Climate change and human responsibility

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by activeStick

Trump was also not impressed by the winner.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1205100602025545730

Clearly stable.

[rubecube]

I couldn't find the EV thread so I'll post this here. News out of Australia that a lithium-sulfur battery has been developed that lasts longer than lithium-ion.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/06/tech/...scn/index.html

[Fuzz]

I love the last line in the article...


"However, the there are some challenges and limitations associated with the technology."


no mention at all what these are. Crack journalism! Also, bad grammar.


I believe I read elsewhere that they have limited charge cycles, and degrade after 200 or so.

[Ozy_Flame]

Man some people are just contrarian pessimists. Nothing this world accomplishes is ever good enough, fast enough, or sophisticated enough. We are a generation expecting immediate perfect results. And in 2020, definitely take the piss out of the middleman!

[Fuzz]

I assume your blathering is referring to my post. Are we not able to discuss the realities? There have been new battery technologies for decades, yet very few make it to market due to limitations. Like those previous ones, these also have limitations. Whether or not that can be overcome is the deciding factor on if we ever see these developed.


But thanks for the contribution. You are always a shining beacon of insight around here.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I love the last line in the article...


"However, the there are some challenges and limitations associated with the technology."


no mention at all what these are. Crack journalism! Also, bad grammar.


I believe I read elsewhere that they have limited charge cycles, and degrade after 200 or so.

Did you read the entire article? This is right out of it;

However, lithium-sulfur batteries tend to have a far shorter lifespan. They are used in some aircraft and cars, but previous attempts to bring them to mass production and phase out lithium-ion batteries have failed.
According to battery experts The Faraday Institution, the widespread use of lithium-sulfur batteries faces "major hurdles" stemming from sulfur's "insulating nature," and degradation of the metallic lithium anode.

[Ark2]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Man some people are just contrarian pessimists. Nothing this world accomplishes is ever good enough, fast enough, or sophisticated enough. We are a generation expecting immediate perfect results. And in 2020, definitely take the piss out of the middleman!

If the technology does not work, then what good is pretending otherwise? My biggest criticism towards climate change activists is that they often don't seem terribly interested in discussing feasible solutions that would actually work. Your post is a pretty apt depiction of that.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Did you read the entire article? This is right out of it;

Then the article states how these new tech solved those problems by restructuring the anodes or something. Then they close with Fuzz’s line.

So the article basically goes Lithium sultry battery solves previous challenges with lithium sulphur. Undisclosed technical challenges still remain.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by GGG

Then the article states how these new tech solved those problems by restructuring the anodes or something. Then they close with Fuzz’s line.

So the article basically goes Lithium sultry battery solves previous challenges with lithium sulphur. Undisclosed technical challenges still remain.

I think you are reading too much into the fact they have done some promising research and have a patented approach. Research and implementation are not the same thing. At the end of the day until they can start mass producing examples that live up to their claims it's not proven.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by Ark2

If the technology does not work, then what good is pretending otherwise? My biggest criticism towards climate change activists is that they often don't seem terribly interested in discussing feasible solutions that would actually work. Your post is a pretty apt depiction of that.

Hahaha that's what you got from my post? I'm a climate activist not offering a real solution? I don't have any solutions! I'm laughing at the contrarian opinion of those who punt emerging innovation into the ground. bwahahahahaha

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Hahaha that's what you got from my post? I'm a climate activist not offering a real solution? I don't have any solutions! I'm laughing at the contrarian opinion of those who punt emerging innovation into the ground. bwahahahahaha

Have you considered adding anything meaningful to any discussion, ever? bwahahahahaha

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

At the end of the day until they can start mass producing examples that live up to their claims it's not proven.

#Analysis

[Bagor]

Lab-grown food will soon destroy farming -and save the planet George Monbiot

It sounds like a miracle, but no great technological leaps were required. In a commercial lab on the outskirts of Helsinki, I watched scientists turn water into food. Through a porthole in a metal tank, I could see a yellow froth churning. It’s a primordial soup of bacteria, taken from the soil and multiplied in the laboratory, using hydrogen extracted from water as its energy source. When the froth was siphoned through a tangle of pipes and squirted on to heated rollers, it turned into a rich yellow flour.

