The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Solar influx is there but it is not possible to build out that much hardware to capture it at a scale that can replace what are using as I stated above. Even with our current liquid fuel wealth.This is the part of the discussion that green energy advocates never bother to address.
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25 years from now when liquid fuel pricing is 5X higher, even rich people will have a hard time affording their food. And we will have little surplus fuel for such things as building out rebuildables. Or maintaining the ones we already have in service.

I've never read or heard of anyone who claimed that we could do it within any 'sudden' transition.I'm no industrialist,but 'that' seems impossible to me.
If there was some sort of agreement that this ought to be the future trend,then we'd just manufacture what we could,expand manufacturing as we went,and over time displace,eclipsed technology with emerging technology,while doing R&D as we go.
Profits would attract capital investment.
Capitalists like 12-years wiggle room to move their portfolios around to protect themselves.That could be a beginning chronology as a talking point.
We need 18,000,000,000 pounds of plastic crap to put in the oceans each year,so we could reserve fossil fuel production for that.Between duPont and I.G.Farben,we've got enough chemists to create anything we can imagine.
Some jobs would stay the same,some would be different.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Y...Solar...probably competitive by 2051.'p.136 (it's competitive in 2018)
...He says that we're going renewable,it's just a matter of when.(I'll get that citation soon.)

...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.

Which is it? Are renewables price competitive now, or later in 2051? If they are price competitive now, then what is the explanation for it not replacing current energy production while reducing electric bills?

Any country that takes drastic measures to mitigate fossil fuel consumption without worldwide participation puts themselves at a competitive disadvantage. As my wife always says "I'll go first after you."

Originally Posted by 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.

Is that based on nameplate generation, or real world generation? We need something like 10x nameplate generating capacity to not only cover local energy needs, but provide other regions with energy when their local weather isn't producing enough... and that all assumes that a totally intertied grid is already solved.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

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

From the SolutionsProject.org numbers.
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[sendler]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

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Is that based on nameplate generation.

The other issue that constantly clouds the discussion is that oftentimes when people talk about what is needed to replace "power" what they don't realize is that they are being quoted info on replacing electricity only. Not total energy. Which is much larger and harder to replace the density and transportability and storability of fossil fuel.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by 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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Not sure about the future of air transport,but cars,trucks,trains,and ships can go electric.
That would take a lot of demand off liquid hydrocarbons for transport,opening a treasure trove of durable materials possibilities.
Obviously there are no technological boundaries between us and a renewable grid.
Instead of fossil-fuel-fired power plants,Bechtel Corp. can design and build (and operate) manufacturing facilities as they presently already do.
Divert steel from drill rigs,well completion equipment,drill stem,casing,and concrete to solar and wind.Bechtel could have the contract for that.
Mandate Cd 0.13 automobile bodies and you've just increased highway mpg by 25%,in an electric car with a 'BSFC' of around 0.15-lbs/bhp-hr.Reduce the grid requirement by that amount.Streamline housing.Reduce the grid.Streamline commercial real estate.Reduce the grid.Have a discussion about any leisure activity which involves internal combustion.
Ban the left turn nationwide,then synchronize traffic lights.Eminent domain and demolish corner commercial real estate development,then install cloverleafs at all intersections.Tell the real estate lobby to shove it.Tell the appraisal districts to shove it.
I better stop.
Peoples's thoughts are the only thing that stands in the way of any change.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Peoples's thoughts are the only thing that stands in the way of any change.

That. And physics and math.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

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.



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.



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.

Things are what they are.You can engineer for anything.Connecting the grid is a matter of decision.The nuts and bolts of it just follows the work order.Weather variability is just something we have to design for.I'm given to understand that with the present state-of-the-art in power conditioning,variability in power output can be electronically manipulated in which to achieve a steady output. It's a 'different' energy landscape of course.
As to cost,I'll follow Donald Rumsfeld's lead and tell you that those numbers just get in the way.If we're talking about an existential threat to the entire planet then economics becomes meaningless.Money is just a construct.It has no wealth.It is not wealth.It's just a medium of exchange.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed we didn't gnash our teeth and run around protesting the cost of a world war.We just hunkered down and got to the business of it.
As to running out of things,I'm just parroting what Lomberg published.He's held in high regard for his economic and statistical prowess,and I thought his predictions would be germane to the conversation.

