Climate science from climate scientists...

This month’s open thread on climate solutions.

Filed Under: Open thread, Solutions

Mr. Know It All says

Good news: COVID is getting smaller in the rear view mirror as Nov elections approach. Bad news: WWIII is just getting started. Good news: Nuclear winter will put an end to AGW. Yippeeee! :) Bad news on wind energy: https://americasbestpics.com/picture/in-case-you-did-not-know-about-this-a-two-AjUz7xqK9 More bad news – Brandon pushing for more domestic oil production: https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/white-house-quietly-calls-us-oil-companies-increase-production More bad news: New Yorkers pissed at electric bills: https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/new-yorkers-lash-out-conedison-over-soaring-electricity-bills

Good news: your claim about wind energy is a much-debunked falsehood.

And since you know it, or at least *should* by now know it, it’s also a lie in your (metaphorical) mouth.

Mr. Know It All says

Show us the breakdown of energy input versus eneryg output for a monster wind turbine installation. Brief list of some, not all, of the inputs you’ll need to account for:

Site selection team spending YEARS finding a suitable site and fighting the NIMBY’s to get permits. Design selection team effort to find the best Engineering bang for the buck. Don’t forget the site visits and surveying team activities. Mining to produce the monster concrete base, metals of all types in the entire thing. Energy to produce the non-metal parts including mining, etc to get the raw materials. Transportation of every bit of material from the mining site to the ore processing facility, to the metal refiners, to the manufacturing plant, to the job site, to lift and erect it on site. Energy for maintenance over the life of the installation, and the energy to demolish it and return the land to pristine condition as required by the NIMBY’s. Do we need to include the transmission wires and towers, required to get the power to the grid?

Good luck with your calculation and may the force be with you! :)

Mr. Know It All says

Brief overview of the on-site erection process:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vE6QkvcV-s

This one is amazing and, in one part, shows another one of the lifts to put the machinery on top of the tower:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR8nD_BgF1Y

Environmental impact of wind turbines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsswrLKlinU

Mr. KIA, This is a family blog. Talk of erections is inappropriate! ;-)

Not sure what strange form of amnesia leads you to forget the many times this has been discussed here already, but–good news!–there’s no need for li’l ol’ me to do any of that, since, to quote environmental journalist Sara Peach:

People have studied, in detail, the amount of carbon pollution emitted during the life of a wind turbine.

In fact, this type of analysis constitutes an entire branch of research known as “life cycle assessment,” with its own handbooks, internationally agreed-upon standards, specialized software, and peer-reviewed journals.

Needless to say, she goes on to present the results of that work:

…it’s possible to calculate a carbon “payback” time for a wind turbine: the length of time it takes a turbine to produce enough clean electricity to make up for the carbon pollution generated during manufacture. One study put that payback time at seven months — not bad considering the typical 20- to 25-year lifespan of a wind turbine. Bottom line: Wind turbines are far from a joke. For the climate, they’re a deal too good to pass up.

Them’s the facts. But it was so pretty, the way you waved your hands…

Curious…What is your suggested “practical way” of storing 430-odd cubic km of new water per year… ?

I don’t have one at this time.  Why do you think I said “finding practical ways” if I did not think they were yet to be found?

There are some tantalizing hints, though.  Selective radiation surfaces have demonstrated the ability to cool below ambient temperature even under full sunlight.  If we could cover e.g. Greenland’s ice sheets with such stuff, we could perhaps turn ice loss into ice gain.  Perhaps other kinds of solar radiation management could halt or reverse ice loss in both Greenland and Antarctica.  Whether we’d actually do it is another question.

What is your “practical way” of using the water for irrigation while at the same time _permanently_ (not just for a short while) sequestering an additional 430-odd cubic km on land next year as well?

Honestly?  There is NO practical way to deal with a continued anthropogenic warming trend.  It has to be stopped somehow.  The question is how to either deal with its effects or reverse it, neither of which is trivial.  We could reverse it by e.g. mineralizing gigatonnes of CO2 every year via dissolution of dunite into seawater.  It appears doubtful that humanity has the resolve to do this.

EP: appears doubtful that humanity has the resolve to do this.

RtW: fortunately, humanity has been known to gather resolve in an instant. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to think of a stimulus other than something gawdawful, such as whatever happens during/after our first annual (after a stutter or two) Blue Ocean Event (no reservations required)

How you heard of Project Meer https://www.meerreflection.com/home

Nigel, Again, you make sense. Rapist tendencies are at all levels. The kicker on whether to act on them could be opportunity, it could be perceived risk.

If Bill Cosby had washed out as a comic would he have been more likely to serially offend or less? And would his score be higher or lower?

But man, rape is soooo easy when you’ve got power.

Anyway, “rich vs poor” and “white vs blue collar” overlap, but rich dudes blue-collar rape via gun-to-head, too. I’m saying that if ya don’t need to display a gun you probably won’t, and you’re more likely to pull the trigger on the rape when you can do it with deniability. Might even get appointed to the Supreme Court

I see that you are trying to hook me back into this conversation about sexual assault yet again, by using flattery this time. Well I have an hour to kill before watching David Attenboroughs The Green Planet. (Normally I find nature documentaries a bit sleepy but this is simply stunning, and takes in the climate change issue as well. ) So here goes. Remember the research studies tend to show that white and blue collar workers commit about the same number of rapes (when adjusting for numbers in each group) so you seem to be saying the studies are wrong.

You seem to also be saying white collar workers would commit more rapes than blue collar workers and get away with more of them because they are smarter and have more power. Well they are going to get away with more of them because they are smart and can afford the best lawyers, thats a given. And I agree it probably would motivate them to take more risk.

Do white collar workers commit more rapes than blue collar workers? They probably could if they wanted, because they are smarter and have more power. But various things push in the other direction. Part of the reason to rape is likely to involve sexual frustration and white collar workers can afford prostitutes more easily. White collar workers also have reputations to protect, and get their power kicks from their jobs, or some by screwing people financially, or some bulling the lower classes. They don’t need to rape people.

For powerless blue collar workers rape is one of the few power things left to them apart from using their fists and storming the whitehouse like complete morons. Zebra would understand. And they dont have the money for prostitutes in abundance. So blue collar workers have a whole lot of reasons to commit rape and I’ve only picked a few things.

So I’m just inclined to think that on balance, the perpetrators of rape are probably no more likely to be white collar workers than blue collar workers. Its probably about the same.

Another thing. Working class women figure highly in the victim statistics. There could be various reasons and I can’t be bothered googling that, but it does suggest blue collar men are not exactly angels. Most victims are actually known to the perpetrators from what I’ve read.

Moderators: Your desire to encourage free and open discussion of topics even tangentially related to climate science is admirable, but your willingness to provide a sort of self-therapy space for uninformed speculation on utterly unrelated topics is not infinitely tolerable. The way this site is managed does not reflect well on you. Please- moderate is a verb. FWIW, after more than fifteen years of regular readership and much knowledge gained, I will no longer be looking in. As well, I will choose another site to recommend to others for climate news and information. Thank-you.

RC. There is nothing ‘uninformed’ about my comment. Its based on peer reviewed science and my studies of psychology at university.

You’re just a damn troll that likes to take a swipe at people without the guts or brains to back up your demeaning assessment with specifics. I suspect my comments disturb your world view. What a shame.

Please do stay away and don’t come back.

Mr. Know It All says

After reading just a few lines of that idiotic exchange between RtW and nigelj, I think you have made a wise choice. Please let us know if you find a suitable site for better dialogue on climate news.

It is true, that I only read a line or two of each comment before realizing it was crap and scrolling on down the page. So, if you don’t find a better site, I reommend doing as I do and scrolling past the drivel that is regularly spewed by those who seek to impress us with their with and their insults.

To all and everyone exept to Mr. Know It All

About Mr.Know It All, behind his back

and on the levels and lines that he is not reading,…..

Now, let us see whether he can get it.

I agree that the level of discourse here has fallen into the toilet.

I used to come here to learn things, but now all I see are endless pointless arguments back and forth about nonsense where I don’t even know (or care) where the participants are coming from.

The big question is now how the Ukraine war will impact greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere.

Imho, possibly in the short term a rise, then accelerated adoption of renewables coupled with more people driving electric cars.

Swap Russian gas for renewables, EU tells member states https://www.climatechangenews.com/2022/03/08/swap-russian-gas-for-renewables-eu-tells-member-states/

Climate change: EU unveils plan to end reliance on Russian gas https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60664799

Yes, let us get this down to earth and down to politics and away from rapism that Perverse Participans PP only can dream of.

Diesel oil costs 25 Nkr / liter here. Formerly it was 15 Nkr/ liter. But that does not matter, since a good Diesel is Science` answer to the question and creme dela creme of engines with all the worlds records. It hardly drinks and smokes anymore.

Russian gas is a sad story. It was some of my highest hopes.

Bill Clinton has the blame. He could have bought the very soviet Union, like former qualified precidents bought Alaska and the fameous French colonies and settlements when it was cheaply for sale on the free market, instead of committing ADVLTERARE in office.

The USA will never get any such chanse again. Just think of that, the very Soviet union offered for sale war surplus on the free market.

Maybe Biden could still buy Russia. Apparently there is a real chance Russia wont be able to pay its foreign debts and could go bankrupt. So Biden might get Russia for a cheap price. He could install Donald Trump is dictator in chief of Russia. It would keep Trump away from Americas politics. Trump appears to love Russia. Might not happen, but its nice to dream.

Putin thinks that because he has Nuclear Weapons he can get away with anything. Things are more complicated than that. He has probably destroyed Russia’s fossil fuel exports. Europe will almost certainly reduce reliance on Russian gas now as others have pointed out. Putin has shot himself in his own big hairy foot.

Saw a tweet yesterday suggesting that the fall of the Ruble means a really bad quarter for Republican fundraising.

I have a feeling it’s going to be much more than a quarter.

Nigel, surely you don’t think that having Trump in charge of nuclear weapons again would be a good idea..?

(Yeah, I know you’re not really serious.)

KM. If America buys Russia, then obviously Russia doesn’t get to keep its nuclear weapons! That would be a condition of the sale and purchase agreement. But yeah I’m not being serious. about any of this.

Kevin. Mind you it would be great if America did offer to buy Russia. Just to really piss off Putin.

Mr. Know It All says

Latest Brandon administration news on EVs:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/biden-elevates-ford-gm-and-now-siemens-but-not-tesla-in-big-ev-push-152156398.html

So now you are flaunting your ignorance by calling the president puerile names like a 12 year old? Hint: “Brandon” won! Big.

Mr. Know It All says

Nah, Dan, he didn’t. Here’s a tip of the iceberg for you to start your journey on finding out the truth. I know, YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

k[…And here are the crickets…]

Good points, Nigel. I wasn’t speaking of white collar rape as rich person rape but rape by power and position. Blue collar rape would be beating someone up or shoving a gun in their face. One rung up from the bottom can be a powerful position for a white collar rapist of exceedingly modest means.

Your working class woman who knows the perp victim profile – That’s what I’m talking about. And blue collar dudes can do a white collar style crime: insisting on sex from a woman who can’t afford to lose her job. Know a secret that could get her fired?

