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| JohnS Guru  Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3678 |
It's very unfortunate that it doesn't work, as the car makers are having a DREADFUL time trying to meet EU CO2 limits. If it worked, they could meet them easily instead of being faced with the ENORMOUS costs of switching to creating electric vehicles. John |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
Lance -- it is dubious. Shadetree mechanics can't achieve this! They have all gone round the bend with the rest of us! The losses get you. You can't eliminate all of them. There is no free lunch. Paul in NY |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
John -- the car makers can't meet the CO2 limits by themselves. One way would be for the car makers to plant a lot of trees, or even better lots of algal ponds and then go on making lots of CO2 for the plants to feed on. Electric vehicles by themselves are NOT the answer. A good conventional gasoline powered car can achieve about a 32% efficiency, i.e. 68% of the calories produced goes off into the environment as heat without moving the car. A modern utility size gas turbine generator can manage 42% efficiency losing 58% of the energy. An old fashioned oil fired boiler steam turbine plant might manage 34% efficiency losing 66%. Then you feed that electric power through distribution lines and transformers and lose another 3%, a battery charger losing 2%, and a battery charge cycle losing 8%, a battery discharge cycle losing 20%, and an electric traction motor losing 1% ---- and you wind up with something like 21% overall efficiency if you're lucky. NOPE!!! Fire up the car and plant trees! Paul in NY |
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| Paul_L Guru Joined: 03/03/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 769 |
And furthermore ... The utility companies aren't stupid, they run the most efficient generators full time and use the less efficient, older generators to pick up the peak loads. Tesla fast chargers use up to 120 KVA! The average household in NY has a continuous demand of about 3 KVA and a peak demand of about 15 KVA if there is an electric kitchen stove. One Tesla fast charger equals 8 household peak loads. That guarantees that charging a Tesla around here means that you're using power generated by the oldest, dirtiest, least efficient coal burning generators out in Ohio! So if we could generate the power for Teslas from geothermal, solar, hydroelectric, wind turbines, or nuclear powered generators then we could let the sun, wind, falling water or fissioning radioactive elements run the Teslas. And don't start yelling at me about nuclear power plants blowing up or irradiating the neighbors! Those unstable elements are in the crust of the earth merrily fissioning away whether we use them or not. They were put there by the early giant proto-stars when they became supernovas. We might as well use the heat they produce. By the way, I'm the weirdo who heats his house using a geothermal fed heat pump. Paul in NY |
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CaptainBoing Guru Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1995 |
Unfortunately this is a misnomer. OK, my 2p In order to neutralize (i.e. to stop at current levels) just the USA at today's output levels of CO2, you would need to plant 20 Million trees - twice a day. That is assuming a 100 year life span and all the trees you plant are adult immediately (just to make the sums easier). And that is just USA - forget about the real environmental villains of China, India, Russia, Brazil and second world nations (Why aren't the protesters outside their embassies?). Unfortunately all the good work the altruistically developed nations do is being brought to nought largely by those BRICS economies - and who can blame them? They surely have a right to develop and "we" can't forbid them to use this tech after we have used it to grow. Can you imagine how that would appear on the world stage? One other point - plants die and when they do they release all that CO2 back - so this is just kicking the can down the street, it's not a fix. Of course some wood remains as furniture, buildings and other items, but world trade cannot consume 40M trees x 365 x 100 recurring - and remember; this wood will eventually decay anyway (fungus is the enemy here - wood+fungus=no new coal, but I love 'shrooms...) We have seen the greening of the planet with higher CO2 levels (it is a nutrient to green plants) which have and will continue to absorb some of the CO2 but you still have the increasing return when they die. Planetary warming & cooling is a natural phenomenon (simple question:what caused and ended the numerous ice ages end over the last billion years at fairly regular intervals?) but taking all the stored carbon out from the ground and chucking it back in the atmosphere - safe to say we have made things a lot worse. The last Ice Age ended between 10 and 20 thousand years ago (depends what sources you consult). Ice ages seem to occur roughly every 140 to 200 thousand years, so we are effectively on the leading edge of a 35 to 50 thousand year hot cycle (above nominal)... ten thousand years in and temperatures are already thought to be way above what they should be - the peak in 25K years should be a doozie this time round! Personally I think there is a very real chance of a Venus-like runaway; the Sun is no longer an infant ind is now emitting 70% more energy than it was when life first emerged and yet the temperatures on Earth have remained fairly constant. Geologically we know there were periods where free CO2 was *much* higher on the early Earth and it is thought it played a big role in keeping Earth at broadly habitable temperatures for the past 3BN years. As life locked away the CO2 Earth lost its ability to keep warm in pretty even proportion to the increase in Solar output. Helpful. Probably, logically, the best way to try and re-balance things is to capture the CO2 and put it back in the ground. It needs to be accessible as we will require CO2 in the distant future to keep plants going as CO2 is locked away through erosion. Without intervention photosynthesis will become impossible in a few 100M years (ignoring any relevance). The main problem here is our perception of what is going on - we live in a tiny snapshot and we tend to believe it is the status quo. We really haven't helped things by not realizing this until relatively recently... coupled with human greed - we are screwed. |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3678 |
