that adequate food, modern medical care, televisions, and smartphones should be criticised because poor people cant afford them. I find all that approach completely absurd.
Yes, your use of Straw Man arguments is, as ever, absurd. However, that the wealthy exploit the resources of others and leave them poor and without the same opportunities to use them *is*, in fact, a legitimate critique of *any* ***use*** of a technology. (I have already clarified the absurdity of conflating this with a criticism of a technology itself.)
It clearly does not determine the value of a piece of technology
Of course, it does. If a resource is used for the exclusive use of a small group to the detriment of others, that absolutely does have an impact on the value of said technology to humanity. Opinions may vary on what that value effect is, but one cannot accurately claim there is no effect.
But you do. No surprise.
and whether its development is desirable or not.
Which is why I have never said it. I said nothing of the technology, only of policy/application.
Stop trolling via Straw Man arguments. Understand what you read before responding. Work to not allow your head worms to color your ability to comprehend and the nature of your responses.,
Actually, what is happening on the ground is quite different. Rural life in India is beginning to be transformed by the influx of cellular phones and cheap photovoltaics. On my two trips to Madagascar, 12 years apart, there was an astounding transition along similar lines. Now, even far off the main highways, you see photovoltaics charging cell phones. In a few villages, enterprising citizens have purchased refrigerators (again, powered by photovoltaics), where they can store medicines–for a price, food, etc.
Life is still quite hard. Hell, famine is a real possibility this years, and outbreaks of plague are a regular occurrence. However, technology is improving the lot of poor villagers–particularly those enterprising to be early adopters. One important shortcoming, though remains transport. It is still too intermittent and expensive, especially during rainy seasons.
Killian.
Try to think about it like this. Right now only about 5% of new generation is renewables and there are only a small number of EV’s, so OBVIOULY a lot of people are missing out, poor people in particular. It takes time to scale things up. Eventually the majority of people will share in renewables, but very poor people (and countries) will probably STILL miss out.
Its the way of the world. Not everyone can have everything because resources are FINITE. You have a computer. Not everyone will own a computer even with mass production. I don’t know if I’ve explained this perfectly but surely you get the point.
The only practical thing we can do is some wealth redistribution within countries to help with the basics, but even that will not ensure everyone has renewables like an EV. or any car at all..
Poor countries only have themselves to blame for their lack of progress with renewables and other things. You cant go on blaming colonisation hundreds of years ago. They have had ample opportunity since then to get their act together and modernise their economies. The trouble is they have a lot of corrupt institutions and practices and don’t get themselves organised. Stop being so guilty about it all.
I say this as someone who doesn’t like greed, and supports government programmes to help poor people, but I recognise you are being very idealistic and totally unrealistic about what’s possible in this world.
Killian
“There was no criticism of renewables. There never has been. Never will be”
Rubbish. You have been very critical of renewables. A couple of years ago you wrote that EV’s are “useless pieces of junk” or words close to that, and you have been very critical of solar and wind farms. You know it.
To clarify, the purpose of the GCF isn’t to do all the heavy lifting of economic development; it’s intended to assist poorer nations adapt to and/or mitigate climate change. It’s part pragmatics–deal-making between developed and less-developed nations (political pragmatism to get to the Paris Accord), plus speeding the clean energy transition (mitigation pragmatism)–and part compensation from the more developed nations to the less developed. But it was never envisioned as providing access to clean energy for everyone. For that purpose, $10 billion in 4 or 5 years would be frankly laughable.
Luckily, no-one is depending on the GCF to do it all. There are numerous other ‘pots of money’ available to do the work of transition–governmental (local revenues, international aid); NGOs of all sizes; and private capital. Without a doubt, Africa is the continent facing the greatest challenges in terms of energy access, so let’s focus our attention there for a moment. Here’s something a recent IRENA report had to say on the topic of energy in Africa:
The choice isn’t between renewable energy or nothing; Africa is going to keep on developing as long as we don’t crash civilization as a whole, so there will be some sort energy investment and deployment, no matter what. The question is, what sort? It’s very fortunate that the lowest LCOE option is also low emitting.
To re-emphasize, it said “to fully reap.” The current investment level, you will note, is thus $20-32 billion US annually. Even with this level, and with sub-optimal investment patterns (i.e., building expensive and dirty fossil fuel generation capacity), progress has been made:
Globally, access to electricity is now ~90%, by one estimate at least.
All of which is to say, I don’t believe that:
a) 5 billion are at risk of being “left behind” WRT energy access, or
b) that renewable energy is somehow the culprit in this putative risk. On the contrary, it promises to do a great deal to alleviate the problem of energy access by lowering energy costs.
P.S.
Killian: “Besides, renewables aren’t renewable, let alone sustainable…”
Me: Several centuries of ‘renewal capacity’ (using current technology) is lots for my taste.
To clarify…
While not intended as a Straw Man, this has the same function: Nobody said it was expected to do the heavy lifting. Why spend all those words on a non-issue?
quote and “The choice isn’t between…”
First, if we’re going to invest in Africa’s well-being while claiming to help them to “leapfrog fossil fuel technologies and pursue a climate-friendly, needs-oriented power strategy aligned
with the Paris Agreement and low-carbon growth….”, why do so with strategies that are not, in fact, needs-based and set them up for collapse later? How does this make sense, particularly when using the same funding would support magnitudes more change if put into regenerative systems?
You always react to my comments as if I am have spent all these years saying “renewables are evil!” It makes no sense. You know the framing I believe we need to use: There is not enough time for tech-based solutions, they don’t actually solve our problems, and there is a massive opportunity cost because virtually no money, in comparison, is going into options that actually get us to a safe, stable, healthy future in a time frame that gives us a pretty good chance of stabilizing the ecosystem within decades. I am not against renewables, I am for solutions – which renewables are a part of, but should not be the vast majority of our focus, energy and funding.
Why do you fight so hard for non-solutions and to consistently discount actual solutions? I am telling you, good enough is not good enough. Absolute guarantee.
Access to electricity
That’s some very privileged thinking there, isn’t it? My point, exactly, was that is what we will see: Access, not equality. Dear Africans, you get 0ne 200W solar panel, but Americans get 25! Ain’t that grand?! Progress is your metric? Do you sincerely believe this tech-based approach will ever lead to resource use equality?
I don’t believe that:
a) 5 billion are at risk of being “left behind” WRT energy access, or
b) that renewable energy is somehow the culprit in this putative risk.
LOL… they already are, always have been. How does your promotion of renewables change that? How does it alter the economic system? The political system? The injustices and inequalities? Electricty changes everything, is that what you think?
Do you not understand this conversation about electricity is serving as proxy for the way the entire system functions? We see all the same dynamics in all other parts of society/economics/politics.
This is not about belief, it’s about seeing what is in front of you, and has been your entire lifetime.
Killian: “Besides, renewables aren’t renewable, let alone sustainable…”
Me: Several centuries of ‘renewal capacity’ (using current technology) is lots for my taste.
That does not exist, particularly at a global level equal to that of even Europe, let alone the US. And given renewables solve nothing, there is zero chance we get a stable several centuries before collapse of the ecosystem and society. Zero. Your point is moot, and dangerously shortsighted, in not naive, imo.
Killian
“You )Kevin) always react to my comments as if I am have spent all these years saying “renewables are evil!”
Because Killian has pretty much done exactly that even if he doesn’t intend to. I specifically recall Killian utterly rubbishing EV’s on several occasions and being critical of solar and wind farms. The ONLY positive thing I can recall him saying about renewables is that its “ok to use a single solar panel and car battery preferably used ones that people scavenge”. This is not exactly a ringing endorsement of renewables ( EV’s, wind power. solar power, hydro power etc)
So I have developed the impression he is largely anti renewables yet he acts all surprised. This man is his own worst enemy.
Killian needs to to be much CLEARER, and simpler in how he frames things, and definitely less contradictory, or multiple people misinterpreting him is going to continue, over and over.
And a solar panel and battery won’t come REMOTELY close to even meeting his OWN goals of some sort of functional technology backbone. So what’s the plan? Do solar farms or wind farms and EV’s have some place in this plan? Yes or no?
I’m all for minimising how many renewables we need to build. Killian makes a valid point there. Waste is never good, but I doubt we will be able to cut use of renewables to the bone.
And when Killian says “There is not enough time for tech-based solutions, they don’t actually solve our problems, and there is a massive opportunity cost because virtually no money, in comparison, is going into options that actually get us to a safe, stable, healthy future in a time frame that gives us a pretty good chance of stabilizing the ecosystem within decades. I am not against renewables” he is asking people to believe he is not against renewables when he has just vociferously argued against them on multiple levels! His statements are rhetorical bullshit.
“Dear Africans, you get 0ne 200W solar panel, but Americans get 25! ”
What does Killian expect? That America and China just give away billions of solar panels to Africa so each continent has the exact same number? Good luck with that idea. I’m sure the general public will be right behind it (sarc). Talk about a pie in the sky fantasy.
How about Africans get of their backsides and get rid of the corruption, and manufacture their own solar panels or otherwise earn some income so they can buy them.
I support progressive policies, and I support a moderate level of tax payer funded foreign aid enough to help people in Africa survive with the basics of life and help reduce poverty, but in no way do I feel obliged to make sure they have the exact same standard of living that I do (which is moderately high but not profligate). Why should I? I’m not responsible for them or their problems and corrupt systems.
Why should I give away half my stuff or money to people, many of whom will just completely waste it and then demand more? Heard of the term cargo cult mentality? Lets have some social realism and awareness in this debate please.
More later.
Since my other comment will likely get deleted for its intense accuracy, let’s go with this:
You )Kevin) always react to my comments as if I am have spent all these years saying “renewables are evil!”
Because Killian has pretty much done exactly that
Lie. No other word for it. Why you think this is how you should engage in the most important issue humanity has ever faced, I do not know. I am, however, beyond tired of the unrelenting dishonesty. No point in reading further. Any screed based on a lie is garbage.
Dear Readers, do remind yourselves anything I have ever said on renewables has been said in the context of Regenerative Design aka Permaculture. Truth? The claim is absolutely false as such design is done with the following clearly, firmly, unabashedly, necessarily in the rubric:
* Start from tabula rasa and let the design emerge. Do not dictate what is needed. (Corollary: Don’t dismiss anything “just because.” We do not design from bias.)
* Appropriate Technology: A. Use the best tech for the job. B Use unsustainable tech, when *needed*, to create regenerative systems.
* Bridge Technlogy: Use new unsustainable tech if needed to create a regenerative system.
The bias here? It’s in nigel’s Ad Hom’s Straw Men, dishonesty, etc.
The comment about “heavy lifting” WRT development was my wording, but I think the proverbial ‘reasonable person’ would recognize it as a fair shorthand tag for this:
But sure, let’s move on.
Africa isn’t obliged to agree with your assessment of their needs, and increased access to electricity has been formally identified as such a need. As for the assertion that RE would somehow “set them up for collapse,” it’s unsupported, IMO.
I didn’t say a word about your putative “actual solutions;” I’m not sure what you were thinking of when you wrote that.
And why do I “fight so hard” for RE? Because it’s a necessary part of addressing our climate crisis. I don’t claim it’s sufficient by itself, but it is necessary.
No, I don’t think it is–and in any case, it’s not my framing. It’s in common use internationally–as in the Sustainable Development Goals–and internally in Africa.
Did I ever suggest that it might? I’m all for equality, and not in a merely theoretical manner, either. But IMO transforming energy generation around the world isn’t nearly as big an ‘ask’ as perfect ‘resource use equality.’ And the former is presently a hell of a lot more urgent, as well.
That’s not what the data say. It’s perfectly true that the global ultra-rich are padding their economic lead as a class, but the developing world has by and large been ‘gaining’ on the developed world. If we take energy access as criterion, the number of people without electricity is less than 1 billion globally, and dropping.
Apparently you think that you can define the topic unilaterally. Talk about that if you like, but I’m talking about decarbonizing energy generation, and secondarily pointing out that a goodly number of smart folks see concomitant social gains (like better energy access) from deployment of RE.
Not sure if you thought I meant “renewable capacity,” which of course does not exist *yet*–but assuming not, your assertion would again be unsupported. There have been a number of studies identifying roadmaps to the requisite capacity, and AFAIK nothing showing hard constraints on RE for timescales of a few centuries. (Continued economic growth, much less *energy* growth, of course, is another story.)
RE is necessary to solve the problem of decarbonizing power generation globally in the shortest possible amount of time. Not, perhaps, sufficient–but very definitely necessary.
Clearly it’s not moot, since here we are debating it. Your opinion is noted, but it’s mine that while ending our culture of waste and disposability is also necessary, it isn’t sufficient to address the current crisis, either. It’s also my related opinion–and I know I’m repeating myself here, but apparently I need to–that doing so will be much more difficult than transforming energy generation will.