The book goes well, what with JWST continuing to progress and Putin getting his nose rubbed in the Ukranian carpet he bombed.

All that Potemkin Military (yachts ain’t cheap and Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s) volumed up with conscripts for Special Assignment is still massive. Tons and tons of steel. Crap designs, crap maintenance, crap newbie conscripts who tend to insist on eating. And without fuel they are all lines of static targets being Swiss cheesed into oblivion. Last estimate from somewhere in Ukraine was 8% destruction so far. Strategically take out 8% of all kinds of columns all using the same roads, with grandmothers tossing Molotovs and insults…

You were duped, BPL. Capitalist Russia is just as corrupt and worthless as Communist USSR. Maybe 90% of the USA’s “defense” spending since integrated circuits got involved was wasted. It’s fun watching our toys blow up Russian Capitalists, but what if we had instead been building productive toys that ended fossils? Putin wouldn’t have any customers.

Oops, looks like that’s happening anyway.

Want an America First policy? Set a national price for energy-related commodities. Letting rapacious asshats spike prices for the same product is crazy. We can use our Strategic reserves to balance supply and demand in the USA. WE will have a stable system. We will buy and sell fossils as a collective, and we are self-sufficient. Who can beat that?

And it’s not like we want advancements or efficiencies in fossil fuels, especially when “efficiency” is defined as efficiently shoving cash into lazy leeches’ pockets in exchange for zero work and zero positive directing of the economy.

The local Story is keeping pace. Who knows? We might survive.

RtW: Nobody reads anything that comes after some moron says “Brandon”.

RtW: Nobody reads anything that comes after some moron says “Brandon”. Yep, you’re a Brandonized Boy, boy.

I’ve decided to go with the “fuck off” to capitalism by spewing my major Work out loud. Internal combustion was solved over a year ago and no new advances or quibbles or fears have occurred, so the Solution is obviously solid.

I wouldn’t have the guts to shred my potential IP if the Local Story, the Societal Story, the Scientific Story, and the Celestial Story didn’t harmonize.

But yeah, I’m taking your critiques to heart by rejecting rent-seeking. If someone wants to thank me for whatever I do, cool. But I ain’t being the thing I’m fighting anymore.

Mr. Know It All says

Is that you, Al Bundy?

Mr. Know It All says

EP Quote: “Honestly? There is NO practical way to deal with a continued anthropogenic warming trend. It has to be stopped somehow. The question is how to either deal with its effects or reverse it, neither of which is trivial.”

How long do we have to stop our emissions? Only 8 years left as AOC says? Let’s find out. We’ve raised the CO2 concentration 140 ppm from 280 to 420 ppm in ~300 years. It’s warmer now in most places, but we’re doing OK. If we can level off CO2 at another 140 ppm, that would be 560 ppm, or 2X pre-industrial. Can we do it? How long do we have?

Since 1850 we’ve emitted 2.4EE12 tons of CO2 and 950EE9 tons of that went into the atmosphere. That’s 2,400 and 950 Gigatons or billion tons for you folks in Rio Linda. Source: https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/climate-change/global-warming/global-co2-emissions/story

Each year humans add 34EE9 tons of CO2, and counting ALL GHGs we emit 50EE9 tons CO2 equaivalent, CO2e. Source: https://ourworldindata.org/greenhouse-gas-emissions#:~:text=Today%2C%20we%20collectively%20emit%20around,were%20around%2035%20billion%20tonnes.

Wild guess, say we maintain the 950/2400 ratio of atmospheric uptake to total emissions (wild guess), then atmospheric uptake will be ~ 50×950/2400 = 20EE9 tons per year. (BPL, whoop out the calc – how does this compare with the annual increase in CO2 we are measuring?) To add another 950EE9 tons to the atmosphere would take ballpark 950/20=47.5 years IF we average what we are doing now over those 47.5 years and if my calc is in the ballpark. (OK, other GHGs probably make it a little worse than that.)

Since we’re working on reducing emissions (slowly), and are even attempting to remove some CO2, we may have longer than that before we get to 560 ppm (double pre-industrial).

So, looks like it’s a problem, but perhaps achieveable. We’ve go wheels and concrete, gravel, and rip-rap trucks so the low-lying cities can start building dikes and moving to higher ground.

Off-topic, but MIT says natural CO2 emissions exceeds human emissions by ten times. Not saying this is correct, but here it is FYI: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does-earth-naturally-absorb

LOOK! REAL MITIGATION: Africans are removing CO2 from the atmosphere: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/africas-great-green-wall-begins-rise

BPL, some day I’ll look at your planet-calculation page. Who is the intended audience?

KIA: BPL, some day I’ll look at your planet-calculation page. Who is the intended audience?

BPL: People interested in planetary astronomy.

We do not order or buy your planetary SPAM!, Gernosse, from SPiced and canned, industrialn hAM! off the factory assembly line where the earth is flat. For religious, racial military climatic nutrician and communal festival purposes.

Try Stoccafisso instead, and Surströmming. That is more autenic planetary and astronomical in the real climate. Or SmalaHAUD.

bpl: You probably mean lonely hikers who stumbled into your borehole due to a lack of house number lighting.

ms: You probably mean lonely hikers who stumbled into your borehole due to a lack of house number lighting.

BPL: If there were some context to this jibe, people could figure out what you were talking about.

If we can level off CO2 at another 140 ppm, that would be 560 ppm, or 2X pre-industrial. Can we do it?

And you think that 560 ppm would be safe, or useful, because–?

(Reminder: the central estimate for ECS is still ~3 C per doubling…)

Off-topic, but MIT says natural CO2 emissions exceeds human emissions by ten times. Not saying this is correct…

Correct, but not very relevant to the topic of Forced Responses, since a) we don’t control natural emissions, and b) natural emissions aren’t forcing the observed trend. (This latter follows arithmetically from the fact that of anthropogenic emissions, only ~4/9ths stay in the atmosphere on annual timescales.)

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle/page1.php

We have been through this here, more than once. Just sayin’…

Mr. Know It All says

We’re doing OK at 420 pppm, 1.5X pre-industrial, so I think we’d be OK at 2X pre-industrial, 560 ppm. Not optimum but we can handle it. Here’s why:

We can’t get to zero emissions today – we have to grow food, heat homes, run the world economy. If we go away from all FFs we will welcome a warmer world in the winter. Solar and wind ain’t gonna cut it for many decades. By the time we get to zero emissions, we will likely be able to start removing CO2 in meaningful quantities. We have time to start building levees and sea walls where needed ASAP or moving people where needed.

None of these “reasons why we can handle it” actually bear on the point.

People are on moove now in Ukraina, and people have been on moove in the mediterraneans both from Africa and fro0m the middle east now for years. And King Donald Grizny began building his great wall to make America great again, against people on moove from Mexico.

Criminally negligent to suggest 560 ppm is a safe goal, or any sort of goal, for climate.

New data on methane. In 2021, there was a record increase in the concentration of methane on average. However, something strange is happening in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. Annual fluctuations in the concentration of methane began to change there at the end of 2019, which is confirmed by observatory data.

It is not known how much of the rise in mean methane concentrations is Arctic methane, but the trend is interesting. Its source is also unclear.

https://ibb.co/LZNC54t https://ibb.co/GHw285j

We all knew at some point, and sooner rather than later – well, those with any analytical skills whatsoever knew – the Arctic CH4 would rise above the noise. This looks like that moment has come.

I wrote in the wrong topic, but here is an interesting study on underwater permafrost. It refers to thermokarst sinkholes 220 and 74 meters in size and 24 meters deep. Their size is impressive. This study is the first of its kind and it is not known how many such thermokarst sinkholes are around the world and how they are affected by climate change.

Rapid seafloor changes associated with the degradation of Arctic submarine permafrost Temperature increases in Arctic regions have focused attention on permafrost degradation on land, whereas little is known about the dynamics of extensive glacial-age permafrost bodies now submerged under the vast Arctic Continental shelves. Repeated high-resolution bathymetric surveys show that extraordinarily rapid morphologic changes are occurring at the edge of the continental slope of the Canadian Beaufort Sea along what was once the seaward limit of relict Pleistocene permafrost. How widespread similar changes are on the Arctic shelves is unknown, as this is one of the first areas in the Arctic subjected to multiple multibeam bathymetric surveys. Rapid morphologic changes associated with active submarine permafrost thawing may be an important process in sculpturing the seafloor in other submarine permafrost settings.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2119105119

And all those who understand basic climate science know you need more than one or two years data to be sure something has risen above the ‘noise.’.

If you look at the data graphs of the Tiksi Observatory from the screenshot, then the first surge in methane concentration was in 2018. To be sure, you can wait another year or two

In December 2021, a record increase in the concentration of methane in the Arctic is seen. Around April 5, NOAA will release methane data for December 2021. Normally, the average concentration of methane around the world starts to fall around this time. If there are deviations from this trend in the NOAA chart, we will all see

And all those who actually do, know that the specific response of permafrost/clathrates isn’t climate. In fact, they both release CH4 regularly. That his happens isn’t special. What is is the rate of increase.

Those that do *also* know that every trend has a beginning and climate science has done a poor job of predicting/scenarioing the rate of change due to climate forcings even as it has nailed the GHG totals and temps. That is, sensitivity is at the very high end, not the low end or middle.

Those that *do* also know we are getting into some areas of climate change and effects having doubling times that are at 5-year to 20-year scales. That rate of doubling makes the 30 year metric absurdly inappropriate for some aspects of assessing climate changes.

Those that understand basic English, which is not you, knows that the phrase “looks like” is not definitive; it implies a caveat much like, “very possibly is” and so don’t troll others.

Anyone sanguine about Arctic CH4, as you are and have been, is playing a dangerous game of trying to time the market. From thermokarst lakes to pingoes to the blast craters found in Siberia to the infrastructure being ruined in Alaska to the new report above on sinkholes in the Arctic Ocean, things are changing and that is not going to slow down.

Only two years? If it’s the first two years of a ten-year doubling, it’s extremely bad news.

There is also good news. Methane oxidizes in the atmosphere over 10 years into carbon dioxide. With an increase in the concentration of methane, its relative rate of oxidation decreases, but the rate at which a certain mass of methane is oxidized increases. The growth of methane concentration will stop when equilibrium is reached. The runaway greenhouse effect is unlikely

So according to you pointing out you need more than one or two years of data to determine if something has risen above the noise is trolling? By your definition virtually every climate scientist is a troll. You’re an idiot.

Stop trolling, Mr Killian, stop trolling

Orgies during Lent, Orgien während der Fastenzeit, Orgier i fastetiden!

That is not sustainable and it is not Permaculture.

Pattern recognition seems not to be your strongest dicipline, Hr. Killian,

It tells us further of your lacking levels and horizons of experience,, enlighttment, training, and inauguration. Things that cannot be substituted and repaired by belongings missions and memberships.

On pattern and tendency recognition

Can you try and take the subject a bit more serious, pleace?

To Your discussion of trends in time by smallwer or larger, countable catastrophic events,… and their further consequenses that follow and smooth out in time.

