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It will be a long transition. Especially with reluctance over nuclear power leaving it as something of an either or choice. Still, the growth in efficiency of renewable power generation has been heartening -- the more cost effective it becomes, the easier to transition.
A rather under-the-radar negotiation...or put another way...an outright attempt at environmental extortion, is set to occur during President Biden's environmental summit set to kick off today [Earth Day]:
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...to-save-amazon
That sounds like it could come out of any Hollywood mob movie...'pay us, or else...'Quote:
The US is negotiating a multi-billion dollar climate deal with Brazil that observers fear could help the reelection of president Jair Bolsonaro and reward illegal forest clearance in the Amazon.
Senior US officials are holding weekly online meetings about the Amazon before a series of big international conferences. Ministers and ambassadors from Britain and Europe are also involved. But rather than those who know forest protection best, their Brazilian interlocutor is Bolsonaro’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, who has overseen the worst deforestation in more than a decade.
Salles is asking for a billion dollars every 12 months in return for which, he says, forest clearance would be reduced by 30-40%. Without the extra foreign cash, he says Brazil will not be able to commit to a reduction target.
There is also potential cannon fodder for Biden's political opponents:
Opening the hen-house door for the fox:Quote:
This is a risk for Biden, who is on the verge of doing what Trump never did: give cash to a Brazilian president who has eviscerated forest protection agencies, lethally mismanaged the Covid crisis, and is seen as a danger not only to Brazil, but the world.
Izabella Teixeira, the former Brazilian environment minister, said the US and the UK were poised to pay off a government that is holding the planet to ransom. “They have to offer money to Bolsonaro’s government so he doesn’t block the Cop meetings,” said Teixeira, who represented Brazil in several international conferences during the administrations of Dilma Rousseff.
In other words, give us your money, but don't tell us how we can spend it.Quote:
But Salles, who became environment minister in 2019, has no credibility with those who defend the forest. He has tried to monetise the region and promoted mining and agribusiness, and under his watch the rulebook for Amazon protection, which reduced deforestation by 80%, has been shelved, monitoring agencies have been eviscerated, 15,000 sq km of forest have been cleared, and Brazil has backtracked on its international commitment to cut carbon emissions.
Salles already has access to substantial international funds. About $500m from Norway and Germany sits idle in the Amazon Fund, which was frozen by the environment minister because he disliked the strict conditions on deforestation that came with it. This raises questions about what any new funds would be used for, and by whom.
An indication of just which way the wind blows on Brazil's intentions:Quote:
Time pressures could weaken resolve. Biden wants a success to announce at his climate summit later this month and the UK will be looking for progress at Cop26 in November. Environmentalists fear a rushed deal with an insincere negotiating partner could be worse than no agreement. Unless payments are tightly pegged to emissions-reduction results, they could be frittered away on dubious carbon credits, vague development plans, benefits to land-grabbers and a huge new greenwashing system for fossil-fuel companies.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-deforestation
It will be interesting to see if the environmental gangster gets what he wants...more money to continue the destruction of the Amazon....:shrug:Quote:
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions has never been a priority for the Brazilian government. Take its own climate fund, from which about $100,000 was channelled into sanitation measures rather than the mitigation of national carbon emissions. Of course, sanitation is essential to health and wellbeing in our cities, but it is far from a significant source of emissions. The government also slashed the budget of the Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), the department within the environment ministry responsible for monitoring deforestation. In the first half of 2019, £2.2m was allocated for inspections; last year, the figure was £700,000.
What the government is missing is not cash, but a commitment to the truth. It denied the existence of fires in the Amazon as the flames were burning. Brazilian news is saturated with scandals that show persistent government action to weaken environmental bodies, roll back legislation, and ignore international agreements. Two years ago, it dismissed the head of the INPE – the National Institute of Space Research – for the simple fact that the institution had compiled data on the rise of deforestation. Last week, it dismissed the head of the office of the federal police, who had led the largest investigation into the illegal extraction of wood in the history of the Amazon. It has replaced experienced civil servants with individuals without any forestry expertise in several departments, and it intends to effectively shut down ICMBio, Brazil’s foremost institution dedicated to the protection of natural reserves.
If it was another President of Brazil besides Salles it'd make great sense. As you've pointed out we couldn't trust him one bit to use the money to not just burn more forest.
There is actually a point to paying them to keep the forests undeveloped as for developing nations the economic incentive to exploit lucrative land versus a global benefit that is good for the climate but not the bottom line. Sorta like the endangered species throughout the world, it seems hard to justify to people in or on the edge of poverty to preserve animal X because we like them and their important to the broader ecosystem. The national park systems in Africa make those countries a good bit of money which offsets higher patrols to try and stop poachers. Something similar needs to be done for forests, reefs, etc.. Unfortunately doing it through the UN would be slow, inefficient, and undoubtedly corrupt. Direct nation to nation though is extremely uneven too though as the globe benefits while select countries may choose to pay or not pay.
I know a lot of people that are looking into the electric cars now just for practicality, no longer a 'statement' because the costs are finally near the same costs as the gas versions and the ranges are far enough for most consumers.Quote:
the more cost effective it becomes, the easier to transition.
I know once they have electric pickup trucks with a range of about 500 miles that aren't more than a few thousand dollars more than gas pickups I'll probably get one of those too.
Same with the electric rooftops, especially here in hawaii where we have some of the highest kw/hour costs in the nation. It's economical to go solar into the grid despite the high upfront cost so a lot of people have done that.
I actually don't disagree with that. The global impact of further decimation of the Amazon probably exceeds $1 billion a year. What I'm mostly concerned about is who that money is being given to...which is why I provided the second link showing just how unconcerned the current Brazilian regime is with climate change. It's a billion dollars wasted if Bolsonaro and Salles just continue to burn forest land without any repercussions...:shrug:Quote:
There is actually a point to paying them to keep the forests undeveloped as for developing nations the economic incentive to exploit lucrative land versus a global benefit that is good for the climate but not the bottom line.
And sorry Brazil...a 30-40% reduction in deforestation just doesn't cut it. For that kind of money, it'd better be double that amount....:smash:
This is precisely why Brazilian strongman Bolsonaro cannot be entrusted to do anything that remotely resembles contributing to climate change policy:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...e-talks-pledge
Can't believe a single word that falls out of his mouth....:rolleyes:Quote:
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has approved a 24% cut to the environment budget for 2021 from the previous year’s level, just one day after vowing to increase spending to fight deforestation.
Speaking on Thursday to the summit organised by US President Joe Biden, Bolsonaro pledged to double the budget for environmental enforcement and end illegal deforestation by 2030.
Bolsonaro vetoed a list of environmental budget provisions worth 240 million reais, including outlays for environmental enforcement.
A sad state of affairs (literally):
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...lican-governor
The future is cleaner energy, Wyoming, deal with it....:no:Quote:
A new state law has created a $1.2m fund to be used by Wyoming’s governor to take legal action against other states that opt to power themselves with clean energy such as solar and wind, in order to meet targets to tackle the climate crisis, rather than burn Wyoming’s coal.
“We have seen a spike in states trying to block Wyoming’s access to consumer markets to advance their political agenda,” said Jeremy Haroldson, a Republican state legislator who introduced the new law. Fellow Republicans previously proposed banning the closure of any coal plants in the state. Haroldson said phasing out coal would risk the sort of disastrous power blackouts suffered by Texas in February. “It is time we start truly caring about the future,” he said.
While the US constitution’s commerce clause prevents one state from banning goods and services based upon their state of origin, there is nothing to prevent them banning certain things, such as coal, as long as the measure is not targeted at one specific state.
With EV's taking the front and center in many countries push to reduce carbon emissions, there is a hidden caveat to producing EV's (and the electronics industry in general) that is not often mentioned...what to do with all those batteries and other electronic components when they've reached the end of their useful life. Given the mixed results for recycling waste products in other industries, the repurposing of all the rare earths and lithium used in EV manufacturing should be a topic at the top of the list for any country considering producing millions of these vehicles. It will also bring to the forefront disputes between countries as the search for rare earths and other minerals takes the the ocean bottoms (SeaQuest DSV anyone?):
https://www.theguardian.com/sustaina...s-transparency
An extensive summary on recycling done by CEWaste (use the public final report link):Quote:
Although rare earths are abundant in the earth's crust, they are difficult to find in commercially viable concentrations. Extracting individual elements from the host mineral's chemistry is a complex and energy-intensive process, involving strong acids and other hazardous chemicals. Radioactive materials such as uranium and thorium are often found alongside rare earth elements, and these can end up in the "tailings" – a toxic stew of waste products from the refinement process.
Japanese researchers claim to have discovered vast deposits of rare earth minerals in the seabed in international waters, east and west of Hawaii and east of Tahiti in French Polynesia. The high upfront costs of establishing a mine, and potentially long and complex approval processes, could prevent many of these deposits from being exploited in the near-term.
In Greenland, the government has overturned the country's 25-year ban on uranium and rare earth mining in the hope of boosting the country's cash-strapped economy. But there are concerns that the proposed mines will harm fragile ecosystems, and damage the traditional Inuit fishing and hunting trades. And several years on from China's rare earth export restrictions, which kick-started the hunt for alternative supply chains, smuggling and environmental damage is still an issue.
Recycle rates of rare earths from existing products, [which are] very low because of the expense and complexity involved, may also increase in future (Honda has already begun extracting more than 80% of its rare earth materials from nickel-metal hydride batteries).
https://cewaste.eu/wp-content/upload...lic-Raport.pdf
The report goes on to identify critical areas of ensuring the recycling of CRM's (Critical Raw Materials), and what needs to be done to accomplish this. The EU seems to be ahead of the curve in this respect.Quote:
Secure access to critical raw materials (CRMs) is crucial to sustain our high-tech lifestyle and secure the competitiveness of European firms. CRMs also play a big role in the defence and renewables industry. Europe remains too reliant on foreign supply and, therefore, its access to some raw materials remains uncertain. Even though recycling is one of the important means to mitigate the criticality of CRMs, recycling rates of most of them are close to zero. Recycling is not economically attractive for most CRMs, due to, on the one hand, huge capital required in the development of technologies and, on the other, low and volatile prices of CRMs.
The CEWASTE consortium believes that the responsibility of undertaking actions to increase recycling of CRMs lies with various actors in the value chain; it is a societal challenge. Considering this, the relevant authorities must make the recovery of CRMs economically viable.
CEWASTE did not develop the new voluntary scheme from scratch nor formally amend existing standards. The project focussed on developing the scheme based on the current developments in recovery technologies and on the existing normative landscape in the field of waste treatment and responsible sourcing of raw materials. It has also presented a clear roadmap for the large-scale roll-out of the scheme noting the wider policy, legislative and fiscal alterations that also need to be made to support the increased recovery of CRMs.
Volumes of Li-ion batteries in electrical (hybrid) vehicles have increased in the past years. Extending this trend to 2025 would mean that around 7,900 tonnes of Co will be generated from Li-ion batteries in electric ELVs, while 13,900 tonnes of Co will be contained in Li-ion batteries for newly registered electric vehicles.
