The Problem with AGW…

…is that is not a scientific issue. It is a political issue. We can easily discern that by looking at the “remedies” put forth by its adherents.

The thing that makes AGW so toxic is not whether you believe one group of scientists or another. After a while their arguments begin to sound like medieval scholars arguing over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

AGW is nothing but a Christmas tree to support massive increases in government. More taxation and more regulation. The resolutions that came out of Durban are comic in their extremism, but it still in the same direction that Warmers want to go.

But Warmers ask, if not greater government, what?

The only logical answer is development of practical substitutes for fossil fuel. But there are no practical substitutes for fossil fuel. Wind and solar energy facilities fall into disuse without massive government subsidies. Literally tens of thousands of wind turbines are abandoned in primo wind sites like Altamont and Tehachapi and San Gorgonio Passes. And these sites have strong wind resources with nearby demand for the electricity.

http://www.naturalnews.com/034234_wind_turbines_abandoned.html

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html

Solar isn’t doing any better.

http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/Arti...ed-Solar-Farms-Clutter-California-Desert.aspx

Neither one has ever gotten past their intermittent nature. Solar produces nothing at night. Wind doesn’t work if the wind is not blowing hard enough or too hard.

Funny thing. Coal-fired power plants do not require government subsidies to flourish.

America is dismantling the only workable form of solar power – hydro-electric dams – for the sake of … fish.

http://www.hydroworld.com/index/display/news_display.1505260210.html

And, of course Fukushima hysteria is foreclosing nuclear power.

At the end of the day, there is no substitute for fossil fuel energy.

Can you envision America without fossil fuel? I can. Watch movies like “The Last of the Mohicans” or “The Patriot.” They show a fossil fuel free America. Coal mining in colonial America was very localized and very small scale.

Go to Williamsburg and get a feel for what life was like when you heated your home with firewood. Sailing ships were the high-tech of the day. Metal products were scarce and expensive. And day-to-day life was (coining Hobbes) nasty, brutish and short.

 

That's the heart of the issue. The truth is, people who are NOT in the government and believe in AGW (such as the people posting on this forum), whether or not the theory is correct, do not pretend to believe in it just so they can be taxed more for use of energy. They believe in it because they view global warming as a threat. People who deny it, usually deny it for the reasons above.

But you are, of course, assuming that the only way to reduce AGW (among other things) is via force of some kind. I'd say "getting people to get their heads out of the sand and look at the cold hard evidence", via education and other non-forceful means, would be much better.

Yes; the economy would collapse due to us being addicted to it, currently. Which means we should try to continue to be addicted to them.

Just like if a heroin addict stops injecting heroin suddenly, they'd probably die or come close to it because they "need" it, being an addict. Which means they should try to continue being a heroin addict.

We need fossil fuels like heroin addicts "need" heroin.

 

Death star posted:
“People who deny it, usually deny it for the reasons above.”

Taxcutter says:
That and the fact the AGW science is shaky.


Death Star posted:
“…the economy would collapse due to us being addicted to it…”

Taxcutter says:
Like I said, there is no substitute. The only alternative is going back to a colonial Williamsburg level of technology.

If a person were truly a believer that AGW is a problem, NO non-fossil alternative would be off the table. But hydro and nuclear are not acceptable, either.

Since it certainly looks like nothing more than a vehicle for aggrandizement of government, AGW is unacceptable.

 

I know youre new here, but you need to learn how to make replies/quotes here. Anyways, it's kindof like any other situation where you have a complicated system and do something to it, and try to predict the effects that might have on said system, be it pumping CO2 into the atmosphere or giving a person's body a drug: you have to look at what the system was like before, and then look at the differences after you do something to it. Then you can guess that there was a relationship there.

The Earth is hotter now than it was before. There are a few reasons why this could happen but pumping CO2 into the atmosphere is a surefire way to cause an increase in heat. Venus is much farther from the sun than Mercury, yet is much hotter (on average) because it has so much of a greenhouse gas effect on it's surface.