For that class of phaenomena I recommend poisson statistics, first developed by Poisson for the discussion of criminal statistics in Paris such as murders or fires pr month or pr year in Paris.. Further appliciable to catastrophic car collisions from A to B per year on your local highway.

In general, for the number of raindrops in a cup of coffee under open sky, in order to be able to say for sure, It is not raining now! Is it beginning to rain? Yes, it is raining! Does it rain more now? When will this end? I think it has stopped now! ……. ……… When you are not allowed to look up.

Poisson statistics is also used for radioactive counting and for political election statristics such as the number of votes on the communist party from time to time in your local community. How and when can you tell that communism increasing or decreasing or whether it is steady?

The std at Poisson is the square root of the amplitude. By one event it might as well not have happened and you shall not lift your eyebrows again until you have 3 more such events. By 10 events std is slightly more than 3, but by 1000 events the std is 33, and you must lift your eyebrows again above 1100 and below 900, at 3 times the Std.

Then take a telescopic look at the moon. What is the rate and the tendency of meteorite and asteroide impacts there? That can be judged because by aging and erosion you can also judge the age of the craters and say for sure that the rate has fallen roughly exponentially fror the last 4.5 billion years. But, as we know from other reasons, such events may also occur in swarms just like deaths and fires in Paris.

The moon together with Paris is a very good reference example for many such discussions and we will soon be able also to use Ukraina as a referenjce for dramatic catastrophic chaotic events..

Then what about large methane blobs in the siberian permafrost tundra? I took a look with Google maps on the Yamal peninsula and found that it seems rather normal and regular. There are large round holes all the way there, and when you have determined the climate and soil premises, you can look over the very arctic fror the same. I have found several, similar old blob- fields. ( very flat and thick silt- fields with permafrost)

Then back to Poisson. The police, the Gendarmerie and the Paris fireward must also be constant for Poisson fully to come to his rights. Siberian blobs were hardly noticed and mentioned before the invention of the telegraph, and of Pravda.

Media interest and obsevance like the Paris gendarmerie is also a parameter to it. Before the geiger counter, radioactive poisson statistics was not on pensum. And before the fall 0f the soviet Union, those blobs were not mentioned at all in Western media.

Mrkia: How long do we have to stop our emissions? Only 8 years left as AOC says?

RtW: All this time here and you still think it is a light switch? Zero (minimal?) damage now or in the future as long as we act in 7.9 years and total destruction a month or so later?

Two sorts of people might treat a sound bite like a dissertation:

A total idiot, someone with a room- temperature IQ

As if you started out in life as stupid as the logic trail that weaves to your stance from a call to action inspired by a published paper….

..and just too incurious to glance at the paper AOC was referring to…

So, I vote for the latter being the cause and the former being the sad effect we are witnessing today: a self-made moron.

I would say KIA is an average guy being deliberately idiotic / stupid. Like you say a dissembler. However I suspect years of deliberate stupidity kill brain cells, so he better watch out..

I have the impression that being hardnecked supid contrarian in one way most oftenly corelates to be hardnecked contrarian in another way7 and more thanj one way, but this next way cannot be carried out officially in fullmdaylight. Thus, ones contrarian deliberately stupid denial and contrarianism is as much as a steady, daily exercise for something worse and quiten more serious.

It may be their daily training on unimportant matters for them, for something quite much more serious for them, They are allways training on less serious matters for their assumed doubble- life with its necessary “doubble- think”.

That is called hypocricy in english and HEUCHELEI in German. Namely, allways having to say and to train saying something out of the mouth while meaning the opposite inwards into your heart.

That routine- exercise not only kills braincells each day. Much worse, Mr Knowitall; It wears down your CON-SCIENCE, that is organically identical , (nothing more and nothing less) than your very NERVUS VAGUS, your 7th nerve. .

Which is quite unhealthy. in the long run. I say that for good.

Is that really so and am I right, Mr. Knowitall?

It is just as likely that he is far too insecure and coward to admit to being wrong. It is not rocket science. He flaunts his ignorance due to his insecurity but he gets the attention he craves while never making any effort to learn. Which reflects on how poorly educated he is as well..

But there is more to it. I personally believe that most people are educated in any case, but on what? That seems to differ highly. And then, intelligence also shows high diversity. And there are types of intelligence and of characters.

Being able to forget and to ignore and to supress impressions and experience is also a necessary property of mentality and of talented intelligence, …. and has also to be learnt and can be falsely unluckily educated or diciplined.

Am I right also on this Mr. Knowitall?

We were told about intelligence tests at the inaugurating university studies, and “Adequate norming” of intelligence tests. And if that is not conscidered, different races , nations, and cultures may come out quite unequal, which is not biologically plausible..

My Uncle, Dr.Med and Scientist said: Yes, that is obviously so and it is not that easy ton compare apes to humans. Put an ape on an English Gentlemans problems, and the ape will fail and show very unintelligent. But put an Englishman (or any anglo- american knowitall) on an ape- problem in the jungle..!”

Wherefore I also mention apes and bears and trolls, slugs, cyclopes and Bonobos in the climate dispute, and mention their fore-paws.

Quoth Mr. Know It All:

How long do we have to stop our emissions? Only 8 years left as AOC says? Let’s find out.

I figure minus 30 years, give or take.  We’ve already found out.  We have already had extreme weather events and the full effects aren’t even being felt yet.  We probably crossed the line at 350 ppm, maybe less.

We’ve raised the CO2 concentration 140 ppm from 280 to 420 ppm in ~300 years. It’s warmer now in most places, but we’re doing OK.

Tell that to the dying Great Barrier Reef, the droughts across the world and the exploding methane vents in the Arctic.

What can we do?  I suggest mineralizing 2 tons of CO2 equivalent for every ton emitted until we’re back down to 350.  This can be done by enhanced weathering of massive quantities of dunite and other mafic/ultramafic rocks, but whether humanity has the will to do this is an open question.

Off-topic, but MIT says natural CO2 emissions exceeds human emissions by ten times.

And natural CO2 uptake is much greater than that.  Only the net matters, not the gross.

EP, Yep, four decades ago the “entitled”, uh modern world was tiny. It ended up being rather damaging to metastasize the Western World before a reasonable system was designed.

A video on why we (the general public) don’t care about climate change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK7g6pgaC7I&lc=UgwkMG2GFitrjv0-7eB4AaABAg.9ZnRPZt-uwO9ZnyqF_U8TM

Suggests that it has something to do with the way climate change is reported, and the lack of coverage it gets compared to other far more trivial subjects. Maybe reporting climate change and its consequences in a way that people can directly relate too, such as things that they can see and experience, will help.

Good video, however the idea that lack of media coverage is the reason almost nobody is doing anything significant about the climate problem seems rather weak . Because surely virtually everyone knows the basics of the climate issue by now?

You would have to be living under a rock with no human contact, no television or other media for the last 20 years to not be aware of the climate issue, including the fact that the climate is changing, that its due to fossil fuels and that its very serious. And surely virtually everyone knows what the main solutions are.

I would say the lack of progress solving the problem probably has multiple causes, including technological roadblocks, political factors, public fears about costs, and the denialists campaign, but I believe this following is the main reason:

“Humans Wired to Respond to Short-Term Problems : NPR. Humans Wired to Respond to Short-Term Problems Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert argues that humans are exquisitely adapted to respond to immediate problems, such as terrorism, but not so good at more probable, but distant dangers, like global warming.”

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5530483#:~:text=Humans%20Wired%20to%20Respond%20to%20Short%2DTerm%20Problems%20%3A%20NPR&text=Humans%20Wired%20to%20Respond%20to%20Short%2DTerm%20Problems%20Harvard%20psychology,distant%20dangers%2C%20like%20global%20warming.

We don’t know how to change this. It makes me suspect that progress fixing the climate problem will be slow, and is not going to include things that most people find unpleasant, painful or hugely inconvenient . And the real world historical data is on my side. I don’t like this at all, but it appears to be the objective reality.

Of course there are things that would help nudge people more towards solutions. Obviously better media coverage of wildfires and hurricanes and their links to the climate issue would help rather than hinder. (like EP’s example) This sort of thing is fairly immediate. But we will probably need a lot more very obvious, drastic, and immediate climate problems to wake the world up.

I think the point the video was making was that on the regular everyday media feeds (e.g. TV news and newspapers), climate change and relating the climate change science to what is happening with the world’s weather typically takes up a very small amount of space compared to a ton of other things the media prefer to report which are better at stimulating feel-good emotions and selling newspapers. People can understand the fundamentals of climate change but not necessarily easily be able to relate it to their personal everyday lives. It said in the video that if climate change consequences are framed around a few polar bears dying or glaciers melting, people might say “so what”, because polar bears and glaciers do not feature tangibly into their lives (at least not in the wealthy West), but if it were framed around something that did directly affect them, such as the NW American heatwave (or any other deadly heatwave), or a rise in food prices because of a natural disaster in a normally highly productive farming region which are projected to get worse in the future, or a destructive extreme rainfall event, which are also projected to get worse/more frequent, people might take it a bit more seriously.

Adam, yes I appreciate the video is saying those things. I guess I’m rather sceptical that if things were framed more around genuinely relevant natural disasters that it would make much difference. New Zealand media where I live have framed things in that way quite well over the last few years and it isn’t causing people to rush out and make big changes to their lives. and vote for the Green Party. But I agree with you it might “help a bit” and I’m maybe being too pessimistic.

FWIW, it’s my perception that it’s more common than previously to use CC impact framings that are apt to be relevant to the expected audience. Perhaps that’s one reason that we’re seeing opinion shift in a helpful direction.

Maybe reporting climate change and its consequences in a way that people can directly relate too, such as things that they can see and experience, will help.

Putting some emphasis on things like 175 wildfires in Texas in the past week can likely help:

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/21/us/texas-wildfires-monday/

I drove past a plume of smoke yesterday that had to have been 2 miles tall, given the distance from which it was visible.  And that was just ONE fire, from the looks of it.

Dr Genosse poet, 0n your engineering

At the same time there are wildfires in Norway and people to be evacuated

This is hardly due to climate change, but due to human settlements and mis- use, mis- interpretations of their landscapes and of setting fire to it in the seasons

. It is as antroåpogene as can be in the climate, and not due to cycle and cyclings but to ignorance and stupitity and to unqualified engineering.

We hope that a series of Texan gas and oilfields also will catch fire due to this, will show proof and be educative.

In Ukraina, the Russians ar now doing their very best to set fire to it and to cause wildfires also in densely, populated, suburban areas..

They have longrange rocket artillery with 2-3-4 Kg of TNT within conventional “barrels” of gasoline and diesel, 150 liters…… delivered to town and elsewhere.

That sets fire to it.

The worlde is discussing whether this will inhibit necessary climate responsibility and action.

You, as a presumably resposible engineer- poet, shoud be able to get and to discuss this first. We judge and discuss you and eventual further poetries on behalf. of this

So, how is it that the wildfire season in California and across the West has expanded by at least a month, and two months in California, compared with the 1970s?

That is easy to answer from where I live.