Lack of financing prevents the recycling of CRMs even in cases where this would be technically feasible with acceptable additional effort at a reasonable cost-benefit balance. Currently, recycling of CRMs is not economically attractive for CRMs other than palladium and, to a certain degree, cobalt and antimony under the present economic framework conditions.
In addition, new traceability and sustainability requirements could be needed as well to ensure the sound collection and processing where the collection, transport, handling and treatment of KCE are related to specific health, environmental and safety risks that are not yet covered in the analysed normative requirements. Eliminating or at least mitigating the identified obstacles would reduce the efforts to recycle the CRMs from the KCE and thus reduce the cost. If EU member states and states outside the EU want CRMs to be recycled, it will be critical to establish a stable and reliable financing mechanism. Without such a financing mechanism, the recycling of CRMs from NdFeB-magnets, fluorescent powders, and in part from batteries, cannot be achieved.
This describes current and future outlooks of CRM's (view full report):
https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role...gy-transitions
"Let the mineral wars begin." (and it's already underway):Quote:
An energy system powered by clean energy technologies differs profoundly from one fuelled by traditional hydrocarbon resources. Solar photovoltaic (PV) plants, wind farms and electric vehicles (EVs) generally require more minerals to build than their fossil fuel-based counterparts. A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant. Since 2010 the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50% as the share of renewables in new investment has risen.
The shift to a clean energy system is set to drive a huge increase in the requirements for these minerals, meaning that the energy sector is emerging as a major force in mineral markets. Until the mid-2010s, for most minerals, the energy sector represented a small part of total demand. However, as energy transitions gather pace, clean energy technologies are becoming the fastest-growing segment of demand. In a scenario that meets the Paris Agreement goals (as in the IEA Sustainable Development Scenario [SDS]), their share of total demand rises significantly over the next two decades to over 40% for copper and rare earth elements, 60-70% for nickel and cobalt, and almost 90% for lithium. EVs and battery storage have already displaced consumer electronics to become the largest consumer of lithium and are set to take over from stainless steel as the largest end user of nickel by 2040.
[...] a concerted effort to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement (climate stabilisation at “well below 2°C global temperature rise”, as in the SDS) would mean a quadrupling of mineral requirements for clean energy technologies by 2040. An even faster transition, to hit net-zero globally by 2050, would require six times more mineral inputs in 2040 than today.
Today’s supply and investment plans are geared to a world of more gradual, insufficient action on climate change (the STEPS trajectory). They are not ready to support accelerated energy transitions. While there are a host of projects at varying stages of development, there are many vulnerabilities that may increase the possibility of market tightness and greater price volatility.
These risks to the reliability, affordability and sustainability of mineral supply are manageable, but they are real. How policy makers and companies respond will determine whether critical minerals are a vital enabler for clean energy transitions, or a bottleneck in the process.
https://www.euronews.com/2021/04/23/...-carbon-energy
A hopeful sign:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...climate-491104
That BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, back's candidates more in line with carbon emission reduction, is significant.Quote:
In the space of a few hours, Exxon Mobil Corp. was bested by an upstart shareholder seeking to shake up the company’s board. Chevron Corp. investors instructed the company to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to slash emissions by 45 percent. And while the oil industry was taking its hits, longtime ally Ford Motor Co. widened its distance from fossil fuels.
The rebukes signal that climate concerns, once confined to environmental activists and barely registering with some Washington lawmakers, have become mainstream thinking in C-suites and on Wall Street, analysts said. The visible effects of climate change, action by governments, and shifting consumer sentiment are transforming the world in which companies do business.
But then we get this from a supposedly environmentally friendly administration:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...t-trump-491132
"One step up, and two step's back":Quote:
The Willow project, consisting of five wells that collectively could produce up to 160,000 barrels of oil a day, would be one of the first major new oil projects in Alaska in years. The development would include a new gravel mine, airstrip, more than 570 miles of ice roads and nearly 320 miles of pipeline to the Alaskan landscape. The Justice Department, in a court filing with the U.S. District Court of Alaska, defended the Trump-era decision to allow the project against environmental advocacy groups' allegations that Interior had failed to adequately assess the project's environmental impacts.
The Biden administration defended a proposed ConocoPhillips oil development in Alaska on Wednesday, backing the project pushed by Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the centrist lawmaker the administration has wooed as a potential swing vote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkFQHScyti0
We need the oil.
Sadly, we burn it rather than the multitude of other uses to which those large hydrocarbon molecules may be put.
Like an addict needs their drugs, no matter how bad for them they are...:embarassed:Quote:
We need the oil.
.....I would dispute that the US "needs" oil....:inquisitive:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-stay-relevant
Something I'm looking forward to. I'm thoroughly disliking EVs because of their lack of sound & soul, so while we really need to switch our climate tactics, switching to hydrogen or biofuels or ethanol to me is the right compromise for those who want cool sounding cars without burning the house down.
A couple of brief discussions about the differences between fuel-cell and battery-driven vehicles. One declares victory for EV's (quite likely true), and the other a bit more optimistic about the future of PEV's:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmo...electric-cars/
I'd be extremely interested to see what ties Forbes has to the industries producing PEV's, and all the related technology. They don't even consider that advances in fuel-cell technology will occur, and that one of the looming problems of PEV's is the fact that they require 6 times the minerals to produce (particularly rare earth minerals), and that currently there is no system in place to recycle these minerals (see post #488).Quote:
But ten years later, it’s very clear that battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are dominating the shift towards more environmentally friendly transport instead. By the end of 2019, only 7,500 hydrogen cars had been sold around the world. But by the end of 2018, there were already over 5 million plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) globally, and sales have been accelerating considerably since then. The BEV segment within this has never been less than 55% and is now more like 75%. In the UK, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, BEVs were up to 4.3% of the overall car market year-on-year by May 2020, representing a 131.8% increase since 2019. The BEV is starting to challenge fossil fuel cars, and their fuel cell alternatives are getting nowhere.
And then there's this, concerning what lithium mining looks like in its' current state:
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/lithium-mining
It ain't pretty....:embarassed:
A more optimistic view on FCV's, that lays out the biggest differences between PEV's and FCV's:
https://youmatter.world/en/hydrogen-...ability-28156/
In its' current state, FCV's seemed destined for the commercial market...fleet vehicles, aircraft, and shipping, where lithium-ion power disadvantages like charging times and range, come into play to favor the fuel-cell.Quote:
Cars with hydrogen fuel cells instead of the typical lithium-ion batteries from electric cars offer an attractive value proposition that seems to get rid of the problem of the end of the lithium batteries life cycle. This is a plus as for now, at a time when there’s still some uncertainty about the future of these batteries (from cars, but also from solar panels, cellphones and others) once they no longer serve their main purpose. They’re hard to recycle and some projects are being developed to reuse them as back up generators in urban buildings like hospitals.
Some studies also show the hydrogen economy has the potential to decrease global CO2eq emissions between 0 and 27%. This potential can be met once 1) methane leakages from natural gas are relatively low, 2) methane cracking is employed to produce hydrogen, and 3) a hydrogen fuel cell is applied.
Post #488 is a starting point, at least as far as what resources go into PEV's and FCV's, and the different ways H2 is produced, and some of the problems associated with PEV's...:shrug:Quote:
I hardly know anything about these emerging technologies
You did rather take my words out of context you realize?Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
I'm not sure how, but I certainly have been known to be rather dense on occasion....:quiet:
Something I am very very excited about, and 100% looking forward to in the future - fake meat with cellular agriculture. If some of you know about Beyond Meat & Impossible Foods, cellular agriculture in fact replaces vegan proteins by using animal cells developed in a bio-reactor, creating the tissue necessary for chicken nuggets & other popular food staples.
https://logicmag.io/distribution/labriculture-now/
Quote:
But if chicken nuggets are emblematic of contemporary capitalism, then they are ripe for disruption. Perhaps their most promising challenger is a radically different sort of meat: edible tissue grown in vitro from animal stem cells, a process called cellular agriculture. The sales pitch for the technology is classic Silicon Valley: unseat an obsolete technology—in this case, animals—and do well by doing good.
Intensive animal agriculture, which produces nuggets and most of the other meat that Americans consume, keeps the price of meat artificially low by operating at huge economies of scale and shifting the costs of this production onto people, animals, and the planet. The industry deforests the land, releases hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases every year, creates terrible working conditions at slaughterhouses, and necessitates abhorrent animal treatment on farms, all while engaging in price fixing, lobbying for environmental and labor deregulation, and pushing for unconstitutional anti-whistleblower laws.
The problem is that people love eating meat, with global production and consumption growing steadily and little sign of a collective vegan epiphany on the horizon. This makes intensive animal agriculture a wicked problem: something so obviously detrimental, and yet so politically and socially entrenched, that it is unclear where reformers should even start. Cellular agriculture, however, seems to offer a potential socio-technological hack: it could eliminate much of the damage that system causes, without requiring consumers to sacrifice meat.
wasn't one of the problems with lab grown muscle the lack of resistance training to break and reform the tissue in response to linear exercise, such that it generates a texture we recognise as 'meat'?
i.e. the absence of this training process results in something that has all the delicious texture of a tumour, instead of the chicken fillet we were hoping for...
**imagines giant bio-vat factories with endless rows of gelatinous cubes of muscle being tirelessly stretched between two piston driven slabs**
Ever have salt-water taffy?
Just give me my all-in-one nutrient pastes, patties, purees, and potations already (gotta have variety).
There's plenty of that already available, including one with a rather... ominous name. Soylent. Plus many others getting into powder meal replacements, not just them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
I'll switch to Soylent if I ever need my colon removed.
I know exactly the meme to build with this, but I can't find the right materials.
This will have to do.
https://i.imgur.com/cDWhiGP.jpg
In an earlier post, I made reference to mineral wars, and to the early '90s TV series SeaQuest DSV. Well, here we go:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-un-ultimatum
Quote:
Deep-sea mining has been given the go-ahead to commence in two years, after the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru notified the UN body governing the nascent industry of plans to start mining. Triggering the so-called “two-year rule”, which some have called the nuclear option, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) now has two years to finalise regulations governing the controversial industry. If it is unable to do so, the ISA is required to allow mining contractors to begin work under whatever regulations are in place at the time.
Quote:
DeepGreen is looking to extract polymetallic nodules from the seabed. The nodules, which resemble potatoes and are thought to take millions of years to form, are rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt and rare earth metals, key components of batteries for electric vehicles. DeepGreen argues deep-sea mining is a less environmentally and socially damaging alternative to terrestrial mining, and is crucial for transitioning to a greener economy.
DeepGreen is in the process of merging with blank-cheque company Sustainable Opportunities Acquisition Corp (SOAC) to become The Metals Company. The Metals Company plans to list on the Nasdaq in the third quarter.
