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Europe hasn't stopped development. The French have developed an even more expensive nuclear power plant!
There's definitely been some pretty impressive developments over the last few years as far as renewables (particularly solar) are concerned. Having said that, if we could go back in time to 1980 and do it all again I would have poured my research dollars into nuclear instead of Solar. We could have some really, really impressive nuclear technology if we hadn't stopped development after TMI and Chernobyl.
One thing I'd like to see more research into is rechargeable sodium batteries. The chemistry would be basically similar to that of Lithium, but Sodium is way cheaper. Lithium Hydroxide costs $18/kg, which works out to $62/kg lithium. For comparison, the most common Sodium compound, NaCl, costs roughly $50/tonne ($0.05/kg), which works out to $0.13/kg, 500 times cheaper. Lithium batteries will always have a better power density per weight and per volume, but for stationary applications where space and weight are less important I think sodium batteries can provide acceptable performance at better cost.
Let's Go to Mars...Google on: Fast Track to Mars blogspot.com
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EdwardHeisler,
Physical reality, which does not care one bit about what humans think and is not consensus-based. 97% of scientists may conclude that the Earth is flat, but nature does not care about their beliefs, bias, lies, or mistakes.
SpaceNut,
University of Texas at Arlington devised a process to capture CO2 from combustion and to turn it into more liquid hydrocarbon fuels:
GW,
There's a vast chasm of difference between what I want and what industry can actually provide at an affordable price. I don't want to subsidize fossil fuels, solar, wind, nuclear, or any other form of energy production. I want science to focus like the NIF laser on actually solving the intractable problems that existing and new power technologies present. If our government wants to subsidize something, it should subsidize development of technologies that make fossil fuels as clean as possible and improving the efficiency and minimizing all types of hazardous waste from other forms of power generation.
If there were cost-competitive solar panels and batteries that could power a home, then we should use them. There aren't any because such technology simply doesn't exist. Our government subsidizes the hell out of those technologies precisely because none of them are cost competitive for the overwhelming majority of potential customers. Everyone who can operate a calculator knows it, including the companies offering the panels and batteries. I don't base my judgements on things not backed with math and never will.
If someone actually made a solar panel and battery system for a home that cost less than MSRP of a brand new full-sized SUV, with or without any government subsidization, I would happily buy it and use it. I already paid $21K for new AC units, $28K for windows that cut our energy usage by a third, and about $1K for LED light bulbs (my home has lots of lights and I don't buy cheap crap). This mythical cost-competitive solar energy solution doesn't exist, even with tax credits. I live in Texas just like you do and multiple different companies have all told me that it doesn't make economic sense for me to buy solar panels because they're honest with their customers. Moreover, we have friends who have actually installed solar panels to power their houses. The average cost seems to be between $60K and $70K. It cost just over $60K for a good friend who had his installation completed this year.
In economic terms, wind power is worse than solar power. It's not cost competitive at all, which is why we had to impose emission regulations to shut down coal fired power plants and then present the solar and wind as cost competitive alternatives (after we subsidized the hell out of them) that they've never been and still aren't. Then we had to build new gas fired power plants to contend with the fact that there are no grid scale batteries. Most people in the US don't have $60K to their name and if they did, they'd use it to buy a house or pay medical bills, student loans, car payments, etc.
PBS has a good article on what we're actually doing with wind power and what the actual average cost for wind power is:
If we keep subsidizing wind, will the cost of wind energy go down?
I'm tired of this Pollyanna crap that ignores reality. Solar and wind aren't going to scale out to required capacities to replace fossil fuels without spending ourselves into oblivion, mostly because batteries are nowhere near the energy densities required to store power from those intermittent sources. The people perpetuating this nonsense are either mathematically-challenged or willfully ignorant of reality. We've expended hundreds of billions of dollars on these technologies because the tree huggers can't learn to accept the word "nuclear". Every solar or wind power plant requires building another fossil fuel power plant to be built to do what batteries can't do. It's just stupid and stupidly expensive.
