The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[freebeard]

...happy sailors, dancing on a sinking ship...

John Prine

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Here is a quick start to discussing intercontinental electrical cable.
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The Energy Age: Intercontinental Energy Grid
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Which still doesn't address the density and storage problem of converting electricity to work in large farm, mining, construction machines. Our tractors will need some mighty long extension cords.
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What will actually happen is that most people remaining will grow their own food by muscle power after the age of fossil fuel.

As of 2008,work in this direction was already under construction,or planned for:
*Baltic Sea
*North Sea
*Spain
*Ireland
*European national grid
*Algeria-to-Europe
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Smaller entities were connecting renewable energy to new transmission lines in:
*Florida
*Texas
*Colorado
*New Mexico
*California
*Minnesota
*Nevada
*N.Dakota
*S.Dakota
*Utah
*Wisconsin
*Wyoming
*Kansas
*China
*India
*Brazil
*S.Korea
*Iceland
*New Zealand
*Philippines
*France
*British Columbia
*Japan
*Russia
*Turkey
*Oklahoma
*SE USA
*Upper Midwest USA

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

I don't understand how it is thought to be a more efficient use of energy to build out vast amounts of rebuildable energy generation hardware using vast amounts of embodied energy, in order to gather solar and wind energy, transmit it and store it in storage that was built with vast amounts of embodied energy, in order to light up lights that were made and installed into buildings or caves that were made with vast amounts of energy, to light up said lights with said captured rebuildable energy, to grow food for 8 billion people.
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Than to just let the sun shine directly on the food in a field whenever it will.
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Scale for 8 billion people. And embodied energy. Keep things in mind when anyone thinks we will build our way out of diminishing fossil fuel energy currently propping us up at 17 TW. 300 fossil slaves each to maintain a USA standard of living.
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1 barrel of oil at $70 has enough energy in it for the human power equivalent of 4.5 years of steady work. Magic stuff.

Earth receives in one-hour,solar insolation,equal in energy to 1-years total global electricity demand.
In 42-minutes,Earth's wind energy equals total global electric demand.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Energy Reality Project had some decent napkin math. We need to "Run The Numbers" as we try to get out of this jam.
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Let’s Run the Numbers – Nuclear Energy vs. Wind and Solar | The Energy Reality Project
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In 2008,Lester Brown,in his Plan-B 3.0 mentioned that,at 'full-cost' pricing (including waste disposal,decommissioning,insurance against accidents,and insurance against terrorism),that new nuclear plants would not be economical in a competitive electricity market.
Germany dumped nuclear in 2005.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Here is a study showing a proposed tidal flow turbine installation at the Straight of Gibraltar. With a peak of 3GW. Average power would be the sine? 2.1 GW average with two periods per day near zero. So if we we could eventually get 100GW peak somehow out of the whole area would be excellent.
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http://oceano.uma.es/pdfproj/fleger_3.pdf
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There's a 240-MW plant operating in France which entered service in 1968.
As of 2009,plants were in the pipeline at:
South Korea 254-MW
China 300-MW
New Zealand 200-MW
India 7.4-GW
Britain 8.6-GW
Russia 10-GW
U.S.A. a smattering of facilities:
Puget Sound
San Francisco Bay
East River,N.Y.
38 applications were pending as of 2008.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Agribusiniss consumes 15% of primary energy. So about 2.5 TeraWatt? There is no feasible way to convert this much energy to biofuel. And even if we did find enough land and equipment to use this, the very poor ER/ EI of biofuel compared with the 20:1 we are currently getting from oil would increase the cost of goods 4X and wreck the economy.
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If all the arable land presently devoted to E10 Regular Unleaded gasoline ethanol production were diverted to biodiesel production for farm equipment,would that be a step towards providing liquid fuels for agribusiness?

[sendler]

Originally Posted by aerohead

If all the arable land presently devoted to E10 Regular Unleaded gasoline ethanol production were diverted to biodiesel production for farm equipment,would that be a step towards providing liquid fuels for agribusiness?

No. The Energy Returned vs Energy Invested is very poor. 2:1? It is foolish for the cars and it is foolish for replacing diesel. A waste of time and money. There is no replacement for the density and current price of diesel fuel. Magic stuff. Things will be much different as it starts to leave us in 20-30 years.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Scale. Building out 17 TW of rebuildable hardware and keeping it repaired and operating with no cheap fossil fuel to build and repair it is impossible. Run the numbers. It is not just a matter of choice. Why do people think the world has failed repeatedly in living up to all of the various carbon agreements. The current socio-economic system for 7.5 billion humans was built on, and is completely reliant on cheap fossil energy to keep from crashing.
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Exponential Population explosion/ GDP/ and energy consumption have been highly correlated 1:1:1 since 1850. And have led us to overpopulate the planet beyond the carrying capacity of normal energy flows. Fossil fuels are so dense that we will have a big shortfall of energy availablilty when they leave us. And they are so cheap (we pay almost nothing for any of the actual raw materials we pull out of the Earth. Only for the cost of extraction.) that their diminishing output will force us to abandon everything we now take for granted in the way our economy works. We would need to completely revamp the distribution of wealth. And rich people are not going to give it up willingly. Like they did last time when FDR reminded them that the hungry hoards would be coming with pointy sticks to take it if they didn't. 78% of world wealth went to 1% of the population in 2016.
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100 years from now, people will have to grow their own food and firewood with muscle power and will be lucky to keep enough industry going to have an internet of knowledge running and have some lighting and e-bikes to get around on.