(No offense intended, but that’s why I’d urge you to spend more time articulating your vision, and less slagging–intentionally or not–RE. Flow charts and principles are great, but not very intuitive for regular folk. Your occasional links to ‘example communities’ are good in that regard. We all need to know what sustainable looks like, and in many different settings.)
Killian
I said you come across as saying renewables are evil. Deny it and call it a lie if you want but I gave you reasons why you come across like this namely ” I specifically recall Killian utterly rubbishing EV’s on several occasions and being critical of solar and wind farms., etcetera ”
Do you deny you have utterly rubbished EV’s on several occasions (calling them useless junk or words similar to that) and being critical of solar and wind farms.? And rarely ever said anything positive about renewables?
Remember regulars here may have read your past comments. Along with the moderators. They are stored in the archives for a very long time.
why do so with strategies that are not, in fact, needs-based and set them up for collapse later?
Africa isn’t obliged to agree with your assessment of their needs
Let’s avoid the nigel2-isms, eh? Leave the bizarre Straw Man arguments to him. I made zero assessment of Africa’s needs. I *did* point at what Africa would never get from the rest of the world and the dangers of building out an unsustainable energy system.
and increased access to electricity has been formally identified as such a nHed.
And who said it isn’t? Implied Straw Man. Perhaps you like that nigel2 appellation…
As for the assertion that RE would somehow “set them up for collapse,” it’s unsupported, IMO.
Zero analysis as to why. Hmm… 1. Limited resources. 2. Likely insufficient capital for replacements over time (if even possible given #1.) 3. Massive debt they will be forced to take on if full buildout occurs.
Why do you fight so hard for non-solutions and to consistently discount actual solutions?
I didn’t say a word about your putative “actual solutions;” I’m not sure what you were thinking of when you wrote that.
You very clearly emphasize renewables and undersell and critique regenerative solutions.
And why do I “fight so hard” for RE? Because it’s a necessary part of addressing our climate crisis. I don’t claim it’s sufficient by itself, but it is necessary.
Why? Where? The latest chapter of the IPCC report says we must slash emissions 80%ish. Can that be done solely by electrifying? No. It is utter nonsense to think the energy intensity of the current system can be massively reduced and production and consumption can remain the same. This thinking is the result of people not having any clarity on the nature of energy vis-a-vis work (physics, not jobs) being done.
I encourage you to improve your understanding of thermodynamics and why steady-state economics necessarily includes far less consumption. It is simply B.S. that one can simply electrify everything and that takes care of that. energy intensity and fungibility of resources is VITAL to this discussion. You, unfortunately, missed The Oil Drum, which leaves you ill-equipped for these discussions.
[Access to electricity] That’s some very privileged thinking there, isn’t it?
No, I don’t think it is–and in any case, it’s not my framing. It’s in common use internationally–as in the Sustainable Development Goals–and internally in Africa.
Yeah, it is, Kevin. Ignoring history and assuming the Great White Saviors are going to change their stripes is exceedingly privileged.
Do you sincerely believe this tech-based approach will ever lead to resource use equality?
Did I ever suggest that it might?
Yes. It is inherent in the ecofascist approach.
I’m all for equality, and not in a merely theoretical manner, either.
You are a technocopian, Kevin. Tech first, regenerative… um…. maybe? Continuing with current gov and econ is exactly the opposite of being ‘all for equality.”
But IMO transforming energy generation around the world isn’t nearly as big an ‘ask’ as perfect ‘resource use equality.’ And the former is presently a hell of a lot more urgent, as well.
So, the impossible is preferable to the necessary?
LOL… [5 billion] already are [being left behind WRT energy access], always have been.
That’s not what the data say.
Yes, it does. 95% have access? So, the other 5 billion use the same per capita energy as the US, Canada, Europe, et al.? C’mon… top rationalizing.
Do you not understand this conversation about electricity is serving as proxy for the way the entire system functions?
Apparently you think that you can define the topic unilaterally.
Another nigelism.
Talk about that if you like, but I’m talking about decarbonizing energy generation
You cannot sensibly silo these issues. That’s how we ended up where we are.
and secondarily pointing out that a goodly number of smart folks see concomitant social gains (like better energy access) from deployment of RE.
So… with economic equality at its greatest extent ever in the modern era, the poor are catching up and social gains are increasing… even as we hurtle towards utter destruction of the ecosystem. This line of thinking is sensible to you?
[Several centuries of ‘renewal capacity’] does not exist, particularly at a global level equal to that of even Europe, let alone the US.
Not sure if you thought I meant “renewable capacity,” which of course does not exist *yet*–but assuming not, your assertion would again be unsupported. There have been a number of studies identifying roadmaps to the requisite capacity,
And they are wrong. The math is clear. Only Econ gymnastics makes it possible to twist the reality into this fantasy. The resources aren’t there, the time frame needed does not exist and the wealthy are not going to simply give the poor free or even very inexpensive energy. Have never done it, will never do it. Pipedreams.
and AFAIK nothing showing hard constraints on RE for timescales of a few centuries. (Continued economic growth, much less *energy* growth, of course, is another story.)
Cement. Aluminum. Turbin blades. Rare Earths. Pretty much everything else in these machines. None of these things can be produced at the scale needed indefinitely. Even the recyclable stuff – and much isn’t – needs decades of capacity buildout. Fantasies.
And given renewables solve nothing, there is zero chance we get a stable several centuries before collapse of the ecosystem and society.
RE is necessary to solve the problem of decarbonizing power generation globally in the shortest possible amount of time.
GIGO. US has 3x the renewables it needs for degrowth. Europe is similar, and probably even higher. Why should barely industrialized people industrialize thier use of resources rather than go regenerative, which they can do **far faster**?
Not, perhaps, sufficient–but very definitely necessary.
Your point is moot, and dangerously shortsighted, in not naive, imo.
Clearly it’s not moot, since here we are debating it. Your opinion is noted, but it’s mine that while ending our culture of waste and disposability is also necessary, it isn’t sufficient to address the current crisis, either.
Agreed. Who said merely ending waste and disposability solves anything? Another nigelism.
It’s also my related opinion–and I know I’m repeating myself here, but apparently I need to–that doing so will be much more difficult than transforming energy generation will.
Assertion. No facts. No analysis. Simplification takes a fraction of the time of any other approach. Period. The logic behind saying building out multiple new industrial systems globally with limited resources and no funding using non-renewable resources, some of which will be depleted this century, is faster than just stopping the 80% of amkework we do is a special kind of denial.
(No offense intended, but that’s why I’d urge you to spend more time articulating your vision, and less slagging–intentionally or not–RE.
I have never slagged, intentionally or not, RE. It’s a Straw Man, aka nigelism. You and the others around here get all heated up by logical, accurate analysis and start distorting what I say. Have. Never. Slagged. RE. Ever. Good analysis is not slagging. but it scares all of you to think a regenerative future is *necessary,* so you are aggressive and intellectually dishonest about all this.
I said you come across as saying renewables are evil.
nigel, dear, you hearing what you want to hear and falsely characterizing what I *do* say is not me “coming across as” anything.
Straw Men, gaslights…. ugh… take responsibility for yourself.
K: [Africa has] 1. Limited resources.
BPL: The second largest continent in the world, renowned for its mines, with a huge labor supply, and vast investment being poured in from advanced industrial economies such as China, has limited resources. Thus it can’t build out renewables.
After he has said this, why should we take anything Killian says seriously on any subject at all?
There’s little to rebut in your last, Killian, as most of the retorts IMO simply miss the point.
However, I do have a couple of comments.
–You bizarrely accused me of “privilege” for simply using a widely accepted metric (access to electricity). More than a little ironic for the guy who wants to define the “need” in “need-based” not only for Africa, but for all the rest of the world, too. It’s the deepest problem with your vision: people *will* decide for themselves what they “need.”
–You claim I present “zero analysis” as to the prospects for RE in Africa. Wrong–I linked a 100-page report, including case studies of a dozen or so nations. You said, by way of “analysis”:
Forgive me if I’m a bit underwhelmed.
—
You mean the “Great White Saviors?” How about a little respect for Africa agency?
—
Well, congrats on the extraordinary clarity you have on what you ‘didn’t intend.” But you theoretically might give a tinker’s about how your communications are received, because clearly lots of folks, myself included, get a very clear impression that’s at odds with your intentions. Or non-intentions, as the case may be.
B,
I guess it is going to take you time to reboot to being polite. Ill-intended arcasm and Straw Men are not polite.
K: [Africa has] 1. Limited resources.
BPL: The second largest continent in the world, renowned for its mines, with a huge labor supply, and vast investment being poured in from advanced industrial economies such as China, has limited resources. Thus it can’t build out renewables.
I said nothing restricting the issue of resource limits to Africa because that makes no sense in the current context – or any context. That said,…
Dear Readers, having a lot of resources in a given location, region or on a given continent in no way invalidates the issue of resource limits and their impact on sustainability.
I think the idea of wealthy countries assisting poorer countries in transitioning to clean energy is a good idea in theory. The issue I see in my country (the UK) is that directly doing this would be extremely unpopular with the electorate. The UK has been one of the worlds worst affected countries by COVID which still isn’t over, the lack of investment in public services such as the NHS and public transport over the last half century is now coming home to roost, we are constabtly reminded of the strain COVID is and has put on an already stretched NHS, the UK state pension is reported as one of the worst in Europe, so handing millions or maybe even hundreds of millions of taxpayers money overseas for nothing tangible in return, which the public will very likely claim should be spent on UK people, and which will be hammered out by most of the influencial media, is not going to go down well.
Unfortunately, even with ambitious and expensive ideas which involve altruism and could be logically argued as ultimately beneficial to everyone, you can’t just ignore public opinion in a democratic country.
Maybe there is a way of raising the money through extra taxes on fossil fuel use, but I doubt that will go down well in the UK given the soaring price of fuel and gas has resulted in one of the worst costs of living crises in a century.
https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/spring-statement-2022-grim-stats-cost-of-living-crisis-3624841
Adam, the US has a well-established solution to this, but we do it with military hardware, not solar panels.
Taxpayer money goes to other countries so they can buy our weapons systems, which benefits the defense-industrial complex. And that benefit is distributed to all the States through sub-contracting, so there’s zero problem getting the votes in Congress.
Tricky business to get there with renewables, as we are way behind China in the ability to produce renewable technology in quantity, as well as having the fossil fuel vested interests so powerful here.
Linley
I know a lot of theese discussions.
In connection to the fameous nobel price to Al Gore and IPCC Rajendra Pachauri in Oslo, the Norwegian state with Jens Stoltenberg also had to shown its scientificivity and progressive- ness, and told of a lot of things to be done and paid for elsewhere in “developing” coutries, and paid for with Norwegian oil and gas production andc earnings and engineering teaching and administration.
It is the very theory of russian oil an Yamal- gas and Nordstream 2. that shall displace german and polish dirty coal and brown coal burnt for open chimney at low efficiancy, russian and Adolph technology. political
All in all an eldorado of progressive hocuspocus and commercial cheating.
Another Hocuspocus political commercial El- dorado is electrification of the off- shore oil and gas platforms with hydroelectrics from land. So that gas can be saved at the platforms offshore and reduce the local CO2 national “footprints” and rather sold to the EU and burnt there so that they get the footprints. Instead of the much cheaper way, to sell hydroelectro by cables to Germany and Poland to stop their traditional coal burnings form open chimney. NBecessary electrics for the plastforms, drilling and pumping etc., can be done by offshore gas and steam turbines with plenty seawatrer cooling on the condensers. coal and nuclear suffer consciderably in the summer warmth due to lack of proper icy water cooling on the steam condensers.
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E.Poet
I do not quite believe in the Teslas either. Hydroelectro is much to valuable to be burnt away on the streets. That should run on “clean Diesel” with synthetic Carbo- hydrides. They drive like hell. “read the amperemeter!r” I instruct when sitting in electric cars, the Nissans. When rather aquainted to how to save gasoline and budget in traditional low compression cars, I have learnt that and couldv save and steal gallons of “gas” in military wehicles for my own use. The teslas never leant such things, economical driving to ones own advantage. Drive it like a soft, steam entine and avoid any accelleration. .
The traditional Volvo buseswith 6 cyl inline diesel were fashionable and comfortable, one could enjoy the engines and the voyage. They did hardly smoke and drink. Also the electric railway is comfortable and fashionable, they only have to keep up with and renew the railway restaurant. A railway system stands and falls with the railway restaurant.
The Nissans are exellent and fashionable. One can hear the wheels rolling on the road and the birdsongs outside. Its heavier weight does remind of the horse, that also must have some match- weight, and the horse is also a silent animal. Getting rid of th terrible motor sound feels like getting back on a proper diligence again.
