When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

SpaceNut · 2020-09-27 10:31:57

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/sever … rip_sq_hed

kbd512 · 2020-09-28 11:48:23

SpaceNut,

When are we going to see some lawsuits over the billions of dollars squandered on solar panel and wind turbine businesses that never produced a single solar panel or wind turbine, for all the money dumped into them by our federal government?

SpaceNut · 2020-10-11 19:18:15

Scientist Maps CO2 Emissions for Entire US ]

SpaceNut · 2020-11-23 17:26:43

We know how to extract co2 from the atmosphere whether its thinned out or concentrated such as the exhaust gas from any form of automobile which is less energy intense.
South Korean researchers say they have developed technology that can draw out carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and convert the climate-warming gas into calcium carbonate, which then can be adapted for different uses.

SpaceNut · 2020-11-25 17:10:39

How much more proof do we need that man is the cause of global warming NASA model reveals how much COVID-related pollution levels deviated from the norm

wuhan-nitrogen-dioxide-levels-most-years-after-lunar-new-year-hg.jpg

Nitrogen Dioxide levels

https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/GEOS/

SpaceNut · 2020-12-10 20:21:28

Record CO2 emissions drop in 2020 won't do much to halt climate change

A record 7 per cent drop in global carbon emissions this year will make no difference to long-term climate change, say researchers.
Globally, the burning of fossil fuels released 34.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2020, down 2.3 billion tonnes on last year, the Global Carbon Budget team found. The biggest fall was the 0.84 billion tonnes of CO2 drop from transport, especially road traffic, with a steep dive in April when many countries had imposed limits on travel. After April, global emissions began recovering towards pre-pandemic heights.

SpaceNut · 2020-12-21 19:18:11

Like all bills these days there is always something else hiding with in them that gets the bill finally passed and the newest stimulus bill is no exception.
New stimulus bill includes $35.2 billion for new energy initiatives

The spending is split between the Energy Act of 2020 and the Energy for the Environment Act, and both include new money for big technology initiatives.

SpaceNut · 2021-01-31 17:51:36

tahanson43206 wrote:

This is an item for SpaceNut .... it is a bit out of line with the nature of the NewMars forum ... it may not fit ...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/op-ed-collap … 02647.html
The article refers back to the 1972 "limits to Growth" publication, which has been largely discredited ...
However, the authors of the article at the link above appear to be making the argument that for all it's flaws, the 1972 projection appears to be on track because humans just can't seem to help themselves.
(th)

The effects of global warming caused environments and of there eco systems for life. Its something where we can see its effects an danger that its causing.

SpaceNut · 2021-02-06 17:32:14

We have talked about the flaring item but its also a way to get free energy from a wasted commodity for the poor and yes its a green house gas.

Climate crisis: An invisible, odorless gas is pitting Texas against the Biden administration, Deep in the heart of Texas, above an oil patch about the size of Kansas, a little team in a small plane is trying to reveal a big problem.

SpaceNut · 2021-02-13 19:42:17

This is thinking about the problem and how to defeat it.The U.S. government has approved routes for a system of pipelines that would move carbon dioxide across Wyoming in what could be by far the largest such network in North America, if it is developed.

The greenhouse gas would be captured from coal-fired power plants, keeping it out of the atmosphere where it causes global warming. The captured gas would instead be pumped underground to add pressure to and boost production from oil fields. The Petra Nova system moves carbon dioxide 80 miles (130 kilometers) from a power plant to an oil field in southeastern Texas. In southeastern Saskatchewan, Canada, near the U.S. border, the Boundary Dam carbon dioxide system connects a power plant with an oil field 40 miles (65 kilometers) away.

Capture before releasal for syngas production is an energy bonus....

New factor in the carbon cycle of the Southern Ocean identified

Photosynthesizing plankton, known as phytoplankton, for example, produce half of the oxygen in the atmosphere while binding huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). Since the Southern Ocean around Antarctica is very rich in nutrients, phytoplankton can thrive there. It is therefore a key region for controlling atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Indeed, along with iron, manganese is another essential "micronutrient" required by every photosynthetic organism, from algae to oak trees. In most of the ocean, however, enough manganese is available to phytoplankton that it does not limit its growth.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21122-6

kbd512 · 2021-02-16 14:11:59

GW,

How are those frozen wind turbines working out?

We didn't receive any power from our snow-covered solar panels, but our Tesla Power Walls did consume electric power to keep themselves warm.

Was there any possible way to predict that photovoltaics don't produce electricity without photons, or that wind turbines don't spin when they've been frozen in place with ice and snow?