This flour is not yet licensed for sale. But the scientists, working for a company called Solar Foods, were allowed to give me some while filming our documentary Apocalypse Cow. I asked them to make me a pancake: I would be the first person on Earth, beyond the lab staff, to eat such a thing. They set up a frying pan in the lab, mixed the flour with oat milk, and I took my small step for man. It tasted … just like a pancake.

But pancakes are not the intended product. Such flours are likely soon to become the feedstock for almost everything. In their raw state, they can replace the fillers now used in thousands of food products. When the bacteria are modified they will create the specific proteins needed for lab-grown meat, milk and eggs. Other tweaks will produce lauric acid – goodbye palm oil – and long-chain omega-3 fatty acids – hello lab-grown fish. The carbohydrates that remain when proteins and fats have been extracted could replace everything from pasta flour to potato crisps. The first commercial factory built by Solar Foods should be running next year.

The hydrogen pathway used by Solar Foods is about 10 times as efficient as photosynthesis. But because only part of a plant can be eaten, while the bacterial flour is mangetout, you can multiply that efficiency several times. And because it will be brewed in giant vats the land efficiency, the company estimates, is roughly 20,000 times greater. Everyone on Earth could be handsomely fed, and using a tiny fraction of its surface. If, as the company intends, the water used in the process (which is much less than required by farming) is electrolysed with solar power, the best places to build these plants will be deserts.

We are on the cusp of the biggest economic transformation, of any kind, for 200 years. While arguments rage about plant- versus meat-based diets, new technologies will soon make them irrelevant. Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life. After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation. This means multiplying particular micro-organisms, to produce particular products, in factories.I know some people will be horrified by this prospect. I can see some drawbacks. But I believe it comes in the nick of time.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ng-save-planet

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Bagor

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ng-save-planet

There are so many beneficial downstream effects of this, too. If we can put an end to the livestock/feedlot industry, we can dramatically reduce the risk of developing more antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by driveway

That’s completely ass-backwards. Solar panels function better at cooler temperatures and less efficiently at high temperatures.

Time for a bump to this thread (more appropriate versus the weather thread, but could also be in the Alberta politics thread).

The cold hard truth about solar and wind in Alberta.

http://ets.aeso.ca/ets_web/ip/Market...DReportServlet

Wind and solar continues to power Alberta and keeping our lights and keeping us warm in this extreme cold...with 42 MW generation out of 1800 max capacity for over a billion dollar spent. Solar has provided a net 0 over the past 2 days.

People need to look at the actual median and average outputs of solar and not agenda pushing media (or reddit) when debating the merits of solar and wind, especially here. This solar plant cost taxpayers 30 million, uses over 70 acres of land dedicated to it, and it's planned for a 50 million dollar extension.

https://www.dispatcho.app/live/BSC1?r=2592000

Brooks Solar Plant has not been above 1 MW since October.

Good thing our 18 coal power plants is being phased out at a cost of 1.3 billion for early retirement while we build wind turbines and more solar projects that don't do anything half the year (and half those days for solar).

We are almost -1000 in the hole, having to get power from BC (ocean), Montana and Sask (lots of coal powered energy) because Alberta is unable to power itself anymore. In the end it costs Alberta more money, while still emitting the same amount of carbon emissions, it's just being generated elsewhere with the money going out the province.

The reality in climates like Calgary is that both wind and solar are far from the viability and perform much worse than what the media is portraying. You will of course find articles like this one below always talking of max capacity and how many thousands to hundreds of thousands of houses it will power as if they ever peak there, let alone the median. It's the 2020 version of snake oil.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4967533/n...lants-alberta/

The plants are to produce about 94 megawatts at peak times, enough to power about 20,000 homes, and about 270 jobs will be created during construction.

I can tell you right now, that those solar power plants would produce 0 MW today.