Imagine if that last highlighted phrase was used in a congressional hearing as part of a land-based, open-mine environmental impact statement...:rolleyes: People in the affected area (in this case an area the size of Romania) would be having a hizzy-fit...:flame:Quote:
But SOAC said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week it was not yet known whether mining the seabed would have less impact on biodiversity than mining for the same quantity of metals on land.
“We cannot predict ... whether the environment and biodiversity is impacted by our activities, and if so, how long the environment and biodiversity will take to recover,” it said.
So instead of SeaQuest's UEO (United Earth's Ocean Organization) we have the ISA (International Seabed Authority). A quick synopsis of the initial SeaQuest plot-line:
And instead of DSV's baddies like the Macronesian Alliance and Deon International, we get Deep Green, Sustainable Opportunities Acquisition Corp (SOAC), and the cryptic The Metals Company. Are you effing kidding me with those names??? As noted above, The Metals Company plans to list on Nasdaq sometime later this year....Quote:
The storyline begins in the year 2018, after mankind has exhausted almost all natural resources, except for the ones on the ocean floor. Many new colonies have been established there and it is the mission of the seaQuest and its crew to protect them from hostile nonaligned nations and to aid in mediating disputes as well as engage in undersea research[...]
So here we have an undersea mining company, with no idea of the environmental impact its' mining will have on deep sea biosystems, and with little to no regulatory systems in place, set to begin providing the world with all those precious rare and expensive minerals it needs for a "carbon zero" future by 2050.
The prescience of Rockne S. O'Bannon (DSV's creator), is uncanny...:thinking2:
Problem is volume as they all typically taste bad and it is about trying to tolerate as much as you can before you give up.Quote:
Originally Posted by edyzmedieval
Leave it to the Aussie's to come up with a discussion about climate change that even a grade school student can understand:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-...ange/100020944
By the 1980s, scientists (including those who worked for fossil fuel companies) had a pretty clear idea what was going on in the climate, and could start to measure increases in CO2 and increases in global temperatures. So we knew even then that one day we'd have to stop using fossil fuels.Quote:
In Australia we've been talking about climate change for over a century …
As decades go by and emissions rise, the politics has stayed the same. Each time it bubbles up we're told taking action will result in job losses and disruption to the Australian way of life, and we're better off waiting.
But strip away all the politics, and the maths tells a different story: reducing emissions now will buy us more time to get to zero, but inaction dramatically cuts the time we have to act. This is why the next five years are so important.
Quote:
Coal industry representatives [insert oil and gas representatives here in the US] have fought back strongly against any plans to cut greenhouse emissions from burning coal, saying it would be an expensive move which would undercut one of Australia's strongest export industries.
This opposition was accompanied by familiar framing: "Advocating a moderate and pragmatic response on global warming."
Those reasonable sounding words, repeated by politicians and fossil fuel companies year after year, make it sound like we're gradually solving the problem. But again, strip away the politics, and see what is happening to emissions globally.
Quote:
So this is where we are now. We're at a point where the effects of climate change [...] can no longer be ignored, and globally the emissions tap has gone from dripping, to flowing, to full bore. The only thing that hasn't changed is the political message.
That century the world had to get on top of this problem has been squandered in a few short decades.
I highly recommend reading the Deloitte Access Economics report that blows the doors off the argument by the energy industry that "green energy" will cost thousands of jobs, and be economically ruinous:Quote:
We can't just keep emitting until 2050 and be fine; that date only works if we all start reducing emissions now. If we spend the next five years not reducing emissions, that gives us just 17 years to make that transition.
If you live in a part of Australia that's reliant on fossil fuel jobs, it is easy to see the appeal of the message "we can't turn things off tomorrow". But if we keep following that thinking, tomorrow won't be in 2050 — it will be just around the corner.
https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/page...te-growth.html
Quote:
What this report reveals is a fundamental flaw in how we are viewing the debate on climate change; we are all missing the point. We view the costs of action against an economic future where the basic assumption is that the economy will keep growing with unconstrained emissions. It is no wonder, then, that any debate about climate change turns up a large cost of action with scant benefits from change.
The economic baseline that we are conducting this debate against is fundamentally flawed. In its place, this report develops a baseline where unconstrained emissions are not consistent with unconstrained growth.
Given the fact that in Eastern Europe, today was marked in some places by record breaking heat... we need to act fast. And the problem is that individual steps, like recycling, going biking instead of a car and installing solar panels, will not be enough. Political action is required.
Romania had 41 degrees today, apparently Bulgaria and Greece experienced 43. And Turkey is literally burning.
I think this article link, which I first posted back in February, is worth a second look:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...istory/617793/
Quote:
Today, atmospheric CO2 sits at 410 parts per million, a higher level than at any point in more than 3 million years. And humans are injecting more CO2 into the atmosphere at one of the fastest rates ever. When hucksters tell you that the climate is always changing, they’re right, but that’s not the good news they think it is. “The climate system is an angry beast,” the late Columbia climate scientist Wally Broecker was fond of saying, “and we are poking it with sticks.”
The beast has only just begun to snarl. All of recorded human history—at only a few thousand years, a mere eyeblink in geologic time—has played out in perhaps the most stable climate window of the past 650,000 years. We have been shielded from the climate’s violence by our short civilizational memory, and our remarkably good fortune. But humanity’s ongoing chemistry experiment on our planet could push the climate well beyond those slim historical parameters, into a state it hasn’t seen in tens of millions of years, a world for which Homo sapiens did not evolve.
Quote:
When there’s been as much carbon dioxide in the air as there already is today—not to mention how much there’s likely to be in 50 or 100 years—the world has been much, much warmer, with seas 70 feet higher than they are today. Why? The planet today is not yet in equilibrium with the warped atmosphere that industrial civilization has so recently created. If CO2 stays at its current levels, much less steadily increases, it will take centuries—even millennia—for the planet to fully find its new footing. The transition will be punishing in the near term and the long term, and when it’s over, Earth will look far different from the one that nursed humanity. This is the grim lesson of paleoclimatology: The planet seems to respond far more aggressively to small provocations than it’s been projected to by many of our models.
The iconic quote from this well-written article is "Life has speed limits".Quote:
We’re more than 3 million years in the past now, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at 400 parts per million, a level the planet will not again see until September 2016. This world is 3 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than ours, and the sea level is up to 80 feet higher. When we arrive in the middle of the Pliocene, just over 3 million years ago, CO2 levels are high enough that we’ve escaped the cycle of ice ages and warm interglacials altogether. We are now outside the evolutionary envelope of our modern world, sculpted as it was by the temperamental northern ice sheets and deep freezes of the Pleistocene. But as to atmospheric carbon dioxide, 3 million years is how far back we have to go to arrive at an analogue for 2021.
And this warning:
[edit]Quote:
Humans are currently injecting CO2 into the air 10 times faster than even during the most extreme periods within the age of mammals. And you don’t need the planet to get as hot as it was in the early Eocene to catastrophically acidify the oceans. Acidification is all about the rate of CO2 emissions, and we are off the charts. Ocean acidification could reach the same level it did 56 million years ago by later this century, and then keep going.
This sauna of our early mammalian ancestors represents something close to the worst possible scenario for future warming (although some studies claim that humans, under truly nihilistic emissions scenarios, could make the planet even warmer). The good news is the inertia of the Earth’s climate system is such that we still have time to rapidly reverse course, heading off an encore of this world, or that of the Miocene, or even the Pliocene, in the coming decades. All it will require is instantaneously halting the super-eruption of CO2 disgorged into the atmosphere that began with the Industrial Revolution.
We know how to do this, and we cannot underplay the urgency. The fact is that none of these ancient periods is actually an apt analogue for the future if things go wrong. It took millions of years to produce the climates of the Miocene or the Eocene, and the rate of change right now is almost unprecedented in the history of animal life.
@Monty
I noticed your post just after mine back in February when I first linked the Atlantic article:
So in which direction do you think consensus modeling has taken us?Quote:
From the little reading on climate I've done over the past year, I've gleaned that consensus modeling has downgraded both the worst-case scenarios and the best-case scenarios. Thoughts?
IIRC the old target of +1.5 °C is considered unattainable, with the new hope being 2.5 °C, while the outer envelope of 5 °C is deprecated because it assumes no decarbonization and adaptation by countries, but you would probably be more diligent in tracking down the reports than I am.
Artisanal handcrafted cultured soylent green.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
https://youtu.be/XpChfjSUFMo?t=72
I think even that is unlikely given the trillions still being poured into fossil fuels usage and development...:shrug:Quote:
...with the new hope being 2.5 °C...
@spmetla
I have to admit that this has slipped under my climate change radar:
https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/06/ex...aii-this-year/
Climate change for Hawaii is often viewed in terms of sea level rise. But fire (outside of volcanic activity) looks to certainly be a problem. In terms of acreage affected, Hawaii leads the nation...even worse than the Western states, which has all the media coverage:
https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/08/ha...y-other-state/
And it appears that land management, or lack thereof, is as responsible as climate change:Quote:
The mean annual area burned in Hawaii from 2005 to 2011 accounted for 0.48 % of Hawaii’s total land area, which was greater than the proportion of land area burned across the entire U.S. mainland (0.30%), and even across the 12 states in the fire-prone western U.S. (0.46 %) over this same time period [...]
And why, in god's creation, are folks intentionally starting fires?Quote:
“Our real problem is a fuels problem,” Walker said. “We have all this open grassland that we’re not managing. And if we don’t manage them, these fires are going to continue.”
Thoughts?Quote:
Humans are almost entirely to blame for wildfires in Hawaii, starting many of the fires. But unlike some global warming challenges, experts said this one is solvable at the local level. Lightning rarely sparks a blaze in the islands, and usually just on the Big Island. But arson and unintentionally set fires are rampant, particularly on the west side of Oahu.
Climate change is definitely here and part of the conversation, sea level rise isn't too much a concern outside those that are immediately near the shore and the resorts that have typically built right on the shore (especially Waikiki area as that was all marshland a century ago too).
Where I live in Kona, the last two years have been the wettest and most overcast in memory which has changed the harvest times and quantities of coffee and other crops. The other parts of the islands are seeing increased droughts which has led to the wildfires.
Land management is certainly the main problem. Where the fires are at used to be lightely forested 200 years ago, unfortunately the hawaiian chiefs chopped down those forests to sell the sandlewood which was traded by Americans and Brits to China and the rest turned into canoes, firewood, etc... The introduction of cattle, sheep, and goats by Vancouver led to the highland forests that had been chopped down turn into grassland as the livestock ate all the tree starts.
On Oahu, the once food growing (rice and taro) productive valleys on the Honolulu (southern) side of the island have been completely developed so suburbia is widespread with the watersheds, streams and so on all built over making it vulnerable to occasional flooding. The west side of the Oahu used to be all sugarcane fields up to the 1980s but is now turning into suburbia too.
I'm curious at what point the population on Oahu will exceed the ability for the watertable to produce drinking water.
