Climate Change - History and Forecasts

kbd512 · 2022-09-03 01:21:00

If the people living on the coasts are that worried about this, which they clearly are not if we're talking about doing more than paying lip-service to the idea or accelerating the process by consuming more energy, then perhaps it's time to build some floating cities, either as barges or ships. I'm pretty sure that as long as the Earth has oceans, they'll float. If there's more liquid water, then they'll be able to float more boats.

Why all the incessant freak-out over things that none of you will ever live to witness, that won't affect you in the slightest (physically, not mentally), that you don't think you have any power to change, and that you're doing nothing meaningful or worthwhile to mitigate or prevent?

If global warming turns out to be the world's biggest brain fart, then we'll have spent an absurd amount of money and destroyed a bunch of lives in the developing world, as well as our own country, over a lot of nothing. From where I'm sitting, it looks like hysteria mixed in with ye olde zero-sum thinking. People who live too close to the water routinely drown. That's one of the biggest hazards of living near large bodies of water- over enough time the water moves, it washes over things and sweeps them away, basically doing what water does and always has done. The people who built cities there didn't put a lot of forethought into what might happen. The people who aren't building ships or moving away from the water's edge are asserting their unwillingness to accept and prepare for what will eventually happen, according to them. If some people are so stupid that they refuse to move to places that are not under water, then Darwin was / is right again.

Some of us can't imbibe in the mass hysteria of this death cult because we're not good lemmings. If everyone is running around screaming "Fire!" when it's obvious that there is no fire within sight or sound or smell, then we simply go on about our daily lives because that's all we really can do. We respond to things we can perceive. Emergencies don't happen over a century. That's not an emergency, it's an eventuality, such as the Sun eventually going supernova and consuming the Earth. Why not freak out over that, too? That's another calamitous event that none of you will ever live to see, and arguably far more threatening to humanity than having more liquid water to deal with. We also presently lack enough whale oil to run our lamps at night, but nobody uses whale oil lamps anymore, so freaking out over the lack of whales for whale oil is an utter waste of time and energy.

None of you have any slight clue about how to go about solving the problem. You're supposedly worried about a bunch of people dying some time decades to a century into the future, so your only "solution" to your fears, if you could call it that, is to use government to murder a bunch of them right now through energy poverty and other forms of senseless privation, and then "hope for the best", given that none of you will be alive to see the results. We can't produce more food to feed people who would otherwise starve to death, because that would cause more global warming and might kill a bunch of people in the future. That's one hell of a reasoning system at work there.

Void · 2022-09-03 07:20:19

Actually, I only spoke of alternative thinking. I am amused/horrified by the masses of silly people being ever so important about it.

But, if changing northern albedo can be useful, then it can permit conversation.

The Russians are hoping to actually farm large animals in the North. Bison of several types, I presume wood Bison, possibly Muskox, and some others. The grasslands are more productive than evergreen forests and tundra. And in doing this several almost extinct creatures could be built into very large populations. It may be that someday even a pseudo-Mammoth will be created, but there are likely robotic ways to treat the northern lands to perhaps make 1/2 of the northern lands resemble the Mammoth Steppe.

I am not panicking. I am considering/calculating/evaluating.

Done

GW Johnson · 2022-09-03 11:16:54

The whole climate change issue has been politicized into lemmings screaming "fire", and deniers. That is not the right approach. Period.

The right approach is actually two-fold: (1) look for means that you can trust to work, which might slow or even mitigate this problem, and (2) look for ways and means to cope with the worst case outcomes, on the assumption that (1) is a failure.

I see some efforts toward (1), and no efforts toward (2), and way too much effort toward arguing between the two irrelevant camps. That is utterly irresponsible behavior.

GW

kbd512 · 2022-09-03 17:19:19

GW,

I did not politicize this issue. You can thank the Democrats you voted for, for that problem. Basically, you voted for people who caused that problem and now you lament the result. Much like science itself, I'm here to tell you, a scientist of all people, about "what is". Did you once believe or do you still believe that one side or the other can be bullied into accepting the impositions made by the other? How well is that working?

(1) I trust in solutions that have workable math backing them. Math involves money input for development / deployment / operation, labor input, and any fundamental resource limitations that must be solved (i.e., not using a scarce metal like Lithium for batteries), nor doing a whole lot more of the thing they're claiming is causing the problem (i.e., burning absurd quantities of coal and gas to make photovoltaics, mine the metals for the batteries, transform motor vehicles into electronic arcade games on wheels, etc).

The math behind photovoltaics / wind turbines / batteries, simply doesn't work. The input of materials and energy required is astronomically high compared to what we're presently using. The people asserting that climate change is the biggest problem facing humanity are the very same ones who can't or won't do enough basic math to know why their solutions are unworkable using the technologies they favor most. Unlike those people, I have done the math that they were too lazy to do or too arrogant to accept the results of. I don't believe that all of them are incapable of figuring out what I have, but maybe that was a faulty assumption on my part. My math shows that their solutions are absurdities. That is the sort of nonsense being peddled as our "salvation" from global warming. It's not. You and I both know that.