Yes, just like a person addicted to heroin must have heroin to survive. Does that mean getting addicted to heroin is a good thing? This is a similar situation.

 

?!? Energy allows huge increases in per person productivity. A few grow the food for thousands, a few build cars for hundreds, a few provide heat and light, etc.

Why fossil fuel, because it is continuous, because it has high energy density, and because it is far cheaper than human labor.

Eliminate fossil fuels, and billions will starve, the remaining will live like pre-industrial revolution Europe.

I'm sure the junkie feels they can't live without heroin. I'm sure the MMGW crowd feels the world can thrive with CO2 neutral energy today. Both are wrong, the latter, dead wrong.

 

Why can't nuclear be?

Um there are two very different kinds of energy "density"; energy per unit of mass, and energy per unit of volume. Hydrogen by the way has extremely high energy per unit of mass, but very low energy per unit of volume, because well, it's a gas and isn't very spatially dense, like most gases.

You have to be clear about these things

Well obviously.

Anddd this is an extremely logical argument for people to never get beyond fossil fuels. Just like the horse was extremely relied upon in the old days; I'm sure some people thought people would always be riding horses. They were replaced by things that ran on fossil fuels. Just like someday (probably soon-ish), fossil fuels will become a non-popular method of energy storage.

They literally can't, until they phase off of the addiction.

 

When a good substitute comes along, it will not need government ramming down our throats.

 

So why no complaints about oil and coal subsidies? How profitable would the FF industry be without subsidies and tax breaks.
Why no pictures and links to articles about abandoned coal mines?
Why no pictures and links to articles about abandoned nuclear power plants?
Why no pictures and links to articles about abandoned oil refineries?
Because the links you provided are anti alternative energy propaganda pieces. Yes, we get it. Lies and distorted information repeated often enough becomes "truth".

 

Coal subsidies? Where?

 

A report of the real "cost' of coal: ‘Full Cost Accounting for the Lifecycle of Coal’,

 

The problem with it is that it is an unprovable theory. Those who think it is a fact are AGW conspiracy theorists.

 

NIMBY and transportation. Transportation fuel I explain below. A significant subset of the MMGW crowd protests nuclear enough that we stopped building new plants over 20 years ago.

Methane (CH4) provides only half the CO2 for an equal BTU of coal (C), translated, one carbon atom has the same energy as 4 hydrogen (2 X C + 2 X O2 = 2 X CO2) (CH4 + 2 X O2 = CO2 + 2 H2O). Like methane, hydrogen doesn't liquify with reasonable pressure - poor energy density.

Energy density is a primary consideration in fuel for transportation - where diesel is best (coal, not so good).

Is that clearer?

Not to many in the green movement, they think we can live like we did in the 1700's. Less than a billion can, too bad for the other 5 billion+.

It is also a logical arguement for viable alternative energy - biofuels from algae (for transportation) for example.

There was quite a back yard industry converting used cooking oil to bio-diesel, then the greenies running the Peoples Republic of California decided they needed to heavily regulate that activity, to death.

Nuclear - discussed that above.

Solar, I am currently involved in a solar farm project. A couple of hundred square miles of steerable mirror in orbit would provide continuous power.

The alternatives being touted by the MMGW crowd touts aren't viable.

Junkies can phase off to no heroin. What alternatives do we have to phase off to no fossil fuel?

 

I find this strange; most people I've encountered who don't like nuclear, in person, are the ones who dislike everything and anything except unrenewable fossil fuels and think that there could never possibly be any alternatives. That would suck for them, because when fossil fuels run out (since they're sorta being used way faster than they're being created), they'd be SOL.

Anyways, the main point is that in person the only people who hate nuclear are the ones who don't see any possible alternatives to fossil fuels. So it's weird that I'm being told that the people who want to see alternatives, hate all alternatives. That doesn't match up to my experience with talking to people about this issue

Actually per kilogram (units of mass), hydrogen is extremely energy dense; much more than any fossil fuel. But it is a gas, so per cubic meter (units of volume), it's energy density is low.

