California to ban selling new gas-powered cars by 2035

[Piotrsko]

Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr

Than bankrupt everyone into starvation to death.

I am beginning to believe that is the object of the hype on Covid

[sgtlethargic]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

K, so how do you plan to replace 175 million tons of of global ammonia production with renewables?
At least 70% of that is used for fertilizer.
I don't think you comprehend the scale of the problem.

Here's what looks to be a good article on renewable ammonia:

"Ammonia—a renewable fuel made from sun, air, and water—could power the globe without carbon"

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018...without-carbon

[freebeard]

Thanks.

There seems to be competing efforts. I like Sarb Giddey and ... the Clayton offices of CSIRO Energy's 'series of tubes'.

When he squints, he can see, maybe 30 years down the road, Australia's coast dotted with supertankers, docked at offshore rigs. But they wouldn't be filling up with oil. Seafloor powerlines would carry renewable electricity to the rigs from wind and solar farms on shore. On board, one device would use the electricity to desalinate seawater and pass the fresh water to electrolyzers to produce hydrogen. Another device would filter nitrogen from the sky. Reverse fuel cells would knit the two together into ammonia for loading on the tankers—a bounty of energy from the sun, air, and sea.

Sea-going infrastructure.

I think they mis-underestimate Australia's power potential.

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

www.dw.com: World’s Tallest Solar Chimney Going Up Down Under undated article prior to 2003

[oil pan 4]

So it seems like they are going to electrolysis the water for hydrogen.
Problem is that takes 237kj per mole of water. Now to convert that into knuckle dragger imperial units (mostly).
Now 237kj isn't much energy only 0.2777wh but one mole of water isn't very much water and it's almost no hydrogen, every mole of water is 2 grams of hydrogen.
So 77wh makes a pound. Now this is bare minimum theoretical power to split H2 and not actual.
The mole weight of ammonia is 17, 3 of that 17 is hydrogens.
To make the hydrogen in 170 million tons of ammonia you just need about 30 million tons of hydrogen.
It will only take about 16.6 gigawatt hours to make the hydrogen if it were 100% efficient. Realistically it will be more like 30.
It doesn't make sense to split water with solar power until all the coal and natural gas powers plants are replaced with renewable.
As of last year the United States made 66 Terra watt hours with solar, which made up about 1 and 2/3 precent of all US electrical production.
Electricity only makes up about 1/3 of the total energy we use. So solar has grown to where it can effect the rounding error in total energy use.
So the build out till we get to renewable hydrogen / ammonia is approximately never.

[freebeard]

http://www.deansgarage.com/2011/1932...turm-roadster/

[sgtlethargic]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

...
So the build out till we get to renewable hydrogen / ammonia is approximately never.

I'm sure nobody crunched numbers, except for the big fat grant checks.

Again, what reasonable alternative do we have, considering we risk so much?

I guess we'll have to roll the dice on what's going to happen since there are no good solutions. We got a very late start, we haven't been serious, and we're currently rolling back any efforts while increasing fossil fuels production so Big Oil can make more record profits, probably by exporting. And there's lag time with emissions and climate change.

[freebeard]

Focus on pollution. Reducing environmental impact will improve overall efficiency, and knock-on effects will be mitigated.

It will either get hotter or colder, best to focus on getting to the Moon and it's Lagrange points.

[sgtlethargic]

The bottom line is that the Industrial Revolution needs to have a real Green Revolution (not the energy-intense synthetic fertilizers one). In a short period of time we've screwed up almost everything on the planet. We've acted like there are no consequences. We're hanging on by a thread. Our food system is horribly inefficient and propped up with chemistry. Instead of creating good soil we're depleting and poisoning the soil. Same with fresh water. Climate disruption changes weather patterns, which we rely on knowing as much as possible for agriculture. How are we going to deal with that? Move crop production?

[sgtlethargic]

Let's not forget the opportunity costs of trying to save our home. It's much more important to dominate the globe with US militarism so we can maintain access to unsustainable fossil fuels. They say the US military is the number one consumer of fossil fuels.

[oil pan 4]

Actually the process of producing ammonia is fairly efficient.
I wouldn't be surprised if ammonia and all the raw hydrogen used in industry was still made from natural gas 100 years from now.
The number 1 consumer of fossil fuels is power generation by a lot.
The US military uses around 300,000 barrels of oil per day.
If most of the 20 million barrels of oil per day the US uses could be replaced with electric then the military could use their 300,000 per day just about indefinitely.
That could be further reduced by the navy going with more nuclear ships and the DoD using battery powered ground vehicles where it makes sense and the air force cutting back some flying hours.