I wish for the days when nuclear was not the red headed stepchild step it is today, we had the answer to the energy problem and reducing carbon emissions, but simply ignore it. Ontario still gets the biggest share of its electricity from nuclear on the backs of 40-50 year old nuclear power plants and doesn't get phased by fluctuating weather conditions.

Renewable should be viable and sustainable, and wind and solar are just not able to meet either of these criteria at this moment. I am all for them if they were efficient, but they simply are not.

[Fuzz]

I agree with that, just a point of clarification. Brooks Solar has produced more than 1MW on many many days since October, so I'm not sure where you got that from, but if you expand the chart you should see that. Sunday it peaked at a MIGHTY 2.8MW.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I agree with that, just a point of clarification. Brooks Solar has produced more than 1MW on many many days since October, so I'm not sure where you got that from, but if you expand the chart you should see that. Sunday it peaked at a MIGHTY 2.8MW.

I stand corrected!

Between 10:51 and 11:07 Brooks on Sunday Jan 11, we got an outstanding 3.0 MW value for those 16 minutes before some clouds got in the way or something and dipped back down to 1 MW. Darn clouds, winter and earth rotation cycles preventing us from some peak renewable energy.

I guess the way I saw it just showed it based on daily average. Can't wait to get rid of all coal and gas for this technology and power and heat our homes in this cold where it's most needed

[Ozy_Flame]

With better storage, perhaps we can fill our emergency energy reserves (or even operational capacity) through accumulated solar charging technology?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...1120131309.htm

Scaling and cost would certainly be an issue (at least in today's dollars), but solar should theoretically still be viable as part of a viable mix of energy sources for a jurisdiction. I do think we are just in the infancy though, and seeing private investment in solar farms in Alberta is a good sign there is a market for this in the future. However, if we took an approach of a decentralized and small scale system, some communities could be powered through renewables, as well be energy-independent. A good listen for this topic, and on batteries and renewables is located on The Documentary Podcast.

I also like the idea of a thermoelectric generator to generate electricity; this means our cold temperatures could actually work to our advantage.

http://theconversation.com/researche...ff-grid-123464

Greater temperature differences could generate more power with thermoelectric generators, and it works better in drier environments (such as Alberta's, compared to a Vancouver or Toronto). Again though, scaling would be an issue.

Nuclear fusion (as opposed to fission) could also be a future technology to look at as well. And there are private interests already at play:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/27/a-...million-boost/

Exciting to see new technologies perhaps one day increase the ability of renewable energy to power Alberta in conjunction with our unique place in the world and our environmental properties. Hopefully in our lifetime that "perfect mix" could be attained.

[Fuzz]

The problem with batteries, or that "accumulated solar charging technology" is that it may work over night, but it would be useless in the weather we have this week. If solar can only work at 20% of it's nameplate capacity in January, you need...rough math, 3333 x Brooks Solar plants, in that brief instant where it provided 3MW of power, to actually provide that for half the day, and store the other half, so you really need 6666(somehow charging 12 hours a day, instead of an hour the currently grab). Except there were days where it produced almost nothing, so you would never even charge the batteries (or store the heat, since, well, there is negligible solar heat coming in at -30). I don't like to use thew word "impossible" but you can see this as a massive challenge.


Now, you may say that this week is an outlier, but you MUST have capacity for the worst case, not the best case, unless you are OK with lots of people dying. People say the other renewables will balance out on days when there is no sun, but we see wind at 1% of it's nameplate, and that's distributed over the province, so it's not a case of wind in one spot, none in another.


I've said it before but it is a very tough problem to solve. Gas, coal, nuclear...all great at it, but with their obvious drawbacks. We need to be really careful not to get ourselves into a renewables trap where we depend on them for something they can't provide. If this means we still deploy them for when they are useful, we must remain mindful that we still need baseload, and this will all result in increased costs, because you are building renewable generation as an added bonus, not as a reliable supply.

[zamler]

Batteries are not useless in cold weather (or any) they make a major difference in supplying peak loads and make the entire system more efficient by storing wasted energy since a generator can't be shut down and restarted quickly.

But of course they generate exactly zero energy on their own.