I don't see how algae would produce billions of gallons of fuel a day (that we could collect in farms economically), but creating combustible fuels would be a great alternative because that would create an entirely new jobs market...

...and the most important thing is, it wouldn't be like today where a monopoly could own all physical fossil fuels and dunk the economy any time they wished.

It would make sense that they would regulate that because it produces CO2, but how much artificially added CO2 this planet can stand, is another topic.

Ok, but it seems like it'd be insanely expensive to put anything in orbit, let alone that large. How much energy would be costed to move (e.g. steer) it? How

The alternatives being touted by the MMGW crowd touts aren't viable.[/quote]

In my experience, AGW supporters don't tend to propose alternatives, they tend to focus on how AGW is likely. I think human activity maybe or probably is increasing the heat of this planet to some extent, but that isn't why I want to get off fossil fuels. The reason why I want to get off fossil fuels...

...is, like I mentioned above, because fossil fuels are a limited scarce physical resource which means they could get bottled up in the hands of a few. Since we are ADDICTED to them and our society would CRASH and burn without them, that isn't good. No monopolies are ever good, natural (i.e. in the free market) or unnatural (i.e. government interference).

I doubt it's millions of square miles of microorganisms (it'd sorta cost a lot of energy to move a fuel collector through millions of square miles of algae), or insanely costly space experiments. It's probably more along the lines of..things that are already working. Such as nuclear and hydrogen to some extent.

 

The green movement stopped nuclear power in the past, and today.

A viable alternative adopts to our existing infrastructure (infrastructure costs can be a show stopper). Nuclear connects to the grid just fine. Hydrogen doesn't fit.

It is also scalable, so the poor countries can install algae farms where needed (a great place to dispose of sewage). Harvest some oil for transportation, and burn the rest in place of coal in a power plant. The ash and CO2 go back into the pond.

I have heard algae yields from 5,000 to 150,000 gallons per acre per year, the next best is oil palm, at 600 gallons per year per acre. Where did the oil come from in the first place?

At 30,000 gallons per acre per year, algae equals solar panels in sunlight conversion. The result is an easily stored, transportation fuel.

Even at 100% effeciency, there isn't enough sun falling on a car to propel it during the day.

?!? Bio-Diesel from veggie oil is CO2 neutral.

Mylar sheets don't weigh much, aluminum supports, ion drive to steer (lowest fuel usage).

I agree, and go a step further. Energy is prosperity. The cheaper energy is, the better life we can live.

The roof top of a 1000 square foot home, assuming a sunny day with no obstructions, sees over 100KW per hour for 4 to 6 hours a day.

We will find a way to capture that (lates news is solar cells have a theoretical efficiency of 60%, adding quantum dots to the 30% efficient cells). When we do....

Graphene capacitors would provide the energy density needed for land based transportation.

I'm all for nuclear.

Hydrogen is not a source of energy, it is a method of storing energy. Due to energy density (BTU per cubic meter), it is a poor method of storage.

 

That's strange, considering coal power plants produce not only more waste, but specifically, more NUCLEAR waste, than nuclear power plants!!

Hydrogen comes from tap water.

This seems no less far fetched, if not much more so (considering how much land it'd occupy), than to get hydrogen from tap water that you get for FREE.

So? I don't see how this is relevant

Anything that combusts produces CO2 and H20;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_biodiesel

What's the exact mathematics behind all this? This seems way more far fetched than say, using FREE tap water for energy (separate it into O2 and H2 and burn the H2).

I'd say the major limiting factor is skill shortages (using "skill" in a broad sense here). If enough people have the skills to do things (like engineering, construction work and other trades, etc.), they can provide humanity with all the energy and food and shelter and entertainment it needs/wants. In the U.S. today, we're flooded with people who don't have enough skills to have a non-minimum wage job.

Can you source this? How expensive would building the solar panels to trap that be? How expensive would it be to maintain said solar panels from breaking/deteriorating or something?

