The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Yeah, a 10 kWh supercap bank would be room-sized.

AllDarc was hyping some technology that was both a supercap and battery, but then went silent on it.

Right. If built with commercially available 10Wh/kg caps it would weigh a metric tonne, that much capacity is not practical yet for car use even though you'd be able to fit several in a room

But in the near future things may change.
https://phys.org/news/2018-02-altern...r-reality.html

If these values of capacitance can be achieved in production, it could potentially see supercapacitors achieving energy densities of up to 180Wh/kg—greater than lithium ion batteries.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...08622318301143

So who knows. Except that some lithium batteries already have higher energy density than that.
Nor do we know what it will cost. As energy density increases cost will become the all deciding factor.
However.
https://energystorageforum.com/news/...supercapacitor

This technology represents a fierce competitor to lithium ion batteries and could potentially replace the lithium batteries in the future. Monaghan compared the cost for this type of graphene supercapacitor at $100 per kWh to Tesla’s target price for its batteries that will be produced at its GigaFactory at $150 USD per kWh by 2020.

Their comparison goes awry; Tesla is already below $100/kWh on the cell level. But nonetheless, if supercaps can get that close that's good.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by sendler

There is not that much Lithium in the world. Keep in mind the scale of what we are trying to replace. Half of what we use (from a 2:1 efficiency improvement) for 18 hours would need 136 TWh of batteries. I will let someone else figure out how many 1,000s of GigaFactories this requires to get it all built and then rebuilt every 20 years.
.
Scale
.
Things will be much smaller after fossil fuels leave us. Simplify now and beat the rush.

Lithium gets mined mainly from brine nowadays, and many brine pits are not in use now but would if the price rises. Then it can be mined from granite and many other minerals, or even sea water. There's 230 billion tonnes of lithium in the sea.

[sendler]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Lithium gets mined mainly from brine nowadays, and many brine pits are not in use now but would if the price rises. Then it can be mined from granite and many other minerals, or even sea water. There's 230 billion tonnes of lithium in the sea.

Mining anything like Lithium from sea water will have such a high negative ER/EI so as to be completely the realm of SciFi dreams. Even if we had the raw materials, have you considered the scale of 130 TWh of batteries? Just to store 16 hours of half of the energy we are now using. Please wake up people.

[NeilBlanchard]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Nuke plants can go 100 years, they just haven't been around long enough to prove it yet.

They last only 40-60 years. We are now having to pay for decommissioning - which will take at least 10 years, and could take much more than that. The first one is Vermont Yankee, and soon Pilgrim.

They budgeted $1 Billion to do this. And WHERE will the radioactive materials go?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

They last only 40-60 years. We are now having to pay for decommissioning - which will take at least 10 years, and could take much more than that. The first one is Vermont Yankee, and soon Pilgrim.

They budgeted $1 Billion to do this. And WHERE will the radioactive materials go?

Lifespan was arbitrarily chosen at 40 years. Most plants get 20 year extensions, and it's expected most could get further extensions beyond that, up to 100 years.

Nuclear reactor life spans get extended - US news - Environment | NBC News

Nuclear "waste" is not a problem. They could store it in my backyard for all I care. I'll charge a fee for the privilege, along with a release of ownership that way I can sell it back to the energy companies when they begin building reactors that run on "waste".

Vermont's nuke plants are being decommissioned due to political pressure and cheap natural gas electricity, not due to safety concerns. Vermont also has the highest electricity price in the 48 states, and has to import most of the electricity they consume.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Some things need a bottom up grass roots approach some things need big top top down solutions.
Asking people to pay to fix global warming is like pouring roundup on the grass roots, so that's obviously not going to work. Time for the nuclear option.

I just finished reading 'The Dragons of Eden' by Carl Sagan.
In the book,he goes into quite a bit of neuroscience , the evolution of our brain,and how we're kinda wired for responses from certain environmental situations.
It's a battle between fight or flight of the right-hemisphere,and critical analytic reasoning of the left-hemisphere,fought across the corpus callosum.
If nuclear competed with your competing energy provider,then films like 'The China Syndrome and Silkwood and news of 3-Mile Island,Diablo Canyon,and Chernobyl might do the trick,as far as getting folks to distance them selves from nuclear power.
The emotional power could be compelling.
We do have a rather artful public relations/advertising/marketing industry,which is a cousin to a full-blown social-engineering laboratory.These artisanal word crafters are pretty good at compelling people to behave in ways beneficial to a client.
If there was a relentless,concerted,nationwide public relations campaign for an increase in nuclear power do you think they could ultimately sell the idea?
It looks like far more people have been killed in fossil-fuel-related events than nuclear could ever imagine.If the actual numbers were presented to the general public,I wonder if they'd have an epiphany?
I'm no Pollyanna,and I do have some sense of some of the challenges to 'safe' nuclear power,but It would be an interesting experiment just to see what a promotion might provoke.

[NeilBlanchard]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Lifespan was arbitrarily chosen at 40 years. Most plants get 20 year extensions, and it's expected most could get further extensions beyond that, up to 100 years.

Nuclear reactor life spans get extended - US news - Environment | NBC News

Nuclear "waste" is not a problem. They could store it in my backyard for all I care. I'll charge a fee for the privilege, along with a release of ownership that way I can sell it back to the energy companies when they begin building reactors that run on "waste".

Vermont's nuke plants are being decommissioned due to political pressure and cheap natural gas electricity, not due to safety concerns. Vermont also has the highest electricity price in the 48 states, and has to import most of the electricity they consume.

Vermont Yankee was literally falling down, and leaking radioactive water into the groundwater.

Pilgrim had FIVE unscheduled shutdowns in the past year or so. Hardly dependable.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Yeah I wouldn't call western Europe a success story.
Still burn fossil fuels to generate electricity some and still get a lot of energy from fossil fuels it's just more expensive. Gasoline is at least $5 a gallon and people still buy cars.
That's energy poverty.
I want change through energy prosperity.
Of course Europe has it backwards as usual.

What's the believer con to get people pay more than $10 per month?
Or make it easy, what's the con to get believers to open their wallets?
We are not talking $10 per month, Obamas cap and tax plan started out around $30 to $36 per month per person at first, then swelled to around $100 per person per month after several years.

one of the Republican-sponsored carbon tax schemes would be net-zero in cost to the consumer.

[NeilBlanchard]

The climate is getting much warmer, very quickly.

Earth just experienced one of the warmest years on record

[redpoint5]

Yeah, it has been a mild winter here. Very enjoyable. We still got snow yesterday though.