As for the fire starting, there are a lot of homeless in Hawaii that do start fires in areas that they squat in revenge against other homeless and occasional local residents but primarily through carelessness in cooking and smoking. The cause of the wildfires last week are possibly from a chainsaw without a spark arrester as the paniolos (cowboys) do cut up some of the existing wood to make posts for fence repairs. Idiots throwing cigarettes is possible another culprit and there are campers that don't understand fire safety too, not to mention hunters though I don't see how they'd start a fire unless they are taking shots in the prone as opposed to kneeling which you need to do to see over the grass up there.
Hawaii is terrible in long range planning. That's why my island uses oil to make electricity instead of increased windmills or solar in our lava field deserts or more use of the Puna geothermal power plant. Our roads and highways are all built for the amount of people from twenty years ago when the projects start not to mention the laughable disaster that is the Honolulu elevated rail project. Unfortunately in this state the only way to make effect change quickly is when private industry leads which the anti-business attitudes in Hawaii (residents and govt policies) hinder leaving us with tourism and the military as our major industries, a big difference from 50 years ago when we exported sugar and pineapple throughout the world. Hell, even putting another telescope on Mauna Kea (the 30 meter telescope or TMT) is probably not going to happen due to local protests.
Properly managing land and having a long term plan to deal with climate change is beyond the capability of our short sighted and entrenched politicians and bureaucrats.
Gotta say, Spmetla, that any geo-active island like Iceland that isn't using the bejeebers out of geothermal is missing the boat.
https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/stat...22302442889219Quote:
Very apocalyptic video of people in Greece being evacuated from the forest fires by boat:
@Crandar
Though typically less of a priority than hundreds of millions of eventual refugees, relevant to the heritage of this forum is the loss of historical and cultural patrimony to climate and oceanic disruption.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
https://i.imgur.com/j1A37fT.jpg
Quote:
Fearful of a French invasion after breaking with Rome, Henry VIII erected a line of massive coastal forts along the English Channel, and one of the most imposing is called Hurst Castle. It has stood on its sandy spit since 1544, through the Napoleonic Wars and World War II. Its garrison protected the Allied forces on D-Day.
But earlier this year, a large section of the castle — a wing constructed in the mid-19th century by the best military engineers in the world — tumbled into the fast currents of the Solent strait.
Hurst Castle has done its duty, but it is hard to fight the sea — specifically, its caretakers say, the steadily rising waters and more intense winter storms of a warming world.
All nations stand to lose cultural monuments to climate change, including the United States. But Britain is especially vulnerable. The country is stuffed to the attic with heritage properties.
Whereas animals might migrate, seeking more hospitable habitats, a Norman church, Roman villa or neolithic stone circle cannot move. They’re stuck where they are, built for preindustrial climates, centuries ago.
Britain’s preservationists find themselves trying, sometimes struggling, “to protect the past for the future.” They know not everything can or will be saved. There will be triage — and loss.
Didn't Hawaii enact like the most aggressive (relatively) carbon neutral mandate in the country? How do they plan to execute it with current 80+% petroleum reliance? NYC, for example, is banning natural gas in new construction, though on a long timetable - 2030 - along with investments in electrification and renewable energy.Quote:
Originally Posted by spmetla
Quote:
Hawaii was the first state to set a deadline for generating 100% of its electricity from renewable energy sources, which is required to be achieved by 2045.
Despite being among the five states with the lowest total energy consumption, Hawaii uses about 11 times more energy than it produces. More than four-fifths of Hawaii's energy consumption is petroleum, making it the most petroleum-dependent state.
[...]
Hawaii has the highest average electricity retail price of any state, in part because it relies on petroleum for more than 60% of its electricity generation.
You mean like this:Quote:
Gotta say, Spmetla, that any geo-active island like Iceland that isn't using the bejeebers out of geothermal is missing the boat.
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ro-in-pictures
Geothermal is getting the short end of the stick, IMHO, and some of these numbers point that up:
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/fea...ing-countries/
While the US leads the world in kWh produced, it's a far, far cry from the potential:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power
SEVERAL MILLENNIA.:jawdrop:Quote:
Estimates of the electricity generating potential of geothermal energy vary from 35 to 2000 GW depending on the scale of investments. This does not include non-electric heat recovered by co-generation, geothermal heat pumps and other direct use. A 2006 report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that included the potential of enhanced geothermal systems estimated that investing US$1 billion in research and development over 15 years would allow the creation of 100 GW of electrical generating capacity by 2050 in the United States alone. The MIT report estimated that over 200×109 TJ (200 ZJ; 5.6×107 TWh) would be extractable, with the potential to increase this to over 2,000 ZJ with technology improvements – sufficient to provide all the world's present energy needs for several millennia.
We are certainly missing the boat, though for us Geothermal would only be relevant to my island, we have seven separate populated islands and mine is the only one with active volcanoes.Quote:
Gotta say, Spmetla, that any geo-active island like Iceland that isn't using the bejeebers out of geothermal is missing the boat
The problem with the solar and wind is land is so expensive here that no one wants solar and wind farms ruining THEIR views. Rooftop solar would seem a solution but the electrical companies have put limits on how many can be put in per county as they haven't built the facilities to store energy so they really only use the solar created to offset some of the daytime power spikes.
They enacted a deadline without a plan, the planners in this state are about as effective as people making weight loss goals for the new year.Quote:
Didn't Hawaii enact like the most aggressive (relatively) carbon neutral mandate in the country? How do they plan to execute it with current 80+% petroleum reliance? NYC, for example, is banning natural gas in new construction, though on a long timetable - 2030 - along with investments in electrification and renewable energy.
Geothermal is amazing in its potential where ever it is possible. Unfortunately a lot of the people that want a green world and no pollution in Hawaii tend to be of the ignorant type that think geothermal CAUSES volcanic eruptions. Then there's the hawaiian cultural people that something think its against their new interpretation of past hawaiian practices to have geothermal tapping the power of the Goddess Pele.Quote:
Geothermal is getting the short end of the stick, IMHO, and some of these numbers point that up:
There's just too much incompetency and ignorance. My island could be energy independent and grow a lot of its own food as well as export food and be a scientific capital for astronomy, geology, and marine science. Instead our politicians are flirting with the idea of just legalizing gambling or weed for other sources of easy tax revenue.
I think everyone (well at least government leaders) on The Big Island should be offered a week vacation in Iceland. When folks see what their "distant cousins" are doing to reduce emissions, grow most of their own food year round, and produce income from non-traditional sources (the EGF produced from barley @ $10,000 per gram would make growing pot obsolete), they might return with a different perspective on what's possible on their home turf.Quote:
My island could be energy independent and grow a lot of its own food as well as export food and be a scientific capital for astronomy, geology, and marine science. Instead our politicians are flirting with the idea of just legalizing gambling or weed for other sources of easy tax revenue.
But then again, maybe not...:shrug:
A case of "Not what I say, but what I do", or simply bowing to the reality that the biggest pollution on the planet just refuses to kick it's addiction to fossil fuels:
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ts-suggest-not
And yet:Quote:
Some signs from Biden the candidate last year were encouraging. His promise to ban new drilling and fracking on federal lands – an action that would be a simple, decisive first step in curtailing new fossil fuel extraction – was unequivocal: “No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”
And Green Energy proposals:Quote:
Yet since taking office, Biden’s interior department has approved more than 2,000 new permits for drilling and fracking on federal land. In May, it appealed a federal court order that had paused fracking in Wayne national forest. In June, it advanced a proposal for new oil and gas exploration at Dinosaur national monument – a proposal the Trump administration had actually suspended under immense pressure from activists.
There are other similar disappointments – from the shocking approval of Trump’s plan to open Alaska’s North Slope to new oil drilling to the approval of the infamous Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. At precisely the moment when we must be forcefully rejecting new drilling, fracking and pipeline infrastructure, Biden isn’t just tolerating fossil fuels – he’s uplifting them.
However, the Reconciliation Bill's future is sketchy, at best.Quote:
The Biden White House yanked much of its modest climate agenda from the bipartisan infrastructure package that just passed the Senate. Instead the White House proposes that a larger, separate spending package will include things like a national “clean energy payment program” that advocates claim will facilitate a speedy transition to renewables – apparently without any need for clear, enforceable emissions regulations. Climate activists should be skeptical; some of these proposals have even counted fracked gas power plants as a clean energy source.
A play-by-play of the Biden Administration rhetoric since taking office:
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/20...21_second-hero
Some notable quotes:
If the largest CO2 emitter on the planet has officials coming out with these kinds of questionable behavior, is it any wonder that keeping global warming under 2 degrees C is just a pipe dream?Quote:
During a Senate confirmation hearing, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm argued that fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere: “If we are going to get to net carbon zero emissions by 2050, we cannot do it without coal, oil, and gas being part of the mix.”
When announcing his executive order on public lands drilling, Biden declared: “Let me be clear, and I know this always comes up: We’re not going to ban fracking.”
In written answers submitted as part of her Senate confirmation hearings, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm promotes the export of fracked gas as a clean energy solution: “I believe U.S. LNG exports can have an important role to play in reducing international consumption of fuels that have greater contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.”
Climate envoy John Kerry tells a finance group: “No government is going to solve this problem…The solutions are going to come from the private sector.” He added: “What the government needs to do is create a framework within which the private sector can do what it does best, which is allocate capital and innovate.” Kerry was also quoted as saying, “I think we’re on the cusp of a massive transformation… And ultimately, the market is going to make the decisions, not the government.”
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was a surprise guest at an oil industry conference, where she reassured the audience: “We want to be a partner. And first, let me be clear, in our position as a global supplier of crude oil and natural gas and other forms of energy, that traditional fossil energy is going to remain important, even as we work to reduce carbon emissions.”
According to statistics from the Bureau of Land Management, from the start of February to the end of April, the administration approved 1,179 drilling permits on federal lands, not far from the four-year high of nearly 1,400 approved over a similar three-month period at the end of Trump’s term.
The Washington Examiner reports that Andrew Light — Biden’s nominee to be the deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at the Energy Department — wants to see more fracked gas exports: “My job in this role is to make sure U.S. gas is competitive around the world…Russia has the dirtiest source of gas right now. We’ve got to make sure ours is cleaner and that ours fill those markets around the world. That’s what I intend to do.”
Reporting from a G7 summit focused on climate action, Politico reports that the Biden administration helped to block more forceful action on phasing out coal: “The Biden administration — fixated on cultivating the Democrats’ razor-thin Senate majority and the coal mining sympathies of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin — was wary of any language specifically clamping down on coal.”
At a House committee hearing, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told lawmakers: “I don’t think there is a plan right now for a permanent ban” on oil and gas drilling on public lands. Those comments directly contradict Biden’s repeated promises to ban fracking on public lands. Haaland added that “gas and oil production will continue well into the future.”
The Associated Press reports that “approvals for companies to drill for oil and gas on U.S. public lands are on pace this year to reach their highest level since George W. Bush was president.” The Interior Department approved about 2,500 permits to drill on public and tribal lands in the first six months of the year — more than 2,100 drilling approvals since Biden took office on Jan. 20.