There should be 3- wheeled electric Richa- taxies in town, and the Ford A and Ford T solution, really very fashionable, should be restored and electrified for taxies..
BPL proves that he can’t math:
We’re talking abandoned mines, near suitable water supplies/reservoirs, which don’t have anything in them which would pollute said water, etc. etc.
MS declared that there are millions of m³ of caverns available. Turns out we’d likely need HUNDREDS of millions, depending on depth. Then on top of that, we’d need the “renewable” energy supplies to “charge” them and keep them charged against need.
Gravity is the weakest of the 4 fundamental forces. If we’ve got space underground and we need electric storage, we’d get a lot more bang per cubic meter storing energy via the electric force (e.g. Form Energy’s sulfur-based flow battery) than moving water up and down.
Again, BPL fails at math. That’s 8050 units to equal the output of ONE small-ish nuclear plant, and only when a river flow rate of 4 m/sec is available. It would take something like 375 Palisades-equivalents to serve the US base load. That’s roughly 3 MILLION 100 kW RotR plants, cranking at maximum.
If you can’t do math, you can’t wrap your mind around the sheer scale of this problem. BPL demonstrably cannot.
My current analysis project is a 3 GW(th) reactor driving a sulfur-iodine water-splitting plant, generating approximately 350,000 tons of H2 per year. One of my previous analysis projects was a 50 MW(e) NuScale reactor generating combined heat and power. Even that’s too big for my nearest city of significant size, but heating everything with heat to spare and powering a lot of the surrounding area is a virtue, not a vice.
50 MW(e) is smaller than lots of wind farms, so who’s the big, centralized advocate now? And nuclear has virtues that “renewables” don’t:
1. It’s not dependent upon the weather or season.
2. It’s not affected by day/night cycles.
3. It can supply multiple needs at once (heat as well as electricity).
4. It’s compact and local, rather than a blight on the landscape.
5. It can be located near the point of use, rather than requiring long transmission lines from far-flung “farms”.
For reasons which elude reasoned analysis, BPL thinks these things don’t count.
@EP.: – ” reasons which elude reasoned analysis… ”
1. It is independent of weather or season.
– What happens if your nuclear power plant can no longer be cooled in summer due to drought and low water levels in the rivers?
2. It is not affected by day/night cycles.
– I just explained to you that the more inflexible the base load, the more highly flexible storage power plants the power grid needs.
3. It can meet multiple needs at the same time (both heat and power).
…and what do you do day and night with the heat in summer at 40°C?
4. It’s compact and local, rather than a nuisance to the landscape.
— Compact and local would be my own balcony power plant (2 water-cooled PV modules with 600Wp electric / 1200Wp thermal / in combination with water-cooled LED plant light as a heating system with negative CO² emissions and a water boiler with heat exchanger).
The components cost a total of less than €1000 and can be installed by any craftsman or do-it-yourself / without a voltage regulator, inverter or mains/grid connection.
5. It can be placed close to the point of use instead of requiring long transmission lines from distant “farms”.
— Millions of end users in the big cities of the world are enthusiastic and can hardly wait to welcome a nuclear power plant in the center or periphery.
As a reward, they will caress your cheeks until you drop dead.
You elegantly sweep Fukushima and Chernobyl under the rug because you (like D. Trump) believe that stupidity only needs to be repeated often enough to make it acceptable.
EP: [wind farms are] “a blight on the landscape.”
BPL: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Hr E.Poet
I look at your points 1,2,3,4,5 and find that they nare really not so convincing. It is modern times, but really not the most happy, healthy, sustrainable, intelligent, and natural, and economic way of life.
It is not the ideal of CARPE DIEM, live according to Nature, rather be economical, rather re- cycle, and get down to reality and respect the weather, climate, and the seasons.
It was first made possible by fossile fruels, the steam engine, and the rural and urban Ottomotor 4 stroke and 2 stroke.. All things that are to be avoided, ridiculed and heavily traxed in our days.
I can put i9t on a very simple formula, as a major reason for all the fameous climate problems. And that it is Stalin- ism and Mao- ism! I hope Killian as a drunken sailor can agree to this. It is not his Permaculture.
It takes and it wastes resources in ann unnecessary way. I have been told of, but I have allways been quite sceptic to that kind of life, and I ridicule and badger it wherever..
It is the modern industrialized and uniformed way of life off from seasons nweather nature locar proosibilities and resources, realities, and everything.
In short, it is the devils temptations to stupid people about his alternatives and his special paradise.
Hr. Poet
Mooving water up and down is very traditional, but can only work under special natural circumstances.
I saw a hydroelectric system where water falls down several hundred meters in tubes and drives turbines down at the fjord. Some of the electricity is then used to lift up much more water only 2-3 meters from a next sea with long and flat river draining system. Thus they have a shortway and steep high waterway and can use just a bit of that energy to lift up and make a much larger current or flow. the high and steep way, from another and rather useless lake and waterfall system.
There are also systems with reversible turbines, where overflow of danish wind energy can lift back and up turbine water to the high mountain reservoir, store it, and send it back to Denmark again when they have windstill there. The efficiency however of that systemma alltogether is hardly over 40-50%. 2 times through the turbines and all the frictions and losses elsewhere.
Compressing air and lifting of water is probably not the best “battery” storage at all. But modern hydroelectrics are discussed as possible “batteries”fror the whole integrated system that way..
Then I have looked i9nto the fameous recent Sulphur iodine method of oxygen hydrogen separation of water by heat only. Good greef what a corrosive system with needs for exotic materials. I can hardly immagine that it will compeat.
Then I believe more in high temperature eølectrolysis, where nuclear heat plus wind or solar electricity can do it. There are all in all a series of known industrial processes that were resigned on because it took too much valuable cokes from the coceries , eventually arabian oil. And that is rather where nuclear heat could be utilized. I think especially of syntetic oil and syntetic hydrogen.
I do not believe that the combustion engine has drawn its last sigh. Diesel today is really very exellent. It only needs better fuel, and that is where atomic heat can step in. Better keep the hydrogen compressed in a tank by chemical forces, than by compressors and mechanical forces.
PS
Reversible turbines I wrote,….
Is not that easy either.
We lost a bronse propellar and I could only afford a new home- made one, of welded soft steel, that can be really recommended. Today they are easily grinded, and can be finely adjusted and shapet in the blasted charcoal forge. I have made many model airplane and boat propellars before, and did think in terms of convex / concave model airplane wings. That did work splendidly better than ever forwards, but would not back at all.
Bernoulli must have had a point there.
So I took it back in the forge and re- shaped it finely bi- convex wing for wing at deep red hot. . Then it could back also but I lost some of the superbe low speed gliding airplane efficiency forward. Moral: In order to loop with an airplane, they must be given bi- convex wings, and you will loose motor efficiency forward by it, it will co0st you more fuel…
And that tells it. It will not be that cheap and easy just to reverse the propellars and turbines in order to lift up the water and then let it flow down again in the same tubes over the same turbines, at that full and superbe efficiency well above 90 % in updated hydroelectric system
Also take a look at the new propellars of “stealthy” silent submarines. They are really advanced, elegant, smooth, fashionable minimum splash and noise and max efficiency.. Those boats can hardly back out at the same speed, I believe.
Similar basic problems of reversible systems at roughly acceplable prices and efficiencies are there everywhere in battery and energy storage systems..
And o be known by everyone, who dream of permacultures, re- cyclings and ” green” sustainable lifestyles. And of modern re- chargeable batteries of all kinds. Trans- formation of energy costs.
Engineer – Poet. Yes sure, America’s fracking fields dry up quickly, so you would need to open up more of them and yes there has to be a orderly transition from fossil fuels to a new energy grid. But in general global terms it may be a good idea to ban new oil fields providing existing fields are capable of providing enough oil for an orderly transition. It will help push things along.
Otherwise we are just giving a huge green light to a fossil fuel future. The oil companies will explore and open up fields and then argue after all that effort they should be allowed to contine to use them. They will be under no pressure to change and diversify their operations into other forms of energy.
And there it is folks–another reason not to be a denialist!
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/petromasculinity-leading-dealbreaker-dating-app-203958966.html
It’s not just bad for the planet. It’s bad for your sex life!
It gets worse: “How pollution could be killing your SPERM:”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6847201/How-pollution-killing-SPERM-Breathing-tiny-toxic-particles-worsens-semen.html
Blathereth macias shurly:
You use cooling towers and pump makeup water from wells. You refill the aquifer during the wet season.
No, you asserted it. Worse, “renewables” are not merely inflexible, they’re unreliable. You can do something with “inflexible” power that’s always-on; you can’t do anything with power that isn’t there.
This little piece by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers might enlighten you: an all-nuclear grid requires far less storage than all-wind or all-solar. https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/presentations/real-cost-electrical-energy.pdf Of course, the OSPE analysis was done before the Natrium and Moltex designs (incorporating thermal storage to follow daily load cycles) were published.
You sure don’t air-condition at night with PV, and heat waves are typically due to high-pressure systems which cause “wind droughts”.
Okay, let’s assume a generous 15% capacity factor for your PV. That’s 90 watts average. Europe consumes 636 watts per capita, some 7 times as much. European demand peaks in winter; PV output peaks in summer. There is no way that your €1000 system either meets your entire needs or includes months of battery storage.
Chernobyl was the result of a badly-flawed design and even worse operator misconduct. No one is ever going to build another RBMK reactor.
Fukushima was just as bad. The first error was failing to note the sendai stones which record the heights of historical tsunamis when designing the plant. Second, PM Naoto Kan practically ordered the meltdowns when he commanded the plant personnel to delay venting the reactor containments (so that water could be added) until he’d held a press conference. Compounding that stupdity, he ordered panicky evacuations which killed at least 1000 people outright, when they would have been perfectly safe sheltering in place. Ultimately there was ONE fatality attributed to Fukushima, and given that it was due to lung cancer and the Japanese penchant for smoking, it probably had nothing to do with the meltdowns.
I notice you don’t mention Three Mile Island. That’s because there were no casualties. Tsunamis don’t affect the USA much, and don’t affect inland areas period. Meanwhile, the fossil backup required by “renewables” kills people through air emissions, and methane leakage from the natural gas system aggravates climate change. Nuclear power does none of this.
The gas price crisis has Belgium reconsidering their nuclear closures. It even changed the position of the Belgian Green party. It created great enthusiasm for nuclear energy in the UK, and has France planning a massive expansion.
It’s amazing what a dose of reality can do. You should take one.
@DUMBIJUJU EP. – “It’s amazing what a dose of reality can do ”
For power generation capacity capital costs are often expressed as overnight cost per watt. Estimated costs are:
Type Cost($/kw)
Gas/oil combined cycle power plant 1000 (2019)[12]
Combustion turbine 710 (2020)[12]
Onshore wind 1600 (2019)[12]
Offshore wind 6500 (2019)[12]
Solar PV (fixed) 830 (utility-scale, 2021),[13] 1800 (2019)[12]
Solar PV (tracking) 860 (utility-scale, 2021)[13] 2000 (2019)[12]
Battery storage power 1380 (2020)[12]
Conventional hydropower 2752 (2020)[12]
Geothermal 2800 (2019)[12]
Coal (with SO2 and NOx controls) 3500–3800[14]
Advanced nuclear 6000 (2019)[12]
Fuel cells 7200 (2019)[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy
Genosse Schürle
You are obviously teaching us that cxonsumer goods and values have a price in western hard cash, by 4 valids chiffers, PERIOD!
But
Durch nichts ställt sich die Mangel an matematrische Bildung deutlicher zur Schau, wie durch mass- losse Genauigheit in den Zahlenrechnereien..
As a student allready, I examined it and thought it over, judged and compareds 3 very popular consumer goods.
1, a brand new colour TV
2, a brand new 4 cyl low compression air cooled 4 stroke Volkswagen with 5 seats.
3, a brand new “flat” where you can take in and live privately with your fiancee.
The prices for those 3 popular consumer- goods were in the proportions 1 : 10 : 100 allthough material costs and productiom trickiness and complexity should entail rather equal price, or maybe even the opposite proportions.
Conclusion: The Public and the consumers are being cheated to pay!
I shall never forget that qualified conclusion of mine, thus I am able further to give a damn to your Zahlentrechnereien d/ o. along with Friedsrich Gauss, who was very bright indeeds.
===========000
There are fameous hydroelectrics well over 100 years old. It did cost, but then it pays. The prices are now well down near to one cent / Kwh. And further costs and paints is but cheating.
properly designed and manufactured turbines and electromachinery can run and run and run and run for 100 years without any wear and tear.
I have 2 chairs from my grand- grandmother. They were inherited by my grandmotrher ands my mother, used, and kept.