There's a lot of electricity being generated via solar PV and wind here now. Cost has dropped below older technologies and is still dropping. John |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3678 |
A thought on plants. They do not inevitably release the carbon when they die (e.g. coal deposits, peat bogs, temperate forests). It would be a start if we stopped chopping forests down, though. John |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 3590 |
I hope Trump does 1 thing right before he goes... Immediately order the build of 10+ nuclear plants. I know the public opinion is not in favor, but we need them to solve more urgent problems. We can get up to 20% out of solar, wind, water etc. But we need a solution for the 80%. There simply is no alternative available we can implement comming 20 years. And that is no "fake news". Trump is the guy who doesn't give a sh*t, and simply put's his idea's in action. That would be benificial now. Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| CaptainBoing Guru Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1995 |
Pretty much, yeah they do. The amount of green material that ends up in bogs etc. is tiny and do you think it will hold on to that carbon for a century? a million years? 10 million? ... and trees falling over in forests rot away. Important to note *there is no new coal* all of it is about 360 to 290 million years old - let that sink in for a moment - no new coal has formed in the last 300M years! The reason is probably (and is generally attributed to) the land evolution of fungi; which first appeared about 600MYA and started to develop significantly 400MYA (they have been going three times longer but in the water). So I am afraid the argument of trees keeping their carbon when they die because they form coal beds just isn't born out by the biology, chemistry and (more importantly) the geology of the last 300M years. Shame. I agree about chopping forests down. Even where the wood is grown as a crop, i.e. Scotland has millions of acres of pine, it looks really bad to see whole stands of trees gone and the ground just laying fallow, full of grey stumps and slash - but that is my sentimentality... I find solace and nobility in trees. Agree with that. Besides all the panic caused and spread by the media and antis, by the numbers, Nuclear is very safe and really the only thing that can allow us to continue as a technological global community (notwithstanding any security concerns). Modern reactor tech is superb with high efficiencies and low waste. My only dis-agreement is the number required - we need lots more. I wish it was all possible with renewable but from what I have learned (when you cut away all the hype and agenda) it just doesn't cut it and brings problems of its own - the lifespan of wind turbines isn't great and their manufacture is really dirty. Remember: the "green agenda" is an industry worth US$1.5Trillion per year. Be very cautious of trusting anything with "green" or "environment" in the title without a lot of research. The problem is (as was seen with the Fukushima meltdown) lots of people are given a public platform who know little of what they talk about. I saw one clip I think it was either New Zealand or Oz where a woman was addressing (possibly) parliament about isotopes that have been detected and was evidently trying to illuminate the problem by spouting huge half-lifes of millions of years. Not a clue! For those who don't know about half lives, it is the rate at which an element decays into something else (emitting various forms of radiation in the process) and the time it takes to have half of the original mass of the original isotope. A half life of 10 million years sounds scary but think of it... if you have a Kg of the stuff, it takes 10 Million years for 500g to decay into another element and release radioactive particles in the process... which means it is a very slow ticking clock and likely not dangerous at all - you get far greater exposure on a commercial flight. Something with a half life of a few hours or minutes is screamingly radioactive - that same Kg (of, say, Iodine 133) will convert half its mass in just 2.3 hours by emitting Beta particles (stopped by 2mm of aluminium sheet) and Gamma particles (very nasty in even small quantities and you need several inches of lead or concrete to stop them) - and yes, you would want to stay well clear of that! Unfortunately, joe public likes to get excited about something and they greedily gobble down the BS without looking for the truth - this of course applies to almost everything in the news. I remember seeing graphics showing a huge red plume stretching across the pacific from Japan to California. It was really scary. The numbers however tell a different story - the actual levels involved were barely above background per cubic metre of seawater and you would get something like five times the exposure from eating a banana than going for a swim (bananas are high in potassium and a weak beta(I think?) emitter) This is why I like the work of Dr.Phil Mason - a proper scientist who actually goes to these places and does the measurements himself with full disclosure. He does not appear to be biased one way or the other by his own wants and trusts only what the science tells him. (He has also shown why HyperLoop is likely never to run as planned and why it is a bad idea anyway but that is another thread)  Edited 2020-01-09 21:45 by CaptainBoing |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
