Climate Change(d)?

[Elixir]

If you've got any freebees left for The Atlantic...

The Hottest Thing in Clean Energy

Little of America’s energy comes from geothermal sources, but that could change quickly.

www.theatlantic.com

The United States is in the midst of an energy revolution. Under the Biden administration, the country shoveled unprecedented sums of federal dollars into clean-energy projects—battery factories, solar farms, nuclear plants—while also producing and exporting record volumes of oil and gas. President Donald Trump has vowed to ramp up energy production further, but takes a skeptical view of solar and wind power. But Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” mantra extends beyond fossil fuels. His administration is embracing geothermal energy, which is primed for a very American boom.

So it uses fracking. The knuckle draggers like that.
It's zero carbon. The libbies like that.
It's always on and easily throttled.
It uses water in the fracking process, not some mystery fluid.
It can be done across large portions of the US, not just in small hot spots.
I think the only thing that may kill it is there is nothing divisive about this new geothermal. No reason to argue or protest. And we all hate when we can't bitch about a thing.

I don’t know if technical obstacles to harnessing geothermal resources exist, but I am somewhat bothered by the approach taken by the city that manages the aquatic center where I swim.
Some 40 gallons per minute of hot water (out of the ground at 140°F) flows downhill for about 5 miles, arriving at the pool facility at 110°-125° depending on season. It is stored in huge cooling tanks, and continuously added to the pool at 100° to 101°. Every minute, about 25 gallons goes into the pool and another 15 gallons go through a complicated set of cooling pipes leading back to the Arkansas River, into which it flows at 50-70°. That’s a LOT of wasted energy. PLUS, another 25gpm is taken out of the pool at 80-99°, treated (removing pool grunge and trace chlorine) and sent to the river. I’d freakin’ KILL for 1gpm of that 110-125 degree water.
Meanwhile, back at the pool, the showers in the locker rooms use CITY water! They pay to heat it, and they pay for the water even though there’s way more hot water than they can use, coming in for “free”. Apparently it's too expensive to cool it enough for showering?
Mystifies me. So much energy, so much pristine spring water continuously wasted.
Bothers me.

 

[thebeave]

If you've got any freebees left for The Atlantic...

The Hottest Thing in Clean Energy

Little of America’s energy comes from geothermal sources, but that could change quickly.

www.theatlantic.com

The United States is in the midst of an energy revolution. Under the Biden administration, the country shoveled unprecedented sums of federal dollars into clean-energy projects—battery factories, solar farms, nuclear plants—while also producing and exporting record volumes of oil and gas. President Donald Trump has vowed to ramp up energy production further, but takes a skeptical view of solar and wind power. But Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” mantra extends beyond fossil fuels. His administration is embracing geothermal energy, which is primed for a very American boom.

So it uses fracking. The knuckle draggers like that.
It's zero carbon. The libbies like that.
It's always on and easily throttled.
It uses water in the fracking process, not some mystery fluid.
It can be done across large portions of the US, not just in small hot spots.
I think the only thing that may kill it is there is nothing divisive about this new geothermal. No reason to argue or protest. And we all hate when we can't bitch about a thing.

Well, the NIMBYs are always there and ready to complain at a moments notice. They'll say is its an eyesore, or noisy, or it will bring down their property values or its unsafe and they'll be killed in a steam explosion, . It sounds like a great idea to me though. I hope it can work out.

 

[thebeave]

If you've got any freebees left for The Atlantic...

The Hottest Thing in Clean Energy

Little of America’s energy comes from geothermal sources, but that could change quickly.

www.theatlantic.com

The United States is in the midst of an energy revolution. Under the Biden administration, the country shoveled unprecedented sums of federal dollars into clean-energy projects—battery factories, solar farms, nuclear plants—while also producing and exporting record volumes of oil and gas. President Donald Trump has vowed to ramp up energy production further, but takes a skeptical view of solar and wind power. But Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” mantra extends beyond fossil fuels. His administration is embracing geothermal energy, which is primed for a very American boom.