For some people it is so easy and so tempting and so adult and so professional and serious to set fire to it…… smile smile…….. and to go there and rake fires……. each year in the season….

It is simply archaic tradeitionjal, human Pyro- philia and Pyro- mania.

And the season comes earlier and earlier in spring and better and better and later in autumn.

It is as antropogene as can be. And CO2AGW improoves or expands theese seasons both in spring and in autumn.

I’ll let you answer Richard Mercer before I bother to answer you.

So, Engineer Poet does not get the point.

The summer season and growth season and season where it can burn at all has expanded at both ends in recent decades. Spring coming earlier, autumn coming later.

If people then are tradidionally eager to burn it all every season for traditional ceremonial psychological and moral political reasons being poetic engineers in that respect in order to feel nostalgic or something, then their due traditional moral political “bonjfires” may get out of control.

And they will deny it.

They even will blame me for not having understood them and for having to learn first.

@carbonito – ” This is hardly due to climate change… ”

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-climate-change-is-affecting-wildfires-around-the-world

So our stupid little pastor and preacherman is also a climate denier – now your mercilessly meaningless comments finally seem to me in the right context.

The stupid “holistic” sales agents, pastors and preachmen and systematic deniers…..

Do I have to mention more?

On March 18, the Concordia-Dome C research station in East Antarctica recorded an anomaly 47 degrees C above normal.

Is that now the largest anomaly ever recorded anywhere on earth? If not, what was the largest (positive or negative)?

Nigel: the idea that lack of media coverage is the reason almost nobody is doing anything significant about the climate problem seems rather weak .

RtW: If the same percentage of the news coverage was about the death, destruction, losses, and inconvenience of likely-climate-related stuff as was given to war stuff during WW2 then ?

O yeah, that’s net news coverage. You have to subtract the GOPpish propaganda since it is inverse coverage.

Richard, even if we had saturation media coverage of the climate issue, I don’t believe it would make much difference to what people do about it, and most people would probably change channels or turn the TV off. Because people have already heard about all aspects of the climate issue many times over the last 20 years or so and can only take so much. Even I don’t read every media article on climate change or watch every tv segment these days. It gets repetitive. The exception is this website, because they tend to tackle new technical issues and in depth and its just one or two new issues each month.

Imho the problem is not a lack af awareness. Instead people are in various forms of psychological denial. It will only change if theres something like a heatwave that kills millions.

Don’t get me wrong. One of our media outlets had virtually no climate coverage, and I’ve lobbied them hard to change that,

And I certainly don’t object if the media increase climate coverage. I guess I have just got a bit cynical about it all.

Killian to Nigel: Only two years? If it’s the first two years of a ten-year doubling, it’s extremely bad news.

RtW: Denialists do “down the up escalator”. Your comment feels like one rung of “ladderizing the up escalator”. to me.

One thing we need to address if countries like the UK want to embrace renewable energy and become less dependant on FF and large energy price rises is the NIMBY factor:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-60878403

“The government badly needs to generate more renewable energy to meet its emission targets and make the UK more energy independent.

But some of its own MPs are among those lining up against projects that could power hundreds of thousands of homes.

At least 20 have publicly spoken out against solar or wind projects in their own constituencies in the past two years.

Many of them say they fully support increasing energy from renewables.

But building wind turbines and solar panel farms on unspoilt English countryside can be deeply unpopular with their constituents. ”

They claim to support renewables, as long as they are not near them. The problem is, in the UK, if you eliminate all places where someone could object to the visual intrusion, and all areas of outstanding natural beauty, there aren’t many places left to put large scale renewable installations. Any thoughts as to how to address this?

I use RC and comments to refine my understanding of what’s likely to crash civilization if the tyrants can’t do it first. But reading comments can be a waste of time sorting the wheat from the chaff.

RC blog could be rescued of course. RC’s rules are too polite. Conditions should be that comments shall be on-topic, Personal aspersions not tolerated, nor shall nonsense be run into the ground.

We can’t let the trolls destroy insight into climate change by corrupting public inquiry into what concerns us all; or having citizens’ inquiry disappear because the denialists want to keep us confused.

Let me join with others saying that valuable explanations and tangential points to the initial discussion are revealed in a blog. I’ve observed that even the denialist trolls contribute in a way – by having their points demolished by the facts.

I don’t use Facebook or Twitter or any other social medium.

My vote’s to keep the blogs and toss the hogs.

A more draconian Bore Hole would be easy: place comment in BoreHole and place an ever-increasing suspension on the perp, maybe with a public notice, maybe not…

The volunteer moderator concept has legs. So does a weekly or twice a week batching of comments. And letting commenters edit or delete their not-yet-moderated comments would be a huge boon.

But some of its own MPs are among those lining up against projects that could power hundreds of thousands of homes.

At least 20 have publicly spoken out against solar or wind projects in their own constituencies in the past two years.

Many of them say they fully support increasing energy from renewables.

But building wind turbines and solar panel farms on unspoilt English countryside can be deeply unpopular with their constituents. ”

They claim to support renewables, as long as they are not near them.

After all, who could possibly object to square miles of black rectangles, or spires topped with blinking anti-collision lights which radiate harmful infrasound which will stand there for the rest of their lives?

Any thoughts as to how to address this?

It starts with Hinckley Point and Sizewell D, E, F and G.  Minimal geographic footprint, no significant impact beyond the site itself, and no need for carbon-spewing “backup”.

EP is SO concerned with the visual impact of renewables. NIMBY is just awful!

Except, of course, when it’s local opposition to nukes. Then it’s uninformed anti-science Communists holding back progress.

National energy concerns do need to supercede local concerns when it comes to energy projects. It is legitimate to require each site to be surveyed for environmental impact, and to invite local comment. But that’s all. That said, here’s what we need to meet the crisis.

1. Ban all new drilling and mining of fossil fuels, immediately. All of it. Worldwide. 2. Ban all new coal, oil, and natural gas power plants, ditto. 3. Build out national and even international HVDC smart grids to distribute power where it’s needed over as large areas as possible. 4. Build out solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and wave power generation. Overbuild it to help take care of slack periods. 5. Build out pumped hydro, battery, compressed air, and other power backup as needed. 6. Electrify as much transportation and industry as possible. Upgrade rail transportation in every country, especially in countries with backward, third-world level rail systems. Like the United States. 7. Take fossil fuel power plants off-line as soon as they can be safely replaced with renewables.

8. Promote use of biochar agriculture to take carbon dioxide out of the air, where we don’t want it, and put it in the soil, where we need it. 9. Remove subsidies for wasteful, monoculture agriculture and the overuse of fertilizers. Promote natural insecticides and arbori-agriculture (crops planted amidst trees, and yes, there are ways to do that without blocking all the sunlight). 10. Stop deforestation with appropriate legislation in every country. It’s okay to raise timber farms in areas already devoted to timber farms. It’s not okay to turn rain forests into hardpan.

11. Promote home recycling everywhere. Remove perverse incentives. People shouldn’t have to pay to recycle; recycling should be the default. Disposing of recyclables should be made easy for households, as in Japan. 12. Promote recycling on an industry level. We need to reuse materials, not mine new ones. Mining should be shut down to a minimum level as soon as materials from recycling streams come on line. We need a circular economy, not an endless-growth economy. 13. Research safe, cheap nuclear power, if such a thing exists. Maybe it will exist in the future. 14. Research fusion power. In the future, this will be a good way to dispose of toxic wastes, by breaking them down into their elemental or small-molecule components.

Totally agree with your list of climate solutions. They will be challenging but seem feasible.

Biochar might be limited by available land and biomass and pyrolitic ovens don’t come cheap, so additional solutions to sequester carbon are be needed. Both rock weathering and regenerative agriculture and direct air capture have potential to sequester carbon. None of these are perfect solutions either, or they face various challenges, but a combination of all these solutions starts to look very powerful and technically feasible and cost effective to me.

“Project Drawdown” has a nice sensible list of well researched climate solutions.

Agree also with your comments on contraception etcetera.

I should have included, in the long run, make contraception and abortion freely available in every country. Voluntary provision of contraception has already reduced fertility from seven children per women to three in Bangladesh, which was once thought to be a basket case. The world population is one its way to stabilizing around the year 2050, but if we can do it any faster, that would help. The fewer people consuming resources, the better.

And we need to welcome immigrants and refugees. For population to be mobile would help in all kinds of ways. For example, in the United States, or China, where social security systems are strained by the growing number of elderly people and the shrinking work force, it makes no sense whatsoever to keep young, working-age immigrants and children out.

“And we need to welcome immigrants and refugees.”

Good luck selling that to the UK population, which seems to be attempting to become a clone of America (and as COVID shows, repeating what others do will likely brings you the same results as them). The reason BREXIT got voted for was because of our toxic media framing immigrants as the primary cause of social ills in the UK.

I don’t understand the attitude that immigrants take jobs and increase the unemployment levels of the native population. Given the population is aging, and given elderly people retire from work, there should be plenty of jobs to go around if it is true the workforce population is shrinking.

BPL goes off the deep end:

1. Ban all new drilling and mining of fossil fuels, immediately. All of it. Worldwide. 3. Build out national and even international HVDC smart grids to distribute power where it’s needed over as large areas as possible. 4. Build out solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, and wave power generation. Overbuild it to help take care of slack periods. 5. Build out pumped hydro, battery, compressed air, and other power backup as needed.

You failed at the outset with 1.  This is NOT going to happen, because you’ll have a world-wide repeat of the Texas blackouts only worse.  Nobody will stand for it.

3 is something we don’t have working ANYWHERE.  Worse, BPL ignores the massive vulnerabilities created by long supply lines and especially hostile suppliers; Germany is effectively a vassal state of Russia due to a bone-headed program to close all nuclear plants, creating dependence on Russian gas.

4 is crazy.  Geothermal and tidal are very limited geographically, and wave-power machinery tends to get broken easily.  None but geothermal has a life expectancy of more than 20-25 years, so you can expect to replace it at least 4-5 times a century.  While the ultimate energy source might be renewable, the materials for the equipment are not.

5 posits that we can make storage systems which fight to become affordable even today will suddenly be widely available… in an energy-constrained world.  That isn’t going to happen.  AAMOF, the supply chains would collapse immediately when we no longer had the reliability of electric supply to run arc furnaces to process steel for e.g. wind-turbine towers.

Nobody pushing such nonsense has a clue, and they all need to be removed from any role in determining policy.

Meanwhile, the USA is sitting on enough depleted uranium to run the entire country for centuries without mining another ounce.  You want an end to mining of fossil fuels?  There’s your solution; it’s been in front of you the whole time.

Engineer-Poet. I dont believe that BPL was suggesting stopping using fossil fuels immediately. He appeared to be suggesting don’t open up NEW oil fields or do further exploration. Most oil comes from big existing fileds that have many years life left in them. That would give us enough oil for the transition period to a new energy grid but would put some pressure on to get moving.

Yes, EP, we know your point of view. Renewables are awful, the only solution is nukes, nukes, and more nukes. Ignore their total failure so far. Ignore that no one will invest in them any more; that the only people still investing in them are totalitarian countries where opposition can be steamrollered. Ignore the fact that people are lining up to invest their money in solar and wind, which are still growing by double digits every year. In short, ignore reality.