I took them over and restored them for my children 50 years ago the best we could in the same tradition and style. They seem well ready for keeping for another 100 years now, and allthough the did cost a bitb first, they are now becoming really very cheap. You are probably ignoring the value and capital of culture skill and knowledge.
And that is making your speculations and zahlenrechnereien in-valid.
EP
Stupidity is also a reality. ERRARE HVMANVM EST
and yo.u have given examples both from Cernobyl and Fukoshima. And what about the war in Ukraina, if that is not a reality and sheere stupid?
As far as I can judge, the Germans know especially much about Stupidity and ERRARE duen to WW1 and ww2, , and that is why they fear nuclear energy.. Because however reasonable, as E.Poet allways tells that it is, there may also come times of war when rather SATAN is in charge and for serious. Nuclear also has the much greater potenbcials of falling into wrong hands and being misused.
Putin menti9oned it quite recently that “Why worry so much about the Ayatollas in Iran and embargo them? Rather be aware that the Ukrainians now will have a quite easy way to atomic bombs!”
It has a core of reality in it. Ukraina did set highly on atomic power in the sovietb period, they gave back their atomic bombs by the fall of the soviet empire, but they sit further with Europes largest nuclear power stations at the moment and that is a worry even for the UN due to that unlucky war, where SATAN has re- appeared. As if law and orderv reason and hygiene is followed during war? How can de- armament be necessary if humanity is reasonable?
The Germans are somehow fed up with social and politrical madness and craziness and aware that it even may happen in their quite especially and fameous, civil, poetric, and engineering land, wherefor they want no “nukes”! also in addition to it.
The Japs are feeling and thinking similar as a quite especially civil, poetic and engineereing people having also had Hiroshima. and their own unlucky episode of collective social and political and technical psychosis and sheere crazi- ness even during the cherryblossoms and with all their geisha girls.
Murphys law 1: What can go wrong will go wrong
Murphys 2nd law, What has gone wrong will get worse!
is rather hygienic and reasonable thinking.
Murphy 1&2 was delivered by poetic engineers who got to the moon and safely back.
MS: What happens if your nuclear power plant can no longer be cooled in summer due to drought and low water levels in the rivers?
EP: You use cooling towers and pump makeup water from wells. You refill the aquifer during the wet season.
BPL: And somehow there wasn’t enough water from the wells when the plant was built, so that they had it being cooled with river water, yet the water from the wells is suddenly adequate when the river fails.
Levenson
Some years ago, the mass media reported that European nuclear electrics were complaining for loss of efficiency and earnings during a very hot summer. They were using air- cooling towers. The same is mostly seen at coalheated plants also, and it is not the best..
Near Strassbourg in France we came through a huge, electric factory with transformer plants and very long glass- iso0lators for high voltage on the outgoing leads. And a tiny river was running next by in that ratherv flat landscape. My wife screamed: ” Get the hell out from here, That is Nuclear. They cannot make all that electricity by that tiny creek!”
But they can use it for steam condenser cooling. But, given 30 Celsius summer warmth, that tiny creek will keep 26 deg bathing water. The forellers and salamandris cannot have it hotter. So you will make a dramatic impact to the waterway økosystem if you cool mega and gigawatts with that and this is problematic Wherefore very huge and expensive cool towers are seen all over the EU. “Heat po0llusion” is being discussed.
Indeed, . A proper glacial creek would be really very valuable for many large industries, for the necessary cooling of it also.
They have oil heated gas and steam turbine combination at sea. The cool seawater intake is very essencial then. when they have to go to Australia or to Singapore and back burning cheapest ship bunkers ” heavy” waste oil as economically as possible.
@carbonito
– ” I do not believe that the combustion engine has drawn its last sigh. Diesel today is really very exellent.
– ” So you will make a dramatic impact to the waterway økosystem if you cool mega and gigawatts with that and this is problematic. ”
— If I understand you correctly, you are a dumbhead & climate change denier –
declaring yourself that you are an idiot. LMAO
Thus you show hardly able to understand anything at all.
Quoth nigelj:
This is extremely dangerous. You can’t simply command a massive change in the world’s energy economy; things take time, effort and energy to get done. How much that is can’t be determined except in hindsight, and if energy supplies fall short of immediate needs the first things to be sacrificed will be the investments. When you start sacrificing investment to the point where you fall behind, you will have a collapse.
The only feasible way to get such a transition done is via taxation of emissions, directly or indirectly. Return the taxes to the public so that government has no incentive to sustain fossil fuel consumption as a revenue source. This gets the public to buy low- and zero-emission energy and energy products if they are available, and gives industry incentives to produce as many such products as it can. A $100/ton tax on CO2 emissions would almost instantly make every nuclear plant in the USA profitable, for example, and give the public a strong incentive to buy nuclear electricity rather than gas. (This is probably why it has proven politically impossible thus far.)
You have to recognize that such changes cannot be done overnight without collapsing the system upon which so many lives depend. We have to approach this as an “as-able” process and employ remedial measures such as enhanced weathering to begin the process of restoring the atmosphere immediately rather than waiting until we’ve got emissions fully under control. Crossing even one tipping point like firing the “clathrate gun” would be disastrous, so we must act there as soon as we can and even without world-wide agreements.
1. 70% of oil reserves are owned by government
2. Banning production would create the biggest black market in history
3. Those who violated the bans would be the big winners, economically.
Engineer Poet, so just give oil companies the green light to drill everywhere even the arctic? Its a hard pill to swallow.
I’m still inclined to think there should be some controls over oil exploration. It should be possible to come up with a realistic or even generous estimate of how much oil we will need for the transition, and then have at least some limits on exploration or areas that can be drilled..
However I agree about carbon tax and dividend and rock weathering. You would do that as well. Canada has carbon tax and dividend schemes that have worked quite well.
Blathereth BPL:
Feel free to vote it into YOUR back yard. The people who actually have to suffer the presence of industrial wind turbines and massive PV farms do not like them.
I’d LOVE to have a nuclear plant in my back yard; if silly fears cut my property taxes in half, GREAT!
EP: Feel free to vote it into YOUR back yard. The people who actually have to suffer the presence of industrial wind turbines and massive PV farms do not like them.
BPL: Wrong. I doubt you know any. I do. My cousins in Ontario almost literally have a wind turbine in their back yard, and they love it. Not their wind turbine; one belonging to the local power utility.
I would gladly live next to a wind turbine. A nuke, not so much.
There is a difference between a single private wind turbine providing renewable energy to a household, and an industrial wind farrm. The latter is the visual blot on the landscape many people object to.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/energy-bills-windfarms-renewable-gas-cost-b1996053.html
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/cabinet-split-energy-strategy-grant-shapps-contradicts-kwasi-kwarteng-onshore-wind-farms-1554499
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60837170
The links above suggest at least there is some discussion on the subject of electricity generation and the need to wean the UK off fossil fuels, rather than a blanket opposition to wind farms.
“There is a difference between a single private wind turbine providing renewable energy to a household, and an industrial wind farrm. The latter is the visual blot on the landscape many people object to.”
I think more people would object to having agriculture collapse and starving to death.
Hyperbole, though.
Original poster: “There is a difference between a single private wind turbine providing renewable energy to a household, and an industrial wind farrm [sic]. The latter is the visual blot on the landscape many people object to.”
BPL: I think more people would object to having agriculture collapse and starving to death.
K: Hyperbole, though.
BPL: Right. This blog is pretty much concerned with a false issue. Global warming? Who cares, right?
K: Hyperbole, though.
BPL: Right. This blog is pretty much concerned with a false issue. Global warming? Who cares, right?
Enough, B. Time to get back to pre-2015 gentility. Nasty sarcasm isn’t that.
For Dear Readers: Localized energy is far superior to utility-provided energy. I wrote about this 15 years ago: http://aperfectstormcometh.blogspot.com/2008/03/build-out-grid-vs-household-towards.html
For folks not clicking the links, here’s the lead ‘graf’ on the first:
Clearly, some people do consider them a “visual blot,” though many others (including myself, FWIW) do not. But I can’t help but wonder how much opposition results from other factors, such as insufficient local involvement in planning and/or insufficient local benefit; political partisanship; and FUD resulting from propaganda ginning up exaggerated fears about infrasound, shadow flicker, and/or wildlife mortality.
Blathereth BPL:
Robert Bryce keeps a database of communities which have restricted or rejected wind projects. It’s now up to 317 entries.
https://www.americanexperiment.org/windrejectiondatabase/
This has been going on for more than ten years.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2012/11/backlash-against-big-wind-continues-robert-bryce/
This is pertinent as well.
https://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/wind-turbine-syndrome/what-is-wind-turbine-syndrome/
Solar has seen rejections too.
https://www.citizensforresponsiblesolar.org/
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/wisconsin/articles/2021-08-28/massive-solar-farm-plan-angers-southern-wisconsin-residents
https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/plans-scrapped-for-huge-solar-array-north-of-las-vegas-2405042/
https://mtstandard.com/news/local/massive-solar-project-proposed-for-butte-denied-permit/article_f8512228-5924-5b07-9185-8db8c77620d0.html
https://www.bayjournal.com/news/energy/township-rejects-pennsylvanias-largest-solar-project/article_73d3db32-c57a-11eb-9db8-4b08ddff2680.html
There’s a tiny (obsolete, down for years because spare parts are no longer produced) wind turbine to the west of my local conurbation. I’m sure it’s relatively benign. It’s not like the sixty-story monsters I’ve seen along I-69 in Indiana. There, you can see red anti-collision lights blinking on and off in synchrony covering half the horizon.
I’d buy nuclear electricity and steam/hot water for DHW and space heat if I could. Being insulated from price surges in the natural gas market would be almost as good as going carbon-free for almost everything I do.
EP: Robert Bryce keeps a database of communities which have restricted or rejected wind projects. It’s now up to 317 entries.
BPL: DIshonest. You know damn well there is a concerted effort to bring actions against wind projects in the United States, backed by the Koch organization and other rival energy sector powers. This is evidence of exactly nothing. People who show up to blather about how awful wind power is at municipal hearings are almost always later shown to be from out of town.
Hmmm, it appears EP and Cheetolini suffer from the same phobia–fear of windmills. Is there a name for this? Is in recognized in the DSM?
Hr Poet
I have the impression that in Denmark and furtherv south in Germany, they like windmills traditionally and have one on their own land and farm.
When it blows, it gives free electricity and when it blows too much, they van sell it out ton the net and cash, and when thereb is no wind theyn mustb buy it from the net. So what is wrong? Why did they set up that windmill at all? the nuclears and the gas and coal is not their business, so why worry?
You are making problems where there is none, and they hardly like “nukes” on, or next to their lands.
What I find more silly is when I traveled through Westfriesland over the Groningen gas field. It is an extreemly flat land with wide industrial ackers and only a tiny poor “farm” here and there, a house and a next one, a recycled car anda Tractor. And next to that, a high pole with ann unstable flame.
Why not set up a tiny greenhouse also and grow tomatoes also, andc heat it now and then with that burning flame. Where no gas comes, they could order it from the stable net. But “flacking” it for the crows in the air like that over a most fameous gasfield is not poetic engineering. And it could be seen several flacking flames at the same time over that allmost empty, very fameous field.
The Dutch are not stupid. Quite on the contrary, rural Calvinism and Protestantismm is known for scraping the last drop of milk out of the bitty and live with piggy bank on the fridge.
This needs an explaination.
The EV revolution is almost complete in Norway, by the market share criterion at least:
As for fleet composition, that will naturally take a bit longer:
https://cleantechnica.com/2022/04/02/norway-at-new-record-high-92-plugin-ev-share-in-march/
The Titanic was a great new innovation, too. but it didn’t solve the problems of hubris and icebergs.
Killian
I use the word “Titanic quality” of iron from that period, of quite criminal quality. Re- cycled nails for instance that hardly can be bentt over, they break. And they are loosing their head. It is early industry, fast and cheap assembly line production with primitive methods.
Titanic was 1″ rolled iron plates,, seamed with nails on iron ribs. It has been found again. There is no large hole in the starbord hull. It is rather broken like a “Flatbrød” just by a smooth bump alongside from a small iceberg.
Modern ships is like modern cars, welded, and it curls up without cracking, like a smooth iron tin can by collision. That is quality, pure ferrum reductum.
A next iron quality is Opel 52 and furtherv industrial irons from that period. It is re- cycled tanks and ships made in an uttermost hurry with no capacity or time to sort it and blast it clean. It rusts quite terribly and In could compare with good blacksmith delivery of the same irons from 1850. That keeps outdoor painted. But that war surplus material is rusted through.
Titanic was big business and intense propaganda, criminal in many details. They had it new delivered on high loans and took on board full load of paying passengers on 1st 2nd and 3rd class, and hardly lifeboats and rafts even for the 1st class.
