The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[aerostealth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sitP...ature=youtu.be

Just substitute the United States government for the Australian government in this video and this would apply aptly to us.

[sendler]

Very cute but you guys are not grasping the scale of our dilemma so I will post this again and then you can tell us how we can possibly achieve this. It's not a matter of decision. It is simple physics. civilization and the economy will be much smaller after peak cheap oil.
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130,000 square miles of area, 1.000.000 2.5MW class wind turbines, and 50,000 SolarStar class grid scale solar farms, and 70,000,000 rooftop solar systems, and a 4% increase in hydro with the new capacity capable to pump store. And an unrealistic quantity of this as split Hydrogen with a new fleet pf long haul transport.
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[oil pan 4]

The United States has a lot of thorium. Definitely top 5 in the world.
Better get your solar panels while you still can.

This peak oil thing is coming up fast. For example I saw a department of energy article talking about how Saudi Arabia could stop exporting oil with in the next 10 years if their economy keeps growing like it has been. Then within 20 years they could be importing oil.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Lomberg spoke of distributing the load.With all renewable sources tied to the same grid,there'd be a likelihood that renewable power would be available from somewhere at all times.

Yeah, but the grid isn't intertied that way, with the capability to divert power from any 1 region to any other region. Not only that, but sometimes weather events such as an Eastern snowstorm take out half the generating capacity of the country. That means we'd need the other half of the country to have more than double the normal output capacity, which is economically and environmentally wasteful... and that all assumes the other half of the country would somehow have the ideal weather conditions to not only provide power for itself, but also the other non-producing half.

How much overproduction would need to be provisioned and distributed around the country to maintain our current level of grid uptime, and how much would that cost in terms of both money, and land use?

Finally, transporting power long distances involves massive losses.

Originally Posted by aerohead

F
'... solar energy influx is equivalent to about 7,000 times present global energy consumption.'

Yes, but that energy isn't produced at a steady average; it's produced with vast swings in output, coupled with vast swings in energy demand. Production and demand must perfectly match, which is why depending on the weather to match demand is economically improbable for now.

Oil will run out in 2041 page 135
Gas will run out in 2061 ditto
Coal will run out in 2231 ditto
Uranium will run out in 16,001 ditto
India's got a lot of thorium

We'll never run out of anything. The problem isn't running out; the problem is scarcity of crucial resources causing prices to rise to economically harmful levels.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by Xist

"[R]ainforests are responsible for roughly one-third (28%) of the Earth’s oxygen, but most (70%) of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by marine plants." https://www.nationalgeographic.org/a...reathe-freely/

They say that warming oceans reduce nutrients coming from the depths, so marine plants produce less oxygen. I keep thinking that if we just create a shade then places (maybe just Phoenix places--forget those not named for things on fire) will cool down, but maybe shading the oceans would be less helpful if ocean plants then produced less oxygen.

This just means I will visualize UV film instead of mylar.

According to Ohio State University,for the land-based biosphere,all photosynthesis ceases beyond 104-degrees F.
There may be an equivalent analogue with marine flora.
So far,I'm mostly hearing about coral bleaching and coral die off events,and it's impact on ocean fisheries.
As the poles warm,the delta-T between there and the equator lessens,which in turn reduces density-sensitive hydrodynamics.
The ocean acidification is also preventing shells of many marine species from developing.The carbonic acid formed by dissolved atmospheric CO2 has lowered the pH below the threshold at which calcium carbonate can withstand the seawater.
Which in turn affects the life forms which would otherwise feed on these creatures.Nice!

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

The fact that we are even considering electolytic Hydrogen with it's 30% round trip efficiency as a means of energy storage demonstates what we are up against when it comes to trying to maintain a baseload grid from intermittent sources. The author's contention is that batteries are so resource intensive and embody so much energy in their refining and manufacturing that their superior efficiency of 83% is swamped.

From Lomberg,
'...a modern windmill($3-million installed cost)can produce the energy used for it's own production within just three months.' circa 1997 (page 135)
The present TESLA (PANASONIC) automotive batteries are reflecting a 20-year service life.
For their 'installed cost',it would be great to see a life-cycle cost analysis.The US Commerce Dept. tracks this sort of thing,although it may be proprietary.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by aerohead

From Lomberg,
'...a modern windmill($3-million installed cost)can produce the energy used for it's own production within just three months.

But the mining, refining and installation for it's production and implementation is heavily liquid fuel dependant.
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And you guys are still ignoring the scale that is required.
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Again.
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130,000 square miles of area, 1.000.000 2.5MW class wind turbines, and 50,000 SolarStar 500MW class grid scale solar farms, and 70,000,000 rooftop solar systems, and a 4% increase in hydro with the new capacity capable to pump store. And an unrealistic quantity of this as split Hydrogen with a new fleet pf long haul transport. Just for the USA. And another 10X for the rest of the world.
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Where do we get all of this stuff. How do we install it. How long would it take. And how to rebuild it all every 20 years? After liquid fuel pricing goes 5X in 30 years?
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This hardware is required to optimistically get 1.5TW. Which is right from the favorite resource: Roadmap To Renewables from the SolutionProject.org site. Just for the USA. And still no storage.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

It still takes an unrealistic quantity of rebuildables to replace all primary energy even if you could eliminate the need for storage with a world wide, ocean and continent spanning high voltage grid. 1.5TW is required just for the current USA consumption.
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130,000 square miles of area, 1.000.000 2.5MW class wind turbines, and 50,000 SolarStar class grid scale solar farms, and 70,000,000 rooftop solar systems, and a 4% increase in hydro with the new capacity capable to pump store. And an unrealistic quantity of this as split Hydrogen with a new fleet pf long haul transport.

Yes, the numbers are staggering!
From Lomberg:
'...the greenhouse effect is really quite simple and entirely uncontroversial.' P.259
'About 98 percent of the extra CO2 comes from...oil,coal,and gas...'p.260
'...anthropogenic greenhouse effect is also fairly uncontroversial.'p.260
'Solar...probably competitive by 2051.'p.136 (it's competitive in 2018)
'...it is estimated that the price of renewable energy will fall faster than the price for conventional energy.' p.132
He says that we're going renewable,it's just a matter of when.(I'll get that citation soon.)
If it's ever agreed that we're going to end CO2 emissions and remove some of the extant CO2 from the atmosphere,then we are talking about a carbon-free grid.
The oil,gas,and coal can't be combusted.
It's political suicide to even broach the topic,so as with President George Herbert Walker Bush's National Energy Policy,there probably won't be any policy.We'll just leave it to the market to sort it our for us.
What I hear from Lomberg's 2001,comments though,is that as renewables reach competitive pricing,the days of internal combustion will quite naturally,over time,fade into the dustbin of history.It's a timing issue as Lomberg points out.

[NeilBlanchard]

I think your numbers are off. It will take 0.6% of the US land to power ALL the US:

https://www.good.is/infographics/sol...all-of-america

Here's the estimate to power the WORLD:

Total Surface Area Required to Fuel the World With Solar | bLAGI

191,817 square miles - to power all humans on earth. Just from solar.

Wind turbines are now often 8MW each - and they are more efficient the bigger they are.

Nobody is proposing to make hydrogen - that takes at least 3X as much energy.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Yes, the numbers are staggering!

The numbers are absolutely impossible. The sooner we realize that it is not possible to have a 1:1 replacement of primary energy with rebuildables, the sooner we can begin to implement rational decisions on developing a new social system that can survive on much less.
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We are being led down a Green Brick Road to meet with the wizard of renewability, only to find that he is actually just an impotent old man running a scam.