Climate Change(d)?

[Loren Pechtel]

Cars seem so smart today, and I know there are wires connecting the gear shift to a computer. I've often wondered what would happen if I threw the Honda into Reverse when traveling at speed. Would some anti-idiot mechanism save me?

I'm too cowardly to try it. Will someone else volunteer to run the experiment?

Mythbusters tried it--a modern (remember, they did it many years ago and they were probably testing a clunker that had been around many years) car simply failed to shift. In the old days you would destroy your transmission.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I never liked sitting next to the emergency exit on an airplane. Even after the cabin attendant assured me I wouldn't be able to open that door even if I tried.

They're right--airplane doors open into the plane and thus are impossible to open while the plane is pressurized.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yes alternative energy is not likely to support the global economy going forward. Do we continue burning large amounts of fossil fuels?

That is a yes or no.

Until there is a viable alternative, yes.

And we cook.

The high scenarios (which is what we would get with your approach) are expected to produce about 6C of warming. To put a scale on this, 6C of cooling is ice age temperatures.

And note that the IPCC estimates do not include any effects from methane hydrates because we don't know enough about how they will respond to warming and just how much is down there anyway. I've seen estimates for 9C of warming from them, though--that would give a total of 15C. Earth has seen temperatures in that range before--and that layer of rock is basically devoid of fossils. In other words it killed most everything.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So, the best ICE uses 25% of the energy of it's fuel and 75% is lost heat to and friction. Why not burn nat gas to generate electricity? Would it not be better ?

It doesn't help much. Yes, the powerplant doesn't waste as much--but now you have the transmission wires and you have to charge the battery and then discharge the battery to run the car. By the time you add it up the electric car emits about as much CO2 as if it were burning the fuel directly. (Which is why electric cars aren't one bit green when charged from fossil fuels. They only make sense if the power doesn't produce carbon.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There are practical recovery systems. Regenere braking that uses a generator load to slow the car charging a battery. A car at highway speed has a very high kinetic energy which makes regenerative braking practical.

Yup. Just look at the EPA numbers--hybrids generally have basically equal city and highway mileage numbers. Regenerative braking and being able to shut the engine down when can be dispensed with save quite a bit of fuel. (As a driver it's not viable to turn your car off when you stop--but if the car can run on it's electric motor for long enough to restart the engine it becomes viable.)

 

[Swammerdami]

I don't think it's true that ALL energy becomes heat, at least in the near-term. What about energy used to create high-enthalpy substances? What percent of man-produced energy does end up as heat? Call it 60% for now.

Disagree. 60% seems like a reasonable value for the immediate heat losses that produce nothing. However, of the energy that does produce something useful I think it's only a very tiny percent of that remains locked in the materials. I would be shocked at less than 99% showing up as heat in the near term. Heat is required to make a lot of chemical reactions go but few reactions lock up much of that energy.

My "for now" was just for the back-of-the-envelope. I tired to duplicate the professor's number and was pleased to see how close I came. I'm sure you're correct that 60% was far too low. But as Steve mentions, transportation to high elevations avoids some heat.

OTOH, some activities create MORE heat than the input energy, right? Mining which exposes some minerals to oxidation. Or tree-cutting (assuming no regrowth).

I never liked sitting next to the emergency exit on an airplane. Even after the cabin attendant assured me I wouldn't be able to open that door even if I tried.

They're right--airplane doors open into the plane and thus are impossible to open while the plane is pressurized.

I DID believe them. Similarly I don't think I could break the large window in a skyscraper but my acrophobia makes me very queasy to get close to such a window.

 

[steve_bank]

I could have worded it better.

Energy is noways conserved and there is the prohibition against perpetual motion IOW efficiencies >= 1.

Raise a rock adding gravitational potential energy. Your muscles get warm from losses. Drop the rick and if it does not break I assume the energy is lost through hat in elcastic deformation of the rock.

 

[pood]

EPA head: advanced nuke tech key to mitigate climate change

 

[atrib]

Then again, it was on a stick with no idiot-proofing. As a result the repair was also about $2000 cheaper than it would have been otherwise.

My first thought is your synchros must have been shot already, or you’d never be able to do that …

Exactly. Reverse on my WRX 5-speed manual shifter is locked out to prevent the driver from accidentally shifting from 5 or 3 into Reverse. You would have to put the shifter into neutral and rack it all the way to the left stop in order to then force the transmission into Reverse. It can be done, hypothetically, but you would have to do some work to force it.