More on another campaign promise broken:
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/13/10155...provals-are-up
Well, on terms of space, it must be one of the worst, if not the worst, disasters. Very few casualties, at least, as only two died (a civilian and a volunteer firefighter). The man responsible for handling the crisis was pretty aggressive on his public speech and pretty much asked the society to apologise for disapproving of how he handled the crisis. As for the minister, he described himself as a hero, both fighting the fires off with a hose and managing the response. Both a firefighter and a strategist (his words)!Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
This trend bears watching:
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...s-for-30-years
Back in December of last year, the Carbon Brief (a climate think-tank) published this report:Quote:
Germany is forecast to record its biggest rise in greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 this year as the economy rebounds from the pandemic-related downturn, according to a report by an environmental thinktank.
It also shows a significant increase in consumption of fossil fuels across the building, industrial and transport sectors. If confirmed, the German government will be required by law to introduce urgent measures to reduce those sectoral emissions.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-c...ssions-in-2020
In it, the authors made this statement:
They went on to say this:Quote:
The peak of the decrease in emissions this year [2020] occurred in the first half of April, the researchers say in a briefing document. This was when lockdown measures in response to Covid-19 were at their most comprehensive – particularly in Europe and the US, they note. This year has also seen the first clear fall in global emissions since a 1.3% drop in 2009 – visible in the chart below – which was driven by the global financial crisis that started in 2008.
Quote:
That crisis was followed by a “huge rebound” in emissions in the early 2010s, explained Peters. Global emissions subsequently plateaued between 2014 and 2016, he said, which started to get scientists “a little bit excited that maybe emissions were peaking”. However, emissions then “jumped up again” in 2017 and 2018 before levelling out in 2019.
Fossil fuels are readily available now, and still at reasonable prices. So the logical conclusion is that countries will take the least painful way to get their economies back on track by using the energy sources they've always used---fossil fuels. Germany is the first EU nation with such data. What the other large emitters do remains to be seen, especially here in the US, the world's biggest emitter.Quote:
However, the rebound in emissions seen in the aftermath of previous global crises suggests that the way countries stimulate their economies after Covid-19 lockdowns will play a key role in future emissions.
Although late to the party, at least there is some discussion finally happening in the US concerning recycling lithium ion batteries and other materials from EV's:
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...appens-to-them
Quote:
A tsunami of electric vehicles is expected in rich countries, as car companies and governments pledge to ramp up their numbers – there are predicted be 145m on the roads by 2030. But while electric vehicles can play an important role in reducing emissions, they also contain a potential environmental timebomb: their batteries.
By one estimate, more than 12m tons of lithium-ion batteries are expected to retire between now and 2030.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into recycling startups and research centers to figure out how to disassemble dead batteries and extract valuable metals at scale.
There is big momentum behind lithium-ion battery recycling. In its impact report, published in August, Tesla announced that it had started building recycling capabilities at its Gigafactory in Nevada to process waste batteries.
Nearby Redwood Materials, founded by the former Tesla chief technology officer JB Straubel, which operates out of Carson City, Nevada, raised more than $700m in July and plans to expand operations. The factory takes in dead batteries, extracts valuable materials such as copper and cobalt, then sends the refined metals back into the battery supply chain.
Legislation could help. While the US has yet to implement federal policies mandating lithium-ion battery recycling, the EU and China already require battery manufacturers to pay for setting up collection and recycling systems. These funds could help subsidize formal recyclers to make them more competitive, Pennington said.
I'm not a big fan of EV's, but if this recent innovation, combined with fuel-cell technology can reduce emissions from rail transport, then that's a step in the right direction, IMHO:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...port-emissions
Quote:
The new train, known as the FLXdrive battery-electric locomotive, underwent successful trials in California earlier this year where it was found to have cut fuel consumption by 11%, which meant reducing the amount of diesel used by 6,200 gallons. Wabtec said that the next iteration of the locomotive, to be rolled out within two years, will be able to cut the consumption of diesel, the fossil fuel traditionally used in freight rail, by nearly a third.
Quote:
The company also said emissions will be entirely eliminated through the development of accompanying hydrogen fuel cells. If the technology is used worldwide, Wabtec estimates planet-heating emissions could be cut by 300m tons a year, with nearly half of those saved emissions occurring in the US.
That last part about using a train's own kinetic energy to recharge batteries is important, as currently many or most recharge stations are powered by fossil fuels, negating the benefits of EV's in the first place.Quote:
Wabtec is betting the FLXdrive will change this dynamic. Housed in a traditional locomotive body, the new battery system drives the axles of the train and uses the kinetic energy of the train’s braking to recharge, meaning the batteries should never run out. The newest version will be a 7-megawatt battery locomotive, which is “100 times the power and energy within a Tesla – it’s dramatically more powerful”, said Eric Gebhardt, Wabtec’s chief technology officer.
Nice. Despite our rail system's limitations, we move a huge amount of goods that way. I was never a fan of the hydrogen cells for cars thing, but this seems like a great usage.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
Fuel cells in general, or just for use in cars?Quote:
I was never a fan of the hydrogen cells for cars thing
Private auto usage is what I am leery of. They work well for fleet vehicles and heavier applications. I will admit that my view of this is also colored by my appreciation for the skills of the typical USA motorist.Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
:laugh4:Quote:
I will admit that my view of this is also colored by my appreciation for the skills of the typical USA motorist
Actually, to date, the biggest danger is explosions of plants producing the H2, rather than the vehicles themselves. I don't particularly care for EV's much, not because of the cars themselves, but because of the glut of lithium and the 17 other rare-earth minerals that's needed to produce them. We've raped the land surface plenty to get these, but in order to feed the beast (so-to-speak) countries are going after deep-sea deposits. There is little to no regulations about how this mining will occur, and you know what that means...a SeaQuest DSV situation come to life.
The EU is ahead of the curve, somewhat, when it comes to recycling the minerals for all the planned EV's, but here in the US it's just talk, for the moment. I'm not holding my breath on that one as I remember how long it took to get lead-acid batteries into the recycle bin, but god only knows how many ended up in landfills or out in the back yard junk pile...:rolleyes:
This is a pretty balanced discussion of the pro's and con's of BEV's vs FCV's:
https://youmatter.world/en/hydrogen-...ability-28156/
I know you folks probably think I keep crying Wolf! on this topic, but none-the-less, world governments better wake the hell up before it's too late or we really will see seaQuest DSV come to life (somewhere in the ethos, Roy Scheider is smiling):
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...e-the-deep-sea
Quote:
A short bureaucratic note from a brutally degraded microstate in the South Pacific to a little-known institution in the Caribbean is about to change the world. Few people are aware of its potential consequences, but the impacts are certain to be far-reaching. The only question is whether that change will be to the detriment of the global environment or the benefit of international governance.
In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica of its intention to start mining the seabed in two years’ time via a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, The Metals Company (TMC, until recently known as DeepGreen). Innocuous as it sounds, this note was a starting gun for a resource race on the planet’s last vast frontier: the abyssal plains that stretch between continental shelves deep below the oceans.
And here's the crux of the matter:Quote:
The risks are enormous. Oversight is almost impossible. Regulators admit humanity knows more about deep space than the deep ocean. The technology is unproven. Scientists are not even sure what lives in those profound ecosystems. State governments have yet to agree on a rulebook on how deep oceans can be exploited. No national ballot has ever included a vote on excavating the seabed.
“This is now a test of governments who claim to want to protect the oceans,” she said. “They simply cannot allow these reckless companies to rush headlong into a race to the bottom, where little-known ecosystems will be ploughed up for profit, and the risks and liabilities will be pushed on to small island nations. We need an urgent deep-sea mining moratorium to protect the oceans.”
So net-zero emissions is going to be the back pressure excuse to fuck up the world's deep-sea eco-systems, which we have little to no knowledge of, all in the name of "Green Energy".Quote:
Mining companies also insist on urgency – to start exploration. They say the minerals – copper, cobalt, nickel and magnesium – are essential for a green transition. If the world wants to decarbonise and reach net-zero emissions by 2050, they say we must start extracting the resources for car batteries and wind turbines soon. They already have exploration permits for an expanse of international seabed as large as France and Germany combined, an area that is likely to expand rapidly. All they need now is a set of internationally agreed operating rules. The rulebook is being drawn up by the ISA, set up in 1994 by the United Nations to oversee sustainable seabed exploration for the benefit of all humanity. But progress is slower than mining companies and their investors would like.
So we might see a return of the "Robber Baron" era of the 1870's, except that this time oversight will be extremely difficult. News agencies can't exactly send investigative reporters a mile or two beneath the ocean surface to film what's happening.Quote:
History does not offer much encouragement to the denizens of the deep that the issue will be resolved in their favour. In modern times, particularly the great post-second world war acceleration of the past 70 years, more has probably been gouged from the Earth than in all of previous human history combined.
The materials for a built and manufactured environment are extracted at the expense of natural beauty, resilience and stability. For most of human history, this was considered a fair trade-off. The costs – cleared forests, scarred landscapes, polluted water, air filled with dust, carcinogens and greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere – were either unknown or deemed small compared with the gains. They rarely appeared on corporate or national balance sheets. Miners extracted oil, gas, coal, iron, gold, copper, lithium and other minerals, while leaving other species, remote communities and future generations to pay the price.
Stating the obvious:
And who is the ISA (International Seabed Authority)?Quote:
Matthew Gianni, co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, said: “This is all about money – money for DeepGreen [TMC] and its shareholders and money for Nauru – and the fear that if DeepGreen doesn’t get a licence soon, investors will walk away from the company and both DeepGreen and Nauru will lose out on any revenue.” He said the case showed the need to shake up international governance. “The ISA’s decision-making process is seriously flawed and needs to be fixed.”
https://www.isa.org.jm/about-isa
But, as usual, corruption abounds:
That's like putting the fox in charge of overseeing the hen house...:rolleyes:Quote:
In theory, every country in the world is involved in the ISA’s decision-making. In practice, power lies with a small group of experts that is weighted in favour of mining. There is no specialist environmental or science assessment group to vet applications for new contracts. Instead, new contracts are initially made by the ISA’s Legal and Technical Commission (LTC), which comprises just 30 members. Their decisions can only be overturned by a super-majority of two thirds of the full council, which comprises 36 states.
And, of course, shady deals already abound:Quote:
The commission has a 100% record of approving exploration applications, for which ISA charges a $500,000 (£365,000) processing fee. Membership of the LTC is skewed towards extraction rather than environmental oversight – a fifth of the members work directly for contractors with deep-sea mining projects. They include Nobuyuki Okamoto, who established Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, which has started its own seafloor exploration, and Carsten Rühlemann, who works for Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, which holds exploration contracts in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Many others have a background in mining or oil and gas exploration. Among them are the chair of the commission, Harald Brekke, who is a senior geologist at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate; Pakistan’s representative, Khalid Mehmood Awan, who has worked for offshore oil and gas companies; and an Australian geologist, Mark Alcock, who is listed as working previously in surveying for petroleum and minerals exploration. By comparison, only three members are obviously focused on marine ecosystems, such as Gordon Lindsay Paterson, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
Look at the opening picture (in the article linked) of what typical deep-sea mining equipment looks like. Does that look like any of the companies currently involved in deep-sea mineral extraction gives a shit about environmental consequences? For that matter, has any mining company ever conducted business with the environment in mind?Quote:
It is not just small island states that are complicit. Seabed resources are supposed to benefit all of humanity and promote sustainable development, but just three companies from wealthy nations have a hand in eight of the 10 contracts to explore for minerals in the Pacific’s Clarion-Clipperton zone that have been awarded since 2010: the Canadian-registered TMC (formerly DeepGreen), the Belgian corporation Dredging Environmental and Marine Engineering (DEME), and UK Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of the US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin.
The role of these companies is opaque. None of the parent companies are included by the ISA in its list of contractors. A common practice is to operate through subsidiaries or by taking shares in partners in small island states, often in conjunction with national governments. This leads to concerns about accountability in the event of an accident: the subsidiaries are often small, which could leave poor nations with huge liabilities.
Will McCallum, head of oceans at Greenpeace UK:
To date, the earth's oceans have mitigated global warming by absorbing nearly 90% of the excess heat caused by CO2 and other emitted gases since the 1870's. And noone has ANY idea how any of this proposed deep-sea mining will impact the earth's oceans ability to continue as a heat sink for our environmental irresponsibility. So here we are, about to gleefully run through the lush green meadow of net-zero carbon emissions, only to fall into the quicksands of exploitation and greed once again.Quote:
“Any claim of not being environmentally damaging is meaningless, as we have no idea now what that environment is.” “We have never entered a frontier and not fucked it up more.”
Quote:
Today’s technology has moved on, but scientists and conservationists doubt that it is ready and the environmental risks are fully understood. They would like more time. Nauru and TMC have given them less. The countdown clock now has 21 months left, and counting.
Conceivably big news from China; ripe for a deep dive:
One year ago Xi declared a commitment to bring China to carbon neutrality by 2060, seemingly an improvement on previous goals. The news now is, he promises a precipitous end to Chinese investment in coal abroad.
Part of it may be that coal is far from the wave of the future it used to be 200 years ago.Quote:
Despite the country’s plans to become carbon neutral by 2060, its domestic coal production has nearly tripled since 2001. By contrast, the amount of coal produced in the United States and Europe has roughly halved over this time. China accounted for more than half of the 7.7 billion tonnes of coal produced globally in 2020, dwarfing the contributions of the next biggest producers (see ‘World’s biggest coal producers’).
[I can't get the chart on "World's Biggest Coal Producers, 2001-2020, to display, nor the other charts in the piece. Can anyone else?]
But China also finances the construction of coal-fired power plants in many other countries, to help Chinese energy businesses profit from overseas markets. Overall, China finances enough coal power abroad to produce 42 gigawatts of electricity — enough to power at least 30 million homes.
Most of this money flows to Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mongolia and Indonesia, but many African countries and some European nations also receive significant amounts (see ‘Coal-power financiers and recipients’).
China commissioned 38.4 GW of new coal plants last year, 76% of the global total of new coal-fired power plants, according to the non-profit organization Global Energy Monitor. Experts say that halting the financing of these coal-power projects is a good start, but add that the emissions they produce are dwarfed by those generated by the 1,000 GW of coal-power that China generates domestically. This is more than four times the capacity of either India or the United States, which are the next biggest generators of coal power.
[...]
Leaders of the G7 group of advanced economies — consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States [Ed. and South Korea apparently] — agreed in May to halt the international financing of coal projects.
Quote:
Between 2014 and 2020, about $160 billion of Chinese-backed coal-fired power plants were planned or announced outside the country, according to the Green Belt and Road Initiative Center, which conducts research around China’s expansive infrastructure building push.
An analysis by the climate think tank E3G found that China commissioned 76 percent of the world’s coal in 2020, up from 64 percent in 2019.
But a decline in demand has dampened Chinese enthusiasm, as countries recognize the costs of continuing to invest in dirty energy. In some cases, the loans have gone to countries that don’t need them, and that’s led to the canceling of proposed plants.
Of the 52 Chinese-backed coal-fired power projects announced since 2014, 25 were suspended and eight were canceled, according to the Green BRI Center. In the first half of 2021, China did not announce any financing for new coal-fired power plants outside the country, it found.
There’s also the growing risk that coal investments will turn into stranded assets as coal becomes less competitive.
As of July, 37 countries were still considering new coal-fired power stations, a 43 percent drop from 2015, the E3G analysis found. Outside of China and India — which does not seek Chinese financing — Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan account for the bulk of the preconstruction coal pipeline, and all have announced some form of restriction on new coal projects.
But without filling the gap, predictably... so withdrawing funding for the one should always be coupled by alternative funding for renewables:Quote:
China’s announcement could affect around 50 gigawatts of new Chinese-backed coal projects not yet under construction, according to Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst who covers China energy trends at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
In Indonesia, for example, research by the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis (IEEFA) shows that more than 15 GW of full or partial Chinese financing has gone to plants that have been commissioned or are under construction and could come online if the policy only applies to new projects.
[...]
"Over the last three months, the Indonesian government and PLN [the state-owned power utility] have been pretty much telling the same story: There will be no more new coal power plants except those that have already signed contracts," said Elrika Hamdi, an Indonesian energy finance analyst for IEEFA.
There are obvious opportunities to one-up China here for mutual benefit - healthy competition in international financing - but we won't take them.Quote:
Climate groups have raised fears that China’s decision could give a boost to gas, with Bangladesh and Vietnam already increasing its role in their plans.
Alternatively, it could accelerate the energy transitions in countries that have relied on China if past financing for coal were redirected toward greener, low-carbon projects, as Xi said in his announcement.
[...]
In 2020, renewable energy investments made up the majority of Chinese overseas energy financing, an investment report from the Green BRI Center showed.
[...]
China has been heavily involved in building out solar and wind projects, including in places where it’s also continued to invest in coal, said Lin.
One example is Egypt, where the massive 6.6 GW Hamrawein coal plant was formally canceled in April 2020 amid concerns that its construction would far exceed new energy needs.
Last month the government signed a nearly $300 million deal with China Gezhouba Group to install 500 megawatts of solar power across the country.
Meanwhile in Bangladesh, the joint venture Bangladesh China Renewable Energy Company Ltd. launched a bid for a new solar park in which China is expected to invest $500 million, PV Magazine reported.
“Generally, these have not been directly connected to the cancellation of a specific coal project but instead are responding to a specific call for renewables project bids from the country governments,” Lin said.
Quote:
According to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center, China has provided roughly 17 percent of all overseas coal financing over the past five years and 11 percent of the planned coal plants in the pipeline.
The rest has come largely from the private sector. But much of that private financing has been leveraged through significant public funding and guarantees, said analysts.
Remove Japan, Korea and China and that’s virtually the death of coal, said Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies for Australia and South Asia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Meanwhile, many (e.g.) deride hydrogen energy hopes for being an illusion of clean or renewable energy.
Quote:
“Blue” hydrogen – an energy source that involves a process for making hydrogen by using methane in natural gas – is being lauded by many as a clean, green energy to help reduce global warming. But Cornell and Stanford University researchers believe it may harm the climate more than burning fossil fuel.
The carbon footprint to create blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than using either natural gas or coal directly for heat, or about 60% greater than using diesel oil for heat, according to new research published Aug. 12 in Energy Science & Engineering.
“Most of the hydrogen in the U.S. and Europe comes from natural gas, using steam and pressure to convert the methane from natural gas into a so-called ‘gray’ hydrogen and carbon dioxide,” said Robert Howarth, the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Howarth, together with Mark Z. Jacobson, Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, authored “How Green is Blue Hydrogen?.”
Blue hydrogen starts with converting methane to hydrogen and carbon dioxide by using heat, steam and pressure, or gray hydrogen, but goes further to capture some of the carbon dioxide. Once the byproduct carbon dioxide and the other impurities are sequestered, it becomes blue hydrogen, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The process to make blue hydrogen takes a large amount of energy, according to the researchers, which is generally provided by burning more natural gas.
“In the past, no effort was made to capture the carbon dioxide byproduct of gray hydrogen, and the greenhouse gas emissions have been huge,” Howarth said. “Now the industry promotes blue hydrogen as a solution, an approach that still uses the methane from natural gas, while attempting to capture the byproduct carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, emissions remain very large.”
Quote:
“Blue hydrogen is hardly emissions free,” wrote the researchers. “Blue hydrogen as a strategy only works to the extent it is possible to store carbon dioxide long-term indefinitely into the future without leakage back to the atmosphere.”
An ecologically friendly “green” hydrogen does exist, but it remains a small sector and it has not been commercially realized. Green hydrogen is achieved when water goes through electrolysis (with electricity supplied by solar, wind or hydroelectric power) and the water is separated into hydrogen and oxygen.
On Aug. 10, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which includes several billion dollars to develop, subsidize and strengthen hydrogen technology and its industry.
“Political forces may not have caught up with the science yet,” Howarth said. “Even progressive politicians may not understand for what they’re voting. Blue hydrogen sounds good, sounds modern and sounds like a path to our energy future. It is not.”
Two sort of conflicting issues concerning China's energy situation.
First---will China cave to renewed coal use to solve it's current energy crunch?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...e_iOSApp_Other
So if the energy crunch continues, is China willing to submit to a short-term slowing of economic growth, in return for renewable energy picking up the slack, or do they do what's easy and ramp up domestic coal production?Quote:
The situation is widespread. In recent days, factories in 20 of China’s 31 provinces have suffered a loss of power, forcing many to shut down production, at least for hours at a time. Millions of households in the north-east of the country have also lost power and found that they cannot use electricity to heat or light their homes.
Since the beginning of the year electricity production has increased by about 10% as the economy has bounced back from the pandemic. It’s just that the Chinese energy juggernaut has run out of steam after running down stocks of coal apparently in the hope that either Beijing would lift all environmental restrictions that increase the cost of producing electricity with coal or that world prices would fall. While Beijing has eased some emissions targets, world prices have carried on soaring.
Choyleva says Xi’s centralising zeal means regional governments have come under closer control from Beijing and resulted in a series of crises. A clampdown on bank lending led to the near collapse of several banks and earlier this month, pushed the property giant Evergrande close to insolvency. “It used to be that a crisis came up every couple of years and was dealt with. Now they are coming thick and fast,” she said. Evans-Pritchard said Xi’s determination to hurry through reforms forcing businesses to conform more closely to Beijing’s policy agenda is causing problems. “One broader takeaway is that the current disruption highlights the economic costs inherent in China’s push for self-sufficiency and decoupling with the west,” he said.
And this podcast is an interesting listen:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/aud...iction-to-coal
At about the 16 min. mark, the conundrum China is in (and other countries with large coal reserves like India), is what I referenced in an earlier post about how China, the US, Japan, and others respond to trying to jump-start their economies during and after COVID. In this article by CarbonBrief, after the financial crisis of 2008, the following years saw an increase in emissions as countries looked to cheap fossil fuels to help their economies back to growth conditions:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-c...ssions-in-2020
Personally, I expect to see a similar trend now...:shrug:
I think Greta does too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwD1kG4PI0w
I suspect this is a market generated opinion. Those with the funding and the means to produce EV's and other electric consumables, have the upper hand, at the moment. "Blue Hydrogen" is definitely not a viable solution to reducing carbon emissions as it obviously creates more emissions than it eliminates. "Green Hydrogen" produced by cracking water, is expensive, at the moment, and therefore at a disadvantage to BEV technology. But that's not to say Fuel Cells are a dead end:Quote:
Meanwhile, many deride hydrogen energy hopes for being an illusion of clean or renewable energy.
https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-hydrogen
And this very overlooked synergy with solar and wind power:
The "You can't trust solar or wind to produce 24/7" is one of the leading arguments used by the fossil fuel industry to push back against renewables. Storing excess electricity in the form of H2 would go a long way towards alleviating that.Quote:
Hydrogen can enable renewables to provide an even greater contribution. It has the potential to help with variable output from renewables, like solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind, whose availability is not always well matched with demand. Hydrogen is one of the leading options for storing energy from renewables and looks promising to be a lowest-cost option for storing electricity over days, weeks or even months. Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels can transport energy from renewables over long distances – from regions with abundant solar and wind resources, such as Australia or Latin America, to energy-hungry cities thousands of kilometres away.
I still think geothermal is getting short-shrifted, in part because of the prevailing notion that you can only generate power if you are located in an area with volcanic activity, which is anything but the truth. And look at the potential:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power
Getting the cost of drilling down is the biggest hurdle. But:Quote:
Geothermal power requires no fuel; it is therefore immune to fuel cost fluctuations. However, capital costs tend to be high. Drilling accounts for over half the costs, and exploration of deep resources entails significant risks. A typical well doublet in Nevada can support 4.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity generation and costs about $10 million to drill, with a 20% failure rate. In total, electrical station construction and well drilling costs about 2–5 million € per MW of electrical capacity, while the levelised energy cost is 0.04–0.10 € per kW·h. Enhanced geothermal systems tend to be on the high side of these ranges, with capital costs above $4 million per MW and levelized costs above $0.054 per kW·h in 2007.
All the world's present---as in current gluttony---for several millennia...~:eek:Quote:
A 2006 report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that included the potential of enhanced geothermal systems estimated that investing US$1 billion in research and development over 15 years would allow the creation of 100 GW of electrical generating capacity by 2050 in the United States alone. The MIT report estimated that over 200×109 TJ (200 ZJ; 5.6×107 TWh) would be extractable, with the potential to increase this to over 2,000 ZJ with technology improvements – sufficient to provide all the world's present energy needs for several millennia.
In the aforementioned MIT report, the conclusion (after 330 pages of analysis...:dizzy2:) is interesting given the recent Congressional handout of an additional $1 billion dollars to Israel's defense budget:
Adjusted for inflation, that about equals what we just authorized for military purposes to Israel. Jeezus we are so effing stupid....Quote:
Analysis suggests that, with significant initial investment, installed capacity of EGS could reach 100,000 MWe within 50 years, with levelized energy costs at parity with market prices after 11 years. It is projected that the total cost, including costs for research, development, demonstration, and deployment, required to reach this level of EGS generation capacity ranges from approximately $600 -$900 million with an absorbed cost of $200-$350 million.
I can't imagine China putting economic stability/growth over the economy. As a one party state failure to deliver basic goods such as electricity; especially with Autumn here and Winter approaching seem non-starters.Quote:
So if the energy crunch continues, is China willing to submit to a short-term slowing of economic growth, in return for renewable energy picking up the slack, or do they do what's easy and ramp up domestic coal production?
Last thing I can imagine the PRC tolerating is power cuts that led to discontent right before the highly visible Winter Olympics.
Meaning you see them dipping into their coal reserves to bolster economic growth?Quote:
Last thing I can imagine the PRC tolerating is power cuts that led to discontent right before the highly visible Winter Olympics.
This scenario would require pretty extensive uptake of solar/wind/geo, to produce excess energy at scale. But in that case, I've heard from hydro-skeptics that efuels would be a more efficient conversion. What do you think of efuels in general?Quote:
Originally Posted by ReluctantSamurai
Meanwhile, pace a more hopeful article you once shared, insurance companies appear to be struggling to price fossil fuels and related investments appropriately, for cultural and for short-term financial reasons mostly.
https://prospect.org/environment/oil...-flannel-suit/
And we have our answer:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-power-crunch
Quote:
Chinese officials have ordered more than 70 mines in Inner Mongolia to increase coal production by almost 100m tonnes, with the country battling its worst power crunch and coal shortages in years. The move is the latest attempt by Chinese authorities to boost coal supply amid record high prices and shortages of electricity that have led to power rationing across the country, crippling industrial output.
Not a surprise...Quote:
The 72 mines listed by the Inner Mongolia energy bureau, most of which are open pits, had previously authorised annual capacity of 178.45m tonnes. The notice proposed they increase their production capacity by 98.35m tonnes combined, according to Reuters calculations.
Meanwhile, coal consumption is climbing as north-eastern China has kicked off the winter heating season, with major power plants having stockpiles for about 10 days of use, down from more than 20 days last year. To ensure power and heating supply to residential users, China has reopened dozens of other mines and approved several new ones.
China wants to keep its high single-digit/double-digit growth rate. I suspect they view it as both a growth in strategic power AND as the best means of keeping internal dissent to a minimum.
But I fear that the vast majority of governments will choose economy and jobs over longer term "green" goals when an economic crisis looms.
Which is exactly what the authors of this article predict:Quote:
But I fear that the vast majority of governments will choose economy and jobs over longer term "green" goals when an economic crisis looms.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-c...ssions-in-2020
An interesting visual look at what famous sites around the world might look like at a 3 degree C rise in global temp vs a 1.5 degree rise:
https://picturing.climatecentral.org/
And China isn't the only country solving an energy crunch by ramping up coal production:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...critically-low
So a coal addict will do what coal addicts often do:Quote:
Over the past two decades, domestic coal production in India has continued to rise exponentially, though there was a minor dip in production of less than 1% from 2019 to 2020 due to the pandemic.
[...] more coal is usually imported to bridge the gap in production. But due to a global energy crisis, which has seen international prices hit record highs, it has been more of a financial challenge to import more coal, leading to greater shortages than usual.
[...] over the past year “renewable energy installation also slowed down” and that, if the Indian government had focused on increasing the capacity of renewables such as solar, wind and hydro, “the increased demand could have been met through renewable energy and this crisis could have been averted”.
***sigh***Quote:
However, there are concerns that the shortages will be used by to justify pushing more domestic coal production, with some state governments already putting on the pressure for expedited clearance for new coalmines in protected areas. India already has plans to boost its domestic coal production to 1bn tons by 2024.
The world surface has officially warmed by 1° C since the Soviet Union collapsed. At 4° C cooler than that benchmark, 20000 years ago, most of the land north of the Tropic of Cancer was covered in ice. Between the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, there had been around 0.5° C of warming. I wonder what a plausible 4° C of warming by the end of the century would be like. But I'll be mercifully dead by then...
Money talks, and all the bullshit about Net-Zero by 2050 walks:
https://www.energypolicytracker.org/region/g20
Policies are classified as “fossil unconditional” if they support production and consumption of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal, “grey” hydrogen or fossil fuel-based electricity) without any climate targets or additional pollution reduction requirements.
Policies are classified as “fossil conditional” if they support production or consumption of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal, “blue” hydrogen or fossil fuel-based electricity) with climate targets or additional pollution reduction requirements.
Policies are classified as “clean conditional” (“potentially clean”) if they are stated to support the transition away from fossil fuels, but unspecific about the implementation of appropriate environmental safeguards. ... Without appropriate environmental safeguards, such policies can still have significant impacts.
Policies are marked as “clean unconditional” if they support production or consumption of energy that is both low-carbon and has negligible impacts on the environment if implemented with appropriate safeguards.
Alternative ("Other") energy sources include geothermal power, wave energy, hydroelectric energy, solar thermal energy and even space solar energy. Geothermal energy is that generated in the earth and harnessed, while wave and hydroelectric energy harness the power of water.
There is considerable investment in renewable energy, to be sure, but the recent energy crunch in various countries-most notably China & India-are leading to a renewed usage of coal and other fossil fuels to make up the difference. It's a tough spot to be in, and one can't simply transition to renewable energy if you haven't made infrastructure commitments well beforehand.
Maybe the pandemic was Mother Earths' way of showing humans what this planet would look like free of fossil fuel (recalling all the stories and photos of clear skies and cleaner water during the world-wide lockdowns last year)...:quiet:
When I was young,Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Reflecting on recent years, unless I'm just ever more unobservant, I notice a decline in the number of squirrels out and about. I wonder if that's a thing.
COP26: Greta Thunberg tells protest that COP26 has been a 'failure'
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland...-west-59165781Quote:
Ms Thunberg said: "It is not a secret that COP26 is a failure. It should be obvious that we cannot solve a crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place."
She said: "We need immediate drastic annual emission cuts unlike anything the world has ever seen.
"The people in power can continue to live in their bubble filled with their fantasies, like eternal growth on a finite planet and technological solutions that will suddenly appear seemingly out of nowhere and will erase all of these crises just like that.
"All this while the world is literally burning, on fire, and while the people living on the front lines are still bearing the brunt of the climate crisis."
She described the UN climate change summit as a "two-week long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah" to "maintain business as usual" and "create loopholes to benefit themselves".
Ms Thunberg added: "We know that our emperors are naked."
Activists from several other countries also gave speeches about how climate change is already affecting their homelands.
They included including Vanessa Nakate from Uganda, who said: "Historically, Africa is responsible for only 3% of global emissions and yet Africans are suffering some of the most brutal impacts fuelled by the climate crisis.
"But while the global south is on the frontlines of the climate crisis, they're not on the front pages of the world's newspapers."
I wouldn't call the COP26 a failure but certainly underwhelming. Did anyone think that COP was going to seriously get agreements to reduce carbon by the means that are used to sustain economic growth in so much of the world despite the negative impact on the climate? Though I've always disliked Thunberg as she seems to embody the petulant demands of a generation not matched by their own actions. If this was matched by action to go and reduce fossil few use by her 'movement' I'd be more impressed. If we in the 'west' did simple things like not running A/C all day, carpooling, and all those other things that burn so much energy but I see that her movement is more just protest without personal action. Not that those individual actions would fix a thing but at least I could believe it more than essentially demands to fix the climate while maintaining their current standard of living/ lifestyle choices. The protest is important as this issue needs to maintain the spot light.
Having the top economies in the world stand by coal use is sad but given the economic climate and fragile political climates I'm not surprised that they favor growth/stability over climate in the near term. China, India, and the US need to drastically reduce our own carbon emissions and leaving any of those three out of the equation makes the end result the same.
Aren't young people like her already taking the most personal steps in their consumption patterns? (I don't think A/C is an energy sink for Scandinavia - yet.) The basic contradiction is that taking the most aggressive personal measures to 'get off the grid' and dissociate from modern capitalism now would not only do nothing to prevent a drastic decrease in one's living standards by the time today's leaders are all dead, but it will decrease one's living standards in the short and medium term. One would have to be a serious prepper or anarchist type to be living now how one would expect life to be in the fallen world of the future.Quote:
Originally Posted by spmetla
At a basic level too, the people do have an entitlement for their lives not to be ruined by mismanagement. I think that's in most social contracts and other political philosophies.
More optimistically, international climate pacts do move the needle enough that we can't abandon the effort to expand them.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ges-cop26.html
(Note that these figures are upwardly-obsolete if Africa isn't assisted in developing itself without heavy reliance on coal and petroleum)
Seems Canada has been having a problem. Not the wildfires, the more immediate problem is, from what I hear, that the primary road and rail arteries connecting the two coasts have been severed by natural disaster.
Unrelatedly, I've always like Disturbed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwELajFteTo
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Can someone explain to me why so many European governments have basically refused to look beyond oil, gas, coal, and anything else combustible in favor of wind, solar, geo, hydro? What we have here is a failure to invest. Europe contains some of the most progressive and the most regressive (de facto) governments on decarbonization; Europe is a land of contrasts.
"Can someone explain to me why so many European governments have basically refused to look beyond oil, gas, coal, and anything else combustible in favor of wind, solar, geo, hydro?"
Nuclear - a strange confluence between the anti-nuclear movement and the watermelons of european politics.
Gas (Shale) - the watermelons of european politics would rather import brown coal than sully themsleves extracting lower-carbon fracking products.
Wind - it is widely deployed in many viable places, but obviously the baseload problem.
Solar - it is widely used, but we have a population density problem that reduces opportunity compared to the States.
Geo - there aren't that many places where its viable, most of europe's interior and periphery is geologically ancient/dead.
Hydro - again, there aren't that many sites where it is viable, tho companies like Rheenergise are looking to expand this with clever methods.
Not to mention the major problem with solar, wind, and hydro is the inability to 'store' or scale power on demand. Hydro with the current droughts certainly showed a major limitation. Geothermal should be a huge industry and I find it kinda bonkers that Italy isn't tapping in all around Mount Etna and Vesuvius to route/sell power to everyone north of them.
Solar and Wind can generate MWs of excess power if done right but where to store it for periods of reduced sun and wind? Great as supplements to temp the effects of things like A/C especially but not as the primaries means of power.
Hydro and Geothermal supplemented by the other green energies for peak hours can work but for large scale energy hogs like European cities nuclear is the best solution for most of Europe but yeah, that's not gonna happen. Too much fear and ignorance.
Nuclear - would be OK if they didn't delay for so many decades. It's taken so long I hope - not much hope - that we'd wait for molten salt reactors which melt rather than explode. China (and belatedly the USA) is relooking into this from the c. 1950'sQuote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
Gas - mainly a storage issue and a failure to have long term supply contracts with other countries - Qatar told Germany in the 1990s to get LNG from then and Germany said no - and apparently they have found it cheaper to have the gas stored in Russia rather than locally. I doubt they were the only country. The UK allowed Centrica to mothball our only storage facility not so long ago.
Solar - getting both cheaper and more efficient by the year with a 90% drop in cost in the last decade alone. There are prototypes that can be used in windows to both lower energy for AC and harvest some of that; can also be used on fields alongside crops if done right. Southern Europe should be coated in the stuff - finally something they can sell without having to do any work!
Geo - newer techniques - IF they can scale from initial prototypes - could enable deep enough holes in most places. So new geo holes could be built near coal / gas plants to switch where the hot liquid comes from.
Hydro - there's tidal, wave and undersea current. Tidal is very few places - and the Bristol channel is one that should have been done 50 years ago but oh that's right there are some birds there at the moment... FFS. Wave always seems to be the hope and I've seen some artificial blow holes that seem to work so fingers crossed - the energy density of the sea wrecks most harvesters too quickly. Undersea currents are taking place in Scotland and due to the energy density of water compared to air could provide a massive amount of energy and work almost everywhere there's a sea.
Storage is always the main problem. For that there are currently a myriad types of batteries - some that only really work at scale like thermal batteries, liquid metal batteries and sodium batteries. There are also bidirectional car chargers so electric cards can be used for a very large, distributed battery.
If Europe had viewed energy dependency as a National Security matter which it clearly is and invested some of the Defence billions into it - and frankly investment would still help - things would be done... quicker.
Why we give billions to NASA / ESA etc to get nicer piccies of something light years away rather than cheaper, cleaner power I do not know. Tech should be retasked to use in pace rather than pretending that by spending a vast sum of money in space we might get some things we can retask to earth.
~:smoking:
I am very optimistic about the small modular reactors from Rolls Royce, both as a technology for rapid adoption in the UK but also as an enormous export opportunity.
And I do think that technologies like Rheenergise above have the potential to solve the 'grid-battery' problem that large adoption of wind and solar creates.
Sand batteries are also very promising, but only for countries that make substantial use of district heating or large amounts of thermal intensive industry.
I wish Samurai were still around. This is an issue of long-term choices in development and energy strategy over decades. Wind, solar, and hydro are still far underutilized compared to their native (regional) potential - I do understand Switzerland and Portugal have different profiles - and geo has always been overlooked, particularly in the form of Enhanced and Advanced Geothermal Systems (artificial wells), which are not some exotic technology: the Netherlands already uses them to power its high-tech and ultra-productive greenhouses, and Germany and France have experimented at small scale. This is a different technology than accessing magma circulation at the crust. We go deeper. All of Europe could in not-distant principle utilize wells economically at 2 to 10 kilometers' depth, and this alone would substitute for all existing natural gas needs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Furunculus
Geothermal technology in energy markets remains at the developmental stage of still being almost wholly reliant on direct state subsidy, providing a good comparison point to wind and solar, which have become economical in their own right in just the past five years. We really should have aimed to arrive at the current stage no later than 2010, to reap the benefits by 2020.
Instead *much* - there is incredible variation, or even mixed records, between and within countries - of Europe persistently reaches around for anything it can burn, burn. Always something to burn in the Eastern European backyard. This is a durable political choice in the search for market stability and a comprehensively-failed one. We should all be angry about it. Frankly, the 2010s OPEC production glut, plus the short-lived fracking boom in the US/Ukraine (halted by the first war), were the greatest tricks the fossil fuel industry could have played at such a critical juncture, besides all the lying and corruption and skulduggery.
One would also smirk at the notion of space constraint for solar or wind relative to the very finite space occupied by the remnants of the primeval European forest. European lifestyles can't run on old-growth wood.
[I realize I'm not being completely fair to Europe, since the worm does turn: Germany has already reached 50% renewables in power consumption, and this year unveiled a target of 100% by 2035. But the point is long-standing, and biomass remains a dead end under the rubric of renewables.]
This is really not so much of a problem anymore, and could have been much less of one with that, you know, concerted investment over decades undergirded by the premise that we can't burn our way to paradise.Quote:
obviously the baseload problem.
I read that EU currently has about 1 terawatt of generation capacity installed, of which a quarter is already wind capacity alone (although this figure might include UK?). As of last year 20% of the Earth's energy mix was wind or solar. When's it time to stop farting around?
As of 2021 more than 20% of all electricity generation on the planet was wind/solar. A fifth. There's no reason we couldn't have been on track for 50% or more by 2020 - we just didn't prioritize it since 1990. A target of 90+% renewable could have been complemented by a mix of nuclear and load-following gas for the final transition atop a basic storage framework.Quote:
Originally Posted by spmetla
As I was getting at above, by now speaking of baseload power as an unsolved or unsolvable problem is no better than treating nuclear waste storage as such. The baseload concept of an always-generating source targeted to a predetermined minimum supply of power is becoming obsolete. Even if we don't consider nuclear, we need:
1. Geographically-distributed overcapacity in solar/wind.
2. Mid-load (load following) or dispatchable generation (can include final transitional gas)
3. Energy sinks during periods of overproduction to manage peak load (either grid batteries or uneconomically-high-input industry or infra that operates only intermittently)
And as ACIN once said, the appetite for nuclear is best reframed in terms of a post-transition expansion fuel to maximize potential energy supply well beyond concurrent demand patterns. Excess energy, especially from "free" sources like most renewables, is good. Cheap and bountiful energy is good for civilization, and cheap energy carries far fewer externalities and perverse incentives when it is non-combustive by source.
Anyone who tells ya this hasn't been achievable already is a dirry liar. The current absence of such an arrangement at scale is just a failure of policy and politics, and not an optional one like colonizing Jupiter's moons or what-have-you.
Good summary. The US Department of Defense has been publishing for a few years already that energy independence is a national security concern. I know this is always a better sales pitch in the US than in Europe, but maybe it will find more rhetorical purchase with European publics now.Quote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
You're neglecting that the very well-documented trickle effects of space tech research apply to energy storage? That's like one of the fundamental obstacles anything leaving the atmosphere for a good spell has to overcome. The reapplication of space research is not a pretense, it's the historical norm and the source of countless technologies in everyday use, big and small. There has probably never been investment with a higher return rate than public space programs. A few tens of billions annually for some of the greatest returns on investment of all time. We could have easily afforded even more tens of billions both for space programs and for clean energy development, both with concrete long-term targets - we just didn't want to in the age of Pangloss (global neoliberalism).Quote:
Why we give billions to NASA / ESA etc to get nicer piccies of something light years away rather than cheaper, cleaner power I do not know. Tech should be retasked to use in pace rather than pretending that by spending a vast sum of money in space we might get some things we can retask to earth.
Now everything is accountable to acceleration during this decade.
NASA asteroid deflection test livestreamed at this very moment of posting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Z1E0mW2ag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RA8Tfa6Sck
Internet comment:
:coffeenews:Quote:
The probe masses 500 kg and the asteroid maybe 2 billion kg, so it won't get moved much (maybe 0.4 mm/s), but it should change the orbital period by 10 minutes. That's why they're going to a binary asteroid pair - the period change is the only way to see the effect.
This mission also tries out some other cool tech:
- Solar panels with little mirrors on them to reflect more light onto the cells, called the Transformational Solar Array. 3X less weight for the same power! It actually unrolls in space.
- Electronics built in a radiation-hardened FPGA that can implement any circuits at all. They built a big camera onto it, DRACO, that will guide it right into the middle of the asteroid. They can actually modify the electronics in-flight. This will useful for all space tech.
- An ion rocket that uses xenon as a fuel, that gives you far more thrust for a given weight.
This is what NASA is for - PR for American tech!