I have no clue how economical quantum dots are, but I find physics and engineering in general to be cool because I like systems which have the trait that everything about it can be known by mathematics; they're cool. So I will research that sometime

Ok. Can you source this?

It would seem as though using free tap water that I can get out of my faucet and not rely on gouging Big Oil companies and put that into an engine that can convert it to hydrogen and oxygen gas, and burn the hydrogen gas, producing nothing but H20, would be farrrr less far fetched than some of these other ideas I'm presented with.

That would have low energy density per volume, but guess what? I WOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY AT A PUMP RUN BY GREEDY BIG OIL COMPANIES ANYMORE 'CAUSE I'D BE ABLE TO GET IT OUT OF MY (*)(*)(*)(*) FAUCET!!!!!

 

What energy is used to extract the hydrogen from water?

What energy is used to extract the hydrogen from water?

Sunlight hits the earth (clear day) with about 1KW per square meter (about 10 square feet).

Solar panels are about 14% efficient. The last time I priced solar, a 6KW system (6KW, 6KWHr per hour of sunlight, assuming 5 hours a day, 30KWHr a day, 900KWhr a month) was $17K.

I'm an engineer that understands how capacitors work. Carbon nanotube caps have been built that are suitable, but the creating long nanotubes is impossible to date. Graphene (an unrolled nanotube) can be build inexpensively a foot square (and 1 atom thick). Graphene is also a very good conductor (far better than copper), so the loss to resistance (ESR) is low. The insulation between plates is the last technical hurdle, then cost.

There is a kit you can buy that uses your car battery to make hydrogen and oxygen from water to run your engine. The Mythbusters even had an episode about it - BUSTED!

So, I ask again, what energy is used to extract the hydrogen from water?

 

Electrolysis is supposed to be used to separate hydrogen gas from water and other holders of hydrogen which can then be combusted. But whether the cost of electricity can be less than the economic benefit given by burning said hydrogen, is obviously the question.

The advantage: you don't have to pay for gas at a pump; water costs a lot less per gallon than gasoline, obviously.

The disadvantages: gasoline is more expensive per gallon, but has more stored energy per gallon and is already usable in that form.

If Big Oil decides to (*)(*)(*)(*) us over, then the advantage will outweigh the disadvantages.

$17,000? You'd have to be able to use that system for a long enough period of time to offset the initial cost. 1 KWhr costs different amounts depending on different things. But assuming 10 cents, that's 90 bucks a month saved..17,000 divided by 90 is about 189 months, or about 15.75 years. Inflation would have to be taken into consideration by then. But how long would it last?

Do you have some good reference sources about this? Could it be a viable alternative?

 

Big oil makes about $0.07 per gallon, state and federal tax is $0.48 for "road maintenance". Who is screwing you?

The cost you need to compare is the cost per mile driven, because that is what you are really buying.

You can buy a natural gas Civic, and install the fueling station at home (if you have natural gas - I don't).

I pay $0.35 a KWHr, less than 5 years payback.

Panels put out 80% of their initial energy after 25 years.

I hadn't bothered to look until you asked. Here is a reasonable article.

http://www.ias.ac.in/chemsci/Pdf-Jan2008/9.pdf

Just Google "graphene capacitor" for others.

 

When a viable substitute for fossil fuel comes along, it will be irresistible and will take over quickly - unless government gets in the way. When the automobile came along, horse drawn vehicles were run off the road within a couple decades. “Get a horse!” wasn’t heard for long.

My solution to the energy thing is “All of the above.” Drill, dig, build new plants and transmission lines.

