The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[sendler]

"Consequently, there is a risk that policy formation for climate-change mitigation will be based more on considerations of publicity and popular opinion than on evidence of effectiveness, impacts, or feasibility."
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"In neither case is evidence from system simulation provided for how this might occur."
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"The Mason and colleagues’ studies reinforce the notion that integration of variable renewable energy sources into existing grids can be cost-effective up to penetrations of around 20%, after which integration costs escalate rapidly"
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"Our review of the 100%-renewable-scenario literature raises substantial concerns. The widespread assumptions of deep cuts in primary energy consumption defy historical experience, are generally inconsistent with realistic projections, and would likely raise problems for developing countries in meeting goals of poverty alleviation"
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Great. So a 100% rebuildable source replacement for all energy isn't feasible on a stricly functional assessment even assuming a cornucopian availability of hardware and area to implement it on. But after all of that, There was no investigation whatsoever of the actual physical requirements of resources or the costs involved with the roll out to even try. Which is obviously a much bigger consideration when you see the scale of land use, let alone the mining refining, manufacturing, and installation of all of this 1/4 of a country sized hardware. And then the continued maintenance.
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This is where such studies as Without The Hot Air and Roadmap To Nowhere help us see the scale of our dilemma. So that we might wake from this green trance and try to consider what we CAN do as the end of oil approaches.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

I'm saying fossil fuel generation should go away, save the coal for making steel.
Replace fossil fuel with nuclear power. There is something like a 300 to 500 year supply of uranium and at least a 1000 year supply of thorium. By the time those run out nuclear fusion should be figured out.

Yes, moving away from combustion as fast as we can is what the climatologists are recommending.
There was hope for carbon sequestration,but the best so far is an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant with carbon capture,at a cost of $30/ton,but at $79/M-W it cannot compete price-wise in an open market.
Save the precious hydrocarbons for durable goods,chemicals,chemical intermediates,etc.,rather than send it up a stack as smokeless exhaust.
The nukes that are already online could continue through their useful life,generating at zero CO2.
New nukes might be a hard sell,as they're more expensive than other current power technologies.
Thorium,I believe,is already heading for service in Australia.I think it's Lockheed-Martin doing modular package units.
Fusion always seems to be 20-30-years down the road.Sorry! No crystal balls at my place.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Everything we are capable of now is the direct result of vast energy availability from fossil fuel. It is so energy dense, transportable, storable, and cheap, it is nearly indistinguishable from magic. 1 gallon of gas or diesel has 35kWh of thermal energy. For 5 bucks.
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570 Liters of diesel per day = 5,700 kWh per day. Even if you cut that by2.5 for the extra efficiency of electric motors with round trip losses you get 2,300 kWh per day for a large size farm machine. 12 Tesla grid scale 200kWh powerpacks per day to hot swap in and out. for just one tractor. We are going to need to start making a lot of wire to get all of this power around.
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Mark Mathis will agree.Same for Steve Palmisano,Kevin Miller,Jonah Goldberg,Michael Economides,Niger Innis,Fred Smith,John Hofmeister,Robert Bryce,Paul Driessen,Dan Kish,Ben Leiberman,Robert Hirsch,Steve Pearce,Bruce Vincent,Randall O'Toole,and many others.
The thing that strikes me so strongly though,is the conviction among climate scientists,that we're flirting with disaster if we do business as usual.
Agribusiness is such a small fraction of overall energy use,and the equipment would run on biofuels.It would be one of the smartest candidates for these liquid fuels,as it would still be net-zero carbon.
Ethanol corn could go towards farms instead of E10 gasoline/ICE automobiles.
If little Barbie needs to get to her ballet lesson,Barbie doesn't need to drive her there on fossil fuels.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by Xist

Once again I argue we need people planting mangrove forests, coconut palms, and other plants that turn sunlight and saltwater into oxygen.

I use that stuff!

Yeah,the biosphere has the potential to lock up a lot of carbon.A 'tree' is credited with sequestering 13-pounds of carbon/year.

[Xist]

How many of you say that we need to stop using gas now and only drive electric vehicles?