Louis,
Lithium-ion batteries currently cost $140/kWh. The raw Lithium costs $150/kg to $185/kg. Lithium metal prices won't go down when demand overruns supply. Unless the costs of raw materials become nearly "free", when do you suppose Li-ion will ever cost a dime per kilowatt-hour?
If you weren't relying on Li-ion batteries to cost a dime per kilowatt-hour, then we're right back to battery technology that doesn't exist outside of lab. My take on this is that the "best" technology is the mortal enemy of the "better" technology, thus absolutely nothing has materialized in an entire decade, apart from refinements to existing technologies. Academia and industry are semi-permanently stuck in this cycle of waiting for things to be achieved that can't be achieved with current technology. Either that, or we just don't have anything as good as Li-ion at this time and we're spinning our wheels.
Thor Energy in Norway is qualifying Thorium as a commercial fuel for light water reactors. That's the first step. After it's qualified as a commercial reactor fuel, we can use it in current reactors. The next step would be replacing water with molten salts. The MSR technology is "behind the power curve", so to speak, because we stuck our thumbs up our rear ends for the past 50 years and accepted 1950's nuclear reactor technology intended for ships versus commercial power plants.
Thorium fueled reactors are an engineering problem, not a basic research problem. That is what batteries better than Li-ion are. Humanity has a much better track record of solving engineering problems considerably faster than basic research problems. Our energy storage solutions are Exhibit A in that indictment.
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Terraformer,
Seems like it should be possible, but the chemistry would probably be different. You'd probably want to do an Fe0<->Fe2+ kind of reaction. Iron oxide electrolysis is a thing, but only at very high temperatures. I don't know if you'd be able to take advantage of that chemistry.
You might be able to get away with some kind of sulfate/bisulfate thing, depending on solubility:
Fe0+Fe(HSO4)2 <-> 2 FeSO4 + H2
Where the H2 is adsorbed into the cathode. But I guess since H2 has a stronger standard electrode potential than Fe what you're actually doing is more of a Hydrogen thing, almost like a fuel cell.
-Josh
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As Syria joins Paris climate agreement, US stands alone
By Jennifer Hansler, CNN
November 7, 2017
The United States is now a party of one in its stance on climate change.
Syria will join the Paris climate agreement, leaving the US as the only country in the world not signed on to the landmark climate deal.
Syrian officials announced their intention to ratify the accord at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, on Tuesday.
"I confirm that the Syrian Arab Republic supports the implementation of Paris climate change accord, in order to achieve the desired global goals and to reflect the principles of justice and shared responsibility, but in accordance with the capabilities of each of the signatories," Syria's Deputy Minister of Local Administration and Environment M. Wadah Katmawi said
Katmawi added that developed countries, "in their capacity as the primary contributors to climate change, should live up to their legal and humanitarian responsibility" by offering technical and financial support to developing countries to help battle climate change.
Syria, plunged in a civil war, was not present at the 2015 negotiations for the climate agreement, which is dedicated to lowering emissions and strengthening countries' abilities to deal with the effects of climate change. Nearly 200 countries signed on the pact at the time. Nicaragua was the only other hold-out, based on criticisms that it was "insufficient" in addressing climate change.
However, the Central American country recently announced its intent to join the agreement. In late October, Nicaraguan Vice President and first lady Rosario Murillo said the nation had submitted a "document of adhesion" to the United Nations to join the pact.
"It is the only instrument we have in the world that allows us to unify intentions and efforts to face climate change and natural disasters," she said of the agreement at the time.
The US trails only China as the world's worst emitter of carbon dioxide, according to the European Commission's emissions database. In 2015, it released 5.1 million kilotons of carbon dioxide, more than all 28 European Union countries combined, and makes up almost a sixth of all global emissions.