As the former 'arsenal of democracy' the USA has a historical record of rising to meet extraordinary challenges.
Some believe that now,we're just the arse.
As Hucho says about low aerodynamic drag: if it ever becomes a priority,then we'll probably see a lot of it.
The transition away from liquid hydrocarbon fuel is ongoing.Electric cars will be the norm.
Same for passenger rail.
Freight rail
Trucking
Ocean-going vessels
All running on renewable electricity.
The hydrocarbons not 'combusted' can be prestadigitated by chemists,as I.G.Farbenindustrie AG demonstrated in WW-II,into the chemical intermediates which can ultimately become resins for wind turbine blade construction etc..
We're building,repairing,and operating even with losses to the transportation sector.I don't see a problem.
The economy is a construct.It may see some remodeling.It probably won't be pretty for some of the tribe.
Some of Lomberg's crew's predictions are off by 57%-to 204% in retrospect from 2001.We'll want to put every economist under an electron scanning microscope.
Population is the elephant in the living room.Hesitancy on the part of politicians to address it will probably bring the republic down.
Adam Smith said that the only reason a rich man could peacefully sleep at night,was because he had a BIG,powerful government watching his back.He distrusted corporations.Abuses between the British government and the East India Company led to their loss of the American colonies.
About every messenger discussing big issues laments the lack of 'education'.
'Glad we're attempting to put a dent in this one.
Appreciate all your contributions!

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

As I said, We need to realize that there are many things to consider beyond the quote of a cheap wholesale price from solar somewhere. There are huge govenment rebates and tax incentives and huge feed in tariffs available to solar that contribute to these news stories. And then there is also the fact that the solar installs are not held responsible for the cost of guaranteeing their supply to avoid blackouts. Every area with a high percentage of rebuildable energy adoption has seen electricty prices increase. Solar can be really good for daytime cooling peaks with smart grid control of thermostats but still requires high tech thermal storage to time shift by 6 hours to get through the evening. But it absolutley can't replace a baseload grid.
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EIAA projects India to be burning 2.4X more coal in 2050 than 2010.
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China has enough coal gerneration with slowing growth and is downwind from it's own pollution so it's companies have taken their engineering to the world market to build out coal in other countries.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/c...te-change.html
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1600 new coal plants are planned world wide. I'm not rooting for coal. But energy growth is economic growth. And underdeveloped countires want to join us in standard of living. Refuse to be left behind. And rebuildables are expensive and can't provide a baseload.

Absolutely! Only when we've had a taste of all available data will we be able to make an intelligible decision about anything.
Oil and gas has enjoyed an Oil Depletion Allowance far a long time.States like Oklahoma tax oil production right in the oil patch,then turn around and tax every gallon of finished fuel at 17-cents/gallon at the pump.
Many a state's annual revenue comes from the oil patch.And you'll see their elected and appointed client representatives often defending their patron in Congress.It dates to at least the Roman Empire.Perhaps before Sumar.
Incentives are nothing new.And they're a way to 'say' something without actually speaking words.
Having a market basket of energy providers,with distributed capacity,sharing a grid across latitudes and longitudes appears to be the preferred path.
There will always be sun shining somewhere,and wind.Day connected to night and vice versa.
According to the EIA,in 1995,the cost of fuel constituted only 16% of the cost of a kWh.Perhaps there's some rationalization to be had in distribution costs.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

We have a much bigger problem than climate change which will bite us much harder and sooner. We have developed a fractional/ creationist banking system where loans create money out of thin air with nothing taken out of circulation to balance it. The new money anilhilates itself as it is paid back but the interest is real and can only be paid back with growth. And economic growth equals energy growth at almost 1:1. We are headed toward the end of energy growth in the next 30 years. The curent debt based/ growth based economic model will no longer be viable as energy ER/ EI slips away.


Again, operating the agroindustry on biofuel is completely impossible due to the scale of consumption to feed 7.5 billion people and the very poor ER/ EI of bio fuels.
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Please try to be more aware of the scale of our consumption.
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We would use up all of our land and equipment time to grow fuel at 3:1. To put in the tractors in order to grow more fuel to put in the tractors to grow more fuel. And the price of whatever goods we could produce will increase 4X (or much more if supply is very short as it will be).
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Electric trains is something we should go all in on. And develop an economy that allows us to move and work when the energy is available, and not have to do anything when it is not.
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Electric semis are a pipe dream as we are already having a battery crunch and we haven't even gotten started with transportation and grid storage.
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Personal transportaion will be very fortunate to have a 500Wh e-bike 100 years from now for 10 billion people.

We can thank Benjamin Franklin for inflation and perpetual debt.It's how we payed France back for helping us win the Revolutionary War.Fiat currency.
The Vietnamese were demanding gold from Ft.Knox,so we pulled gold specie out the currency,followed by Nixon taking us off silver to boot.Now we have a currency casino,with floating exchange rates,manipulations,and speculation.
Growing the economy is part of the Ponzi scheme.Future suckers underwrite present suckers.A house built on sand.And no precedent for deconstruction.
I'll think in terms off farm equipment fuel requirements.And I was only thinking of US farm production,not global.