So it uses fracking. The knuckle draggers like that.
It's zero carbon. The libbies like that.
It's always on and easily throttled.
It uses water in the fracking process, not some mystery fluid.
It can be done across large portions of the US, not just in small hot spots.
I think the only thing that may kill it is there is nothing divisive about this new geothermal. No reason to argue or protest. And we all hate when we can't bitch about a thing.

I don’t know if technical obstacles to harnessing geothermal resources exist, but I am somewhat bothered by the approach taken by the city that manages the aquatic center where I swim.
Some 40 gallons per minute of hot water (out of the ground at 140°F) flows downhill for about 5 miles, arriving at the pool facility at 110°-125° depending on season. It is stored in huge cooling tanks, and continuously added to the pool at 100° to 101°. Every minute, about 25 gallons goes into the pool and another 15 gallons go through a complicated set of cooling pipes leading back to the Arkansas River, into which it flows at 50-70°. That’s a LOT of wasted energy. PLUS, another 25gpm is taken out of the pool at 80-99°, treated (removing pool grunge and trace chlorine) and sent to the river. I’d freakin’ KILL for 1gpm of that 110-125 degree water.
Meanwhile, back at the pool, the showers in the locker rooms use CITY water! They pay to heat it, and they pay for the water even though there’s way more hot water than they can use, coming in for “free”. Apparently it's too expensive to cool it enough for showering?
Mystifies me. So much energy, so much pristine spring water continuously wasted.
Bothers me.

The dumping of the 15 gallons back into the river doesn't make any sense. Are you sure about that?

The water that goes into the locker rooms (whether for drinking fountains, sinks, showers, etc) has to meet certain water purity standards per EPA and/or city code. The hot water getting piped in from miles away likely doesn't meet those standards and it would likely be prohibitively expensive to have an onsite purification system for the "little" amount of water used in the locker rooms. It does seem like you could use a heat exchanger, though, to pre-heat the locker room hot water with the geothermal water, but I suspect the additional plumbing and maintenance expense on that doesn't make it feasible for the few degrees of temperature you gain from it. Plumbing work ain't cheap these days!

 

[Elixir]

The dumping of the 15 gallons back into the river doesn't make any sense. Are you sure about that?

Yup. You should see the control room. There are so many computer controlled valves, it's a wonder that things don't break down more often. There's stuff for removing particulates, monitoring Ph levels, temperatures, monitoring for biologics etc etc., all hooked up to similar monitoring of the actual pool water through sampling ports in the lap and soaking pools. The whole thing can be controlled by a cell phone, as long as nothing breaks. A wonder of Rube Goldberg modern engineering.

The water that goes into the locker rooms (whether for drinking fountains, sinks, showers, etc) has to meet certain water purity standards per EPA and/or city code.

Yeah, the water that goes into the pool has to meet stringent standards too. The reason the locker rooms aren't connected is because the infrastructure is OLD. When the facility was built, the pool was fed directly with water that was 85-95F, having traveled through uninsulated clay pipes. So they built an entirely separate infrastructure for showering... and it still exists today. Given funds, they COULD use some of the excess spring water, but they'd have to send the waste to the CIty treatment plant anyway. Treatng the "used" pool water is far easier; the entire volume of the soaking pool is replaced every 24 hours, and the lap pool every 48, so it never gets terribly dirty or soapy. But cooling it enough to avoid harming the river ecology is massively expensive. And still, there are unnaturally humongous trout that hang around the inflow at the river.

It does seem like you could use a heat exchanger, though, to pre-heat the locker room hot water with the geothermal water, but I suspect the additional plumbing and maintenance expense on that doesn't make it feasible for the few degrees of temperature you gain from it. Plumbing work ain't cheap these days!

My thought exactly. They could have laid pipes under the entire deck and the floors of the locker rooms and to pre-heat the shower water, bleeding heat from the excess spring water and providing some benefit at the same time. But it's a lot harder to retrofit stuff like that than to build it in in the first place, which they didn't do back in the day.