” 5 posits that we can make storage systems that are already struggling to be affordable, will suddenly be ubiquitous… in an energy-constrained world. That will not happen. AAMOF, the supply chains would collapse immediately if we… Nobody who spreads such nonsense has a clue. ”

— Storage systems, along with renewable energies, are pretty much the cheapest and safest strategy to ensure energy security. As an exception, I have to agree with the blind chicken bpl.

Apparently YOU have absolutely no idea what, for example, modern pumped storage systems can do and what degree of efficiency they achieve. So you can safely delete the engineer from your user name.

Pump storage already achieves ~ 85% efficiency today. Above ground, however, the orographic possibilities have already been exhausted in many places. For really gifted engineers without borders, it therefore continues underground, since only a difference in height and sufficient water masses are required for a pumped storage facility.

In disused mines there are often millions of m³ of volume available. The investments for expanding them into water reservoirs are significantly cheaper than above-ground dams due to the existing infrastructure. Invisible, they can be installed on any major river or lake if the geology of the location permits, and they do not disturb the landscape or the acceptance of the population.

A concept I developed combines such underground pump storage for storing electricity with compressed air storage, heat/cold storage and serves as excellent protection against drought and flood events all year round. The overall efficiency is well over 100% and the underground compressed air caverns are the first in the world that can produce large quantities of compressed air up to 40 bar and a lot of heat without any compressor.

Due to the multifunctionality, they are highly profitable with a comparatively low investment. No lithium, cobalt or other rare metals – 100% recyclable.

I see further global, very large potential in river power plants, which have the same base load capacity as nuclear power plants.

https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/schwimmende-kleinkraftwerke-erobern-donau-rhein/

So you can confidently stick your uranium rods where the sun never shines. At a time when nuclear power plants are being attacked by Russian artillery – your nuclear proposals are particularly ludicrous.

To all and everyone exept Matthias Schürle from Karlsruhe

I found DATA, that sustain my climate understanding and model. the Tropopause, lapsrate, and Claussius Clappeyron- Aristoteles- theory.

That is much easier to comprehend.

It is the fameous Hiawatha- crater on Grønland, that has been shurly dated now. rather 50 million years old, in an arctic situation with tempered rain- forests on northern Grønland, that were due to much more CO2 in the atmosphere, thus it ruins many further, recent missions, projects, and beliefs.

The moral of it is that you shurly do not have to store water on land.

What matters is enough fossile carbon in the air, so you get ocean- temperatures and claussius clappeyron evaporations enough, and then Aristoteles What goes up must come down, also in the arctic where carbon sink was also consciderable at that time, very green rain forests with high diversity also of land animal life to eat all that green.

Then what about the sea levels and its eventual rise?

Well, ignore it. It is normal.

Do not be stupid at least but moove to lands and places where the earth is not flat, so that you only have to climb a bit higher up on the lands and cliffs and solid rocks, and up in the trees during the floods.

That is a better holistic vision, I must say, … and sell!

@carbonito – ” so that you only have to climb a bit higher up on the lands and cliffs and solid rocks, and up in the trees during the floods. ”

— Tell your plans to the subway of New York – but take your magic pills before.

I dont believe that BPL was suggesting stopping using fossil fuels immediately. He appeared to be suggesting don’t open up NEW oil fields or do further exploration. Most oil comes from big existing fileds that have many years life left in them.

A great deal of oil now comes from fracked shale fields with very steep annual decline rates.  These require on-going effort just to maintain production.  Meanwhile, energy demand continues to rise.

That would give us enough oil for the transition period to a new energy grid but would put some pressure on to get moving.

The present surge in oil prices resulting from the effort to isolate Russia ought to be enough to convince you otherwise.

Building out an entirely new energy infrastructure is itself an energy-intensive activity.  Right now we’re running on the legacy of once-cheap oil and lots of coal.  We won’t be able to build a new energy grid with expensive energy; we first have to make energy cheap again.  Specifically, we need to make low-carbon energy cheap.  Until then, we have to use the grid we’ve got.

EP: Specifically, we need to make low-carbon energy cheap.

BPL: Wind and solar have been cheaper than fossil fuels for several years now.

Renewables are awful, the only solution is nukes, nukes, and more nukes.

None other than Dr. James Hansen notes that the only decarbonization success stories use hydro and nuclear.

Name a place where wind and solar support the production of more wind and solar, without fossil backup.  I’ll wait.

Ignore their total failure so far.

O RLY?  Look at France and Ontario.  Both of them decarbonized their grids almost entirely using… nuclear and hydro.  France did it entirely by accident, as an effort to replace petroleum.

Ignore that no one will invest in them any more; that the only people still investing in them are totalitarian countries where opposition can be steamrollered.

Vogtle 3 and 4, Flamanville and Olkiluoto 3 are not in totalitarian countries.  Neither is Watts Bar 2, which was completed this century.

Ignore the fact that people are lining up to invest their money in solar and wind, which are still growing by double digits every year.

Ignore the fact that, according to Warren Buffett,

We don’t want our million customers that don’t have solar to be buying it for 10.5 cents when we can turn it out for them at 4.5 cents. We don’t want the non-solar customers, of which there are a million, to be subsidizing the 17,000 solar customers. Solar customers are subsidized by the federal government, as we are through our wind and solar operations.

None other than T. Boone Pickens got his ass handed to him in the wind biz:

Pickens couldn’t duplicate his oil riches in renewable energy. In 2009, he scrapped plans for a huge Texas wind farm after running into difficulty getting transmission lines approved, and eventually his renewables business failed.

Your “renewables” aren’t economically viable without subsidies and can’t even support their own manufacturing by themselves.  Most of the world’s polysilicon comes from China, where it’s made with massive amounts of coal!

Reality is that the storage required to to get reliable power from “renewables” makes them even more uneconomic than they already are, and drives the energy return on energy invested too low to run our society.

Reality is that we’ve been using wind and solar energy for thousands of years, and ought to know their shortcomings.  They’re unfit for purpose.

Reality is that the energy density of “renewables” is measured in mere watts per square meter of total area required.

Reality is that nuclear energy went from the first detection of atomic fission in 1938 to the first commercial nuclear power station in Obninsk in 1954.  That’s 16 years.

Reality is that the only near-total decarbonization success stories use hydro and nuclear, and nuclear is the only one we can scale up at will.

Reality is that the IPCC has declared that nuclear energy is required to decarbonize the world economy.

EP: Reality is that the energy density of “renewables” is measured in mere watts per square meter of total area required.

BPL: Reality is that nobody cares about “energy density” but nuke freaks.

Vogtle 3 and 4, Flamanville and Olkiluoto 3 are not in totalitarian countries.

No, but they are all pretty good examples of the fine art of the “boondoggle.”

Vogtle 3 & 4: 14 years & $28 bn US (projected) Flamanville 3: 14 years & 19 bn Euro (projected) Olkiluoto: 17 years & 11 bn Euro (Estimated cost–electric generation started on the 12th of this month, with “regular” production expected in July.)

Hinkley Point C isn’t looking all that much better presently, with a project build time of 12 years and cost of over 22 bn Pounds. And of course the Summer 2 & 3 expansion failed altogether, at a cost of ~$9 bn US.

Nuclear has its points, but scalability isn’t one of them, and it won’t be in time to address the immediate climate crisis.

— Storage systems, along with renewable energies, are pretty much the cheapest and safest strategy to ensure energy security.

Then why did California and New York install gas-fired generators to replace nuclear power plants?

Apparently YOU have absolutely no idea what, for example, modern pumped storage systems can do and what degree of efficiency they achieve.

I watched the upgrade project at the Ludington pumped hydro station in real time.  It increased the gross power rating of the station from 1872 MW to 2172 MW.  There’s only one such station in the state of Michigan, and its capacity is dwarfed by the 4 coal-fired plants across the state in Monroe (3400 MW).

In disused mines there are often millions of m³ of volume available.

Meaning there’s millions of m³ of spoils heaps which really ought to be put back down them as part of remediation, but let’s run with this.

A cubic meter of water is approximately one metric ton and can store roughly 9.8 MJ for each meter of ΔH.  If your mine is 1 million m³ at a depth of 100 meters, your maximum possible energy storage is 980 TJ or 272 GWh; at 85% efficiency that becomes 231 GWh.  This will power the USA’s average electric load for about 30 minutes; if you needed a week of storage, you’d need 336 such units.  You have a restriction that you need to be near a source of water, and additional constraints on flow rates if you’re using a river as the ground-level supply.  This will fly as a niche application but cannot do the heavy lifting.

Contrast to nuclear energy.  A fuel reload is roughly 1/3 of a full core and typically runs for 17 months between fuelings.  The soon-to-be-shut-down Palisades NPP 125 miles south of the Ludington PHS plant produces 231 GWh in roughly 287 hours or 12 days.  Uranium gives energy storage beyond compare.

So you’re tooting your own horn here.  No surprise, I guess.

I see further global, very large potential in river power plants, which have the same base load capacity as nuclear power plants.

https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/schwimmende-kleinkraftwerke-erobern-donau-rhein/

A whole 100 kW max.  Do you have any idea how ridiculously inadequate that is?  That’s 1/8050 of a Palisades.

At a time when nuclear power plants are being attacked by Russian artillery – your nuclear proposals are particularly ludicrous.

Russia knows better than to do that.  The “attack” on Zaporizhzhia hit a building well away from the plant proper, which was never in danger.  Don’t believe the propaganda the MSM is putting out.

So you can confidently stick your uranium rods where the sun never shines.

That was always the plan.  The sun never shines in spent fuel pools or dry casks or deep bore holes.

MS: In disused mines there are often millions of m³ of volume available.

EP, attempting to refute MS: Meaning there’s millions of m³ of spoils heaps which really ought to be put back down them as part of remediation, but let’s run with this.

A cubic meter of water is approximately one metric ton and can store roughly 9.8 MJ for each meter of ΔH. If your mine is 1 million m³ at a depth of 100 meters, your maximum possible energy storage is 980 TJ or 272 GWh; at 85% efficiency that becomes 231 GWh. This will power the USA’s average electric load for about 30 minutes; if you needed a week of storage, you’d need 336 such units.

BPL: Apparently EP doesn’t think there are as many as 336 mines in the United States. Further down, he makes the same mistake again:

MS: I see further global, very large potential in river power plants, which have the same base load capacity as nuclear power plants.

https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/schwimmende-kleinkraftwerke-erobern-donau-rhein/

EP: A whole 100 kW max. Do you have any idea how ridiculously inadequate that is? That’s 1/8050 of a Palisades.

BPL: And you don’t think they can find 8,050 rivers in the United States? You’ve never looked at a river map of a county, have you?

In short, EP is in love with big, centralized plants that generate multiple GWe, and thinks multiple plants that generate just as much somehow don’t count.

@EP – ” Then why did California and New York install gas-fired generators to replace nuclear power plants? ” — Maybe because in your country it’s not the sane, intelligent people who call the shots, but dirty, corrupt and criminal oil and gas corporations.

You won’t be able to talk nuclear energy sane and cheap.

