The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[sendler]

Keep in mind that 25 GW of installed solar capacity will average only 6.25 GW with 4 times this amount for a few hours on some days, and nothing every night. Steel, aluminum, and cement production require uninterrupted energy. And energy consumption in India is growing at the fastest rate on the planet as millions of people get home electricity for the first time and a rising middle class get their first chance at a car.
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I couldn't find any charts newer than 2016 for India. And this one doesn't take into account the 25% of India's primary energy from biomass and dung that appears on the chart from 2013.
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This is the big picture
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[sendler]

Factory farming has freed most of us from growing our own food as we traded fossil energy and fertilizer for human work. But the robots are taking our manufacturing jobs.
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[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by sendler

Keep in mind that 25 GW of installed solar capacity will average only 6.25 GW with 4 times this amount for a few hours on some days, and nothing every night. Steel, aluminum, and cement production require uninterrupted energy. And energy consumption in India is growing at the fastest rate on the planet as millions of people get home electricity for the first time and a rising middle class get their first chance at a car.

Yes, solar power is not ideal if it is used as the only source of power with no backup whatever, as we can see happening right now in ... nowhere. Fake argument.
If solar gets really big there will be challenges, but there are several ways to tackle those, like floating the energy price to entice flexibility in consumption and production wherever possible.

Originally Posted by sendler

I couldn't find any charts newer than 2016 for India. And this one doesn't take into account the 25% of India's primary energy from biomass and dung that appears on the chart from 2013.

So it isn't true?
Electricity production graphs are available for 2018.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr...ector_in_India
Coal is still king. But smog is a giant problem, attributing to many deaths.
The growth of the energy sector is actually lowing down now from the 10% annually what it used to be to about 3% yearly. And solar's contribution is rapidly accelerating, now estimated to be 100 GW in 2022.

Or maybe even faster:
https://about.bnef.com/blog/solar-po...han-you-think/

India big solar contracts are at $38/MWh... Crossover point well and definitely passed.

[freebeard]

Today on Slashdot's front page:

Scientists Turn CO2 'Back Into Coal' In Breakthrough Experiment (independent.co.uk)
Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday March 03, 2019 @10:34AM from the renewable-fossil-fuel dept.

"Scientists have managed to turn CO2 from a gas back into solid 'coal'," reports The Independent, "in a breakthrough which could potentially help remove the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere." Long-time Slashdot reader bbsguru shared their report:
The research team led by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, developed a new technique using a liquid metal electrolysis method which efficiently converts CO2 from a gas into solid particles of carbon. Published in the journal Nature Communications, the authors say their technology offers an alternative pathway for "safely and permanently" removing CO2 from the atmosphere....

RMIT researcher Dr Torben Daeneke said: "While we can't literally turn back time, turning carbon dioxide back into coal and burying it back in the ground is a bit like rewinding the emissions clock...." Lead author, Dr Dorna Esrafilzadeh said the carbon produced by the technique could also be used as an electrode.

"A side benefit of the process is that the carbon can hold electrical charge, becoming a supercapacitor, so it could potentially be used as a component in future vehicles," she said. "The process also produces synthetic fuel as a by-product, which could also have industrial applications."

It really isn't coal, more like carbon black or something; there's no impurities. Mega-anthracite? Clean coal?


What was the Phoebe Snow Route?

[oil pan 4]

I can safely dispose of that atmosphere to coal product.

[RedDevil]

I think they assume there will be some clean energy source to provide the power needed to run the process. It would need more than can be obtained by burning the black stuff, or we'd have a perpetuum mobile.

Maybe a nice process to start up whenever there's an overage of wind or solar power and the grid can't take all of it.

[sendler]

Does it say what the ER/EI of the energy requirements are? 1:100?

[oil pan 4]

There is no surplus of wind or solar in any developed nation.
It would be better to use the wind and solar to displace coal and natural gas first.
Just power everything with nuclear and the surplus can make synthetic coal at night, since breeder reactors don't like to be turned off and on.

[redpoint5]

We're able to make synthetic diamonds now. Can't think of a much more permanent way to sequester carbon than that, since diamonds are forever.

Really that's remarkable though, because it's a step toward being able to manipulate subatomic structures, which I think will be game changing somewhere far off in the future. Something akin to the Star Trek replicator.

99.999999% of sunlight is wasted into space. We haven't even scratched the surface for the potential to manipulate our environment. This accidental increasing of CO2 and resultant acceleration of warming will look like child's play in the future.

[All Darc]

Despite there is already synthetic diamonds better than natural diamonts, in many aspects, and clear (not yellowed synthetic diamonds of the past), its still very expensive, near the cost of natural one, or maybe even more, since a good deal of diamont market price it's marketing ratter than just be rare.

And so, due energy required, you put much more energy and consequent CO2 on atmosphere, in the process to creat synthetic diamonds than the CO2 it holds in the diamond body itself.

The sun eneryny released it's often not well explained or used wrong, There is the sun light that reach Earth and the sun light released by the Sun itself per second. If we would calculate the area of Earth in the side (daylight) and calculated the area of the imaginary sphere with the radius from Sun to the Earth's orbit, and remamber that Sun light take 5 minutes to reach Earch... It's a ratio in the order of billions.

light speed :300.000 km/sec
5min = 300 sec
Distance Sun to Earth = 90.000.000km
Earth area (flat calculation since sun light reach surface as flat) = earth radios elevated to cube then x 3,14. Then we get 127.451.472,74 square km for Earth solar area (side shined by sun).

The sphere from Sun (sphere center) to Earth's orbit would 90.000.000 x 90.000.000 than this value x 3,14 x 4. A insane number. 191.736.000.000.000.000 square kilometer
Earth side direct to the Sun have a solar area 1,5 billion times smaller than the sphere from Sun to Earth orbit.

I think the energy released by the Sun in 3 second it's more than humanity consumed (as electricity or thermal from fossil fuels) since industrial revolution.

Edited :I will need to rework my calculations, since the time to sunlight reach Eath it's more than 5 minutes as I imagined. It's 8 minutes and 20 seconds and not 5 minutes as I imagine.
So, I bet than less than 1 seconds of SUN energy it's more than humanity used since industrial revolution.

I did a second mistake, since I have to consider how much of the enrgy from Sun that reach Earth it's equivalente in relation to the enrgy consumed by humans in 1 day.
So maybe humanity consumed even lee than I suposed before.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

We're able to make synthetic diamonds now. Can't think of a much more permanent way to sequester carbon than that, since diamonds are forever.

Really that's remarkable though, because it's a step toward being able to manipulate subatomic structures, which I think will be game changing somewhere far off in the future. Something akin to the Star Trek replicator.

99.999999% of sunlight is wasted into space. We haven't even scratched the surface for the potential to manipulate our environment. This accidental increasing of CO2 and resultant acceleration of warming will look like child's play in the future.