 

[thebeave]

The dumping of the 15 gallons back into the river doesn't make any sense. Are you sure about that?

Yup. You should see the control room. There are so many computer controlled valves, it's a wonder that things don't break down more often. There's stuff for removing particulates, monitoring Ph levels, temperatures, monitoring for biologics etc etc., all hooked up to similar monitoring of the actual pool water through sampling ports in the lap and soaking pools. The whole thing can be controlled by a cell phone, as long as nothing breaks. A wonder of Rube Goldberg modern engineering.

The water that goes into the locker rooms (whether for drinking fountains, sinks, showers, etc) has to meet certain water purity standards per EPA and/or city code.

Yeah, the water that goes into the pool has to meet stringent standards too. The reason the locker rooms aren't connected is because the infrastructure is OLD. When the facility was built, the pool was fed directly with water that was 85-95F, having traveled through uninsulated clay pipes. So they built an entirely separate infrastructure for showering... and it still exists today. Given funds, they COULD use some of the excess spring water, but they'd have to send the waste to the CIty treatment plant anyway. Treatng the "used" pool water is far easier; the entire volume of the soaking pool is replaced every 24 hours, and the lap pool every 48, so it never gets terribly dirty or soapy. But cooling it enough to avoid harming the river ecology is massively expensive. And still, there are unnaturally humongous trout that hang around the inflow at the river.

It does seem like you could use a heat exchanger, though, to pre-heat the locker room hot water with the geothermal water, but I suspect the additional plumbing and maintenance expense on that doesn't make it feasible for the few degrees of temperature you gain from it. Plumbing work ain't cheap these days!

My thought exactly. They could have laid pipes under the entire deck and the floors of the locker rooms and to pre-heat the shower water, bleeding heat from the excess spring water and providing some benefit at the same time. But it's a lot harder to retrofit stuff like that than to build it in in the first place, which they didn't do back in the day.

Yep. I was assuming that much (all?) of your swimming facility was built prior to bringing in the geothermal water, and that major retrofitting to make it all ideal and efficient was probably impractical and not fiscally responsible. Here in California where we have frequent droughts, they are starting to use "greywater" from the sewage treatment facilities for non-potable landscape irrigation, etc. Major streets are getting dug up to install special greywater pipes. Sounds good in theory, but I'm not sure its all worth it.

 

[Elixir]

I was assuming that much (all?) of your swimming facility was built prior to bringing in the geothermal water, and that major retrofitting to make it all ideal and efficient was probably impractical and not fiscally responsible.

No, it was built in 1937 as part of a Federal Works Progress Administration project, long before efficient use of heat energy was even a thing. They just ran a pipe into a pool and let the overflow go into the river (about a mile away). Eventually someone noticed how it was messing up the river ecology, and they started building the "cooling pipeline" but that didn't work by itself. Now the humongous cooling tanks and computer controlled everything, keep the pool pristine and the river from suffering terrible damage, but it is far from idealized.

 

[Elixir]

They just ran a pipe into a pool and let the overflow go into the river

I think I related the story about when we moved here. At the time, the pool was fed by the aforementioned clay pipe, and it ran through our property, unbeknownst to me. There was a dotted line on the plat representing it but it wasn't labeled so I had no idea what it was.
I discovered an old standpipe on the property but opening the spigot didn't yield anything so I forgot about it. Then, one fine spring day I noticed a plume of steam coming out of the ground. DUDE! It was hot water! So I ran some hoses and started siphoning it down the hill to our garden location.
After a few days, the City cops showed up and threatened to arrest me for "stealing city water".
I got in a bit of a verbal fracas with them, threatening to call the Sheriff and have them (the City cops) arrested for trespassing since I was in an unicorporated area. They finally relaxed and explained that the hot springs pipeline lay under the hot pool I was siphoning from, and the hot pool was formed by a leak in the pipeline and there was an easement dating from the 30's. So I had to give up my free hot water....