[aerohead]

[QUOTE=sendler;569718]Getting started on Fuller. He seems to equate the economic growth from 1810 to present with technology and intellect but it is entirely impossible without the near 1:1:1 increase in population, GDP, and therefore, energy consumption, that was available after the discovery of fossil fuel. Although he does illude to it here:
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In 1810 the U.S.A. Treasury found there were one million U.S.A. families and one million human
slaves, or an average of one per family, with no steam engines, motors or any other work producing
machines than the one slave per family could provide. Now only hundred and fifty years later we have
over 1,000 inanimate energy slaves per each family, and no human slaves, with the inanimate energy slaves
being utterly tireless and able to work 24 hours a day, year around, under physical conditions intolerable to
humans
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Each person in the USA currently has the equivilent in human labor of 300 fossil slaves standing behind them. World average is 60 fossil slaves per person. And they will very shortly be asking for a big pay raise. Which will upend the current debt bubble growth based economy. There is no feasible way to replace the 17TW we are currently consuming with rebuildables.[/QUOTE
Sure! No one is going to transform the energy market overnight.
However,if we're going to 'end' fossil fuel combustion,as climatologists recommend we do,then the sooner we get started,the better we'll be poised to be pro-active about what's going to happen to us,rather than reactive after the sky has fallen.
If Earth is unimportant,then we'll just keep on keeping on.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

We will just put up some solar panels, some wind turbines and some grid batteries.

It might have been Adams or Jefferson that said that the only way our democracy was gonna work,was if we had an informed populace.
I've had 16-years of formal education.Twelve of them were mandatory.
I never learned anything about the real world.
Perhaps we could actually have public education since we already pay for it.And we wouldn't be debating climate change or anything else on an obscure forum on an equally obscure website.
We'd already know what was going on rather than clutch to information we gleaned form thirty-one approved lifestyles authorized by the US Chamber of Commerce.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

These low prices keep getting parroted but they are completely unfounded in reality. Bid prices for future solar projects are based on many factors which artificially reduce the bid mainly in that they don't consider the substantial feed in tafiff incentives and tax credits that are also applied. Countries that invest heavily in rebuildables such as Germany and Australia always find the wholesale price of electricty to rise. Grid scale solar farms in the USA are quoting at $2/ nameplate Watt. Which only do 25% of nameplate annually in the best locations. So $8/ W. Rooftop is $3.30/ Watt. In NY it does 13% capacity factor.

I can't go to India to vet the information.Like everyone else I'm at the mercy of the internet.
What was reported,was that a Finnish company was providing solar-derived electrical power,at 2.44-cents/kW-h.India's filthiest,cheapest coal-fired power plants could not provide power any cheaper than 3.1-cents/kW-h.
India was cancelling all new coal-fired power plant construction.They didn't parse it out an any more detail.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

This is my big emphasis right now. to help people understand that we have been greenwashed by under informed people and media as to the scale of our dilemma and complete reliance on super dense liquid fuel to feed the world and transport all of our stuff (made with carbon intense industry) that keeps the economy from crashing. The sooner we realize and accept that there is no techno salvation coming at that scale, the sooner we can start trying to make wiser decisions as to how to let down more gracefully.

If climate change is still the topic,then the climatologists are saying that we can't afford to burn it.And we need to remove some of what's already in the atmosphere.
In two years,the $35,000 Tesla Model 3 will be available.Over it's 20-year pack life it will save the owner over $35,000 in fuel savings.It has the potential of zero carbon with nukes,wind,solar,hydro,currents,tidal,pumped-storage,geothermal,etc..
Internal combustion will never achieve the BSFC of an electric motor.
Your Case, New Holland,Massey,or John Deere will run fine on energy-dense bio-fuels.So will mining equipment.
Trains can be electrified and run on catenary lines.Trams.Buses are already being electrified.18-Wheelers.
Air travel is the filthiest way to get around.Perhaps there will be some patriots to step forward and fall on their sword.
Thirty years ago we might have had the luxury of some more options.It's a dicey situation.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

This is my big emphasis right now. to help people understand that we have been greenwashed by under informed people and media as to the scale of our dilemma and complete reliance on super dense liquid fuel to feed the world and transport all of our stuff (made with carbon intense industry) that keeps the economy from crashing. The sooner we realize and accept that there is no techno salvation coming at that scale, the sooner we can start trying to make wiser decisions as to how to let down more gracefully.

Please bear in mind that others perceive carbonwashing going on at the same time.
West Wave Films' 'spOILed' is worth noting.It's a very professional, documentary-style production with many interviews,data, and a narrative which mirrors much of what you've shared with us.
Everything mentioned within the film is 'true' when viewed through a particular lens or filter.Very contextual.
It would not be 'absolute' within a strict Ayn Rand interpretation.And even she might petition us to 'check our premises.'
If you don't own it,or haven't seen it,it's definitely worth a look.Very revealing.