(2) None of the people you throw your hat in with, politically-speaking, have ever attempted this. That means they're single-solution type people. They have presented their "final solution" to the energy problem. The results are in, and it's not good. The most probable explanation for that is them being incapable of accepting that their solution doesn't work.

(3) None of what you say you want will ever be accomplished while those "irrelevant camps", as you put it, are controlling the direction of the conversation at the national level. We need to deal with that problem first.

This is my starting point for a worthwhile conversation:

Anyone who is unable to demonstrate basic math or engineering expertise is never allowed to dictate to everyone else which energy sources they will use. Those people lack the knowledge required to merely understand what they're asking for.

The people you want to give more money to, which you affirm with your voting record no matter what you think to the contrary, are the very same ones you routinely lambast for not caring about how what they do affects other people, such as the various engineering and management mistakes you routinely point out, all made within an organization that is supposed to embrace science and learning (NASA).

How are you unable to connect those two things if you care at all about the end result?

Do you think anything will change (for the better) by voting in such a way that continually gives unhelpful people the power to take more and more of our money while failing to deliver the results you say you want?

Has that ever worked in the past?

If not, then why do you keep doing it?

SpaceNut · 2022-09-03 22:21:04

It may be money and that seems to be the problem.

Heat is a function of BTU of absorption and the air is one of the holding locations, sea water, and land are the others.

We have a model of thermal runaway in our sister planet Venus and Mars the cold lifeless with earth just right sort of in the middle.

So, reducing the amount of solar isolation is the answer such that we create barriers to absorption.

Ice is a fresh water mostly, so we need to moderate air and land temperatures to be just a degree under freezing to have an effect.

Solar Radiation Unit Conversions

1 Watt/m2 = 0.3170 BTU/ft2-hour

1 degree Fahrenheit hour/Btu (IT) = 3600 degree Fahrenheit second/Btu (IT)
1 degree Fahrenheit second/Btu (IT) = 0.0002777778 degree Fahrenheit hour/Btu (IT)

Earth-Sun Relationships and insolation

GW Johnson · 2022-09-04 10:32:15

Kbd512:

I never said you politicized it. I am saying it has been politicized and polarized by both sides of the aisle, and that is the wrong approach. Lives are at stake, so continuing to do that is irresponsible behavior. Something too many politicians do too often.

My own recommendation for mitigation in the electricity-generating business would be to add as much nuclear as possible as fast as possible, and in the fossil fuel-fired sector replace as much coal as possible with natural gas as fast as possible. Texas already has 20+% renewables, mostly wind, but with solar beginning to come on strong. That's about as much as can be tolerated due to its intermittency, until there is such a thing as grid scale energy storage. The goal would be about 20% renewables (what we have), 40% nuclear (about like France), and 40% natural gas (not that far from where we are now) that has been winterized. Coal plants can be converted to use natural gas. You switch out the burners, mainly. And that is a huge reduction in greenhouse and ordinary pollution emissions, while preserving a reliable energy supply.

The other "biggie" is to incentivize excess generating capacity well beyond the 20% you must have to counter the extreme case of no wind or sun anywhere in your grid. You do this with your natural gas plants, which can respond rapidly to changes in load. Nuclear cannot. That would cure the chronic grid overloads during our hot summers, and the occasional severe freezeup. The other compelling reason to do this is to prepare for the electrification of the motor fleet, which has already begun. The current electric grids cannot handle this, not in Texas, or anywhere else. Simple enough. And my solution really is not very radical, but it has radically-better results.

That's a big enough project to deal with. However, my other recommendation is to get serious about how to cope with sea level rise 1-5 m within about a century. The mass migrations and lost (flooded) assets will lead to chronic nuclear war if we do not. Also quite simple. But a huge project indeed. And one totally unaddressed so far.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2022-09-04 10:33:58)

kbd512 · 2022-09-04 13:36:38

SpaceNut,

Money is not the problem. We've spent obscene amounts of money on this problem. It's not being solved by what we're presently doing because the solutions favored by the mathematically illiterate are unworkable at any cost. Some of the proposed solutions are presently causing the very problems they're supposed to avoid, such as increased use of fossil fuels, starvation, and poverty. These presently favored ideas do not amount to an engineering solution. I've already indicated what the way forward is. An actual solution doesn't involve making people poorer (first world) or dead (third world) right now to "solve" a problem that none of them will live to witness.

Solving this problem will require an energy source at least equal to that which caused it, and the cost will be no less than the money spent to cause it. This is basic math and physics speaking to us, telling us that no greater magic is involved. The problem is the answer, and the answer is not the solution.

Mass-production of electrical (wiring, transformers, motors, generators) or electronics (photovoltaics, computers) or aircraft parts (wind tubine blades) and resource-intensive low energy density storage devices (all types of electro-chemical batteries) on an unprecedented scale actually contributes to the problem, so it cannot be a solution. The electronics are only marginally more efficient than combustion, but they don't operate without heat engines providing uninterrupted power so that they're available or charged or generating power when needed.