Read the full article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/07/politics/ … index.html
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[Excerpt]
NASA’s longest running survey of ice shattered records in 2017
By Maria-José Viñas,
NASA's Earth Science News Team
February 13, 2018
Last year was a record-breaking one for Operation IceBridge, NASA’s aerial survey of the state of polar ice. For the first time in its nine-year history, the mission, which aims to close the gap between two NASA satellite campaigns that study changes in the height of polar ice, carried out seven field campaigns in the Arctic and Antarctic in a single year. In total, the IceBridge scientists and instruments flew over 214,000 miles, the equivalent of orbiting the Earth 8.6 times at the equator
“A big highlight for 2017 is how we increased our reach with our new bases of operations and additional campaigns,” said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge’s project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “In the Arctic, we flew out of Svalbard for the first time, expanding our coverage of the Eastern Arctic Ocean. And with our two Antarctic aircraft campaigns from Argentina and East Antarctica, we’ve flown over a large area of the Antarctic continent.”
The expanding sets of measurements collected by IceBridge will continue to be invaluable for researchers to advance their understanding of how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are contributing to sea level rise and how the changing polar sea ice impacts weather and climate. For example, in 2017, scientists worldwide published studies that had used IceBridge data to look at ways to improve forecasts of sea ice conditions and to use satellites to map the depth of the layer of snow on top of sea ice, a key measurement in determining sea ice volume.
Read the full detailed article at:
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2681/nasa … s-in-2017/
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News | January 18, 2018
Long-term warming trend continued in 2017: NASA, NOAA
From NASA
Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2017 ranked as the second warmest since 1880, according to an analysis by NASA.
Continuing the planet's long-term warming trend, globally averaged temperatures in 2017 were 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.90 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. That is second only to global temperatures in 2016.
In a separate, independent analysis, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that 2017 was the third-warmest year in their record. The minor difference in rankings is due to the different methods used by the two agencies to analyze global temperatures, although over the long-term the agencies’ records remain in strong agreement. Both analyses show that the five warmest years on record all have taken place since 2010.
Because weather station locations and measurement practices change over time, there are uncertainties in the interpretation of specific year-to-year global mean temperature differences. Taking this into account, NASA estimates that 2017’s global mean change is accurate to within 0.1 degree Fahrenheit, with a 95 percent certainty level.
“Despite colder than average temperatures in any one part of the world, temperatures over the planet as a whole continue the rapid warming trend we’ve seen over the last 40 years,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt.
The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (a little more than 1 degree Celsius) during the last century or so, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere. Last year was the third consecutive year in which global temperatures were more than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) above late nineteenth-century levels.
Phenomena such as El Niño or La Niña, which warm or cool the upper tropical Pacific Ocean and cause corresponding variations in global wind and weather patterns, contribute to short-term variations in global average temperature. A warming El Niño event was in effect for most of 2015 and the first third of 2016. Even without an El Niño event – and with a La Niña starting in the later months of 2017 – last year’s temperatures ranked between 2015 and 2016 in NASA’s records.
In an analysis where the effects of the recent El Niño and La Niña patterns were statistically removed from the record, 2017 would have been the warmest year on record.
Weather dynamics often affect regional temperatures, so not every region on Earth experienced similar amounts of warming. NOAA found the 2017 annual mean temperature for the contiguous 48 United States was the third warmest on record.
Warming trends are strongest in the Arctic regions, where 2017 saw the continued loss of sea ice.
NASA’s temperature analyses incorporate surface temperature measurements from 6,300 weather stations, ship- and buoy-based observations of sea surface temperatures, and temperature measurements from Antarctic research stations.
These raw measurements are analyzed using an algorithm that considers the varied spacing of temperature stations around the globe and urban heating effects that could skew the conclusions. These calculations produce the global average temperature deviations from the baseline period of 1951 to 1980.
NOAA scientists used much of the same raw temperature data, but with a different baseline period, and different methods to analyze Earth’s polar regions and global temperatures.
The full 2017 surface temperature data set and the complete methodology used to make the temperature calculation are available at:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp
GISS is a laboratory within the Earth Sciences Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The laboratory is affiliated with Columbia University’s Earth Institute and School of Engineering and Applied Science in New York.
NASA uses the unique vantage point of space to better understand Earth as an interconnected system. The agency also uses airborne and ground-based monitoring, and develops new ways to observe and study Earth with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. NASA shares this knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2671/long … nasa-noaa/
For more information about NASA’s Earth science missions, visit:
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