 

[TV and credit cards]

pood link

EPA head: advanced nuke tech key to mitigate climate change

Yeah, we know. Now fucking do something already.

I mean seriously:

“I think the science tells us that we have to respond to the climate crisis with a sense of urgency…”

Gee. Ya think?

Good closer:

“if we want to respond to the climate crisis in a timely manner,” Regan said.

It’s like the levee broke and this guy’s thinking about buying a mop.


“Timely manner” was explaining nuclear power to an ignorant populous some twenty years ago instead of bending to their will.

***

Reverse inhibitor valve.
Even before electronically controlled transmissions, they all had some gizmo to keep a person from inadvertently throwing their vehicle in reverse at speed based on hydraulic pressure.

 

[Politesse]

Yes alternative energy is not likely to support the global economy going forward. Do we continue burning large amounts of fossil fuels?

That is a yes or no.

Until there is a viable alternative, yes.

"Viable alternatives" don't just magically come into being. You learn how to make better wind farms by building wind farms, not by signing off on new coal plants.

How do you get the wind to blow on a calm day?

How many wind farms do we need to build to find out the answer?

Yes, the fact that we only ever developed one form of renewable energy is a pretty serious flaw with using renewable energy. If only we could investigate some others as well.

 

[bilby]

Yes alternative energy is not likely to support the global economy going forward. Do we continue burning large amounts of fossil fuels?

That is a yes or no.

Until there is a viable alternative, yes.

"Viable alternatives" don't just magically come into being. You learn how to make better wind farms by building wind farms, not by signing off on new coal plants.

How do you get the wind to blow on a calm day?

How many wind farms do we need to build to find out the answer?

Yes, the fact that we only ever developed one form of renewable energy is a pretty serious flaw with using renewable energy. If only we could investigate some others as well.

It's been done. Solar power is good for domestic hot water as long as you're far enough from the poles and have backup for cloudy days. It's also (like wind power) a cheap option for electricity generation when available, but just like wind power, it requires storage to become a 24x7 power source, and storage is carbon intensive and very expensive, rendering all intermittent power sources unviable for widespread use as a primary power source. It can't work without backup, and currently that backup is almost always fossil fuel, typically gas.

Geothermal works pretty well, but only if you're fortunate enough to live on a hotspot. NZ and Iceland both make good use of it; In the US, Hawaii and the Wyoming/Montana/Idaho region could probably use it. I suspect that the National Parks people might object to turning Yellowstone into an industrial facility though.

Hydropower is very good and widely used; But there are few suitable sites left undeveloped, either as existing hydroelectric plants or for other purposes that block the construction of large reservoirs.

Tidal power suffers from lack of good sites like hydropower does, only more so. Most of the useful tidal power sites would significantly block major shipping infrastructure.

Wave power seems to be very difficult to harvest at a reasonable cost, and also has intermittency issues.

If any of these were viable, we would be doing them by now. Certainly the northern European nations, particularly Germany and the nordic countries, have thrown a lot of money at R&D - so their failure isn't a matter of lack of trying.

There are no 'renewable' sources of electricity that are adequate to power a modern industrial society. Largely this boils down to basic physics - as industrialisation has progressed, we have moved towards higher energy densities for our power sources, and renewable sources tend to be very low energy density. It requires a shitload of materials to harvest wind, sunshine, waves or tides. Hydropower too needs a vast amount of material to harvest, though generally we leave most of it in situ, which makes it a lot cheaper.

Fossil fuels have pretty high energy density in comparison with renewables, but as we all know, they fuck up our atmosphere if we burn too much of them (and even if they didn't, we would run out of them pretty soon).

If only there was a fuel with far higher energy density than coal, that was so abundant in the lithosphere that it is available to us in effectively limitless quantities. Can U Think of any?



https://xkcd.com/1162

 

[Politesse]

If any of these were viable, we would be doing them by now.

We do. Fully 35% of California's energy supply comes from renewable sources, a proportion that increased every year for two decades until now. It's been a good investment and a successful one, financially and environmentally, and grearly reduced the amount of dirty power we're obliged to buy at considerable cost from other states.

 

[bilby]

If any of these were viable, we would be doing them by now.

We do. Fully 35% of California's energy supply comes from renewable sources, a proportion that increased every year for two decades until now. It's been a good investment and a successful one, financially and environmentally, and grearly reduced the amount of dirty power we're obliged to buy at considerable cost from other states.

That's lovely. Fully 65% of California's energy comes from non-renewable sources, mostly burning fossil gas.

Because Californians don't want to have to only use electricity when the sun is shining.

Here's where your electricity was coming from 2 hours ago (time shown is my local time):


And here's where your Carbon Dioxide emissions are coming from:


You could be doing MUCH better.

Ontario is doing much better.

 

[Politesse]

If any of these were viable, we would be doing them by now.

We do. Fully 35% of California's energy supply comes from renewable sources, a proportion that increased every year for two decades until now. It's been a good investment and a successful one, financially and environmentally, and grearly reduced the amount of dirty power we're obliged to buy at considerable cost from other states.

That's lovely. Fully 65% of California's energy comes from non-renewable sources, mostly burning fossil gas.

Because Californians don't want to have to only use electricity when the sun is shining.

Here's where your electricity was coming from 2 hours ago (time shown is my local time):
View attachment 40130

And here's where your Carbon Dioxide emissions are coming from:
View attachment 40131

You could be doing MUCH better.

Ontario is doing much better.

View attachment 40132

I'm well aware. But absent the investments in renewable energy that Derec et al are mocking in this thread, that number would be 100% and we would be no better off.


You have some confusion about the state's climate if you think that solar or wind facilities are being built in non-optimal locations. The odds of a sunny day on the Mojave are pretty good, ditto a windy one on the Altamont Pass.

 

[bilby]

If any of these were viable, we would be doing them by now.

We do. Fully 35% of California's energy supply comes from renewable sources, a proportion that increased every year for two decades until now. It's been a good investment and a successful one, financially and environmentally, and grearly reduced the amount of dirty power we're obliged to buy at considerable cost from other states.

That's lovely. Fully 65% of California's energy comes from non-renewable sources, mostly burning fossil gas.

Because Californians don't want to have to only use electricity when the sun is shining.

Here's where your electricity was coming from 2 hours ago (time shown is my local time):
View attachment 40130

And here's where your Carbon Dioxide emissions are coming from:
View attachment 40131

You could be doing MUCH better.

Ontario is doing much better.

View attachment 40132

I'm well aware. But absent the investments in renewable energy that Derec et al are mocking in this thread, that number would be 100% and we would be no better off.


You have some confusion about the state's climate if you think that solar or wind facilities are being built in non-optimal locations. The odds of a sunny day on the Mojave are pretty good, ditto a windy one on the Altamont Pass.

I don't think that they are being built in non optimal locations. Why would you think I think that?

California has some excellent sites for solar power. They still don't generate any solar power at night.

The problem is that even the best sites for wind and solar plants are still shit. Capacity factors are typically around 30% for wind and 25% for solar.

Nuclear reactors routinely have capacity factors above 90%, and their outages are able to be planned well in advance, to avoid overlapping with outages elsewhere (including in the same facility), and to coincide with times of lower overall demand.

Low capacity factors and unpredictability in the timing of the outages is bad. Predictable simultaneous system wide outages are even worse.

As I said, Californians still want to be able to use electricity at night.

 

[fromderinside]

If any of these were viable, we would be doing them by now.

We do. Fully 35% of California's energy supply comes from renewable sources, a proportion that increased every year for two decades until now. It's been a good investment and a successful one, financially and environmentally, and grearly reduced the amount of dirty power we're obliged to buy at considerable cost from other states.

That's lovely. Fully 65% of California's energy comes from non-renewable sources, mostly burning fossil gas.

Because Californians don't want to have to only use electricity when the sun is shining.

Here's where your electricity was coming from 2 hours ago (time shown is my local time):
View attachment 40130

And here's where your Carbon Dioxide emissions are coming from:
View attachment 40131

You could be doing MUCH better.

Ontario is doing much better.

View attachment 40132

I'm well aware. But absent the investments in renewable energy that Derec et al are mocking in this thread, that number would be 100% and we would be no better off.


You have some confusion about the state's climate if you think that solar or wind facilities are being built in non-optimal locations. The odds of a sunny day on the Mojave are pretty good, ditto a windy one on the Altamont Pass.

I don't think that they are being built in non optimal locations. Why would you think I think that?

California has some excellent sites for solar power. They still don't generate any solar power at night.

The problem is that even the best sites for wind and solar plants are still shit. Capacity factors are typically around 30% for wind and 25% for solar.

Nuclear reactors routinely have capacity factors above 90%, and their outages are able to be planned well in advance, to avoid overlapping with outages elsewhere (including in the same facility), and to coincide with times of lower overall demand.

Low capacity factors and unpredictability in the timing of the outages is bad. Predictable simultaneous system wide outages are even worse.

As I said, Californians still want to be able to use electricity at night.

Well if you don't want nuclear with it's minimal risks there are alternatives. There is that 800 miles of coastline with the Pacific Ocean with a shitload of tidal energy available and some significant ocean currents within a couple hundred miles of the California coast, not to mention seasonal and topographical winds and temperature changes in earth, water, and dwelling. Just sayin'

I chose to move to Oregon where plenty of water power is available. The only changes in our rates are because the utilities want to take advantage of other source problems.

 

[bilby]

If any of these were viable, we would be doing them by now.

We do. Fully 35% of California's energy supply comes from renewable sources, a proportion that increased every year for two decades until now. It's been a good investment and a successful one, financially and environmentally, and grearly reduced the amount of dirty power we're obliged to buy at considerable cost from other states.

That's lovely. Fully 65% of California's energy comes from non-renewable sources, mostly burning fossil gas.

Because Californians don't want to have to only use electricity when the sun is shining.

Here's where your electricity was coming from 2 hours ago (time shown is my local time):
View attachment 40130

And here's where your Carbon Dioxide emissions are coming from:
View attachment 40131

You could be doing MUCH better.

Ontario is doing much better.

View attachment 40132

I'm well aware. But absent the investments in renewable energy that Derec et al are mocking in this thread, that number would be 100% and we would be no better off.


You have some confusion about the state's climate if you think that solar or wind facilities are being built in non-optimal locations. The odds of a sunny day on the Mojave are pretty good, ditto a windy one on the Altamont Pass.

I don't think that they are being built in non optimal locations. Why would you think I think that?

California has some excellent sites for solar power. They still don't generate any solar power at night.

The problem is that even the best sites for wind and solar plants are still shit. Capacity factors are typically around 30% for wind and 25% for solar.

Nuclear reactors routinely have capacity factors above 90%, and their outages are able to be planned well in advance, to avoid overlapping with outages elsewhere (including in the same facility), and to coincide with times of lower overall demand.

Low capacity factors and unpredictability in the timing of the outages is bad. Predictable simultaneous system wide outages are even worse.

As I said, Californians still want to be able to use electricity at night.

Well if you don't want nuclear with it's minimal risks there are alternatives. There is that 800 miles of coastline with the Pacific Ocean with a shitload of tidal energy available and some significant ocean currents within a couple hundred miles of the California coast, not to mention seasonal and topographical winds and temperature changes in earth, water, and dwelling. Just sayin'

Sayin' is great.

But if you ain't readin' it could make you look like a fool.

Tidal power suffers from lack of good sites like hydropower does, only more so. Most of the useful tidal power sites would significantly block major shipping infrastructure.

Wave power seems to be very difficult to harvest at a reasonable cost, and also has intermittency issues.

I chose to move to Oregon where plenty of water power is available. The only changes in our rates are because the utilities want to take advantage of other source problems.

That's lovely. Do you have room to accommodate eight billion visitors, or is your personal decision to use a very limited low carbon power supply supposed to protect you against the effects of everybody else burning fossil fuels?

Perhaps, and this may be a little difficult to grasp, but just perhaps, this isn't only about you.

 

[steve_bank]

Hydro power is turning out to be not so reliable.

 

[fromderinside]

Hydro power is turning out to be not so reliable.

I agree. Drought causes problems. Although the Columbia, Snake, Kootenay, system is not part of the current problems.

We have pretty good statistics on most of the world. So we should be able to chose sources for creating reliable hydroelectric power if we come to realize we're all in this together.

 

[fromderinside]

Tidal power suffers from lack of good sites like hydropower does, only more so. Most of the useful tidal power sites would significantly block major shipping infrastructure.

Wave power seems to be very difficult to harvest at a reasonable cost, and also has intermittency issues.

Perhaps, and this may be a little difficult to grasp, but just perhaps, this isn't only about you.

Duh.

As for shipping and 'difficult' we're pretty good at adapting to situations.

For instance: Even though not a power solution example, here's one where government shows warts while new thinking breaks ground.

Artemis is, as expected, having issues with legacy and clean engineering problems while, even while developing new technology, SpaceX is sticking to schedule.