The more and more of this stuff we produce, the greater and greater our emissions will be. That's why emissions keep rising as more and more of this gadgetry is produced. It was never a workable solution. It was sold to you that way, but the experience of Germany should make it painfully clear that it's not remotely feasible.

I Germany now has over 200% of peak demand, in terms of installed capacity of photovoltaics and wind turbines, but that only generates 7% of their total energy demand. Some quick math would show that to meet all of their present demand they'd need over 2,000% of their peak demand to meet their energy needs from those energy sources. Name off a country that has over 2,000% of their peak demand in terms of installed generating capacity. You can't, and neither can I, because there aren't any, because it's grossly impractical (clear-cutting most of the land) and would cost more than their total economic output.

Over time, we've industrialized the production of electric motors, photovoltaics, and wind turbine blades, so they became cheaper to make on a per-unit basis in terms of dollars only. The energy input is still every bit as great as it ever was, and all of it came from fossil fuels, which means fossil fuel consumption would have to skyrocket, and that's the very thing causing the problem. What a genius solution. Why didn't I think of that?

Why is that not obvious that you can't get to where you say you want to go from where you're presently at?

There's a cliff in front of you. The road ends there. Stop marching forward. The road won't magically appear in front of you if you keep going in the same direction. You'll fall off the cliff and die. Look for a path around the cliff, even if you have to get off the road to do it, even if you have to backtrack a little to do it. That's what I've been doing with my free time. We need to find a path forward that doesn't lead us right over the edge of a cliff. There's only one possible outcome if you walk off that cliff. As I said before, some of us aren't good lemmings. We won't be following you over that cliff.

kbd512 · 2022-09-04 14:11:58

GW,

I never claimed that you said I politicized it. One group of politicians, namely the Democrats, made this about their politics, as they always do. You keep voting for them, so they keep doing what they're doing, oblivious to what you want. That's how politics works. Democrats keep screwing up things that were working before they touched it. Their idea of home improvement is to put a demolition charge under the house. Some of us would say that the the home was destroyed, rather than "improved" in any way.

Democrats give near-zero support to nuclear power. They try to demonize and destroy the nuclear power industry wherever possible, because if a country like Germany had spent the same amount of money on nuclear power as they did on photovoltaics and wind turbines, they would've already achieved their "net zero" goal using money they already spent. The environmentalists wouldn't allow that because the goal is not to solve the problem they say they want to solve, rather to provide an excuse for implementing more communism.

If we had 20% excess generating capacity by building more nuclear reactors, then we wouldn't need any wind turbines or solar panels. That's the problem with nuclear power. It de-justifies the building of new wind and solar projects, which need complete fossil fuel backups that nuclear power plants do not require. On top of that, Thorium fuel de-justifies the building of more gas turbines. Nuclear fuel reprocessing de-justifies more Uranium and Thorium mining. We already have enough for the next couple centuries if 100% of the power came from nuclear. Basically, nuclear could generate 20% excess capacity at all times, and then we don't need a bunch of wind turbines or photovoltaics that will all be trash inside of 25 years.

We've discussed this at great length. It's not happening because the people you vote for do not want actual solutions to their problems. They live and operate under their failed "limited pie" rubric. It's a pernicious bad idea that simply won't die, no matter how much evidence there is that the idea is wrong and ill-intentioned.

We had the opportunity to solve this in the 1960s and 1970s when it would've mattered. The west and east coast "environmentalists" wouldn't stop screaming for us to stop solving their next disaster, so the squeaky wheel received the grease and the nuclear power industry was strangled in the cradle by its loving mother- the sociopathic environmentalists who hate humanity and love death and destruction. Their children are even worse than they were. If they drown because they're too stupid to move, then it's no great loss for humanity.

I don't care if they don't like the solution. A viable solution was presented to these evil clowns before I was ever born. They rejected it in favor of something that clearly doesn't work and never will. I say "to hell with them." I don't care about what they want any more. Their ideas are unworkable at any cost, so screw their non-working ideas. I think even less of their ideology.

We can do solar thermal or nuclear thermal power at the scale required. We can do air-powered cars and molten salt or compressed air energy storage. That stuff actually works. Electronic gadgets are not reliable grid-scale energy, there are no good recycling methods, and it requires more energy to recycle them than it does to create brand new ones from virgin materials. That's a losing proposition, any way you try to spin it.

SpaceNut · 2022-09-04 21:18:07

Here is what was being said back in

10/23/2013
Lost Opportunity: The world reportedly "invested" $1 billion a day last year to fight global warming. What a waste. Properly invested, a billion a day would yield productive results.

According to the Climate Policy Initiative, $359 billion was invested in 2012 to limit global warming. That's a nice pile of cash. But of course it wasn't enough to do the job. Media portal EurActiv.com reports that total was "barely half the $700 billion per year that the World Economic Forum has said is needed to tackle climate change."

So all those fancy energy savings devices did what; they caused us to apparently use more energy in the long run not less.