A report from almost 100 years ago |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
And then: 1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969) 1970: Ice Age By 2000 1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980 1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030 1972: New Ice Age By 2070 1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast 1974: Another Ice Age? 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life 1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent 1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes 1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend 1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in 1990s 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs 1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they’re not) 1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it’s not) 2000: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is 2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy 2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024 2008: Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018 2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013 2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World 2009: UK Prime Minister Says 50 Days to ‘Save The Planet From Catastrophe’ 2009: Climate Genius Al Gore Moves 2013 Prediction of Ice-Free Arctic to 2014 2013: Arctic Ice-Free by 2015 2014: Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’ 1968: Overpopulation Will Spread Worldwide 1970: World Will Use Up All its Natural Resources 1966: Oil Gone in Ten Years 1972: Oil Depleted in 20 Years 1977: Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 90s 1980: Peak Oil In 2000 1996: Peak Oil in 2020 2002: Peak Oil in 2010 2006: Super Hurricanes! 2005 : Manhattan Underwater by 2015 1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985 1970: Nitrogen buildup Will Make All Land Unusable 1970: Decaying Pollution Will Kill all the Fish 1970s: Killer Bees! |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Yes, popping a charging station in the ground isn't as simple as some think. There is grid load to consider. |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3027 |
Not to mention circa 1300BC: "No more water, the fire next time". Could still happen, sometime between tomorrow afternoon and 5 billion years from now when the sun enters its red giant phase. You'll always have extreme predictions, sometimes by parties interested in selling untruths (or just interested in selling, without any regard to truth one way or the other). That's why it's always good to consider the source, and the source's evidence, and the source's interests, and the evidence and interests of those countering the source. I'm certainly in favor of nuclear energy, especially with regard to some of the new designs which might be able to use old waste for fuel. Geoengineering to reduce solar irradiance, anyone? Law of Unintended Consequences, anyone? ~ Edited 2020-01-10 01:23 by lizby PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3678 |
Trump seems the least likely president in decades to do that, though it's not quite impossible. Any idea what the realistic time (in years from now) would be for the first few to be online? Where does that 20% (and thus 80%) come from? I've seen no reputable source for it. BTW it would probably help if Germany used its nuclear power stations more as I gather they do not. Instead, apparently Germany burns some very dirty coal... John |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
Trump has the guts to tell it the way it is. These guys preach one thing and do the opposite |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3027 |
You mean like, to paraphase, "Purchasing iron and aluminum from Canada is a threat to U.S. national security"? Or a direct quote from a tweet: "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." (Later claimed to be a joke.) PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
All I've seen from the media is: "Scientists claim..." "Experts warn..." "A senior official stated..." Who are these people? There are an awful lot of knowledgeable people who are not on the man-made-climate-change payroll who would relish a debate. These debates will never happen. Edited 2020-01-10 03:00 by Tinine |
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| Tinine Guru Joined: 30/03/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1646 |
500 scientists requesting a debate are being ignored. |
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| lizby Guru Joined: 17/05/2016 Location: United StatesPosts: 3027 |
Glad you're curious to know. Here's somebody's list of the top 15: Top Climate Change Scientists For balance, the list is followed by "Top Five Skeptical Climate-Change Scientists". One could also start here: global warming I'm sure if you followed the IPCC links and references you'd find plenty of names. All primary research papers will provide the names of the researchers. "Scientists claim..." with no further references would certainly be sloppy reporting, but if you look at reputable sources you are likely to find those references. Climate Change Denial is also informative. There is no shortage of names for anyone who cares to look. PicoMite, Armmite F4, SensorKits, MMBasic Hardware, Games, etc. on fruitoftheshed |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3678 |
Tiny or not (I see no statistics), it is not zero. Trees do not rot entirely away and in any case their roots, leaves etc all add to the soil. These are natural forms of carbon sequestration, of course. Planting more trees does add to soil depth / carbon sequestration. Soils can last millions of years. I gather the average depth in UK/EU is something like 2 metres. It didn't all arrive yesterday :) It has been suggested that humans add some more, such as biochar and CCS (carbon capture & storage). (CCS is in use but not enough.) John |
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