While I'm certainly no expert on climate change or weather, I would've thought that all of those supposedly "smarter people" who are working on "green energy" would've at least considered the possibility, but I guess not.

GW Johnson · 2021-02-16 15:27:34

According to what I saw, the wind farms are still producing, and a lot more than was expected. The shortfall on generating capacity is being blamed on "natural gas, coal, and nuclear" plants. Depends upon whose reports you believe, but the excuse is given as "frozen natural gas lines". That lets out any troubles with coal or nuclear.

Myself, I do smell some rats here. The plants were operating until shut down for the rolling blackouts, then could not be restarted. Those reports did not say what kind of plants. I did hear one nuke plant shut down, but nobody was saying why. That's only one plant.

Most of the generating capacity is coal and natural gas, with about 20% of the mix (25-30 GW supposedly) coming from the wind farms. Unless there is an awful lot of ice in the pile of coal fuel, I don't see why a coal plant couldn't restart as quickly as ever. This weather should have little to no effect on a coal plant, and certainly not on a nuclear plant.

Natural gas is different, depending upon how stingy you are with your maintenance budgets and your fuel purchase budgets. If you buy low-quality fuel, it still has water in it that can freeze. The gas is trans-shipped in pipelines at several hundred to a few thousand psi. Anything that drops the pressure, like downstream of an obstruction, makes the gas colder, and any water in it freezes. The water and the hydrocarbons can form something called clathrates, which freeze even easier than the water itself.

The other thing I saw in the newspaper was that gas prices are spiking quite high. What was $3 per million BTU is selling as high as $600 per million BTU. Somebody may be price gouging or doing illegal speculating, I dunno.

But between buying too cheap (water-contaminated) fuel, and the high prices ruining your ability to buy needed fuel, the gas plants seem to be in some sort of trouble. The truth will eventually come out, but you'll have to be watching sharp for it, because they'll try to sneak this by. Big CEO $ are involved here.

The media aren't reporting this very clearly, probably because most of this goes way over the heads of most reporters. But I suspect when this is over, there may be some very pertinent questions asked of ERCOT, and the big utility giants. ERCOT's rolling blackouts were supposed to a preventative, but instead seems to have precipitated a lot of the power outage disasters.

As for the wind farms, like I mentioned, they seem to be providing more than was expected, despite some windmill shutdowns. That seems to be the consensus of what I could find, searching on line.

Nobody seems to admit to any transmission troubles, despite the ice on the trees and lines. It's just about all lack of generating capacity, near as I can tell. And the capacity was on-line, until the rolling blackout thing started.

As I said, I smell rats somewhere.

GW

SpaceNut · 2021-02-16 18:08:43

I have been reading about the same with the state of affairs as caused by the polar vortex.
Sarcasim such a grin, but even up here you would still want a gasoline or diseil power generator if you did not want propane or natural gas units. Then again producing extra methane from surplus power would be louis' choice for solar not nukes.

kbd512 · 2021-02-16 19:41:21

GW,

Austin American Statesman ran the story. They're not exactly known as a far right-wing newspaper.

I seriously doubt we can take half the wind turbines offline from a winter storm and produce the same output. The fossil fuel and nuclear ate my wind turbine electricity output is getting to be rather tedious. Wind is now 25% of the total electric power generation capacity in Texas. If there's nothing wrong with the turbines, then why would they spray them with propylene glycol?

Seasonal assessments show sufficient generation for winter and spring

According to ERCOT, the wind turbines only generate 19% to 43% of their maximum output during the winter months, yet demand for this period of time significantly exceeds the highest recorded peak demand during the summer.

Natural gas demand is so high right now that they've reduced output from coal and nuclear, because there's no point in producing power that's not being used.

We haven't had any problems with natural gas here in Houston, but we've had serious issue with electricity provided by wind and solar. We've relocated again to another area further north of Houston, but Houston itself saw millions of customers without electricity.

You boys keep trying to blame this fundamental problem with variable output energy on fixed output energy sources. Furthermore, if "the plan" behind "The Green New Nonsense" is to stop relying on coal / gas / oil / nuclear, then we need to stop blaming those power sources when the electricity isn't available.

SpaceNut · 2021-02-16 20:40:21

seems fema is busy https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/cripp … d=msedgdhp i think the artic cold with no power qualifies

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets … d=msedgdhp

here is the iced up windmill debunking
https://earther.gizmodo.com/viral-image … 1846279287

kbd512 · 2021-02-17 00:08:26

SpaceNut,

You do realize that using a stock photo in a news story doesn't "debunk" anything at all, don't you?