So just a few year later

Topline: While estimates vary on the cost of halting global warming and reducing net carbon emissions to zero, a new report from Morgan Stanley analysts finds that to do so by 2050 the world will need to spend $50 trillion in five key areas of zero-carbon technology.
Renewables will require $14 trillion of investment, and could deliver around 80% of global power by 2050—up from 37% today. As solar energy becomes more affordable, it will become the fastest-growing renewable technology.
Electric vehicles will become more important than ever in the bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles; $11 trillion will be needed to build more factories and develop the batteries and infrastructure needed for a widespread switch to electric vehicles—the total number of which could grow to nearly 950 million by 2050.

More wild estimates for what needs to be done but no real change as the entire time we are still using more energy not less.

here is a few more years later

America’s problems with solving our climate crisis predate President Trump and go deeper than petty snark. Yes, it’s a problem when the president of the United States sees a vicious cold snap and uses it as an opportunity to mock climate change. (Especially when the cold snap is itself linked to climate change.)

The 2018 GAO report found that, while the Office of Management and Budget has reported that the federal government spent more than $154 billion on climate-change-related activities since 1993, much of that number is likely not being used to directly address climate change or its risks. Many of the projects reported as “climate-change-related activities” are only secondarily about climate change.
For instance, the U.S. nuclear energy program predates serious concerns about climate change and would likely exist in its current form even if it did not produce fewer greenhouse-gases than some other forms of energy production, like burning coal. But the nuclear program’s budget is counted as climate spending.

So nuclear is clean but we are going the wrong way as

Seven plants with a combined capacity of 5.3 GW had retired since 2013. As of the beginning of 2019, the United States had 98 nuclear power reactors at 60 plants, but two plants—Pilgrim, Massachusetts’s only nuclear plant, and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania—are expected to retire later this year, based on announced retirements.

As of September 2017, there are two new reactors under construction with a gross electrical capacity of 2,500 MW, which still based on numbers is going negative for energy creation.

All that period of time the demand for hydro power creation has kept going up in areas that have been receiving less rain each year to have the amount of water for other uses start to cause farming issues and more.

If all we do is want more energy than what we have we are not going to solve this problem.

SpaceNut · 2022-09-04 21:32:29

Back to solving

The atmosphere absorbs ultraviolet solar radiation, warms the surface of earth through heat retention (which is the so-called ‘greenhouse effect’) and reduces temperature extremes between day and night.

So lets work on the electrical energy used in a manner that lowers the amounts needed.

Solar thermal technologies absorb the heat of the sun and transfer it to useful applications, such as heating buildings or water.

What about those places that are using the electrical for heating.

Solar hot air collectors are typically mounted on a home’s wall or roof, and consist of an insulated box with one face having a glass to allow for sunlight penetration.

What about cooling needs where we have to much heat?
For me winterizing is not the only thing to do and for most not needed but rather changing how we heat is.

https://www.seia.org/research-resources … nd-cooling

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/63159

https://www.epa.gov/rhc/solar-heating-a … chnologies

So putting the money into these changes cause less energy to be used, so where is the money....

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-05 02:43:50

By 2080, climate change will make US cities shift to climates seen today hundreds of miles to the south

https://www.zmescience.com/science/clim … 0-2625352/

“Under current high emissions the average urban dweller is going to have to drive more than 500 miles to the south to find a climate like that expected in their home city by 2080,” said study author Matt Fitzpatrick of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
“Not only is climate changing, but climates that don’t presently exist in North America will be prevalent in a lot of urban areas.”
The team looked at 540 urban areas — encompassing about 250 million people — in the United States and Canada. They mapped the similarities between predicted future climates for cities in these areas and contemporary climate conditions in the western hemisphere north of the equator. They used 12 climate indicators, including minimum and maximum temperatures, as well as precipitation levels during each season.
Climate differences were analyzed under two emission scenarios: unmitigated emissions (RCP8.5), and mitigated emissions (RCP4.5). The first scenario is the most likely given current policies and the rate of global action on the matter, the team writes. The second one assumes policies meant to limit emissions, such as the Paris Agreement, put in place and enforced.
By the 2080s, the study found, climate across North America’s urban areas will be substantially different — even if we place and enforce limits on emissions. In many areas, conditions will mirror climates that aren’t, today, seen anywhere north of the equator in the western hemisphere. If today’s emission patterns continue unaltered throughout the century, these areas will resemble, on average, climate conditions seen today 500 miles to their south.

GW Johnson · 2022-09-06 09:23:19

Fossil fuel powered electricity generation works, is reliable, and can be a steady supply under all circumstances if you prepare your infrastructure for weather extremes. Natural gas is cleaner than coal, in every way you can think of. They set the "baseline" for energy prices. In the past, coal was cheaper. In more recent years, natural gas has been cheaper. But it's pretty much in the ballpark equivalent.

Wind and solar as done today are actually just the merest tad cheaper than fossil fuel. The problem is their intermittency. Without a grid scale energy storage solution (and so far there is not one), they can only be that portion of your mix that the other sources can cover with their excess capacity. Experientially, that's about 20%, maybe at most 25%, of the mix.

Nuclear done wrong (prioritizing profit over safety) was economically competitive with fossil, but produces a series of incidents and accidents. The way we did it in the US, that produced 3 Mile Island, which was a capital loss of one unit die to meltdown, but no injuries to anyone, because the containment held. It could just as easily not have held, had circumstances differed. The way the Russians did it produced Chernobyl. So it can be done really wrong!