Who paid the billions to research nuclear energy? Who will pay the unknown cost of final disposal over the next 50.000-100.000 years? Who pays for the Fukushima or Chernobyl disaster? Who pays for military operations, e.g. in Mali, when French & German soldiers apparently secure Malian uranium production there? The taxpayer???

If these costs were priced into the production cost of a nuclear-generated KWh, then it would cost at least 10 times the KWh from wind energy. It also looks like you don’t know at all how a power grid works. Especially when the inflexible nuclear power is used as a base load in a power grid, we need large storage capacities that absorb the excess nuclear power (at night, for example) in order to release it again during the day as a peak load.

EP.: – ” If your mine is 1 million m³ at a depth of 100 meters… ”

— My pump storage with 1000000m³ at a depth of 400m can absorb ~ 1GWh per day. Battery storage at this scale costs ~$0.5-1 billion. For a fraction of this sum you can expand the old mine.

EP.: – ” A whole 100 kW max. ”

— …can still produce a good 25GWh in 30 years. In series production, such a power plant should not cost much more than $100,000. So it produces sustainable, completely harmless electricity for 0.5 cents/KWh. Your nuclear power is miles away from that.

I am a pragmatist. As such I often wonder if more could be achieved quicker and cheaper by the rich countries paying for the poorer countries to clean up their electricity grids. This example has been overtaken by events rather as Germany has plenty to think about with its own energy supply, but put that aside for a minute. Poland is right next door to Germany. Poland has a very dirty electricity grid, if Germany helped them clean up their grid with some wind, solar and gas and close their dirty coal could emissions be reduced more readily than if Germany continue to build on their own wind and solar.

Another example, India want to build coal. If Britain helped them with wind, solar and gas instead of expanding their own wind turbines would more emissions reductions be achieved quicker and cheaper?

I have never seen anyone explore this thinking. If we all want to be good global citizens it seems to me to be worth some thought.

The issue, though, is that producing coal is part of their economies; I just did a quick check and India is #5 in the world in reserves and Poland is #9. So they would be giving up the value of their holdings (unless they sold it elsewhere.)

This is of course the problem with extractive economies in general, which is why getting off fossil fuels is so difficult.

Thank you for your enlightening reply.

That’s essentially the idea with the Green Climate Fund, which is under the UNFCCC–except that it’s multilateral, not bilateral. Their 2021 report is a bit of a slog, but basically they were pledge ~10 billion USD, got most of it and spent most of it on adaptation and mitigation projects around the world. There’s another “replenishment period” underway, and the “mobilization of funding” continues.

https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/GCF_Tenth%20report%20of%20the%20GCF%20to%20the%20COP%20of%20the%20UNFCCC_final.pdf

One of my critiques of the renewables movement is exactly this: Who pays for the poor people’s energy grids? It won’t ever happen. Despite Kevin’s cite of the GCF, the fact is the chance it solves the problem for the world’s 5 billion or more that can’t afford the transition – or any energy in many cases – is slim and none. Some? Sure. But what you’re going to see is the current inequalities cemented in place – even assuming the entire world got some electricity!

What will happen is, at best, Americans will get all the energy they want at the expense of the rest of the planet’s resources and sub-Saharan Africans, e.g., will get a tiny fraction in comparison. Why? Who’s going to pay for it? The same predatorty economic and political systems will result in the same essential conditions, Changing the type of energy will have zero effect on that.

Besides, renewables aren’t renewable, let alone sustainable, so should be anything but maximized, so the overall strategy is a massive fail. The change must be systemic, not hacking at leaves of the current system.

Killians comments. So renewables movement should be criticised because poor people might not be able to afford renewables. I totally reject that idea. It takes the idea of fairness to the point of absurdity. Its like saying “if everyone cant have everything nobody should have anything.”

By that ‘logic’ you could say that adequate food, modern medical care, televisions, and smartphones should be criticised because poor people cant afford them. I find all that approach completely absurd.

Its the same approach to renewables taken in Michael Moores absurd video “Planet of the Humans”. Namely he attacks renewables (and he lies about them) on the basis that poor people miss out and corporations and rich people benefit from renewables.

The plight of poor people is concerning, and rich people should give them some help at least so they have the basics of life. This happens in some Scandinavian countries through taxes and wealth redistribution. But that is a socio-political issue. It clearly does not determine the value of a piece of technology and whether its development is desirable or not.

So renewables movement should be criticised because poor people might not be able to afford renewables.

Why do you respond to my posts? You literally never understand what you are responding to.

1. There was no criticism of renewables. There never has been. Never will be. It’s a technology. One may as well criticize a fishhook.

2. I provided a *critique* of the application of renewable energy and noted expected results of using it as a primary response to the problems we have. I said, “…so should be anything but maximized…” which does not mean never build another one, but does mean should be applied carefully, and only as *needed.* I have spoken on the necessity of needs-based decision-making for years.

Both of these are legitimate, neither is pejorative. Your use of “criticism” and the assignment of a reasoning you know to be false based on long repetition of these issues between you and me, and generally on this board, is pejorative and inappropriate. I have talked for years about renewables in these spaces and have repeatedly explained to you, directly, the application of Appropriate Technology.

Yet, you use a pejorative term in response to my comment and ascribe a reasoning to me that you *know* to be false. How is one to consider this anything other than trolling in this context?

By that ‘logic’ you could say that adequate food, modern medical care, televisions, and smartphones should be criticised because poor people cant afford them. I find all that approach completely absurd.

Yes, your use of Straw Man arguments is, as ever, absurd. However, that the wealthy exploit the resources of others and leave them poor and without the same opportunities to use them *is*, in fact, a legitimate critique of *any* ***use*** of a technology. (I have already clarified the absurdity of conflating this with a criticism of a technology itself.)

It clearly does not determine the value of a piece of technology

Of course, it does. If a resource is used for the exclusive use of a small group to the detriment of others, that absolutely does have an impact on the value of said technology to humanity. Opinions may vary on what that value effect is, but one cannot accurately claim there is no effect.

But you do. No surprise.

and whether its development is desirable or not.

Which is why I have never said it. I said nothing of the technology, only of policy/application.

Stop trolling via Straw Man arguments. Understand what you read before responding. Work to not allow your head worms to color your ability to comprehend and the nature of your responses.,

Actually, what is happening on the ground is quite different. Rural life in India is beginning to be transformed by the influx of cellular phones and cheap photovoltaics. On my two trips to Madagascar, 12 years apart, there was an astounding transition along similar lines. Now, even far off the main highways, you see photovoltaics charging cell phones. In a few villages, enterprising citizens have purchased refrigerators (again, powered by photovoltaics), where they can store medicines–for a price, food, etc.

Life is still quite hard. Hell, famine is a real possibility this years, and outbreaks of plague are a regular occurrence. However, technology is improving the lot of poor villagers–particularly those enterprising to be early adopters. One important shortcoming, though remains transport. It is still too intermittent and expensive, especially during rainy seasons.

Try to think about it like this. Right now only about 5% of new generation is renewables and there are only a small number of EV’s, so OBVIOULY a lot of people are missing out, poor people in particular. It takes time to scale things up. Eventually the majority of people will share in renewables, but very poor people (and countries) will probably STILL miss out.

Its the way of the world. Not everyone can have everything because resources are FINITE. You have a computer. Not everyone will own a computer even with mass production. I don’t know if I’ve explained this perfectly but surely you get the point.

The only practical thing we can do is some wealth redistribution within countries to help with the basics, but even that will not ensure everyone has renewables like an EV. or any car at all..

Poor countries only have themselves to blame for their lack of progress with renewables and other things. You cant go on blaming colonisation hundreds of years ago. They have had ample opportunity since then to get their act together and modernise their economies. The trouble is they have a lot of corrupt institutions and practices and don’t get themselves organised. Stop being so guilty about it all.

I say this as someone who doesn’t like greed, and supports government programmes to help poor people, but I recognise you are being very idealistic and totally unrealistic about what’s possible in this world.

“There was no criticism of renewables. There never has been. Never will be”

Rubbish. You have been very critical of renewables. A couple of years ago you wrote that EV’s are “useless pieces of junk” or words close to that, and you have been very critical of solar and wind farms. You know it.

I think the idea of wealthy countries assisting poorer countries in transitioning to clean energy is a good idea in theory. The issue I see in my country (the UK) is that directly doing this would be extremely unpopular with the electorate. The UK has been one of the worlds worst affected countries by COVID which still isn’t over, the lack of investment in public services such as the NHS and public transport over the last half century is now coming home to roost, we are constabtly reminded of the strain COVID is and has put on an already stretched NHS, the UK state pension is reported as one of the worst in Europe, so handing millions or maybe even hundreds of millions of taxpayers money overseas for nothing tangible in return, which the public will very likely claim should be spent on UK people, and which will be hammered out by most of the influencial media, is not going to go down well.

Unfortunately, even with ambitious and expensive ideas which involve altruism and could be logically argued as ultimately beneficial to everyone, you can’t just ignore public opinion in a democratic country.

Maybe there is a way of raising the money through extra taxes on fossil fuel use, but I doubt that will go down well in the UK given the soaring price of fuel and gas has resulted in one of the worst costs of living crises in a century.

https://www.nationalworld.com/news/politics/spring-statement-2022-grim-stats-cost-of-living-crisis-3624841

Adam, the US has a well-established solution to this, but we do it with military hardware, not solar panels.

Taxpayer money goes to other countries so they can buy our weapons systems, which benefits the defense-industrial complex. And that benefit is distributed to all the States through sub-contracting, so there’s zero problem getting the votes in Congress.

Tricky business to get there with renewables, as we are way behind China in the ability to produce renewable technology in quantity, as well as having the fossil fuel vested interests so powerful here.

I know a lot of theese discussions.

In connection to the fameous nobel price to Al Gore and IPCC Rajendra Pachauri in Oslo, the Norwegian state with Jens Stoltenberg also had to shown its scientificivity and progressive- ness, and told of a lot of things to be done and paid for elsewhere in “developing” coutries, and paid for with Norwegian oil and gas production andc earnings and engineering teaching and administration.

It is the very theory of russian oil an Yamal- gas and Nordstream 2. that shall displace german and polish dirty coal and brown coal burnt for open chimney at low efficiancy, russian and Adolph technology. political

All in all an eldorado of progressive hocuspocus and commercial cheating.

Another Hocuspocus political commercial El- dorado is electrification of the off- shore oil and gas platforms with hydroelectrics from land. So that gas can be saved at the platforms offshore and reduce the local CO2 national “footprints” and rather sold to the EU and burnt there so that they get the footprints. Instead of the much cheaper way, to sell hydroelectro by cables to Germany and Poland to stop their traditional coal burnings form open chimney. NBecessary electrics for the plastforms, drilling and pumping etc., can be done by offshore gas and steam turbines with plenty seawatrer cooling on the condensers. coal and nuclear suffer consciderably in the summer warmth due to lack of proper icy water cooling on the steam condensers.