Then they even had fire on board and knew it, the large load of coal in many rooms had partly self ignited and was slowly burning, but they kept qu8iet and took the risk and counted on being able to shuffle allready glowing coal it fast enough. Plates and walls may have softened and bent also inboard due to that, and helped the result.
Calling all that a “great new innovation” is ugly defence of the bluddy brittes, a typical example of Transatlantic big business and monopoly capitalism from 1910.
By the way, it now comes out that re- cycled ironware from the Brjesnjev period for the russian army is of similar, very characteristic quality.
Carbomontanus. You’re right about the Titanic. There was an in depth television programme investigating the sinking of the Titanic about ten years ago. There were several contributing causes but the main cause was a fire in the coal bunker. These were actually quite common in ships at the time, or at least not rare. They knew about it but continued to sail because it was such a high profile voyage. The fire softened the metal hull and it was this exact area opposite the smoldering coal bunker that ruptured. They looked at the issue in detail.
So it was not so much “technological hubris” that ended the Titanic but recklessness and foolishness in addition to what you say.
Killians philosophy of life comes across as: “Humans technology isn’t perfect, and cant solve every problem, so its useless”. I truly despair at this sort of cynical, twisted, view.
A more useful philosophy is: “Dont make the perfect the enemy of the good” (Voltaire)
Nigelj
About Voltaires theorem:
I learnt about persian carpets and have checked up an seen it for myself, that there is allways one and only one obvious error in the whole muster. Because only Allah is perfect and makes it all perfect. For humans to try the same would be blasphemic.
And believe it or not, have heard and learnt of and seen the same in proper autentic, gothic cathedrals.
SHATAN they call him, must also be shown to his place clearly visible so he can be shown to and referred to.
Which is further a very vital rule of Mastership of craft and art. The devil must also be shown on the wall and in a corner somewhere, else he will dissolve and spread over the very room and make the very situation into Hell.
Which is very practical and healthy.
There will allways be devil- worshipers and ShATANists among us, those who are looking quite fanatically for errors everywhere. They must have a niche with their favourite ICON in the universal holistic situation and cathedral, so we know where we have them , because therev they will assemble and worship. There must also be something left clearly unfinished out of order where certain people can assemble and damn and swear.
It rules for cars, it rules for violins, there must also be a “Wolf” im Ton somewhere, and it rules for radios and wind instruments and even for women.
K McK
I live there and it is not the whole picture. It may rule for new cars and the reason why Tesla had such a tremendous success was extreemly cheap hydroelectrics and subvention of electric cars. Both those privileges are now over..
In addition, there has been enough of older gasoline and diesel cars still in order, for purposes where electrics can hardly compeat.
Carbomontanus. There is not much that electric cars cannot now do. The teslas have considerable range and towing ability, and they have prototype electric trucks and either tesla or Toyota (cant recall which) have prototype electric utility vehicles for builders and other tradespeople, that will be on the market in the next five years.
There are large hydrogen fuel cell trucks already available and operating.
Diesel has good fuel economy, but it has high carbon emissions and is a dirty sort of fuel. The gains in economy are cancelled out by high use of the fuel for high milage trucking. Can’t see many positives with diesal. Not sure where you are going promoting diesel.
Nigelj
I immagine that diesel engines can also run on hydrogen, since they have been shown able to run on CH4 natural gas. I saw an experiment, a large 12 cyl ship engine could run on a dash of “high cetan” fuel followed by CH4 injection in each stroke. And even more promising, Di metyl eter is shown to be the very best diesel fuel.
If hydtogen can be synthetized into that by the bhelpmof nuclear or solar heat, , severely high pressurized hydrogen and its dangerous filling and transport can be avoided. A next advantage is that it is oxidized by common air. An electric car must also carry the heavy and expensive oxidizer in syntetic form.
Thus I promote: “Diesel has got all the worlds records and can hardly be improoved anymore. It only needs better fuel now!”
And I believe chemistery will be able to solve that. I even believe that it is more promising than trying to improove and to scale up the Tesla and Nissan battery solution for everyman worldwide..
I am really impressed by the litium battery solution and thought it was impossible until I had a strong and practical battery electrical drill in hand. Then I changed my mind totally.
I allways had carburetor sparkplug gas engines 2 stroke and 4 stroke and got virtuos on it, . But after having become…. and learnt.. 4 stroke pre- chamber 2 cyl Yanmar diesel in our boat, I am totally convinced of Diesel. 3 cyl Turbo 2 stroke diesel with common rail will be the very best at sea and inn airplanes.. It only needs better fuel now.
The NOx- problem is solved, simply piss inn the exhaust manifold. Urea into there takes it.
The smell of nitrous gases behind every diesel car tells us that it is a really superbe, clean diesel. The smell of nitration acid, the mixture of cons. HNO3 + H2SO4 tells that they are cheating taxes with cheapest heavy ship bunkers oil.
Carbomantanus. Yes you could possibly run diesel engines on hydrogen. Trouble is making hydrogen using power from renewables is a fairly inefficient process compared to using renewables to charge lithium batteries.
If running ICE engines on hydrogen was a great idea and profitable I suspect the car companies would already have tried it. You also have the hydrogen fuel tank to put somewhere. Perhaps that’s why car companies have gone with hydrogen fuel cell cars, where everything can be designed from the basics and optimised.
Don’t have a lithium battery electric drill but the lithium battery line trimmer does a good job. Plenty of power.
Yes, that story was about *market share*, so by definition “for new cars.” The linked article addresses the point:
…
–Cheap hydroelectrics are now over? Do tell.
–“subvention of electric cars” is over? Did you mean “subsidization?” The latest story on that that I saw was from last summer, and concerned 3 economists advocating putting limits on subsidies, especially for high-end BEVs. Are you saying the new government has now followed through on this?
–“for purposes where electrics can hardly compeat.” Such as?
“Subvention” means “subsidy” (and “Subventionierung” is “subsidisation”) in German, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was similar in Danish.
Danish? Did you mean “Norwegian?”
No, but it’s possibly also similar in both Norwegian and Swedish. I’ve pretty much given up trying to guess where Carbomontanus comes from, or even trying to work out whether his posts have any actual content.
Hr Prt
In New England they first took me for Canadian. When they grasped that I am no american at all, they got uttely confused and betrayed very little knowledge of European geography and kingdoms.
the danes say subsidieret. We say subsidiert. The swedes say subventionerad. The Germans say subventioniert. The bluddy brittes say subsidized. In Holland gesubsidieerd.
” The bluddy brittes say subsidized”
So since you are writing in English, and know the English word “subsidised”, why didn’t you use it?
Dr.prt
I come to think that if you have to take minute linguistic and grammatic ortographic correctures by someone and anybody else, then it is because you cannot read and write.
You are owned and regulated bodily by someone “!native of the blood” above you in the grades because of your more bastard blood and your furs, You must submit to an owner and teacher, professwional native bloody TUTOR and CURATOR in charge.
All because you are yet unable to be resposible for your own perfrormance and correspondance and must learn first,…..
This is a basic reason for why I do not use virtual linguistic and orthographic correctures. It would not be honest from my side. I could not be myself.
You, and many more, are probably not yet aware that this is also a systematic scientific way by which we judge and detemine honesty and autenticity.
The intelligent and experienced reader of proper facultary order will easily see who I am, where I come from and what I represent. I am wearing my native and natural feathers and furs in the climate.
The crooky criminal KADREs and influencers from Ljeningrad Thinktank with an agenda cannot do that. They must performj in a thorroughly qvasi national and intellectual fraud and industrial ideologically linguistically sterilized way.
And by that, they betray themselves and are quite easily seen and sorted out.
This is as old as secret service and military and academic intelligence itself. ” but… senor Simon… you are talking a Gallilean socialect and dialect having not yet adapted and learnt that here in Jerusalem all the people……!”
On racial and æsoteric order in the climate.
prt
Am I writing in enlish?
Only marginally.
Your idiosyncratic spelling and strange use of non-English words in your posts doesn’t help you get your message across, but even ignoring that, I often struggle to find much of a point in a lot of what you post.
Maybe have your partner do all the editing rather than just their posts? They do just fine. You are largely unintelligible.
“Onshore windfarms more popular than thought, UK poll finds”
“Some 73% of the British public polled by ComRes support onshore windfarms in contrast with government decisions to block them”
“Wind turbines are also far more popular than fracking or nuclear power, contrasting with the UK government’s decision to block onshore windfarms but back shale gas exploration and new nuclear power plants.”
“The ComRes poll, conducted for climate change charity 10:10, found that 73% of the British public supported onshore windfarms, with just 17% opposed, and the rest not sure. Strong support remained even when only considering the views of those from rural areas, who might live near windfarms: 65% support versus 25% against.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/20/onshore-windfarms-more-popular-than-thought-uk-poll-finds
Nigel: “ even when only considering the views of those from rural areas, who might live near windfarms: 65% support versus 25% against”
And I suspect the support would be even higher, if their financial benefits were spread around the community.
In fact, there seem to be much more complaints about the negative health effects of wind turbines in systems where the financial benefits accrue only to the investor and the farmer on whose land the wind towers are built, and the guy living next door gets nothing. That’s …understandable – if I had my view affected by the turbines, yet I was getting no money from that, while my neighbour was getting a fat cheque, I would feel ill too. And soon it can change into an actual negative health impact – the effect of a negative placebo.
I remember reading a book that compared the health of victims of car accidents 6 months after the accident. In Sweden, whiplash translated into a big insurance payout, and a Baltic country (Lithuania ?) where it did not. Guess where the whiplash symptoms lasted for much longer…
However, the author argued that it is more complicated – it wasn’t not _only_ because of insurance cheats – he argued that many of the longer symptoms were real: most of us can’t think about ourselves as cheats – so we find way to not feel this uncomfortable way: if I my suffering was validated with a big cheque the society gave me, I would carefully “listen” to my body for the pain that must be somewhere there, I would probably also stiffen my neck muscles to protect against possible pain or re-injury. Having muscles stiffen all the time, and feeling constant stress – may actually translate into physical symptoms and extend the period of recovery compared to the people from the other country, who knowing that they don’t pay much for whiplash, shrug their arms – “ there is no point in dwelling on the things you can’t change” and go about their lives much quicker than the car accident victims in Sweden.
In Poland, the ruling populist party, in addition to being right of centre, i.e. automatically hostile to the environmental concerns, perceived as leftist agenda, has mostly rural electoral base, and quickly
bent over to accommodate their complaints about the wind power: they introduced the “10H rule” – you can’t build a wind turbine tower, if it would be closer than 10xthe tower’s height from any houses or farm buildings. This effectively scuttled the development of onshore wind power, and made Poland even more dependent on gas and coal, which, as we know has little to no health impact …
BTW – the rule has been recently relaxed, allowing the local communities to opt out of it. I applaud this democratic impulse to transfer the decisions from the ruling party to the communities, and I am sure that it had nothing to do with the unexpected effect of the rule – yes, you couldn’t build new wind turbines within 1oH of existing homes, but also you couldn’t build new homes within 10H distance of the existing (or preapproved earlier) wind towers … ;-)
All which tells you how important is to get a local “buy-in” for the onshore wind power farms. And how conservative politicians, in Poland and UK, are trying to be holier than their electorate … And how past ideological anti-environmentalism has put them in a tight geopolitical spot given the Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas.
Piotr. I believe all that sounds true.
Those on the right of politics often seem to hate the appearance of wind farms, from blog comments, but I suspect its possibly their anti environmentalism talking or dislike of wind farms being imposed on them. Texas seems supportive of wind farms yet is a right leaning State, so perhaps they had good local buy in for whatever reason. Or perhaps it was because the wind farms were built or erected by local people that lean towards The Republican Party. Tribalism talking.
I don’t mind the appearance of wind farms, but I’ve asked myself whether that is partly because I dont have to live next door to one, or because I lean towards environmentalism. However I don’t think I would like them being on every single ridge line if Im honest. But that is following a general principle that you can have too much of a good thing and total uniformity can become boring visually.
Obviously there are no perfect, pain free solutions to the climate issue, and wind farms are generally fine by me.
You might like a little book called Quirkology by Professor Richard Wiseman because of the psychology angle in our daily lives.
Were the people in this poll representitive of the population as a whole?
If your sample is biased to people who read the Guardian, it will give a different result than if the sample is biased to people who read the Daily Mail, for example. If you browse a walking forum you will not find many singing the praises of wind farms or hydro in the UK’s areas of outstanding natural beauty. Who participated in the poll and how can we be sure it is representitive of the population?