Nuclear done right (prioritizing safety over the money, the way USN did it), has the far better track record, but is inherently a bit more expensive than fossil. Not a whole lot more, but some. It requires better, more appropriate licensing and regulation to accomplish that in the commercial market, something USN did not have to deal with.

Some Republicans heretofore have resisted appropriate licensing and regulation, which ours was not, instead wanting to dismantle all regulations on business as a matter of ideology. Which is just as evil as the Democrats running around stoking fears over nuclear, and writing the wrong licensing and regulations. Ideology NEVER makes good policy! That is why communism failed, fundamentally.

So when you point your finger at the Democrats, Kbd512, be sure to notice that you should be pointing your thumb back at yourself. I see the evil on both sides of the aisle. Which is why I am an independent. Always have been. And for good reasons.

The current mix in the Texas grid (independent of the rest of the US) is about 20% renewable (mostly wind), about 5% nuclear, about 75% fossil (about half and half, gas and coal), and under 1% everything else. As I said before, I'd like to see that revised to 20% renewables, 40% nuclear, and 40% natural gas (and no coal), with about 20% overcapacity built into the gas sector. It's going to require regulatory and licensing changes to get that done, and not just for the nuclear.

We want the gas "winterized" and "summerized" from the well heads through the pipelines right to the burners in the plants. And we want that excess capacity incentivized. Because it isn't right now, and it shows, every hot summer, and every extreme winter.

That's quite the simple, effective solution. and it has absolutely nothing to do with the way anybody votes, except to the extent that we need to throw out the corrupted ones. And they do corrupt, if they stay there too long. That's true of both parties, by the way.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2022-09-06 09:31:09)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-06 09:42:39

Thwaites Glacier Retreat Highlighting Concerns for Its Future

https://www.azocleantech.com/news.aspx?newsID=32202

unusually broad and vast Antarctic glacier flowing into Pine Island Bay, part of the Amundsen Sea, east of Mount Murphy, on the Walgreen Coast of Marie Byrd Land. Its surface speeds exceed 2 kilometres (1.2 miles) per year near its grounding line. Its fastest flowing grounded ice is centered between 50 and 100 kilometres (31 and 62 mi) east of Mount Murphy. Thwaites Glacier is closely monitored for its potential to raise sea levels. https://www.wired.com/story/antarctica- … king-point The Thwaites Ice Shelf, a floating ice shelf which braces and restrains the eastern portion of Thwaites Glacier, is likely to collapse within a decade from 2021, leading to increased outflow and contribution to sea-level rise https://www.science.org/content/article … rs-failure A 2014 University of Washington study, using satellite measurements and computer models, predicted that the Thwaites Glacier will gradually melt, leading to an irreversible collapse over the next 200 to 1000 years https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cha … ient-truth

US farmers face plague of pests as global heating raises soil temperatures - Milder winters could threaten crop yields as plant-eating insects spread northwards and become more voracious, researchers say
https://www.theguardian.com/environment … mperatures

'We don’t have enough' lithium globally to meet EV targets, mining CEO says
https://news.yahoo.com/lithium-supply-e … 13161.html

Background on the role of natural climate variability in West Antarctic ice sheet change.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/a … et-change/

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-09-06 09:45:10)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-07 06:45:19

The Oilfield That Made the Ocean Burn Last Year Is Now Spewing Methane
https://gizmodo.com/methane-leaks-oilfi … 1849500134

Reuters reported last week on satellite data that shows that the Ku-Maloob-Zaap oilfield leaked 44,064 tons of methane into the atmosphere over the course of 24 days in August.

GW Johnson · 2022-09-07 15:52:37

You have to understand where the oil industry is coming from. Never before has anyone on it been worried about natural gas leaks. They flare off what they can, let the rest leak, and only capture a little of it to sell. Natural gas is a big fraction methane, with some ethane, propane, and butane. There's sometimes some hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and quite often there is nitrogen, and lots of water vapor.

The cheap stuff everybody wants to buy is basically the raw material out of the ground. The water vapor and the condensibles are exactly why there are freeze-ups at well heads, in pipelines and pumping stations, and at power plants, during harsh winters.

The expensive stuff has been processed by chilling below the various condensation points. That gets rid of the water and the carbon dioxide, and it separates-out the propane and butane. Those can be separated, or sold together as "LPG". The ethane pretty much stays in the product, along with any hydrogen and nitrogen.

There's nobody in that industry anywhere in the world that cares much about natural gas leaks. There never has been. And they are actively resisting the notion of any regulations that would make them stop those leaks. Although we have learned that we need to stop those leaks. Trouble is, money talks in politics, and science does not.

GW

SpaceNut · 2022-09-07 18:41:02

If the flaring of the gas was used to create power, we would need less fuels for that purpose and we can use the cheap stuff in the process.

Here in the North I get 3 hours roughly for a stationary solar capturing during the 6 months of spring the fall (summer) with about 2 hours in the fall to spring (winter) part of the year.

