Climate Change

[Madelaine McMasters]

 

On 6/13/2021 at 12:15 AM, Drayke Newall said:

And just when will that growth end as they have been forecasting reduction for many years since well before the end of the 20th century? In 1997 it was estimated that by 2050 Australia would have a population of 25million. Great maths and planning that was...only missed that mark by 32 years and met that number in 2018. It is now estimated that Australia would have by 2050 38million people. Now lets not forget that Australia's optimal population for sustainability is only 15million.

Why do you presume the estimates for optimal populations are more accurate than the estimates for projected populations? Both have been wildly wrong in the past.

On 6/13/2021 at 3:32 AM, Drayke Newall said:

True, however it is not practical. South Australia is the first major jurisdiction in the world (population 1.7million) to be able to generate enough power from renewables to supply the entire state for 1 day of the year in October 2020 and 1 day in December 2020. Those days were perfect days with wind and sun. South Australia has one of the highest solar panel uptakes in the world with over 1 third of its houses' covered in solar panels, 2 massive 10 hectare solar farms and 17 windfarms over 50 hectares each and 1 small hydro dam. South Australia also has the largest lithium ion battery farm in the world.

Last year, South Australia got 60% of its grid electricity from wind and solar.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-achieves-world-leading-60pct-wind-and-solar-share-over-last-year/

And the US state of Iowa got 57% of its grid electricity from wind alone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Iowa

If that's impractical, I'll take it.

On 6/13/2021 at 3:32 AM, Drayke Newall said:

Forget carbon footprint, solar panels are one of the most environmentally damaging renewables out there. As I mentioned we are running out of sand on earth (Why the world is running out of sand) for construction and glass construction is one of them. Are we going to mine all the sand in the world to create glass for solar panels for 7.8 billion people and growing? What impact is that going to have on the rivers of the world, coral ecosystems, forests etc? The sand we use for glass is specific. It cant be desert sand, especially with solar panels as they require high density silica sands only found on river beds.

Here's a quote from your linked article... "The overwhelming bulk of the sand we harvest goes to make concrete". Calculating on a napkin, the concrete in the floor and walls of my home's basement, plus my garage floor, parking pad and sections of my driveway collectively contain enough sand to make 250 complete sets of (triple glazed) windows for my house. If I turned my house 90° to get a south facing roof section, I could completely cover it in solar panels using less glass than is already in my windows.

I could probably make all the glass (both cover glass and silicon for the panel) needed for an adequate solar installation from the sand under the bricks of my patio.

 

Edited June 15, 2021 by Madelaine McMasters
Apparently, I can't think and type at the same time.

[Madelaine McMasters]

15 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

Why also does that article (maybe cause it is old) not mention that the permafrost melting in the northern hemisphere is the number one cause currently under study for CO² emissions? It has been calculated recently that just the permafrost melting (which was going to happen due to natural climate change) is contributing 4 times the amount of CO² emissions than all human activity on earth combined. Arctic permafrost releases more CO2 than once believed -- ScienceDaily and Melting Arctic permafrost contains 4x amount of carbon ever emitted by humans

I forgot to address this in my previous post. I've highlighted in red your misunderstanding of what you read.

Containing carbon is not the same as contributing carbon.

I didn't even have to read the article to spot that error. If you wish to advance a position in this discussion, you'll have to be more careful.

[Chroma Starlight]

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warming_stripes)

Edited June 15, 2021 by Chroma Starlight
citation

[BelindaN]

Here in the UK, summers are getting longer, warmer and drier, winters shorter and wetter. The year on year trend shows this, but its only a small window.

The argument about electric cars to me doesn't address the issues at all. They still affect climate as they are produced and then scrapped. Some countries are utterly car dependent, but the future should be walk, cycle or use public transport. Here in the UK that's feasible, but we see SUVs on the school run, and in supermarket car parks........when on line delivery is now easy to set up.

Plastic pollution is appalling in some places around the world, and commercial flying should be drastically curtailed. But nobody cares enough to take radical steps.