[aerohead]

[QUOTE=sendler;570916]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.[/QUOTE
These are great questions and I'll think on them between now and Saturday.I've run out the clock at the copy center and have to go.I'll 'see' you then.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by aerohead

As to running out of things,I'm just parroting what Lomberg published.He's held in high regard for his economic and statistical prowess,and I thought his predictions would be germane to the conversation.

Running out of things(semantics- a euphemism for resources getting increasingly remote- same thing) is definitely happening. His time tables agree with what I accept. Very germane. But it even more important to realize that it is impossible to even come close to replacing liquid fuel with rebuildables for heavy mining, farming, infrastructure build out and repair ect. And what a short amount of time we have left to realize this. It's not a matter of deciding to replace it. It is impossible to build out enough hardware to replace it. 17 TeraWatts continuous. Can't even make 1/3 of this. And with very little storage. Which means rebuildables are giving us a false hope that things will continue on just the same in our growth based free market society. Big changes are coming to all of the social systems we have been accustomed to during our one time run toward the limits to growth on a finite planet. The Carbon pulse.
The sooner we cast off our rosey glasses, or even open our eyes for some of us (politicians), the sooner we can start talking about what to do next. How we can equitably distribute wealth in a receding economy. And how to educate people to get them to accept a negative population rate.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Connecting the grid is a matter of decision.

No, connecting the grid is a matter of economics. We don't will things into being, we act on that will, which requires expenditure of resources. Expenditure of resources has to be weighed against the opportunity cost (the things you can no longer afford if you expend resources a particular way)

Weather variability is just something we have to design for.

Yeah, just like cancer is just something we have to design for. Very complex problems are no simple task, which isn't to say they aren't solvable or unworthy of making an attempt, but a reliable interconnected grid powered almost exclusively by renewable energy is seriously difficult. I mean, we're pretty sophisticated as a species now, in fact the most sophisticated we've ever been, and we don't already have this wonder system in place.

If we're talking about an existential threat to the entire planet then economics becomes meaningless.

Well, we're not talking about an existential threat to the entire planet, therefore economics is nearly everything.

Money is just a construct.It has no wealth.It is not wealth.It's just a medium of exchange.

It isn't just a medium of exchange. It's also a:

• Unit of Account- Standard numerical monetary unit of measurement of market value of goods and services
• Standard of Deferred Payment- Method of settling debts. When you perform work for an employer, they become indebted to you, and settle this debt by issuing a paycheck.
• Store of Value- Relatively stable store of value until it is converted to a medium of exchange at a later time

In other words, money represents future ability to produce goods and services. No money, no goods and services, and no extremely complex and resource intensive renewable energy systems.

As to running out of things,I'm just parroting what Lomberg published.He's held in high regard for his economic and statistical prowess,and I thought his predictions would be germane to the conversation.

I don't know who Lomberg is, so I'm unfamiliar with how well regarded he is regarding the discussion at hand. Reputation aside, if any person has compelling evidence to support a claim, I'm very eager to see it, and willing to accept reasonable conclusions.

Originally Posted by sendler

How we can equitably distribute wealth in a receding economy. And how to educate people to get them to accept a negative population rate.

I'd look to other countries that have receding populations as a study in what works well, and what does not (Japan). I'm not convinced the contraction is the steep cliff you allude to, and anticipate more of a gentle downward slope.

As long as people are laboring for their money, it is immoral to take that earned money to distribute to those who have not labored. When robots are doing most of the laboring and there are no jobs for people, then distribution of wealth is moral.