Any tracking system will achieve 40% more energy of any form during the seasons of the year.

The map in 55 tells where the best locations are to supply those hours from in the red which coincides with where we are experiencing draught.
Getting the system to create shade on the ground will cause cooling to occur and less moisture evaporation as well. It's not like we need to cover every meter of an area only reduce the effective energy to 50% that makes it to the ground.
I see that California was going to cover waterways with panels to do just that.

kbd512 · 2022-09-08 12:46:34

GW,

The only way that wind turbines and photovoltaics are cheaper is if you totally ignore the fact that the intermittency and enormous power swings throughout a "normal day" create the need for massive over-capacity on the grid, which comes with a massive increase in cost. Beyond that, as you noted, there is no such thing as grid-scale batteries. As near as I can tell, there never will be within our lifetimes, because the cost is too high and the energy density too low for that to work at the scale required. As a result, the fossil fuel powered generators must keep spinning 24/7/365. If they do not, then the power goes down and may not come back on for days to weeks. In simple terms, this means that in addition to paying for the fossil fuels and gas turbines that consume them to reliably generate enough power to meet demand at all times, you also pay for the wind turbines or photovoltaics farms in order to assert that you're using "renewables". That is not cheaper in the real objective world, it's obscenely more expensive. That's why the electricity rates are higher and higher, the more wind turbines and photovoltaics you add to your power grid. In all actual practice, this is exactly what happens, because no other result is possible without sufficient storage to act as a buffer. You don't get "premium electrons" from wind or solar, but you do pay a premium cost for power generated that way. These are the sorts of revisionist assertions that I do not expect from engineers.

I obviously need to spell this out, so I will. In practice, there is no de-coupling the fossil fuel or nuclear backup power plants from a grid burdened with a significant installed capacity of wind turbines or photovoltaics added to it, in order to generate opportunistic power. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with being opportunistic with your power production, regardless of politics or ideology, so long as you don't force everyone else to pay for your scheme at gunpoint, which is what we're doing right now. The real world doesn't function at all if the electricity goes out for even a moment. That means we're getting the worst of both worlds (high fossil fuel consumption with high costs to pay for wind and solar). You pay for 2 or even 3 complete power generation solutions sized to generate a substantial portion of a grid's total capacity. There's no point to building a new power plant unless it does generate significant output, regardless of type. That means 1 wind turbine and/or 1 photovoltaic power plant, plus 1 gas turbine or 1 nuclear or 1 coal-fired power plant to produce power when the Sun isn't shining and/or the wind isn't blowing. That's how it's actually done. You know this. I know this. When the wind turbines stop spinning, or day turns into night, the load on the grid doesn't magically vanish unless the load is dropped (the power goes out). To prevent that from happening, we run gas turbines or coal, and/or nuclear power plants, 24/7/365. If the wind ever stops blowing or the Earth continues to rotate, then there had better be something available to instantly supply equivalent power, or you almost immediately find yourself back in the time before modern civilization. We all pay for this in the form of a gas turbine that never stops consuming fuel because it's always turned on to deal with that intermittency issue. If we shut it off, then the grid will go down, period. That largely defeats the purpose of wind turbines and photovoltaics, and automatically negates any cost benefits they could provide if cheap high-capacity storage was available. Any assertion to the contrary is provably false. Our fossil fuel consumption for electric power production continues to increase every year for that reason.

We have a City of Houston website asserting that 100% of our electricity is provided by "clean renewable power" (with a picture of wind turbines for the background image). Whenever you're in Houston again, we can drive downtown, or to a variety of other locations, where I can show you, you can hear, and you can smell the gas turbines connected to the grid. They never stop turning, so unless they're powered by renewable unicorn farts, then I'd say a considerable amount of our power is coming from the same substance found in all human farts, namely "au naturale gaz". The assertion that "the wind" (the unbroken kind), or "renewable energy" is supplying all of Houston's power is an outright L-I-E, used for political purposes by Democrats. It's a cheap numbers trick- asserting that some percentage of wind power represents 100% of the total demand at some specific point in time, while ignoring where the power actually comes from the rest of the time. Their numbers game is in no way whatsoever reflective of objective reality. The little liars who presently run Houston are perfectly fine with ignoring ugly reality for brownie points with their voters. It's political. It's about public perception and theatrics. They spin reality faster than the gas turbine keeping their lights on. They choose to substitute their own fantasy-based distortion of reality, whenever they don't "agree with" what's actually going on. When the physical world doesn't kowtow to the ideology, you get what we presently see in California.

The accident at 3 Mile Island had nothing to do with prioritizing profits over plant protection. There was misunderstanding on the part of the reactor operators about what the plant designers were telling them to do, via various "alarm bell" indicators and operator manual entries. The plant's designers were unable to get through to speak with the reactor operators in a timely manner. That real problem, while quite serious, was fixed almost immediately afterwards. The designers can now dial into a phone line in order to speak with the reactor operators, which is not subject to being swamped with calls from the general public or government agency personnel who won't do anything useful to prevent a meltdown. The reactor operators can also pick up their dedicated phone to call the plant designers if their manuals or instructions do not cover whatever indications they're receiving from the reactor's instrumentation. That was about 40 years ago. No similar accident (operator misunderstanding combined with the inability to communicate when it matters) has happened since then. There have been no meltdowns at American civil nuclear power plants since then, nor American military nuclear power plants for that matter.