The story about the 12,000MW of 25,100MW of wind generating capacity comes directly from an ERCOT spokesperson, not some random 20-something kid looking for his "big break". That's the co-op that operates the turbines, not some hick farmer looking at a couple of turbines that stopped spinning. Good grief, man. Read ERCOT's own press releases and stop the nonsense. Losing 10% of your generating capacity during peak demand is a BFD. The source for the story is not Republican and not conservative. Give up your ideology just long enough to learn what ERCOT itself is saying about what happened. And yes, they didn't "just say" that the wind turbines are the only problem. The gas pipelines are also affected.

There's a YouTuber who's into his wind turbines, who at least sounds like he knows what he's talking about, who said the problem was related to the hydraulic fluid that the turbines freezing up, probably because some genius thought he'd save a buck or two on cheaper hydraulic fluid. I'm sure they temporarily shut down the turbines until the storm passed, and then the lack of electrical power shut down any heaters, if installed, presuming other geniuses didn't decide to save a couple of bucks on those as well.

tahanson43206 · 2021-02-17 06:03:09

We (the forum) has two prominent members who live in Texas, so I'd like to take this opportunity to extend best wishes to the citizens of the State for a speedy resolution of all the issues at hand, and security for those many who are without power or heat.

The article at the link below showed up in today's news feed. It seems to indicate that there is a lot more to the story of lost power than have come up in this topic so far.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/texa … 10789.html

By Friday, temperatures had dropped to 24 degrees in Dallas. Texans were told to start conserving energy. Physical gas prices soared to more than $500 in Oklahoma from less than $4 at the start of the week. As of Tuesday, they had doubled to roughly $1,000 per million British thermal units. Texas Governor Greg Abbott asked a major gas exporter to limit their intake.

(th)

Calliban · 2021-02-17 08:23:32

Human induced CO2 emissions are likely to decline from this point onwards. Though no one will like the way that happens.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpres … -part-one/

The variability and high embodied energy cost of wind turbines and solar panels mean that they will be of little use in mitigating declining production of fossil energy supplies. All that these things can really do is marginally reduce the fuel bill at the CCGT power plant that has to built anyway to generate power when they don't run. That's of marginal value really, and it does this at the expense of greatly increasing the embodied energy of the system as a whole. If you don't believe me, take a look at the link below to the 2015 Quadrennial energy review, produced by the US department of energy. A reliable enough source?

https://www.energy.gov/quadrennial-tech … eview-2015

Go to Section 10, Table 10.4 for a summary of materials inputs into several different types of powerplant in ton/TWh. Wind power requires an order of magnitude greater materials investment than a coal or nuclear power plant. Solar power is nearly two orders of magnitude more materials intensive. And this doesn't account for the material and energy cost of backup and storage. Exactly how are these renewable energy sources supposed to be more sustainable and reduce human impact on the environment with an industrial materials budget like that?

Given the time it would take to build new infrastructure, energy induced poverty is now baked in for humanity for at least the next few decades. What a shame it is that foolish political idealists got to dictate energy policy in Western countries. With hidden subsidy and a blind eye to Chinese dumping, our political elites have even fooled themselves into thinking that a transition to low power density ambient energy will actually make energy cheaper and boost economic growth. This is actually thermodynamically impossible, as the increased embodied energy cost of RE infrastructure can only be met by reducing investment in other kinds of wealth generating infrastructure. A solar farm providing 1GWe average power would cover 200 square kilometres in Western Europe. It's embodied energy would be greater than the entire city that it powers.

Had we continued with the rapid nuclear energy buildup that was underway in the 1970s, we would not now be facing the Soylent Green future that the Thatcher-Regan generation made inevitable. I personally think any human ambition of colonisation of Mars can be put back at least a century. It is possible that it will never happen. This is what happens when science is perverted by politics.

The US, Britain, France and Russia, all have substantial reserves of depleted uranium enrichment tailings and spent fuel containing plutonium. This may be the key resource that helps to lift us out of the approaching peak-energy dark age. Mother nature is about to teach us a cruel lesson on the energy basis of economic activity. When that lesson is finally learned, these fuels will be available to support our economic renaissance. Only then will have sufficient surplus wealth to consider colonising other planets.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-02-17 08:52:29)

GW Johnson · 2021-02-17 11:12:36

OK, I've been mindful of this outage problem, living in the middle of it. I've been following the stories, trying to see through the CYA lies. I can't say I know the truth, not yet, but here is what I think to be true.

Yes, there are some "frozen" wind turbines, although none of these stories tells you what "frozen" means. Yet despite the reduction in operating turbines, the wind farms seem to be supplying roughly twice what ERCOT intended that they supply. I don't think one can properly lay the fault for generating capacity shortage at the feet of wind power. That would appear to be a CYA lie.