I do not quite believe in the Teslas either. Hydroelectro is much to valuable to be burnt away on the streets. That should run on “clean Diesel” with synthetic Carbo- hydrides. They drive like hell. “read the amperemeter!r” I instruct when sitting in electric cars, the Nissans. When rather aquainted to how to save gasoline and budget in traditional low compression cars, I have learnt that and couldv save and steal gallons of “gas” in military wehicles for my own use. The teslas never leant such things, economical driving to ones own advantage. Drive it like a soft, steam entine and avoid any accelleration. .

The traditional Volvo buseswith 6 cyl inline diesel were fashionable and comfortable, one could enjoy the engines and the voyage. They did hardly smoke and drink. Also the electric railway is comfortable and fashionable, they only have to keep up with and renew the railway restaurant. A railway system stands and falls with the railway restaurant.

The Nissans are exellent and fashionable. One can hear the wheels rolling on the road and the birdsongs outside. Its heavier weight does remind of the horse, that also must have some match- weight, and the horse is also a silent animal. Getting rid of th terrible motor sound feels like getting back on a proper diligence again.

There should be 3- wheeled electric Richa- taxies in town, and the Ford A and Ford T solution, really very fashionable, should be restored and electrified for taxies..

BPL proves that he can’t math:

Apparently EP doesn’t think there are as many as 336 mines in the United States.

We’re talking abandoned mines, near suitable water supplies/reservoirs, which don’t have anything in them which would pollute said water, etc. etc.

MS declared that there are millions of m³ of caverns available.  Turns out we’d likely need HUNDREDS of millions, depending on depth.  Then on top of that, we’d need the “renewable” energy supplies to “charge” them and keep them charged against need.

Gravity is the weakest of the 4 fundamental forces.  If we’ve got space underground and we need electric storage, we’d get a lot more bang per cubic meter storing energy via the electric force (e.g. Form Energy’s sulfur-based flow battery) than moving water up and down.

And you don’t think they can find 8,050 rivers in the United States? You’ve never looked at a river map of a county, have you?

Again, BPL fails at math.  That’s 8050 units to equal the output of ONE small-ish nuclear plant, and only when a river flow rate of 4 m/sec is available.  It would take something like 375 Palisades-equivalents to serve the US base load.  That’s roughly 3 MILLION 100 kW RotR plants, cranking at maximum.

If you can’t do math, you can’t wrap your mind around the sheer scale of this problem.  BPL demonstrably cannot.

EP is in love with big, centralized plants that generate multiple GWe

My current analysis project is a 3 GW(th) reactor driving a sulfur-iodine water-splitting plant, generating approximately 350,000 tons of H2 per year.  One of my previous analysis projects was a 50 MW(e) NuScale reactor generating combined heat and power.  Even that’s too big for my nearest city of significant size, but heating everything with heat to spare and powering a lot of the surrounding area is a virtue, not a vice.

and thinks multiple plants that generate just as much somehow don’t count

50 MW(e) is smaller than lots of wind farms, so who’s the big, centralized advocate now?  And nuclear has virtues that “renewables” don’t:

1.  It’s not dependent upon the weather or season. 2.  It’s not affected by day/night cycles. 3.  It can supply multiple needs at once (heat as well as electricity). 4.  It’s compact and local, rather than a blight on the landscape. 5.  It can be located near the point of use, rather than requiring long transmission lines from far-flung “farms”.

For reasons which elude reasoned analysis, BPL thinks these things don’t count.

@EP.: – ” reasons which elude reasoned analysis… ”

1. It is independent of weather or season.

– What happens if your nuclear power plant can no longer be cooled in summer due to drought and low water levels in the rivers?

2. It is not affected by day/night cycles.

– I just explained to you that the more inflexible the base load, the more highly flexible storage power plants the power grid needs.

3. It can meet multiple needs at the same time (both heat and power).

…and what do you do day and night with the heat in summer at 40°C?

4. It’s compact and local, rather than a nuisance to the landscape.

— Compact and local would be my own balcony power plant (2 water-cooled PV modules with 600Wp electric / 1200Wp thermal / in combination with water-cooled LED plant light as a heating system with negative CO² emissions and a water boiler with heat exchanger). The components cost a total of less than €1000 and can be installed by any craftsman or do-it-yourself / without a voltage regulator, inverter or mains/grid connection.

5. It can be placed close to the point of use instead of requiring long transmission lines from distant “farms”.

— Millions of end users in the big cities of the world are enthusiastic and can hardly wait to welcome a nuclear power plant in the center or periphery. As a reward, they will caress your cheeks until you drop dead.

You elegantly sweep Fukushima and Chernobyl under the rug because you (like D. Trump) believe that stupidity only needs to be repeated often enough to make it acceptable.

EP: [wind farms are] “a blight on the landscape.”

BPL: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I look at your points 1,2,3,4,5 and find that they nare really not so convincing. It is modern times, but really not the most happy, healthy, sustrainable, intelligent, and natural, and economic way of life.

It is not the ideal of CARPE DIEM, live according to Nature, rather be economical, rather re- cycle, and get down to reality and respect the weather, climate, and the seasons.

It was first made possible by fossile fruels, the steam engine, and the rural and urban Ottomotor 4 stroke and 2 stroke.. All things that are to be avoided, ridiculed and heavily traxed in our days.

I can put i9t on a very simple formula, as a major reason for all the fameous climate problems. And that it is Stalin- ism and Mao- ism! I hope Killian as a drunken sailor can agree to this. It is not his Permaculture.

It takes and it wastes resources in ann unnecessary way. I have been told of, but I have allways been quite sceptic to that kind of life, and I ridicule and badger it wherever..

It is the modern industrialized and uniformed way of life off from seasons nweather nature locar proosibilities and resources, realities, and everything.

In short, it is the devils temptations to stupid people about his alternatives and his special paradise.

Mooving water up and down is very traditional, but can only work under special natural circumstances.

I saw a hydroelectric system where water falls down several hundred meters in tubes and drives turbines down at the fjord. Some of the electricity is then used to lift up much more water only 2-3 meters from a next sea with long and flat river draining system. Thus they have a shortway and steep high waterway and can use just a bit of that energy to lift up and make a much larger current or flow. the high and steep way, from another and rather useless lake and waterfall system.

There are also systems with reversible turbines, where overflow of danish wind energy can lift back and up turbine water to the high mountain reservoir, store it, and send it back to Denmark again when they have windstill there. The efficiency however of that systemma alltogether is hardly over 40-50%. 2 times through the turbines and all the frictions and losses elsewhere.

Compressing air and lifting of water is probably not the best “battery” storage at all. But modern hydroelectrics are discussed as possible “batteries”fror the whole integrated system that way..

Then I have looked i9nto the fameous recent Sulphur iodine method of oxygen hydrogen separation of water by heat only. Good greef what a corrosive system with needs for exotic materials. I can hardly immagine that it will compeat.

Then I believe more in high temperature eølectrolysis, where nuclear heat plus wind or solar electricity can do it. There are all in all a series of known industrial processes that were resigned on because it took too much valuable cokes from the coceries , eventually arabian oil. And that is rather where nuclear heat could be utilized. I think especially of syntetic oil and syntetic hydrogen.

I do not believe that the combustion engine has drawn its last sigh. Diesel today is really very exellent. It only needs better fuel, and that is where atomic heat can step in. Better keep the hydrogen compressed in a tank by chemical forces, than by compressors and mechanical forces.

Is not that easy either.

We lost a bronse propellar and I could only afford a new home- made one, of welded soft steel, that can be really recommended. Today they are easily grinded, and can be finely adjusted and shapet in the blasted charcoal forge. I have made many model airplane and boat propellars before, and did think in terms of convex / concave model airplane wings. That did work splendidly better than ever forwards, but would not back at all.

Bernoulli must have had a point there.

So I took it back in the forge and re- shaped it finely bi- convex wing for wing at deep red hot. . Then it could back also but I lost some of the superbe low speed gliding airplane efficiency forward. Moral: In order to loop with an airplane, they must be given bi- convex wings, and you will loose motor efficiency forward by it, it will co0st you more fuel…

And that tells it. It will not be that cheap and easy just to reverse the propellars and turbines in order to lift up the water and then let it flow down again in the same tubes over the same turbines, at that full and superbe efficiency well above 90 % in updated hydroelectric system

Also take a look at the new propellars of “stealthy” silent submarines. They are really advanced, elegant, smooth, fashionable minimum splash and noise and max efficiency.. Those boats can hardly back out at the same speed, I believe.

Similar basic problems of reversible systems at roughly acceplable prices and efficiencies are there everywhere in battery and energy storage systems..

And o be known by everyone, who dream of permacultures, re- cyclings and ” green” sustainable lifestyles. And of modern re- chargeable batteries of all kinds. Trans- formation of energy costs.

Engineer – Poet. Yes sure, America’s fracking fields dry up quickly, so you would need to open up more of them and yes there has to be a orderly transition from fossil fuels to a new energy grid. But in general global terms it may be a good idea to ban new oil fields providing existing fields are capable of providing enough oil for an orderly transition. It will help push things along.

Otherwise we are just giving a huge green light to a fossil fuel future. The oil companies will explore and open up fields and then argue after all that effort they should be allowed to contine to use them. They will be under no pressure to change and diversify their operations into other forms of energy.

And there it is folks–another reason not to be a denialist! https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/petromasculinity-leading-dealbreaker-dating-app-203958966.html

It’s not just bad for the planet. It’s bad for your sex life!

It gets worse: “How pollution could be killing your SPERM:”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6847201/How-pollution-killing-SPERM-Breathing-tiny-toxic-particles-worsens-semen.html

What happens if your nuclear power plant can no longer be cooled in summer due to drought and low water levels in the rivers?

You use cooling towers and pump makeup water from wells.  You refill the aquifer during the wet season.

I just explained to you that the more inflexible the base load, the more highly flexible storage power plants the power grid needs.

No, you asserted it.  Worse, “renewables” are not merely inflexible, they’re unreliable.  You can do something with “inflexible” power that’s always-on; you can’t do anything with power that isn’t there.

This little piece by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers might enlighten you:  an all-nuclear grid requires far less storage than all-wind or all-solar.  https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/presentations/real-cost-electrical-energy.pdf  Of course, the OSPE analysis was done before the Natrium and Moltex designs (incorporating thermal storage to follow daily load cycles) were published.

…and what do you do day and night with the heat in summer at 40°C?

You sure don’t air-condition at night with PV, and heat waves are typically due to high-pressure systems which cause “wind droughts”.

Compact and local would be my own balcony power plant (2 water-cooled PV modules with 600Wp electric / 1200Wp thermal / in combination with water-cooled LED plant light as a heating system with negative CO² emissions and a water boiler with heat exchanger). The components cost a total of less than €1000 and can be installed by any craftsman or do-it-yourself / without a voltage regulator, inverter or mains/grid connection.

Okay, let’s assume a generous 15% capacity factor for your PV.  That’s 90 watts average.  Europe consumes 636 watts per capita, some 7 times as much.  European demand peaks in winter; PV output peaks in summer.  There is no way that your €1000 system either meets your entire needs or includes months of battery storage.

You elegantly sweep Fukushima and Chernobyl under the rug because you (like D. Trump) believe that stupidity only needs to be repeated often enough to make it acceptable.