Nobody living in America has died of radiation poisoning associated with civil nuclear power since 1965, IIRC. There have been plant operators who have fallen off of equipment or catwalks and subsequently died, other workers who were badly burned or even killed by steam from ruptured pipes, and some who have been electrocuted by the electric generating portion of the plant since the 1960s, but nobody has received a fatal dose of radiation from any subsequent accidents occurring within American civil nuclear power plants. Nobody in the general public has been harmed, either. I also have it on good authority that the hot cores from the meltdowns at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima stopped well short of China. In the case of Three Mile Island, the core never melted through primary containment. At Chernobyl, who knows what really happened, because the Soviets were in charge. At Fukushima, TEPCO did prioritize cost over reactor protection.

What would a little more government-sponsored micromanagement do for America's civil nuclear power industry? I don't know, but probably not much. NRC now has about ten years to screw around with new reactor permits, basically looking for any opportunity to drive up the cost of the reactor to the point that it never gets built. They can also shut down or de-certify nuclear power plants which fail to meet standards. Is the fact that nobody has died from radiation poisoning at one of these plants, in the last 57 years, a small sign that we're "doing it right"? If not, then does anything count? What's the probability that the radiation boogeyman is going to end us all by tomorrow? I'd say it's an astronomically low probability. A nuclear WWIII with Russia or China has much better odds, but that hasn't happened over an even longer period of time. I realize this is "normalcy bias", and that the Russians or Chinese or both could decide to launch at us within the next 5 minutes, but I can't live my life that way, nor can anyone else.

The US Navy prioritizes continuous training / education and never doing stupid stunts with a reactor, no matter the amount of money involved. They also use thoroughly proven designs and make small incremental improvements over time. That's the real difference. It has nothing to do with being run by the government / military and everything to do with culture. Naval Nuclear Power Program culture is intolerant of authority-based / fiat-based decision making. They won't have any of it. They don't care what your rank is, if you're incompetent or careless they will remove you or override your decision-making. A Navy reactor operator can tell his or her management (the Captain, an Admiral, doesn't really matter) to "respectfully" take a flying leap if they order him or her to do something stupid with their reactor. If the Captain or Admiral tries to storm into the reactor room and get in the face of said reactor operator, then the operator can ask US Marines to escort any misbehaving officers out of the reactor room. Our Marines have a strict zero-tolerance policy for any funny business related to reactor operations, as well as nuclear weapons.

You say you want more nuclear power, but then say you want to regulate it even more in the next sentence. I want to see the wind and solar industries "regulated" (micromanaged by a bunch of unaccountable ideologues with no sense of the ultimate consequences of their actions) in the same way that the NRC micromanages civil nuclear power. I want to see if anyone builds a new wind or solar power plant afterwards. Oh wait, someone already did that- the Democrats in California. You know, the ones experiencing rolling blackouts right now.

The radicals, who are almost universally Democrats rather than Republicans, spare no effort to make nuclear power impossible to use, so as to continue their energy scams related to their climate change agenda- impoverishing the average person in order to enrich themselves and their donors. They don't want to actually solve this problem, because after the problem is solved it's no longer a political weapon. If they did that, then that's one less way to divide people for their political benefit. They can't have that, because someone might notice how much public money they've squandered on "green energy", without result, and unceremoniously toss them out on their sorry butts. If the same amount of money they've squandered on their scam was instead devoted to civil nuclear power, then we'd have sufficient electricity for all these other "get poor quick" schemes they want to saddle us with. I'm simply fed up with their crap. They're a bunch of thieves and liars with no demonstrated knowledge of basic math, which is the foundation of all valid science.

Frankly, the Republicans aren't much better, just a lot less blatant about their thievery, because some of them actually have morals, and they seem to know when it's time to stop acting like a politician and start acting like a thinking feeling human being who is not a total slave to their ideology. The only thing that causes Democrats to reverse course is being voted out of office. Even that doesn't stop the next one from tryiing to carry out their ideology. Democrats keep pushing nonsense long past the time when they should know it's time to stop, but they can't help themselves. That's my real problem with how Democrats operate. There's nobody to tug on their shirt sleeve and say, "Hey, fella, how about you ease off this ideological stuff, recognize that reality won't always align with ideology, and do what needs to be done for the good of the people depending on you."

I was completely uninterested in politics until one political group decided it was their number one goal and mission in life to screw with my life and the lives of my children over their brain-dead ideology. It's devolved into a cult. The Republicans I actually vote for aren't attempting to interject the federal government into nearly every aspect of my daily life. I don't need to be micromanaged by a bunch of theatrical thieves who prioritize how much they can steal from everyone else, than getting useful work done. Sadly, that accurately describes most of the Democrats these days. In practice, the people they hurt are the very people they claim to be helping. The same morons who can't keep the power on in California are not the sort of people I need telling me which type of car to drive. They don't know any better than I do, what I want or need. I don't need to change every aspect of my life to soothe their night terrors over something that none of them have any ability to stop or change for the better. Their ideology can go take a long walk off a short pier. It's thoroughly unhelpful and self-destructive, and in point of fact, does the exact opposite of what they claim to be doing.