A few years later they moved the pipeline and upgraded it to insulated pipe, which was when the River really began to suffer. A LOT of work has been done since then, but none with efficient use of the heat being a top priority. (After all, it's free.)

 

[robnisch]

Geothermal | Klamath Falls, OR

The City of Klamath Falls Geothermal Utility provides cost effective heating services utilizing a non-polluting “green” resource.

www.klamathfalls.city

I went to OTI(OIT) there in the early 70's.

 

[TSwizzle]

Yes. They hope to profit from climate change, but they aren't ignorant regarding the problem.

Baffling why so many people think that climate doesn’t change.

 

[bilby]

Yes. They hope to profit from climate change, but they aren't ignorant regarding the problem.

Baffling why so many people think that climate doesn’t change.

Could you give one example of such a person? From where I am sitting, it looks like literally nobody thinks that climate doesn't change.

I suspect that you are more ignorant and confused, than you are baffled.

 

[DBT]

Yes. They hope to profit from climate change, but they aren't ignorant regarding the problem.

Baffling why so many people think that climate doesn’t change.

Can you name one person who believes that?

 

[Elixir]

Baffling why so many people think that climate doesn’t change.

Baffles me why so many people think climate changes at its current rate all the time. Or why they think the current rate of climate change won’t cause problems later this century.

 

[southernhybrid]

Yes. They hope to profit from climate change, but they aren't ignorant regarding the problem.

Baffling why so many people think that climate doesn’t change.

Could you give one example of such a person? From where I am sitting, it looks like literally nobody thinks that climate doesn't change.

I suspect that you are more ignorant and confused, than you are baffled.

He just doesn't seem to get the difference between climate change that happens over many thousands of. years and climate change that happens very rapidly primarily due to human activity. Not sure why that is so hard when the evidence is overwhelming and now even the fucking major banks get it.

 

[Elixir]

Not sure why that is so hard when the evidence is overwhelming and now even the fucking major banks get it.

Swiz ain’t no major bank. He’s gonna be dead and gone by the time the shit REALLY hits the fan.

 

[steve_bank]

I think Trrump should give all the federal land in Ca over to commercial development.

Cut down all those useless redwood trees.

 

[southernhybrid]

Not sure why that is so hard when the evidence is overwhelming and now even the fucking major banks get it.

Swiz ain’t no major bank. He’s gonna be dead and gone by the time the shit REALLY hits the fan.

Maybe, but considering how quickly things are changing these days, he may get a taste of the worst of it. Fires, floods, tornadoes, extremely hot temps, droughts etc. Oh wait. It's always perfect weather in Santa Monica, but just wait until all the climate change refugees find out and move there.

I do think it's probably hopeless at this point, considering what the mad man is doing...Today I read he wants to shut down about half of our protected national parks and use them for logging. Bye bye birdies, pollinating insects and other wild life.

 

[TSwizzle]

Yes. They hope to profit from climate change, but they aren't ignorant regarding the problem.

Baffling why so many people think that climate doesn’t change.

Can you name one person who believes that?

Most people on this thread. Not only do they believe climate change doesn’t happen, they believe they can stop something that doesn’t happen. Quite the contradiction. But that’s religion for ya, irrational.

 

[Elixir]

Most people on this thread.

NAME ONE.

Not only do they believe climate change doesn’t happen, they believe they can stop something that doesn’t happen. Quite the contradiction. But that’s religion for ya, irrational.

Truly delusional. I guess that happens after staying up too many nights in a row terrified of the Homeless Industrial Complex.

 

[steve_bank]

It is not Trump, it is our culture.

The only thing the many people today are thinking about is the basketball tournament.

 

[DBT]

Yes. They hope to profit from climate change, but they aren't ignorant regarding the problem.

Baffling why so many people think that climate doesn’t change.

Can you name one person who believes that?

Most people on this thread. Not only do they believe climate change doesn’t happen, they believe they can stop something that doesn’t happen. Quite the contradiction. But that’s religion for ya, irrational.

You know that's not true, yet you say it anyway.