[Innula Zenovka]

3 hours ago, BelindaN said:

The argument about electric cars to me doesn't address the issues at all

They certainly address the issue of how much CO2 and other greenhouse gasses the two modes of transport cause -- if nothing else, powering cars by burning natural gas to generate electricity generates a lot less CO2, directly or indirectly, than does extracting, refining and delivering to petrol stations.     

Against that there are various other environmental costs, some of them potentially grave, involving rare metals needed for batteries, but if CO2 and the climate crisis are the main concern, then that's not the point.

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 hour ago, Innula Zenovka said:

They certainly address the issue of how much CO2 and other greenhouse gasses the two modes of transport cause -- if nothing else, powering cars by burning natural gas to generate electricity generates a lot less CO2, directly or indirectly, than does extracting, refining and delivering to petrol stations.     

Against that there are various other environmental costs, some of them potentially grave, involving rare metals needed for batteries, but if CO2 and the climate crisis are the main concern, then that's not the point.

I wonder what will have the biggest impact on CO2, the electrification of transportation or the automation of it. Rideshare services like Uber were supposed to reduce traffic and parking congestion by maximizing use of rideshare cars. That's not what happened. By lowering the opportunity cost of hailing rides, ridership skyrocketed. Automation may have similarly unanticipated negative consequences.

I was once highly optimistic about robotic cars, imagining the pleasure of reading a book on the way to some destination as my car negotiated rush-hour traffic more efficiently than I ever could. Now I think that'll entice people who'd not have made the trip at all. Rather than making it easier for people to move themselves about, maybe we need to make it more pleasurable to stay the hell where we are. I have enjoyed getting stuff delivered to my porch rather than going out shopping. I hope Amazon and Instacart coming to me is more efficient than me going to the store.

[Innula Zenovka]

2 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I have enjoyed getting stuff delivered to my porch rather than going out shopping. I hope Amazon and Instacart coming to me is more efficient than me going to the store.

Yes, but the efficiency, at least if we're considering CO2 emissions, is how much carbon  is emitted in the course of getting the fuel from the refinery into the fuel tank of either your car or the Amazon van, and either getting you and the goods back home or getting them from the fulfilment centre to your front door.

If it's petrol or diesel, the CO2 cost is whatever it is for burning the hydrocarbons and if it's electric, then it's whatever the cost is of the mix of coal, natural gas, wind, wave, hydro-electric, nuclear, biomass, and so on that your power supply grid is using at the time.

 

[Mollymews]

On 6/13/2021 at 1:56 PM, Doris Johnsky said:

we're still in a quandary about the infrastructure to run electric cars.  The more E-Cars there are the greater need for electric power to charge them.  The more stations the more power to be created.

And you still overlook the underprivileged who can't afford a new car.  So what do we do?

Overlooked by everyone is that as bad as our emissions are, they have gotten better over the last 20 years

 

 

 

on the first. Is too early yet to technically implement battery plug-n-play in vehicles but I think this will eventuate. When on a road trip then pull in to the road side service station. Pull out the vehicle battery, plug in a fully charged battery, pay the fee, and continue on

this is similar to how bottled gas service delivery evolved in NZ. Once upon a time, would take your own bottle to the gas service station, fill it up and take it away.  After a time then bottled gas delivery went to swap-a-bottle. The empty bottle sent to the gas filling plant where the bottle is checked for structural safety, if safe then refill it and ship it back to gas delivery stations

on the second. NZ has just implemented a penalty/reward system for new vehicles.  Fossil only - hybrid - electric only. Fossil vehicles pay a penalty, hybrid cars pay less and can get a reward when the electrics outweigh the fossil, and fully electric get a reward. The effect is that the consumers pay for what they want, not the government

the other effect is that hybrids will be cheaper to buy than fossil cars. I am going to get a hybrid next as I do 8 long road trips annually, and at the moment a fully electric car will run out of puff.  One day when we get plug-n-play batteries then I will get a full electric vehicle

on the third. I agree with the sentiment that things have gotten better, in how we generally as people individually and sometimes collectively, have begun to think about and change our behaviours as best we can with what we have within the circumstances. Like i have 2 rubbish bins provided by the city council. Blue for recycling, red for other stuff.  I used to have a green bin as well for foliage. But since Covid I started a vege garden again, and I don't use my green bin anymore. Just chop up the foliage and food scraps and compost

another example of circumstantial change. I eat a lot less meat now and only eat free range eggs, mostly because my supermarket started stocking meat alternatives and free range farm eggs (rather than battery farm eggs). So I thought oh! ok and started buying them instead of all meat meat and battery eggs  like before

i think that for most people ordinarily then we do what we can within our circumstances to do our bit to save the planet, but generally we don't go out of our way to do this.  We mainly do our bit when somebody else (like a supermarket, a city council, a vehicle manufacturer, etc) puts the way to do our bit into our path

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

On 6/15/2021 at 5:52 PM, Innula Zenovka said:

Yes, but the efficiency, at least if we're considering CO2 emissions, is how much carbon  is emitted in the course of getting the fuel from the refinery into the fuel tank of either your car or the Amazon van, and either getting you and the goods back home or getting them from the fulfilment centre to your front door.

If it's petrol or diesel, the CO2 cost is whatever it is for burning the hydrocarbons and if it's electric, then it's whatever the cost is of the mix of coal, natural gas, wind, wave, hydro-electric, nuclear, biomass, and so on that your power supply grid is using at the time.

I'm thinking of the overall efficiency of living, not just the end-to-end efficiency of moving people and things. I've no doubt that electric vehicles are more efficient than gas, even if the power plants burn fossil fuels. Oil refineries are around 90% efficient and gas cars are maybe 25%. There's also some loss in transportation, but I don't know what that is, maybe a couple percent? Natural gas combined-cycle power plants are about 60% efficient and electric cars 75%. Energy loss in transmission and distribution is around 6%.

So end-to-end efficiency for gas cars is about 22% and for electric cars it's about 42%. If you add wind and solar to the electric route, it's a no-brainer.

But, what I'm wondering about is whether Jevons' Paradox or some other aspect of The Law of Unintended Consequences will spoil the calculation. In my own town, the conversion of street and commercial lighting to LED didn't produce the hoped for reduction in electricity consumption because the city decided to increase illumination substantially and the shops lit themselves up like Christmas trees. Power consumption is down overall, but not by as much as the technology allows. I'm no longer able to star-hop through the night sky with my telescope because 90% of the stars in my backyard are now lost in the sky glow.

If automated electric Uber cars make travel convenient and affordable for more people, I expect more people to travel. That might offset the improvement in end-to-end efficiency of electric vehicles.

Elon Musk and others are confident that we'll science our way to virtually inexhaustible clean energy. I'm not confident but I am hopeful. If we do, I wonder if I'll ever see a star again* ;-).

*Other than the Sun!

Edited June 17, 2021 by Madelaine McMasters

[Love Zhaoying]

11 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Elon Musk and others are confident that we'll science our way to virtually inexhaustible clean energy. I'm not confident but I am hopeful. If we do, I wonder if I'll ever see a star again* ;-).

The technology of harvesting clean, renewable energy from happy kittens and suffering humans, has barely been explored! 

[Madelaine McMasters]

10 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

The technology of harvesting clean, renewable energy from happy kittens and suffering humans, has barely been explored! 

Yeah, but the moment the happy kittens meet the suffering humans, we're toast.

[Innula Zenovka]

15 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

I'm thinking of the overall efficiency of living, not just the end-to-end efficiency of moving people and things. I've no doubt that electric vehicles are more efficient than gas, even if the power plants burn fossil fuels. Oil refineries are around 90% efficient and gas cars are maybe 25%. There's also some loss in transportation, but I don't know what that is, maybe a couple percent? Natural gas combined-cycle power plants are about 60% efficient and electric cars 75%. Energy loss in transmission and distribution is around 6%.

So end-to-end efficiency for gas cars is about 22% and for electric cars it's about 42%. If you add wind and solar to the electric route, it's a no-brainer.

But, what I'm wondering about is whether Jevons' Paradox or some other aspect of The Law of Unintended Consequences will spoil the calculation. In my own town, the conversion of street and commercial lighting to LED didn't produce the hoped for reduction in electricity consumption because the city decided to increase illumination substantially and the shops lit themselves up like Christmas trees. Power consumption is down overall, but not by as much as the technology allows. I'm no longer able to star-hop through the night sky with my telescope because 90% of the stars in my backyard are now lost in the sky glow.

If automated electric Uber cars make travel convenient and affordable for more people, I expect more people to travel. That might offset the improvement in end-to-end efficiency of electric vehicles.

Elon Musk and others are confident that we'll science our way to virtually inexhaustible clean energy. I'm not confident but I am hopeful. If we do, I wonder if I'll ever see a star again* ;-).

*Other than the Sun!

It's certainly going to be interesting to see how things develop.    Quite apart from how the vehicles are powered, while their external appearance may not change much, the engineering is going to be completely different, so they'll be completely different vehicles from ones powered by internal combustion engines and will doubtless develop in their own way.

This has huge implications for the various car manufacturers, since it changes the whole supply chain and all the skillsets required to design and manufacture the components -- apart from anything else, the quality of the electronics will likely become one of the main things to look for in future.

As to Ubers, I'm not sure that, for the sort of use you're describing, cost comes into it a great deal, does it?    I don't have a car, since I've always lived in cities or towns, and been able to rely on public transport, taxis, or hire cars when I need them.   

Now we have Uber, I welcome its convenience, but I can't say that price has ever really been a deciding factor for short hops, at least not for me.    While I'm not particularly well-off,  the price of an Uber for what I'd consider reasonable walking distance has never really been a deterrent for me (or maybe it's just I'm lazy, and never walk far?).     Would I eat more ice cream if it were considerably cheaper, or drink more coffee?   Probably not, and I think Ubers are in that sort of category for a lot of people.

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 hour ago, Innula Zenovka said:

It's certainly going to be interesting to see how things develop.    Quite apart from how the vehicles are powered, while their external appearance may not change much, the engineering is going to be completely different, so they'll be completely different vehicles from ones powered by internal combustion engines and will doubtless develop in their own way.

This has huge implications for the various car manufacturers, since it changes the whole supply chain and all the skillsets required to design and manufacture the components -- apart from anything else, the quality of the electronics will likely become one of the main things to look for in future.

As to Ubers, I'm not sure that, for the sort of use you're describing, cost comes into it a great deal, does it?    I don't have a car, since I've always lived in cities or towns, and been able to rely on public transport, taxis, or hire cars when I need them.   

Now we have Uber, I welcome its convenience, but I can't say that price has ever really been a deciding factor for short hops, at least not for me.    While I'm not particularly well-off,  the price of an Uber for what I'd consider reasonable walking distance has never really been a deterrent for me (or maybe it's just I'm lazy, and never walk far?).     Would I eat more ice cream if it were considerably cheaper, or drink more coffee?   Probably not, and I think Ubers are in that sort of category for a lot of people.

https://hoodline.com/2018/10/uber-lyft-main-reason-for-increased-traffic-congestion-in-sf-study-finds/
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/6/20756945/uber-lyft-tnc-vmt-traffic-congestion-study-fehr-peers

Whether people are taking Uber/Lyft rather than walking, or rather than taking mass transport, the tonnage of sheet metal moving about city streets is rising because of ride share services. I imagine energy use is also rising as a result, possibly faster than efficiency increases. Once fully autonomous vehicles arrive and people can do productive and/or enjoyable things during their workday commutes, will they entertain living farther from work and taking longer commutes?

I haven't researched the effect of delivery services like Amazon and Instacart. I'd hope they have scheduling/routing systems that make their deliveries more efficient than people going out to get their own stuff. I know the big services are looking at switching to EV because most of their routes are short enough to allow delivery vehicles with modest battery packs. Nevertheless, delivery trucks now pull into my driveway several days per week, which is more often than I run errands.

Getting back to the vehicle technology, you're quite right about similarities between electric and gas vehicles being barely skin deep. Might autonomous operation, aided by massive amounts of communication between vehicles and infrastructure, reduce accident rates and severity to the point that we can shed a lot of protective weight from vehicles? Will we scrap cars sooner because the technology is obsolete? Will we install hardware/software upgrades? The changes will extend out from the cars, too. Will we stop purchasing cars and start purchasing rides? Will we curb road and parking space expansion because automation safely increases traffic density and throughput?

There are a lot of new levers appearing on the control panel for this problem. It'll be interesting to see what they are and how they interact with each other.

As for ice-cream, the amount I eat is affected primarily by my weight. If they develop a calorie free version, I'll eat it for lunch, dinner, and bedtime, not just at breakfast.  I am become Jevons' Paradox.

;-).

Edited June 17, 2021 by Madelaine McMasters

[Luna Bliss]

1 hour ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

As for ice-cream

Cherry Garcia ice cream...that stuff is evil...

[Madelaine McMasters]

I'm actually eating this right now, as I type one-handed...

[Love Zhaoying]

10 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Yeah, but the moment the happy kittens meet the suffering humans, we're toast.

I knew that I chose those two seemingly random, yet oddly juxtaposed examples for a reason! 

[Moondira]

4 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Cherry Garcia ice cream...that stuff is evil...

My favorite 😁

[Rowan Amore]

Now I want ice cream!

[Sorciaa]

While I dont have any ice cream, i DO have some Vanilla Ice

 

 

 

[Ceka Cianci]

It's been awhile since I had the good stuff.. hehehe

[Innula Zenovka]

[Arielle Popstar]

On 6/13/2021 at 10:48 PM, Coffee Pancake said:

  It appears there are people in this thread who don't even know where oil came from and what specific conditions allowed it to form.

There is no way we're going to trust you to hold up a complicated socio-economic political debate.

This thread is about climate change, lets not get carried away.

Unless you can prove that dinosaurs left Earth on giant space  ships to populate the rest of the Universe, you will have a bit of a challenge accounting for hydrocarbons being found on Titan's moon, Mars, Pluto and even the Horse Head Nebula:

"Using the 30m telescope of the Institute for Radio Astronomy for astronomical observations in the millimetre range of wavelengths, astronomers have detected the interstellar molecule C3H+ in our galaxy. It belongs to the hydrocarbon family, which is part of the major energy resources of our planet -- petroleum and natural gas. The discovery of this molecule at the heart of the famous Horsehead Nebula in the Constellation of Orion also confirms that this region is an active cosmic refinery."

We better use the oil we have here or it may flood us out!

[Coffee Pancake]

4 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Unless you can prove that dinosaurs left Earth on giant space  ships to populate the rest of the Universe, you will have a bit of a challenge accounting for hydrocarbons being found on Titan's moon, Mars, Pluto and even the Horse Head Nebula:

Well, I guess we can add chemistry to the list of things too magical to possibly ever understand.

4 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

We better use the oil we have here or it may flood us out!

and scale .. distance .. time

 

[Arielle Popstar]

Just now, Coffee Pancake said:

Well, I guess we can add chemistry to the list of things too magical to possibly ever understand.

The point is that it shows oil comes from an abiotic process requiring no dinosaurs. It could well be that the missing carbon that climatologists say should be seen in the atmosphere is actually being carbon sinked into new oil.

[Coffee Pancake]

1 minute ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The point is that it shows oil comes from an abiotic process requiring no dinosaurs. It could well be that the missing carbon that climatologists say should be seen in the atmosphere is actually being carbon sinked into new oil.

*sighs* .. Oil does not come from dinosaurs. 

Crude oil on earth comes from the buildup and compression of marine plankton, starting at the bottom of the sea, and takes millions of years to get to the deposits we can use. It is an excruciatingly slow process operating on geological timescales.

Coal comes from forests, ancient forests. Forests so ancient they predate all the living things that are able to consume dead trees. Back when trees were new, their corpses would just pile up.

But whatever, if we're going for full on gleeful ignorance lets at least make it interesting. My money is on hollow earth pixies pooping petrol.