SpaceNut · 2022-09-08 19:43:24

Still thinking that the energy created is direct grid attached. I would buffer it with lots of the power walls since they would take in the energy create and dispense it later when you can cycle down the currents into the grid by allowing the wall to give its energy up. Also, if energy can be made use of to reduce battery sizing of the power wall than attach those loads on the input side of them.

Other buffering schemes would be to use gravity storage especially moving of water from the oceans to other locations that are inland.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-13 09:05:22

Climate change is affecting drinking water quality, new study shows

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/964268

tahanson43206 · 2022-09-13 11:38:52

For Mars_B4_Moon ... thanks for #69, which brings the topic back into view with an interesting report!

For SpaceNut re #68 ... I missed seeing this when you first posted it, but with Mars_B4_Moon bringing the topic back, I saw it, and would like to highlight your (to me interesting) suggestion of storing energy as sea water lifted from the ocean where that is practical. There are numerous volcanic islands around the world where steep mountain sides are right next to the ocean. Such locations would seem (to me at least) to be favorable locations for your idea.

The "normal" or "natural" vision might be pipes to deliver the sea water to elevated holding ponds, but for some reason, Calliban's report about the efficiency of cable transportation systems came to mind.

Wind would seem the best candidate power source to lift water from the ocean to elevated holding ponds, but in some locations solar power might be cost effective.

If you feel up to it, or have the time, or preferably ** both **, please see if you can work up a design for a simple system that might be implemented in the Real Universe by the residents of an ocean volcanic island.

I like the simplicity of your idea, and the relative lack of rare materials needed, compared (for example) to battery solutions.

(th)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-15 14:10:45

Wasn't this a plot in a scifi movie 'Snowpiercer'

Scientists propose controversial plan to refreeze North and South Poles by spraying sulphur dioxide into atmosphere
https://news.sky.com/story/scientists-p … e-12697769

SpaceNut · 2022-09-15 18:27:31

One might be able to tap into that geothermal volcanic heat to power a means to mist the ocean water into the air as fresh to cause rain down wind of the location where draught may be prevailing.

GW Johnson · 2022-09-18 11:17:38

Regarding geo-engineering as a means to combat climate change: what you do must be reversible, in case it fails or has unintended side effects (quite likely, actually). That more or less rules out adding gases and aerosols to the atmosphere, because once done, you cannot undo it. We are seeing that with our CO2 and CH4 emissions unfold before our eyes.

Regarding the reality and immediacy of climate change: consider that the storm that just flooded western and northern Alaska was in reality the remnants of a Pacific typhoon making their way through the Bering Straits into the Arctic Ocean! Such has NEVER happened before in our recorded history.

GW

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-09-22 08:53:35

Connecticut to Require Schools to Teach Climate Change, Becomes One of the First States to Mandate Climate Education

https://www.theplanetarypress.com/2022/ … te-change/

Void · 2022-09-22 12:01:35

Here is a bucket of cold water for the climate emergency: https://www.news.com.au/national/not-po … f77c91fd33
Quote:

‘Not possible’: Climate emergency disputed by scientists
September 20, 2022 - 6:27PM
The Australian’s Graham Lloyd says a new paper has found that it is “not possible” to detect a climate emergency.
“They don’t say there isn’t an increase in temperature, they don’t say that it will never be the case,” he said.
“But as things stand, it is not possible to see that footprint there.”

Certain types of elites being jealous of power have always looked down on the industrial peoples. There notion of intellect is similar to knowing dead languages and being able to rule people and not manipulate machines.

If you are stupid, you will let them strip you of your means of prosperity, as that will make you more subject to their power.

This is similar to participating in your own rape willingly.

Don't be stupid!

Done.

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#51 2022-09-03 01:21:00

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#52 2022-09-03 07:20:19

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#53 2022-09-03 11:16:54

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#54 2022-09-03 17:19:19

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#55 2022-09-03 22:21:04

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#56 2022-09-04 10:32:15

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#57 2022-09-04 13:36:38

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#58 2022-09-04 14:11:58

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#59 2022-09-04 21:18:07

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#60 2022-09-04 21:32:29

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#61 2022-09-05 02:43:50

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#62 2022-09-06 09:23:19

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#63 2022-09-06 09:42:39

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#64 2022-09-07 06:45:19

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#65 2022-09-07 15:52:37

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#66 2022-09-07 18:41:02

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#67 2022-09-08 12:46:34

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#68 2022-09-08 19:43:24

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#69 2022-09-13 09:05:22

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#70 2022-09-13 11:38:52

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#71 2022-09-15 14:10:45

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#72 2022-09-15 18:27:31

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#73 2022-09-18 11:17:38

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#74 2022-09-22 08:53:35

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

#75 2022-09-22 12:01:35

Re: Climate Change - History and Forecasts

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