I think wind farms have a part to play, but you cannot brush aside the visual intrusion as though it doesn’t matter, because it does. You wouldn’t get 73% of people agreeing to put a lot wind farms on the Lake District fells or the Scottish highlands (they wouldn’t survive the upland climate anyway).
There are already wind farms in the Scottish Highlands.
Bloviates BPL:
Yes, you are. Shameless, too.
Big Wind has the backing of none other than Berkshire Hathaway and the US government. Big Wind just steamrolled Madison County, Iowa.
They’re not putting wind farms in Malibu where rich people live.
Yes, they would be. They’re probably people like Esther Wrightman (forced to move after NextEra put a wind farm next to her house in Kerwood, ON), Dave and Rose Enz, who abandoned their house in Denmark, WI, when wind turbines made it impossible to sleep in their own home.
There are reports of “wind turbine syndrome” going back at least 18 years:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1452529/Wind-farms-make-people-sick-who-live-up-to-a-mile-away.html
Eight families were afflicted in Shirley, WI. They put their experiences in a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71DxuicwCXw
In 2018, the World Health Organization recognized wind turbine noise as a health hazard:
https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/383921/noise-guidelines-eng.pdf
EP: There are reports of “wind turbine syndrome” going back at least 18 years:
BPL: There are reports of flying saucers going back to 1947.
Quoth Carbomontanus:
Traditional wind turbines have blade spans of perhaps 15 meters, not the 150 meters of today’s monsters. They turn too fast to generate the infrasound which appears to be the major factor in WTS.
Denmark has put a stop to land-based wind farms because of WTS complaints.
https://www.cesmeplatformu.org/en/denmark-halts-wind-power-expansion/ (pardon the bad translation, I didn’t do it)
The grid is not a battery. You can’t just shove energy into it and withdraw it when it’s convenient. It might look like that at low levels of use, but the problems are already substantial and will only get worse as laws and regulations based on this mistaken idea allow the problematic generation to grow its share.
The problem is twofold:
1. “Renewables” are inherently unable to get even the grid to 100% decarbonization.
2. “Renewables” are endangering the stability of “the net” (as you put it) even at current levels of penetration.
The problems caused by “renewables” exist and are growing rapidly. Germany just found out the hard way that the dependence upon Russian natural gas for “balancing” comes at a steep price.
We’ll see if this attitude continues after this winter. Nukes guarantee energy security and can store years of fuel on-site. If it comes to a decision between nukes or freezing in the dark, people will choose nukes.
I’ve read about enterprising people setting up gas-turbine generators at well sites to burn this gas and using the electricity to mine cryptocurrency. If there was water available, then you could use the waste heat to heat greenhouses too.
Note that your greenhouse idea won’t work if the flare stacks are needed to burn off surges of combustible gases from e.g. chemical plant system upsets.
This is probably the last time I will reply to you.
“This is probably the last time I will reply to you”
Are you feeli9ng troubble? Do not blame me for that!
The normal conventional and traditional way in Denmark and elsewhere is to have 1, ,2 or even 3 additional sources or “options”. They have the basic heat and even cooling in the house, and then close or open the windows for regulation. And an ability to lit the stove if necessary, and take on … and off a pullover or jacket.. This has been so since stoneage. Then a sack of coal in the celler and / or a stock of wood outside. Even the trees in the park ar left in peace and to growlarge for the case of war.
In rural Denmark there is / was allways tight and high bushes and trees around the house for thermal purposes, to break the storm and for heating, and for 1-2 deg higher microclimate with wine and tomatoes in the garden. The same style is seen also in rural Germany and in New England.
with industrialized collective arcitecture, central heating and worst of all the thermostat and air conditioning, all this is forgotten and ridiculed and I am given the blame only because I have to be “Santa”. I have had to fight quite a lot for those better and cheaper and more healthy methods.
In modern New England it was moist and chill in the early morning and I thought immediately of finding some twigs and litting a fire. But, they had no chimny. Only a very strange and ugly device in the wall with a turning knob graded in Faradays, and one could look right through it and out. And behind there I saw BIG COAL! and even BIG NUKE. So I rather went out as soon as the sun came up and found a windstill “niche” where I could dry and warm up for the day.
Solar, you see.
Pope Francis has preached that Air Condition is sinful!
That BIG COAL and BIG NUKE souds terribly. by a big fan humming on 120 Volt 60 Hz in the homes.
It obviously blunts peoples thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and feelings. Just look at yourself. That is not poetic engineering.
Whereas here, we lit a flush on the stove if necessary, open and close the doors and take on and off a pullover and a jacket and get much more pleasant temperatures and sounds and smells. The central chimney with some heat now and then also ventilates the house, and even cools during wet summers..
Putin sits on the turning knob of BIG GAS, so people begin to hate that also.
What I would say, we have hydroelectrics that can be turned consciously in steps. Ban a thermostate. If a door or a window opens, the thermostate will adjust for that and you feel nothing. It makes you blunt and unconscious.
We manage at below 3000 watt, often down to 1000. Then if we feel a bit chill or uncomfortable , we do something against it on conscios level, Lit the stove for instance. Or take on a jacket or pullover or run after firewood
Run in the chill and relax at the stove.
And ban a thermostat. Which is is what really costs and makes you blunt and stupid..
From “The Conversation” website: How a few geothermal plants could solve America’s lithium supply crunch and boost the EV battery industry.
Geothermal energy has long been the forgotten member of the clean energy family, overshadowed by relatively cheap solar and wind power, despite its proven potential. But that may soon change – for an unexpected reason.
Geothermal technologies are on the verge of unlocking vast quantities of lithium from naturally occurring hot brines beneath places like California’s Salton Sea, a two-hour drive from San Diego.
Lithium is essential for lithium-ion batteries, which power electric vehicles and energy storage. Demand for these batteries is quickly rising, but the U.S. is currently heavily reliant on lithium imports from other countries – most of the nation’s lithium supply comes from Argentina, Chile, Russia and China. The ability to recover critical minerals from geothermal brines in the U.S. could have important implications for energy and mineral security, as well as global supply chains, workforce transitions and geopolitics……..
……..Geothermal brines are the concentrated liquid left over after heat and steam are extracted at a geothermal plant. In the Salton Sea plants, these brines contain high concentrations – about 30% – of dissolved solids………
https://theconversation.com/how-a-few-geothermal-plants-could-solve-americas-lithium-supply-crunch-and-boost-the-ev-battery-industry-179465
Lots of cool stuff goes on, is going on – but none of it sustainable. So, then, if we *must* get to sustainable, then *interesting* stuff is cool and all, but… So, does a new supply of lithium enable more pipedreams of a tech future overcoming nature and reality?
Killian.
“Lots of cool stuff goes on, is going on – but none of it sustainable. So, then, if we *must* get to sustainable, then *interesting* stuff is cool and all, but… ”
Regarding sustainability. Nothing lasts forever. So sustainability is all a bit relative.
I acknowledge that humanity will eventually run short of lithium and at least some other materials. This is obviously concerning, however I don’t worry excessively over this. Studies show we wont have a big problem for about two centuries. Lithium is already being recycled by companies like Veolia. This will extend the availability of lithium perhaps another couple of centuries.
After that people will have learn live simply without as much technology. This is roughly what Killian promotes anyway, so I just don’t know why he agonises over materials shortages. There might be a big migration back to country living. Nobody knows for sure. So in terms of materials I don’t see a reason that we should strictly limit using lithium NOW (or anything else).
Obviously recycling should be encouraged. And I’m not promoting PROFLIGATE use of technology either,. Anything people can do to reduce their levels of consumption of energy and materials would help but there comes a point where it gets unhealthy and painful and could lead to mass unemployment.
That leaves the problem of impacts of mining and industry waste and pollution on the environment. Many of these can be mitigated by processing wastes more carefully. New Zealand now has strict controls on that. This is far more likely to be adopted than some sort of fantasy dream of planned de-industrialisation or massive levels of de-growth.
That leaves mining and industrial complexes causing biodiversity loss. This is concerning but is considerably less than loss of biodiversity caused by conversion of natural habitat to farming as a result of 7.9 billion people. I’m not persuaded that loss of biodiversity related to industry and mining justifies some sort of massive and rapid de-growth and de-industrialisation programme which would be painful, even life threatening for some people and could cause massive levels of unemployment.
Regarding your concerns that poor people / countries wont share in technology as much as rich people / countries. Life will never be perfectly fair. Resources are finite so its not possible for everyone to have everything. Trying to arrange that every human being has the exact same number of solar panels is just not a workable, useful idea.
Developed countries would however be wise to help poor countries to SOME extent just for basic humanitarian reasons and as a global insurance policy. Likewise any progressive county should help its own poor people at least afford the basics of life, but I don’t believe that extends to trying to make everyone the same materially and economically. I don’t believe its even practically possible to do so.
“So, does a new supply of lithium enable more pipedreams of a tech future overcoming nature and reality?”
I find this sort of rhetoric tiresome. I don’t have dreams of technology “overcoming” nature. I believe we can have technology AND nature. The challenge is to reduce the negative impacts of industry on nature but without some crazy, massive, rapid. planned de-industrialisation plan that wont happen anyway.
OK. Let me just say that Killian raises a very good point–and he expressed it concisely and without any personal attacks. It deserves a substantive, thoughtful response.
I would note, also, that what he is saying echoes a finding by some of the studies by Club of Rome (Limits to Growth…). They found that even if energy supplies were unlimited and free, you would eventually have collapse due to pollution… Eventually, we will have to develop a society that can live within limits. That has to be the ultimate goal.
Right now, we have to look toward making things better–less damaging to the planet’s fragile ecosystems. That might involve things that would not be sustainable in the long term. However, the ultimate goal has to be sustainability. We have to concentrate on “interesting stuff” that moves us toward that goal.
However, the ultimate goal has to be sustainability. We have to concentrate on “interesting stuff” that moves us toward that goal.
Yes. This is the point I have been making for over a decade on these pages. I don’t understand why anyone still argues against this, as per nigel’s response, or in any diminishes it. It’s simply framing for rational decision-making. It demonizes nothing, it dismisses nothing.
Unfortunately, we *still* get statements like this:
“So, does a new supply of lithium enable more pipedreams of a tech future overcoming nature and reality?”
I find this sort of rhetoric tiresome.
Of course, he’s using rhetoric in its pejorative sense, but the question is absolutely appropriate and addresses the single biggest problem we have in making the transition: That question exactly frames what is currently the dominant approach to climate.
But it’s tiresome rhetoric?
It’s frightening.
I don’t believe that extends to trying to make everyone the same materially and economically. I don’t believe its even practically possible to do so.
Whole societies live this way. All societies did for 290k years. nigel has been told this over and over. Don’t believe me, ask Dr, Peter Gray, Dr. Helga Vierich, indigenous peoples all over the planet. David Graeber, et al. Newer communities living this way number in the thousands globally. See: GEN, Via Campesina, Transition Towns, IC.org, 100+ uncontacted tribes, Ecosystem Restoration Camps, kibuttzim, Aurora, Mondragon, Findhorn, The Farm, etc.
One wonders why, but we simply get the claim with no reasoning, no logic revealed. It’s just because.
Etc.
Nice to be back to civil discourse, Ray. It reminds me of these boards pre-2015.
Killian:
You may have misinterpreted what RL is saying. When he is saying “However, the ultimate goal has to be sustainability. We have to concentrate on “interesting stuff” that moves us toward that goal” the “interesting stuff” that moves us towards the goal it looks like he is referring to renewables at scale. You have just said “Yes. This is the point I have been making for over a decade on these pages” So are you sure you agree with EVERYTHING he just said?
I also didn’t argue that the ultimate goal isn’t sustainability. We all want sustainability. The difficulty is defining what a workable, modern, technology based sustainable society looks like. Although I’ve indicated some features of it in my comments.
When I say “I don’t believe that extends to trying to make everyone the same materially and economically. I don’t believe its even practically possible to do so it” should be self evident from the CONTEXT that I’m talking about within modern industrial society.
Its well known that some societies have lived by sharing things, eliminating private property, and people being the same materially and economically. I have never denied that. This does not mean its appropriate or even possible for OUR MODERN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY to do the same. . Its basic logic that that A does not always imply B is going to work. I’ve tried to explain in detail why several times, and I’ve given you examples of dozens of failed MODERN attempts.
This is not a criticism of those older societies per se.
Killian
“No, it is how we do sustainability – which you have argued against for six years now.”
I’ve always promoted “sustainability”, including in comments in this page. Just not your particular version of sustainability. which I still find unclear. So I challenge you to do this: Define a sustainable modern society in a couple of paragraphs or with bullet points. One page maximum. I’m not talking about quoting examples of hunter gatherer societies or “The Farm” (if you think that is sustainable). Define a model sustainable modern society. or provide a link to a definition that is consistent with my presentation criteria.