No one has identified any coal plants that shut down, much less why they would shut down. They got lumped into the description "thermal plants" along with natural gas plants and nuclear plants. Those generate steam to drive turbines. All use heat engines. Hence the word "thermal". It would appear there is little or no problem with the coal plants, it's just that they are now a minority of our generation capacity.

The natural gas plants are having severe problems. This traces mainly to curtailed supplies of natural gas, and partly to on-site infrastructure failures induced by the unexpectedly-severe cold. The supply shortfalls trace almost entirely to cold-induced infrastructure failures at the sites of the gas wells. The words "frozen gas pipes" refers to this problem in reality.

Both the generating plants and the gas well operations have long prioritized hot-weather robustness over cold-weather robustness. That has been the focus of the ERCOT and the state government since the founding of ERCOT as the "regulator" of the Texas grid, outside of federal regulation jurisdiction, about 50 years ago.

The shortsightedness of that policy prioritization has shown up before, only a few years ago. This time around it is even worse, and we are seeing a disastrous near-collapse of the Texas grid. Demand exceeds capacity, and would come close to that, even if all the plants shut down were back on line. That is because the extreme cold has magnified demand well beyond what was expected, with the difference exceeding the capacity margin they thought they had in place. In reality, the generating capacity margin was going negative, with the gas wells shutting down.

It appears as if the order to start rolling blackouts caused the plant shutdowns, but that is not the actual truth. What happened would have happened anyway, due to severe shortfalls in availability of natural gas. The management failure here was not the response to the capacity shortfall in progress, but years earlier in not prioritizing infrastructure robustness in cold weather as well as hot. That is the real question to be answered by ERCOT-as-regulator (overtly charged with maintaining reliability), the big power utilities, and the natural gas well operators.

Particularly the gas well operators. That fossil fuel business is long well-known as a dog-eat-dog, bottom-dollar business. Unless demanded by regulators with effective enforcement authority, they do not want to spend a dime on anything they don't have to. And they didn't. That's both a greed failure, and a regulatory failure. Plenty of blame to go around!

Meanwhile, we get a lot of CYA lies from them, from ERCOT, from the state's politicians, and from the big utilities. Those are confusing the issue, by design.

This will get better only when warmer weather returns and the gas wells flow full again. Not before. According to the predictions, that's Friday into the weekend.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2021-02-17 11:19:33)

kbd512 · 2021-02-17 12:41:46

GW,

This is not about ideology, it's about foolish penny pinching causing people to die.

ERCOT bought up a bunch of wind turbines that California didn't want and apparently didn't think to change the hydraulic fluid and oil used to operate the turbines. It was almost certainly another one of those "we're going to save money problems". As with the natural gas pipelines, that didn't work out very well. Apparently, Texas has 30,000MWe of installed wind capacity, but it was generating 800MWe at 8:15PM on February 15th, 2021, according to a graph from ERCOT. You feel free to call that whatever you want. And yes, the natural gas pipeline operators should be lambasted as well for their role in this energy crisis. However, both are to blame for the problem. Solar wasn't producing anything at all, because the panels were covered in snow, just as our solar panels on our house were covered in snow.

At 5:37AM on February 15th, 2021, a pressure sensor failure in a feed water pump on the secondary loop / non-nuclear side of the plant malfunctioned, causing the pump to trip / go offline, thus far attributed to the cold weather, which in turn caused an automatic trip / shutdown of STP Reactor #1 to prevent a potential issue with the power generating equipment (not the reactor itself, which is fed by a different set of pumps). There was no issue with the feed water in the pump (I take that to mean it was still filled with water), but the sensor malfunction caused the automatic control system for the reactor to do what it was designed to do, which was to take the entire reactor offline. Prior to the "auto sequence shutdown" of STP #1 (it was not a "SCRAM"), the reactor was producing its nominal 1,350MWe worth of output. They're working on replacing the sensor with a new one. STP #2 is still operating at 100% of rated output. The last two reactor trips occurred on January 8th, 2013 and May 1st, 2016. There is no reported damage to the reactor or the power generating steam turbines or anything other than the sensor, so STP #1 is fine.

I presume we all want safe nuclear reactor operations, so STP did the right thing by shutting down the reactor. They put lives over money, as well they should.

GW Johnson · 2021-02-17 13:16:54

Kbd512:

I think we are in agreement here. Penny-pinching is the culprit. Plus mismanagement at top levels. Including but not limited to ERCOT.