Energy Density: Hydrogen vs No. 2 middle distillate
Hydrogen (because it is the lightest element of all) is indeed energy dense on a mass (MMBTU/lb) basis. Aircraft designers have long lusted over the idea of hydrogen fuel because of its low weight. If you could look under the skin of most airplanes you find a lot of empty space. Airplanes leak a lot of air so hydrogen buildup in places you don’t want it is not a problem. But hydrogen has its problems, too. It embrittles every metal known to man. Cars and airplanes are subject to a lot of vibration. An embrittled structure would rapidly break up. Hydrogen is not a primary energy source (no such thing as a hydrogen well) but it could be useful to transmit energy generated from something else. Hydrogen has another annoying characteristic. As it is the smallest molecule of all, it can diffuse through anything. It diffuses through a standard steel pressure vessel so fast if you soaped the surface you’d get bubbles. Hydrogen can even diffuse through ultra-dense U-238. So you’d have to fill your hydrogen tank up before you departed and would need to refill at the outset of any trip.

No. 2 is very dense of a volume (MMBTU/cubic foot) basis. Gasoline is close behind. That and its resistance to accidental ignition (you can throw lighted cigarettes into a puddle of spilled diesel and nothing happens other than the cigarette getting extinguished – you need a fuzee to light a puddle of diesel) make it an excellent vehicle fuel. No. 2 supports using the second-most efficient thermodynamic cycle of all – the diesel cycle.

How to use electricity for transportation: Direct electrification.
The US has an opportunity to electrify the mainlines of its freight railroad system. There are only about 30,000 (heavily used) miles left. Figure $10 million per mile to convert that’s $300 billion – less than one year of Medicaid. If the electricity came from a non-fossil source, that would eliminate a quarter-million barrels a day of crude oil consumption in the US alone. Once that were done, direct-electric over the road trucks are an easy jump. Small diesels for around-town operations, then raise the collector to an overhead catenary and run down the suprslab on electric power. This is a great setup for cities (no pollution) and mountainous areas (regenerative braking in its most effective form). Electric locomotives are fast and robust.

Wind and solar have to be mated to a suitable energy storage system. There’s a lot of work going on with batteries, but nobody has even gotten into the red zone on a real improvement over the ancient lead-acid battery.

For mountainous areas, you could build pumped storage systems. You have two lakes, one vertically higher than the other. When the wind blows/sun shines suitably you pump water from the lower lake to the higher lake. When you want to dispatch the energy, you discharge the water through a hydro turbine into the lower lake. Neat system, but you gotta live with a lot of flooded valleys.

The US has to either find a way to live with nuclear power, or ride the fossil-fuel tiger. So far, government interference favors fossil fuel. Just getting the permits for a nuke plant can take decades and even them a single gullible judge can bring the whole thing to a stop. The US needs to find a way to say “Yes” to nuclear.

Wind is not intrinsically hopeless, but the tendency today is to build horizontal-axis turbines. These are probably the most efficient wind turbines, but they are a maintenance nightmare. All the stuff that needs maintenance is 300 feet up in the air. Only daredevils will work 300 feet up and you pay a super-premium for such work. More than anything else, this is what is killing wind power. If they break down (all mechanical equipment needs TLC from time to time) and you cannot find or afford a daredevil, the wind machine is as dead as OJ’s acting career. Maybe a less efficient vertical axis machine that needs no rotating nacelle and keeps the gears/generator on the ground might be a better idea. Yeah, it would have a very long, potentially whippy drive shaft, but oil field guys have the same problem, only orders of magnitudes greater and they seem to overcome.

My longer-term hope is to mate Fischer-Tropsch with algal biofuels. F-T converts almost anything carbonaceous (coal, garbage, sewage sludge, old tires, etc) into fuel liquids (gasoline, diesel, jet fuel). It also generates a lot of carbon dioxide.

Algae can be grown in sea water in farms put in deserts. No agricultural resources are needed.

The key to industrially growing algae is lots of carbon dioxide. Squeeze and use solvents to remove the fats from the algae and put it through a transesterification process and you have biodiesel. Add some F-T kerosene to make the stuff more usable in cold weather and now we are making fuel that is usable. Put the squeezed out algae into a fermentation process and recover alcohols to support the transesterification process. The fermented out mash is excellent animal feed, loaded with protein.