“How? You are a Capitalism fanatic. How do they *make*them? (power companies recycle renewables) Again, and always, you fail to consider the full context.”
Governments could force them with legislation or encourage them with subsidies or tax breaks. Its coming anyway. Our government is doing this with some things already. Its been growing and will obviously grow further. Polls show people are mostly supportive of recycling, and are prepared to pay some costs.
RL: even if energy supplies were unlimited and free, you would eventually have collapse due to pollution…
BPL: Agreed. But there’s no reason renewable energy can’t be part of a circular economy. And they certainly reduce pollution.
It’s so simple and so difficult:
we will have to develop a society that can live within limits. That has to be the ultimate goal.
Right now, we have to look toward making things better–less damaging to the planet’s fragile ecosystems. That might involve things that would not be sustainable in the long term.
Somehow, the world’s promotional and educational apparatus has to be dismantled, so people can slow down and give up on cleverly disguised greed and envy, malice and all uncharitableness, as the good book puts it.
You are right, Susan. It is simple and it appears that we just can’t/won’t do it. We can live as if our actions matter,, as if we are part of a global movement that develops society that lives within limits. I think that’s all we can do. I am told that human extinction is unlikely. If that was all we aspired to, things might look rosy.
Cheers
Mike
Yes, we do.
And AFAICT we need a much more rigorous determination of what they are, precisely. Herman Daly pointed out that classical economics left untouched the problem of matching the scale of the human economy to the underlying physical realities–since it essentially posited that the former could grow without any limit at all. Ray didn’t really make clear the underlying assumptions of the CoR finding, but I don’t see how it could be otherwise than “For some scale of economic activity, even if energy supplies were unlimited and free, you would eventually have collapse due to pollution.”
Assuming that’s correct, it would also seem that the question isn’t technology-agnostic, because different sorts of technologies have different pollution outputs. (Just by way of hypothetical illustration, consider what a pollution problems might attend a society primarily reliant on highly advanced genetic programming to grow tools, devices and products through a sort of agricultural ‘manufacture.’ Would all be well, simply because all that stuff would presumably be biodegradable? Probably not, but what would the actual problems be as economic scale increased? Eutrophication, maybe? What else?)
Returning to something like the real world, it would seem to me, then, that we urgently need analytic tools that would let us analyze the impacts of potential technological pathways across a realistic economic size spectrum. (We also need the political will to use those tools, which seems in general to be an even harder puzzle.)
B,
You acknowledge the problem then *seem* to ignore it. There is a *lot* of waste in RE. There is a *lot* of non-circularity in RE. How are waste and non-circularity part of circularity?
Can you explain this?
There may be some reality in what you say, but I suspect what *I* am thinking in that regard and what *you* are thinking in that regard are not the same thing.
S,
the world’s promotional and educational apparatus has to be dismantled, so people can slow down and give up on cleverly disguised greed and envy, malice and all uncharitableness,
Don’t fight the old way, create a better one that makes it obsolete. – B. Fuller, paraphrased
Regenerative Governance.
Regarding Killians posts on the “regenerative governance” idea.
“Regenerative governance” apparently equals shared ownership of pretty much everything or in the case of the biosphere nobody owns anything, and it involves shared and equal decision making. It involves the elimination of private property and the elimination all hierarchies, according to Killian’s comments previously.
To me this looks similar to socialism or even communism, and experiments with socialism at wide scale in modern technology based societies have mostly been abject failures. Examples are obvious. from the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, to Venezuela, to Cuba to thousands of alternative (intentional) communities that have failed after a few years. Its an issue easily googled. Sure there are some longer lasting examples of modern regenerative governance or something similar like “The Farm” in America run by a few enthusiasts but overall the regenerative governance idea doesn’t look like a compelling, scalable model for the whole world.
In hunter gatherer society and similar societies people are equal and property is community owned or in the case of the biosphere nobody owns it.. Just because something works for hunter gatherer society doesn’t logically mean it would work in other societies, that have different cultures, population sizes, and reliance on technology.
Not closed to the ideas but very sceptical.
Happy to hear alternative views provided they are coherent.
Killian
“There is a *lot* of waste in RE. There is a *lot* of non-circularity in RE. How are waste and non-circularity part of circularity”
This is a lot of waste with RE, but its largely laziness and because materials are still plentiful and recycling adds costs, and because government’s don’t insist materials be recycled. This could change and I believe it is slowly changing. Veolia recycle lithium batteries.
The lack of recycling is not a valid argument against building renewables. Its only an argument against lack of recycling. If governments stopped renewables because of a lack of recycling that would be illogical , because they could equally make generating companies recycle renewables. Which is probably what should happen.
Regarding Killians posts on the “regenerative governance” idea.
“Regenerative governance” apparently equals shared ownership of pretty much everything or in the case of the biosphere nobody owns anything, and it involves shared and equal decision making. It involves the elimination of private property and the elimination all hierarchies, according to Killian’s comments previously.
To me this looks similar to socialism or even communism,
Your ignorance in these matters is only exceeded by your arrogance and hubris in trying to critique something you know nothing about. “Communism” as practiced by Russia, China, Vietnam, NK, Cuba, etc., is totalitarianism. How is this in any way like Regen Gov? Beyond ignorant…
Killian
“There is a *lot* of waste in RE. There is a *lot* of non-circularity in RE. How are waste and non-circularity part of circularity”
This is a lot of waste with RE, but its largely laziness and because materials are still plentiful
LOL… no, they are not. Ask the yeast. (Are we dumber than yeast? Some of us clearly are.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73xdpoQFLQk&t=27s Pay attention to what the resource base looks like just two doublings before they are gone. (Hint: 3/4 remain.)
and recycling… it is slowly changing. Veolia recycle lithium batteries.
And what is the risk analysis on the irreversibility of climate change and ecosystem destruction? Your analysis, such as it is, is always frighteningly simplistic. which is dangerous as hell.
The lack of recycling is not a valid argument against building renewables.
Of course it is. We should keep producing mountains of waste rather than adjust production to our ability to manage it? This is just absurd.
If governments stopped renewables because of a lack of recycling that would be illogical
No, it is how we do sustainability – which you have argued against for six years now. Your denialism of simplicity and sustainability is offensive.
because they could equally make generating companies recycle renewables.
How? You are a Capitalism fanatic. How do they *make*them? Again, and always, you fail to consider the full context.
Quoth nigelj:
Not just geothermal brines, ALL brines. New ion-exchange resins are about to increase lithium recovery from all sources from ~40% to ~80%, and make the process much faster and weather-independent besides (no waiting for evaporation ponds to do their thing). Here’s two companies in the field:
https://www.lithiumsouth.com/posts/doubling-of-lithium-recovery-from-brine-with-chemphys-process/
https://lilacsolutions.com/technology/
Quoth nigelj:
I’d say we NEED both technology and nature. We definitely need lots of technology to support 7-plus billion bodies.
I believe we are in danger of this happening in an un-planned way, from the effects of climate change piling on damage faster than we can cope.
The solution is to reduce our impacts upon nature, with climate as just one facet of it. This means decoupling our energy and material demands from nature as much as practically possible. Getting all our energy from biomass and other “renewables” is precisely the WRONG approach, as this requires taking vast tracts of land away from nature, disturbing large amounts of tidal flows, etc. This is why I’m so gung-ho about nuclear energy. Nature has no apparent use for actinides. None. We can extract uranium from the earth using solution mining which doesn’t disturb the surface, or ion-exchange capture from seawater. Nuclear plants generate a great deal of power from a very small area of land, and can be pretty much placed wherever we want (though availability of natural heat sinks is desirable).
Something I need to get back to is my analysis of the sulfur-iodine cycle for thermochemical production of hydrogen. It requires about 1/3 of its heat input at ~1000°C to crack H2SO4 into H2O, SO2 and ½O2, and the other 2/3 at about 450°C to drive the 2 HI -> H2 + I2 reaction. If we could get it into production at scale with a nuclear heat source, it could replace essentially all consumption of natural gas, allow the production of vehicle fuel from CO2, replace coal as a reductant for reduction of metal oxides, and pretty much replace all the fossil fuels we use today for tasks which are too difficult to electrify.
If the numbers I have are accurate, a single 3 GW(t) reactor could produce hydrogen equivalent to around 350 million gallons of gasoline per year. We’d need several hundred to replace the ~9 million barrels of gasoline the USA consumes per day, but that’s dosable.
Now, if you would, imagine replacing ALL of the footprint of the oil industry in the USA—extraction, shipping, refining, shipping of refined products, storage in tank farms, trucking to delivery points, and dispensing—with perhaps 40,000 acres of plants plus the distribution pipelines to ship the product where needed. Some geologic storage would be required, such as solution-mined cavities in salt deposits. We know how to do this.
dosable -> doable (damn do I hate the lack of a preview in this dis-improved version)
I agree with those sentiments. Its hard for me to understand why this website got rid of the preview panel. Really hard.
nIgel:”I agree with those sentiments. Its hard for me to understand why this website got rid of the preview panel.”
to prepare the ground for getting rid of the need to preview anything:
“The end of blog comments?” thread ?
We all want a sustainable society. The trouble is defining exactly what a modern, technology based sustainable society looks like. I would define a sustainable society like this minimised to the key essentials and leaving out social definitions of sustainability:
1) We have to stop emitting CO2 as a priority and renewables and perhaps some nuclear power are the only realistic and responsible way (over simplifying the issue for brevity). If that fails it leaves geoengineering which is very risky.
2) The circular / recycling economy is a useful, workable idea that is likely to become well adopted. Minerals wont last forever so we just have to recycle what we have and use them prudently. So a sustainable mineral using society should last a long time but it probably wont be forever.
3) Protection of all endangered species and over hunted and over fished species.
4) Stop or dramatically reduce all environmental pollution and waste. I believe this is plausible without stopping industry per se.
5) Get population growth to stop asap to protect whats left of the natural habitats etc, etc.
In hindsight I believe BPL may have said something similar. If you can’t write a definition of a sustainable modern society is a short list of bullet points like this, I don’t think you HAVE one, or know what you are talking about.
Killian seems to define a modern sustainable society as a hybrid civilisation that lives like subsistence farmers / hunter gatherers in terms of farming and socio economic systems, but that has a little bit of just the most essential modern technology added on. He argues that we adopt this society very rapidly. I ONLY write all this because I cant recall him ever posting a definition of a modern sustainable society, despite all his many words.
Humans could obviously get by with less technology to a point, but overall Killians version of a sustainable society doesn’t look workable to me in multiple ways. But don’t take my word for it. The respected anthropologist Joseph Tainter argues much the same about similar sorts of plans.
There are other definitions of sustainable societies such as the United Nations framework of “sustainable development goals” that seem useful, but over complicated and not entirely well resolved. But that’s because its difficult. There are no “silver bullets” as Piotr mentioned.
Sustainables and permacultures should have been better defined here, and Killian is not the man to do it. I am being brought up with it before I coulds even trhink, and before I learnt anything else.. The deep roots of US american management and possible pioneering going on on the basis of what we have and how to go on in the new world and for the future are preserved and written down here where I live, inn the National state churchesn and in the University librareies up- stairs back in Europe where they came from.
Killian is bringing sand to Sahara and Codsfish to Lofoten and teaching the Hens how to lay egs in a very arrogant intolerant manner.
There is a fameousn irish song on what we shallm do with the drunken sailor, and they had then 9- tailed cat also at hand on board.
=============0000
We shall take the boat now for launching. I have scraped the propellar and bought a new cooling water inlet. They are cheating with common freshwater plumber brass, that “rots” in seawater. What only keeps is “gunmetal” 8% tin bronse or “naval brass” that has got less zink andc a 2% content of tin.
Iron does also keep surprizingly well if burnt off with lipid oil and protected wit zink anodes.
Carbomantanus. Permaculture is largely about the circular economy and eliminating waste and using mineral resources prudently which I already mentioned. I firmly believe we need to move to some form of regenerative agriculture and permaculture, but the ‘doctrinaire’ versions of this dont look realistic to me. The advocates fail to consider full context or acknowledge the downsides of their theories.
Nigel
I am thinking of the term “Permaculture”, that is quite brand new! It may “further” the same ERROR, that it is thought to make and end to, namely allways having to have it brand new from the shops on the free market.
Why not take up and use something rather traditional from the ideological and linguistic junkyard or museum, restore it brush it up and repair it and use that further instead?
I think it over, we rather say gjen- bruk. That also has got its traditions, they could not afford anything else but “Gjenbruk” is also quite and art and a lifestyle.
It litterally means to use again.
When the deers throw off their antlers, you can pick it up, take it, see what it is good for, and use it further for something else. And why buy a brand new brick when you can take an old one and rinse it and use it again? Or why take a burnt brick at all when you can rather take a choisest stone from common rubbish and sediments in your local environment? When there ar really plenty enough of natural stones, why heat up and make artificial ones?
Bricks have ben re- taken and re- cycled for the last 3000 years ever since UR in Caldea. It has been the towns “Capital” savings and heritage. Making a new one costs scarce firewood. And worst of all, mounting it the brand new way with ” Cement” = highly burnt calsium and silica and alumina will ruin all your very valuable good old bricks and stones and marbles, and give stones, that cannot be rinsed restored and re- cycled anymore. 3000 years of brick and Tegula history will end up on the junkyard and landfillings.
Instead, mount it caefully with choisest sand and clay in wooden framework that can easily be restored and repaired, Use lime mortar & gypsum and irons only on the most critical sites.
I learnt this from a swedisch church- mason, who had all the troubbles of brand new recent mis- use of “modern progressive and rational” materials and methods in very old and fine buildings, that were cunningly and carefully designed to be easily repairable in those days styles and technologies..
I am more aquainted to woodwork and wooden architecture, then Leonardo da Vinci and Sttradivarii technology and lifestyle.
and there we have the same. Keep and repair and restore it successively as it rots and falls down, “If it ain`t broken, don`t mend it..” and whatever you buy, also think of how to get rid of it again, that mentioned swedish Mason said.
See that you can burn it at least and use the ashes, or compost it. See that you can grow apples on it after all and that your mushroms and rainworms willthrive on it. Because, Pears and plums and wines grow especially well on old urban sediments.
There comes new EU rules now, that only strong and repairable qualities of textiles will be permitted in the shops and on the free market. “Lumps” were once extreemly valuable and re- cycled for lump paper.
Also glass must be produced clean and the sorts kept apart for possible re- cycling.
Modern IT and electro- material with all those very exotic and higly refined materials mixed up together,…. is some worst kind of a mess.
Today I shall try and repair and restore a garden- chair that is allready made from re- cycled wreckwood. Only its feet are rotten. There I must do something. In any case, it must be carefully set on natural stones and not on earth, after having been properly oiled andc tarred..
The same is the art of mideival wooden church masonry that has stood for 1000 years and can stand for another 1000 years or rather till Doomesday according to their ideas.
There have been very high quality products also in recent years, think of the Cassini- sonde to Saturnus. or those Mars- vehicles.
By looking carefully at the iron nails in the viking ships and thinking it over, I found how to stop the rust on Renault cars the rather well known, ckeap and easy way. Whereas vulgar expert folklores on car cosmetics were how to make them rust and decay as fast as possible. “Buy yourself a personality” is sinful. Be a personality is devine and holy. !.
Radiation is far less dangerous than you think:
https://medium.com/generation-atomic/for-the-first-time-world-learns-truth-about-risk-of-nuclear-6b7e97d435df
EP: Radiation is far less dangerous than you think
BPL: It’s good for you. Swallow lots of medical cobalt-60, kids.
So has anybody polled the Russian grunts who camped out at Chernobyl lately?
Radiation poses a threat. The risk posed by the threat depends on the mitigation. Mitigations can fail, especially when stupid and ignorant people get involved.
Sustainables and permacultures should have been better defined here, and Killian is not the man to do it. I am being brought up with it before I coulds even trhink, and before I learnt anything else.. The deep roots of US american management and possible pioneering going on on the basis of what we have and how to go on in the new world and for the future are preserved and written down here where I live, inn the National state churchesn and in the University librareies up- stairs back in Europe where they came from.
Killian is bringing sand to Sahara and Codsfish to Lofoten and teaching the Hens how to lay egs in a very arrogant intolerant manner.
There is a fameousn irish song on what we shallm do with the drunken sailor, and they had then 9- tailed cat also at hand on board.
=============0000
We shall take the boat now for launching. I have scraped the propellar and bought a new cooling water inlet. They are cheating with common freshwater plumber brass, that “rots” in seawater. What only keeps is “gunmetal” 8% tin bronse or “naval brass” that has got less zink andc a 2% content of tin.
Iron does also keep surprizingly well if burnt off with lipid oil and protected wit zink anodes.
Different from Titanic quality, that does not keep at sea and in the climate..
Killian
I will post this again. It got a bit lost in comments above.
“No, it is how we do sustainability – which you have argued against for six years now.”
I’ve always promoted “sustainability”, including promoting it in comments in this page. Just not your particular version of doing sustainability, which I still find unclear. So I challenge you to do this: Define a sustainable modern society in a couple of paragraphs or with bullet points. One page maximum.
I’m not talking about quoting examples of hunter gatherer societies or “The Farm” (if you think that is sustainable). Define a model of a sustainable modern society. or provide a link to a definition that is consistent with my presentation criteria (a concise definition that just summarises key points).
Just quoting permaculture is not enough either.
“How? You are a Capitalism fanatic. How do they *make*them? (power companies recycle renewables) Again, and always, you fail to consider the full context.”
Governments could force them with legislation or encourage them with subsidies or tax breaks. Its coming anyway. Our government is doing this with some things already. Its been growing and will obviously grow further. Polls show people are mostly supportive of recycling, and are prepared to pay some costs.
I’m not a capitalism fanatic. I’m a critic of capitalism. It needs to change in some way, but without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Once this sustainable modern society has been described, I would be interested to see a roadmap of how we get from the current situation, to the global population living this sustainable lifestyle within the time we have left before we reach the point of no return.
I’ve always promoted “sustainability”
No, you haven’t. First, you have no idea what that is, so how can you promote it? Second, you cannot claim to “promote sustainability,” but champion primarily the unsustainable and insult and denigrate most of what is sustainable, or at best pay it lip service while completely misrepresenting it. What was it you called regenerative living, primitive? Yeah, that’s “supporting” sustainability.
Goodness…
You bark words about sustainability, and that is all. Six years and you have yet to make a cogent, sensical comment on the issue. You do a disservice to Dear Readers here by refusing to self-edit and limit your responses to your areas of expertise, if any. Lurk more, post less is my suggestion to you.
Just quoting permaculture is not enough either.
Straw Man. (Gee, what a surprise.) I do not “just quote permaculture.” It’s an absurd distortion of my years on these forums. I repeat, lurk more, post less. Definitely stop being dishonest.
See how Killian STILL doesn’t take up my challenge to define a sustainable modern society, summarised in a couple of paragraphs or list of bullet points. How can any of us take what he writes seriously if he can’t or won’t even do that?
Killian. My depiction of ancient regenerative societies like hunter gatherers as primitives is entirely accurate. Oxford dictionary defines primitive as: “relating to, denoting, or preserving the character of an early stage in the evolutionary or historical development of something” “a person belonging to a preliterate, non-industrial society.” So my description is entirely accurate.
I also called hunter gatherers primitive peoples merely as shorthand to keep comments brief. You are reading too much into what people say, and looking for insults that aren’t even there. The context would have told you I did not mean it an an insult or put down. Haven’t called them primitives since you first raised the issue, yet you dredge up ancient history and bear grudges. It won’t get you anywhere in life doing that.
This looks promising: “Seasonal Storage for Renewable Energy”
EMMETEnergy is developing an affordable, large-scale storage for renewable energy based on methane (CH4). By using methane as energy carrier, the current natural gas storage capacity, is ready and available for storing months of energy production.
In combination with for example a windfarm, EMMETEnergy fully replaces current power plants (slide on the picture to get an impression).
For the Netherlands a storage capacity of 20 TWh and a load/unload capacity of 10 GW is calculated. This system serves 3 purposes:
Covering fluctuations in renewable energy production and demand (intermittency)
Preventing the need for and management of overcapacity of renewable energy production (curtailment)
Serving as a strategic energy reserve
With an estimated (to be engineered!) roundtrip efficiency of 53%, the system is an economic viable storage solution for seasonal fluctuations in energy production on national level.
A pilot system is being built in coöperation with the Technical University of Eindhoven.
https://www.emmetenergy.com/
Humor me, do a little thought experiment: What if none of it cost anything, and were just done? How does that change things?
The storage scheme helps give people reliable, zero carbon, clean electricity to heat their homes and cook their meals, for as long as possible in the long term. Unless you are suggesting we just burn wood? And choking on the smoke? And finding enough wood for the needs of 10 billion people?
Nigelj
Charging litium batteries,…. where will you have the electricity from?
The very best Internal combustion engines have an efficiency of … hardly more than 55%. 2 stroke turbo diesel at optimal speed and load, large ship diesel or electrical plants, or gas- turbine with steam boiler and turbine, and cooled condenser on the exhaust.
Hydroelectric manages well above 90% both on hydro and electro. , the square of that gives us slightly below 90%
In Germany they do not like Tesla because electricity is too epensive and comes from putins coal and gas. Windmill electricity is better invested for heat- pumps.
We suddenly have electricity prices here on EU- level due to hydroelectric export. People are beginning to regret their electric cars. Even worse, peasants with large tractors, and swinery poultry industry complain over electric and diesel- prices. And those huge baggers and wheel loaders drink 30 liters of diesel per hour. Strange, because my boat with Yanmar 2 gm20 drank only 3 liters last summer. It also matters the way you drive. Plan your driving and drive carefully. Offroad on wheels, I would not have electric. And offroad & in the snow, the waggon or wehicle should also rather be light enough, thus rather air cooled turbo diesel there.
And inn the air something must also be done. Electric airplanes will hardly win. I saw they are launching 4 cyl air cooled boxer Diesel for small propellar airplanes because of fuel efficiency and gasoline costs..
Try and find and read about the Renault 2cyl 2 stroke turbo diesel for cars. It is simply the very best, but the basic problem with 2 stroke they say is pollution, clean exhaust.
But that is only when you demand high flexibliity and high acceleration. If it only can run at steady tours with optimal load,m you hardly need even catalyzers and particle filters at the exhaust.
What seems conscidered for serious is NH3 by the Haber Bosch method liquified on tanks under preessure for airplanes and for trans-oceanic shipping, as a method of getting enough hydrogen compressed in a tank. Such quantities of liquid ammonia are not un- dangerous, so I do rather think in terms of synthetic hydrocarbons based on re- cycled CO2 by nuclear heat and electricity.
Both fuel cells and batteries have to carry the oxidizer with them. That is where the combustion engine is superiour. It oxidizes by air.
Can you name any commercially available fuel cell powered car that doesn’t use air as the oxidiser?
They don’t like Tesla in Germany? Teslas seem to sell quite well there.
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/04/germanys-plugin-ev-share-jumps-above-30-an-unstoppable-force/
(Oldish data, but it was what came to hand in a hurried search.)
And the authorities seem to have had little difficulty in permitting the European Gigafactory near Berlin. They’re hiring now:
https://www.tesla.com/giga-berlin
Carbomantaus, I admit to an instinctive attraction to battery electric automobiles. I like their quietness, low running costs and potential high reliability. Even if the generation source is only partly renewables, you still get a lower emissions than petrol or diesel. Plenty of studies on that. Range of battery EV’s is not an issue for me because I dont do many very long trips these days. So for me and EV is a good overall package.
Having said that, EV’s are not perfect, there are other options like hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids, and ICE engines can in theory run on hydrogen like you mentioned. Its probably too early to know which one would dominate the market. It may depend on supplies and costs of lithium when the market really takes off.
It may be that we end up with several types of low or zero emissions vehicles. Hybrids and PHEVs are still very popular for example.
Of all theese solutions maybe I like hybrids least. But even hybrids are traditional. The large diesel locomotives are diesel- electric. And many ships are also. It reduces the need for gears, and are easier and more smooth to regulate
I think I will never buy an electric car for myself but maybe one for our granddaugther who can drive us.
The direct use of hydrogen I think is only relevant where one can build gas pipelines. Also that is traditional Big scale coal and water gasification C + 2H2O -> 2H2 + CO2 in Ruhrgebiet and pipeline to Ludwigshafen for the Haber Bosch Ammonium- production.
The easier freight with less CO2 is LNG Metan . CH4 + 2H2O -> CO2 + 4H2.
Both reactions are endotherm and could be supported by nuclear heat. Today they burn cokes or further LNG for it.
Maybe Solar could deliver a bit more from Sahara.
There is hardly any cubic meter of hydrogen left over for cars in the world because 60% or more of the worlds production goes for the Haber Bosch- synthesis.
In the recent French precident election campaighn, the only thing they agree on is still more french nuclear electricity, where it supports most of the needs allready, and Belgia has changed its mind and will restore their nuclear plants again.
Germany and Polen are now heating up with coal again to avoid Putins gas.
But all in all I believe that both for cars and airplanes and ships, some re- cycling of CO2 and re- synthesis of carbo- hydrids and hydrates from that like it happens in nature by solar, is the way to go.
https://www.desertec.org/