We have a lot more thermal-plant generating capacity on the Texas grid than we do renewables, even though we have the largest wind farm capacity in the nation. Solar is just getting started, so its vulnerabilities are a negligible piece here. Wind is a minor but significant component, so its vulnerabilities are important. And apparently unaddressed yet.

I haven't yet seen any explanations for what it means to have a "frozen" wind turbine, but your explanation about easily-frozen hydraulic fluid is quite plausible. So is ice formation on the blades, just like airplane wings. I think the truth of that will come out. Eventually.

Meanwhile, the largest generation sector by source type of our mix of generating types is now natural gas plants. It used to be coal, but that has been shifting in favor of gas and wind as more cost-effective. Storage compensating for intermittency is still a major issue, which is exactly why our natural gas capacity is far larger than our wind capacity.

The usual grid capacity vs demand problem is in summers, when air conditioning demand is so incredibly high here in Texas (and necessarily so). Yet we have had one earlier cold-weather grid capacity problem since instituting ERCOT as the overseer and regulator. Apparently "we" failed to learn from that, or from the experiences of grid operators in other, colder, parts of the country. And THAT is the real management failure here. It occurred years ago, never rectified.

Given that, the current disaster was preordained. All it took was an unusually large polar vortex failure to put all of Texas into the deep freeze. Tuesday morning, Waco airport recorded -1 F. The all-time record was -5 F in 1949. But the real story isn't low temperature, it is duration below freezing. Today is 7 straight days in the Waco region without seeing temperatures above freezing. We still have 2 more days to go before we get an afternoon above 32 F.

THAT is the 100-year record-setting stuff that caused this grid disaster, because our infrastructure was not implemented to resist it. Not that it could not be foreseen, just that it was discounted in terms of spending priorities. And THAT is the management failure. At ERCOT and in multiple corporate boardrooms. And in the state government.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2021-02-17 13:18:43)

SpaceNut · 2021-02-17 17:45:13

All I can make out from what was labeled hydraulic is the gear oil has become to thick under the cold in the torque conversion unit that would require heating to stay thinner to allow the blades to spin under normal air condition.

edit news articles

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/texas … d=msedgdhp

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … d=msedgdhp

SpaceNut · 2021-02-18 20:09:41

The parts of Texas not on its ERCOT power grid appear to have weathered the freeze with few outages

After the 2011 winter freeze, El Paso Electric, on the Western Interconnect grid, spent heavily to "winterize our equipment and facilities so they could stand minus-10 degree weather for a sustained period of time

edit
Not sure of the time frame....
Texas set the stage for its energy crisis more than 80 years ago

kbd512 · 2021-02-19 19:51:22

GW,

We finally managed to get our burst pipes fixed, so now we have water again.

SpaceNut · 2021-02-19 20:02:22

That is good to hear....

Not sure how this would work but I hope it can Ford Asks Texas Car Dealers to Loan Out Trucks with Generators amid Power Outages Due to Winter Snowstorm

On Thursday, the automaker issued a letter to its dealerships in the Lone Star State asking them to loan out F-150 trucks to those without electricity so they can use the vehicle's onboard generator as a source of power, according to Automotive News.
According to Ford's website, 2021 F-150 models with the Pro Power Onboard feature — which hit the market last year — have a 2-kilowatt generator in the back, while its F-150 hybrid models come standard with a 2.4-kilowatt generator.

We are getting snow in or about 4 inches so far so when I saw what was about the same as we have here

https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topst … d=msedgdhp
BB1dLvNq.img?h=799&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

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#501 2020-09-27 10:31:57

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#502 2020-09-28 11:48:23

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#503 2020-10-11 19:18:15

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#504 2020-11-23 17:26:43

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#505 2020-11-25 17:10:39

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#506 2020-12-10 20:21:28

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#507 2020-12-21 19:18:11

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#508 2021-01-31 17:51:36

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#509 2021-02-06 17:32:14

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#510 2021-02-13 19:42:17

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#511 2021-02-16 14:11:59

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#512 2021-02-16 15:27:34

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#513 2021-02-16 18:08:43

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#514 2021-02-16 19:41:21

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#515 2021-02-16 20:40:21

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#516 2021-02-17 00:08:26

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#517 2021-02-17 06:03:09

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#518 2021-02-17 08:23:32

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#519 2021-02-17 11:12:36

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#520 2021-02-17 12:41:46

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#521 2021-02-17 13:16:54

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#522 2021-02-17 17:45:13

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#523 2021-02-18 20:09:41

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#524 2021-02-19 19:51:22

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

#525 2021-02-19 20:02:22

Re: When Science climate change becomes perverted by Politics.

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