This is all well and good but no possible in the US at this time. It would require something that looks a lot like an oil refinery. Getting the permits would require decades. Since New Source Review (40 CFR 52.21) was promulgated during the carter years, exactly one oil new refinery has been built in the US a small (40,000 bbl/day). To switch the US to algal biofuel will require hundreds of such facilities. In today’s regulatory environment, it simply cannot be done. If we got government out of the way, people would be breaking ground for pilot plants next month.

 

actually, the problem with AGW is that will have, and is already having, significant effects on the environment.

 

I agree with much of what Taxcutter says. A few comments:

Diesel engines can get even better efficiency with high boost (like 45lbs) turbo's (55% compared to 40% for low boost diesels). The lag could be offset by electric hybrid, or a much smaller motor to spool up the turbo. Extract more power using an Miller cycle (close the intake valve half way up, giving a power stroke twice as long as the compression stroke).

Electrifying the highways is half, the other half is electrifying the cars. A huge infrastructure cost.

Veggie oil can be cracked like crude oil into diesel, gasoline and propane.

Algae grows really fast, selectively breed for high oil production until what you have couldn't survive in the wild (faster and cheaper than genetic engineering).

Government in the way - say it ain't so, they are the enlightened saviors of mankind - ROTFL.

 

Not necessarily. Ever hear of hemp? Although a much superior resource in almost every way to timber, it was vilified by the logging/timber industry and never reached anywhere near its full product potential....The money from the timber industry was too great. Much like the current fossil fuel industry.

 

true. and also, there is not one alternative. what energy source is best depends on a whole range of factors. where I am solar and wind is good, I know places where bio is used effectively to power small scale industry, and there are a range of alternatives including many that are currently being researched.

butwe can also improve efficiency as well.

 

A little further amplification.

They are getting a handle of the old bugaboo of turbo lag by installing multiple smaller turbos. They spool up quickly but still compress as much air as a single big turbo. Cummins, Ford and GM all use this on their three-quarter and one-ton diesel pickups. Ford uses it on their “Eco-boost” V-6 gas engine.

The Miller and Atkinson cycles are indeed more efficient, but unless they are mated to a hybrid booster, they are undriveable. Increasing the expansion to compression ratio knocks engine torque down. A Toyota Prius is little more than a Yaris with an Atkinson engine and a parallel hybrid booster.

Another workable approach is displacement on demand. When not asked for a high power output, some of the lifters disable the valves on half the cylinders. Thus, your 6.2 liter V-8 becomes a 3.1 liter four-banger. A number of the GM LS-series engines use this system, and it has proven reliable, effective, and relatively inexpensive. And best of all, the driver never notices.

I don’t think you’d ever see direct electrification on anything but high-volume highways and railroads. The infrastructure cost is so high that you have to get a lot of use out it to justify the up-front cost. Only railroad mainlines and Interstates used by a lot of trucks justify this.

Also, I don’t think you’ll ever see direct electrification for any road vehicles but trucks. The reason is safety. Trucks are over ten feet tall. Cars are much lower. By putting the catenaries up twelve or fourteen feet, you isolate them by location. Not a reasonable possibility for cars. You’d need collectors that are eight to ten feet high. Also cars tend to run of much lower-density roads. That’s the whole point of non-rail surface transportation.

Whether by selective breeding or genetic engineering, you can easily make an strain of algae that cannot survive in the wild.

Hemp is just like other crops. It requires arable land and fresh water. That puts it into competition with food crops for those resources.

Whole generations of engineers have worked their entire careers seeking greater efficiency. I’d say all the reasonably low-hanging fruit has long since been picked. Never confuse “doing without” for “efficiency.” A $35 light bulb is not efficiency.

 

I think the people who confuse "doing without" for efficiency are the ones who are unwilling to explore new options.

it is true that generations of engineers and others have worked their entire careers seeking greater efficiency, and consequently there are numerous things we have learned and are continuing to learn.

I do agree however that we should look very carefully before using crop based fuel ona large scale.

with both climate change and population pressure, we need arable land and water resources for food production.