Chernobyl was the result of a badly-flawed design and even worse operator misconduct.  No one is ever going to build another RBMK reactor.

Fukushima was just as bad.  The first error was failing to note the sendai stones which record the heights of historical tsunamis when designing the plant.  Second, PM Naoto Kan practically ordered the meltdowns when he commanded the plant personnel to delay venting the reactor containments (so that water could be added) until he’d held a press conference.  Compounding that stupdity, he ordered panicky evacuations which killed at least 1000 people outright, when they would have been perfectly safe sheltering in place.  Ultimately there was ONE fatality attributed to Fukushima, and given that it was due to lung cancer and the Japanese penchant for smoking, it probably had nothing to do with the meltdowns.

I notice you don’t mention Three Mile Island.  That’s because there were no casualties.  Tsunamis don’t affect the USA much, and don’t affect inland areas period.  Meanwhile, the fossil backup required by “renewables” kills people through air emissions, and methane leakage from the natural gas system aggravates climate change.  Nuclear power does none of this.

The gas price crisis has Belgium reconsidering their nuclear closures.  It even changed the position of the Belgian Green party.  It created great enthusiasm for nuclear energy in the UK, and has France planning a massive expansion.

It’s amazing what a dose of reality can do.  You should take one.

@DUMBIJUJU EP. – “It’s amazing what a dose of reality can do ”

For power generation capacity capital costs are often expressed as overnight cost per watt. Estimated costs are:

Type Cost($/kw) Gas/oil combined cycle power plant 1000 (2019)[12] Combustion turbine 710 (2020)[12] Onshore wind 1600 (2019)[12] Offshore wind 6500 (2019)[12] Solar PV (fixed) 830 (utility-scale, 2021),[13] 1800 (2019)[12] Solar PV (tracking) 860 (utility-scale, 2021)[13] 2000 (2019)[12] Battery storage power 1380 (2020)[12] Conventional hydropower 2752 (2020)[12] Geothermal 2800 (2019)[12] Coal (with SO2 and NOx controls) 3500–3800[14] Advanced nuclear 6000 (2019)[12] Fuel cells 7200 (2019)[12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_energy

You are obviously teaching us that cxonsumer goods and values have a price in western hard cash, by 4 valids chiffers, PERIOD!

Durch nichts ställt sich die Mangel an matematrische Bildung deutlicher zur Schau, wie durch mass- losse Genauigheit in den Zahlenrechnereien..

As a student allready, I examined it and thought it over, judged and compareds 3 very popular consumer goods.

1, a brand new colour TV 2, a brand new 4 cyl low compression air cooled 4 stroke Volkswagen with 5 seats. 3, a brand new “flat” where you can take in and live privately with your fiancee.

The prices for those 3 popular consumer- goods were in the proportions 1 : 10 : 100 allthough material costs and productiom trickiness and complexity should entail rather equal price, or maybe even the opposite proportions.

Conclusion: The Public and the consumers are being cheated to pay!

I shall never forget that qualified conclusion of mine, thus I am able further to give a damn to your Zahlentrechnereien d/ o. along with Friedsrich Gauss, who was very bright indeeds.

There are fameous hydroelectrics well over 100 years old. It did cost, but then it pays. The prices are now well down near to one cent / Kwh. And further costs and paints is but cheating.

properly designed and manufactured turbines and electromachinery can run and run and run and run for 100 years without any wear and tear.

I have 2 chairs from my grand- grandmother. They were inherited by my grandmotrher ands my mother, used, and kept.

I took them over and restored them for my children 50 years ago the best we could in the same tradition and style. They seem well ready for keeping for another 100 years now, and allthough the did cost a bitb first, they are now becoming really very cheap. You are probably ignoring the value and capital of culture skill and knowledge.

And that is making your speculations and zahlenrechnereien in-valid.

Stupidity is also a reality. ERRARE HVMANVM EST

and yo.u have given examples both from Cernobyl and Fukoshima. And what about the war in Ukraina, if that is not a reality and sheere stupid?

As far as I can judge, the Germans know especially much about Stupidity and ERRARE duen to WW1 and ww2, , and that is why they fear nuclear energy.. Because however reasonable, as E.Poet allways tells that it is, there may also come times of war when rather SATAN is in charge and for serious. Nuclear also has the much greater potenbcials of falling into wrong hands and being misused.

Putin menti9oned it quite recently that “Why worry so much about the Ayatollas in Iran and embargo them? Rather be aware that the Ukrainians now will have a quite easy way to atomic bombs!”

It has a core of reality in it. Ukraina did set highly on atomic power in the sovietb period, they gave back their atomic bombs by the fall of the soviet empire, but they sit further with Europes largest nuclear power stations at the moment and that is a worry even for the UN due to that unlucky war, where SATAN has re- appeared. As if law and orderv reason and hygiene is followed during war? How can de- armament be necessary if humanity is reasonable?

The Germans are somehow fed up with social and politrical madness and craziness and aware that it even may happen in their quite especially and fameous, civil, poetric, and engineering land, wherefor they want no “nukes”! also in addition to it.

The Japs are feeling and thinking similar as a quite especially civil, poetic and engineereing people having also had Hiroshima. and their own unlucky episode of collective social and political and technical psychosis and sheere crazi- ness even during the cherryblossoms and with all their geisha girls.

Murphys law 1: What can go wrong will go wrong Murphys 2nd law, What has gone wrong will get worse!

is rather hygienic and reasonable thinking.

Murphy 1&2 was delivered by poetic engineers who got to the moon and safely back.

MS: What happens if your nuclear power plant can no longer be cooled in summer due to drought and low water levels in the rivers?

EP: You use cooling towers and pump makeup water from wells. You refill the aquifer during the wet season.

BPL: And somehow there wasn’t enough water from the wells when the plant was built, so that they had it being cooled with river water, yet the water from the wells is suddenly adequate when the river fails.

Some years ago, the mass media reported that European nuclear electrics were complaining for loss of efficiency and earnings during a very hot summer. They were using air- cooling towers. The same is mostly seen at coalheated plants also, and it is not the best..

Near Strassbourg in France we came through a huge, electric factory with transformer plants and very long glass- iso0lators for high voltage on the outgoing leads. And a tiny river was running next by in that ratherv flat landscape. My wife screamed: ” Get the hell out from here, That is Nuclear. They cannot make all that electricity by that tiny creek!”

But they can use it for steam condenser cooling. But, given 30 Celsius summer warmth, that tiny creek will keep 26 deg bathing water. The forellers and salamandris cannot have it hotter. So you will make a dramatic impact to the waterway økosystem if you cool mega and gigawatts with that and this is problematic Wherefore very huge and expensive cool towers are seen all over the EU. “Heat po0llusion” is being discussed.

Indeed, . A proper glacial creek would be really very valuable for many large industries, for the necessary cooling of it also.

They have oil heated gas and steam turbine combination at sea. The cool seawater intake is very essencial then. when they have to go to Australia or to Singapore and back burning cheapest ship bunkers ” heavy” waste oil as economically as possible.

in general global terms it may be a good idea to ban new oil fields providing existing fields are capable of providing enough oil for an orderly transition. It will help push things along.

This is extremely dangerous.  You can’t simply command a massive change in the world’s energy economy; things take time, effort and energy to get done.  How much that is can’t be determined except in hindsight, and if energy supplies fall short of immediate needs the first things to be sacrificed will be the investments.  When you start sacrificing investment to the point where you fall behind, you will have a collapse.

The only feasible way to get such a transition done is via taxation of emissions, directly or indirectly.  Return the taxes to the public so that government has no incentive to sustain fossil fuel consumption as a revenue source.  This gets the public to buy low- and zero-emission energy and energy products if they are available, and gives industry incentives to produce as many such products as it can.  A $100/ton tax on CO2 emissions would almost instantly make every nuclear plant in the USA profitable, for example, and give the public a strong incentive to buy nuclear electricity rather than gas.  (This is probably why it has proven politically impossible thus far.)

Otherwise we are just giving a huge green light to a fossil fuel future.

You have to recognize that such changes cannot be done overnight without collapsing the system upon which so many lives depend.  We have to approach this as an “as-able” process and employ remedial measures such as enhanced weathering to begin the process of restoring the atmosphere immediately rather than waiting until we’ve got emissions fully under control.  Crossing even one tipping point like firing the “clathrate gun” would be disastrous, so we must act there as soon as we can and even without world-wide agreements.

1. 70% of oil reserves are owned by government

2. Banning production would create the biggest black market in history

3. Those who violated the bans would be the big winners, economically.

BPL: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Feel free to vote it into YOUR back yard.  The people who actually have to suffer the presence of industrial wind turbines and massive PV farms do not like them.

I’d LOVE to have a nuclear plant in my back yard; if silly fears cut my property taxes in half, GREAT!

EP: Feel free to vote it into YOUR back yard. The people who actually have to suffer the presence of industrial wind turbines and massive PV farms do not like them.

BPL: Wrong. I doubt you know any. I do. My cousins in Ontario almost literally have a wind turbine in their back yard, and they love it. Not their wind turbine; one belonging to the local power utility.

I would gladly live next to a wind turbine. A nuke, not so much.

Wrong. I doubt you know any.

Robert Bryce keeps a database of communities which have restricted or rejected wind projects.  It’s now up to 317 entries.

https://www.americanexperiment.org/windrejectiondatabase/

This has been going on for more than ten years.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2012/11/backlash-against-big-wind-continues-robert-bryce/

This is pertinent as well.

https://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/wind-turbine-syndrome/what-is-wind-turbine-syndrome/

Solar has seen rejections too. https://www.citizensforresponsiblesolar.org/ https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/wisconsin/articles/2021-08-28/massive-solar-farm-plan-angers-southern-wisconsin-residents https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/plans-scrapped-for-huge-solar-array-north-of-las-vegas-2405042/ https://mtstandard.com/news/local/massive-solar-project-proposed-for-butte-denied-permit/article_f8512228-5924-5b07-9185-8db8c77620d0.html https://www.bayjournal.com/news/energy/township-rejects-pennsylvanias-largest-solar-project/article_73d3db32-c57a-11eb-9db8-4b08ddff2680.html

I do. My cousins in Ontario almost literally have a wind turbine in their back yard, and they love it. Not their wind turbine; one belonging to the local power utility.

There’s a tiny (obsolete, down for years because spare parts are no longer produced) wind turbine to the west of my local conurbation.  I’m sure it’s relatively benign.  It’s not like the sixty-story monsters I’ve seen along I-69 in Indiana.  There, you can see red anti-collision lights blinking on and off in synchrony covering half the horizon.

I would gladly live next to a wind turbine. A nuke, not so much.

I’d buy nuclear electricity and steam/hot water for DHW and space heat if I could.  Being insulated from price surges in the natural gas market would be almost as good as going carbon-free for almost everything I do.

Comment Policy:Please note that if your comment repeats a point you have already made, or is abusive, or is the nth comment you have posted in a very short amount of time, please reflect on the whether you are using your time online to maximum efficiency. Thanks.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Copyright © 2022 · RealClimate is a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists.