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Climate Change, 'Greenhouse' effects: Solutions #3
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ML1 Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 21017 Credit: 7,508,002 RAC: 20 |
Another very small but positive step: France to ban heated terraces in cafes and bars wrote: France's government has announced new environmental measures, including a ban on heated terraces for cafes and bars. All a game of politics of good sense?... All on our only one planet, Martin See new freedom: Mageia Linux Take a look for yourself: Linux Format The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3) |
Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30933 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
Force people inside in the middle of a pandemic. Great planning. Every dead human reduces AGW. |
ML1 Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 21017 Credit: 7,508,002 RAC: 20 |
Way to go... Solar: YouTube: Perovskite Solar Cells: Game changer? For a little perspective: The ENTIRE USA could be powered, 24/7, by a solar installation 100miles x 100miles feeding a battery 1 mile x 1 mile. Ok... So that is a big installation. But then again, the USA is big, and yet that installation is vastly smaller than the areas spoilt by coal mining and fracking and oil/gas extraction. Also, that 100 miles x 100 miles is tiny compared to the area poisoned by just the one Deepwater Horizon disaster... How soon can we kill the old fossils pollution corruption? All on our only one planet, Martin See new freedom: Mageia Linux Take a look for yourself: Linux Format The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3) |
ML1 Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 21017 Credit: 7,508,002 RAC: 20 |
Where politics has pathetically and miserably failed, almost too late, the finance greedily speaks: Global Financial Giants Swear Off Funding an Especially Dirty Fuel wrote: Some of the world’s largest financial institutions have stopped putting their money behind oil production in the Canadian province of Alberta, home to one of the world’s most extensive, and also dirtiest, oil reserves... Total implosion in the tar sands wrote: Last week, French energy giant Total, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, announced that it has withdrawn from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) because of a “misalignment” between the organization’s public positions and those expressed in Total’s climate ambition statement announced in May. Total attributes this unprecedented move to concerns around the lobby group’s regressive stance on climate ambition – and reflects the distance between CAPP and major global oil companies, who are increasingly aligning themselves (at least publically) with the need for decarbonization. Hopefully, there is more profit in coming clean and green rather than staying quagmired in oil and dirty... All on our only one planet, Martin See new freedom: Mageia Linux Take a look for yourself: Linux Format The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3) |
W-K 666 Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 19318 Credit: 40,757,560 RAC: 67 |
My back of the envelope calculation says that isn't possible even assuming solar panels are perpendicular to the sun at all times in Texas. Do the calculation yourself. US annual consumption 4400 TWh Solar power in Texas 1000w/sq m in Texas on average 8 hr/day. And I have personal experience of rain in Texas for over a day, I've had dryer days in Manchester in February. And if generated in sunny parts of the US there will be significant losses getting power to the North. |
Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30933 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
My back of the envelope calculation says that isn't possible even assuming solar panels are perpendicular to the sun at all times in Texas. My back of the envelope says if the cells are 100% efficient and capturing all solar frequencies and track the sun without using any power to do so, and the power grid is superconducting, you could get pretty close in the summer, not in the winter. Obviously efficiency is not 100%, wires have resistance, tracking will use power. So you would need to add Arizona, New Mexico and desert California to get close in reality. |
W-K 666 Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 19318 Credit: 40,757,560 RAC: 67 |
BUT; You have to leave space between panels for cleaners and maintenance, and if tilting so that panel 'A' does cause shadow on panel 'B', so maybe you need a site twice the area. Cleaners are needed, a study in CA during a drought says panels lost 7.5% in less than 6 months due to dirt. Bird droppings are a significant source of tough to remove dirt, as you know from your experience on your car. Converting the solar panels DC o/p to AC will also lose 10%, if not more as you have to get the DC to the inverters, in the first place. Solar panel degradation is about 0.8%/year. And the Lithium Ion batteries fail quicker in hot places like Texas. And solar panel efficiency is at most in lab conditions 42%. Without doing the sums I am going to have to revise that 10 *10 mile square to 40*40, if you want that output to be still available in 15 years. And you will still have problems getting that power to NY reliably and consistently. |
Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30933 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2020/08/11/Digital-content-to-total-half-Earths-mass-by-2245/6541597161350/ Researchers estimate that in 300 years, digital production will require the equivalent of planetary power consumption today. |
Mr. Kevvy Send message Joined: 15 May 99 Posts: 3797 Credit: 1,114,826,392 RAC: 3,319 |
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Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30933 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
Researchers estimate that in 300 years... Ah, like global warming itself. |
Mr. Kevvy Send message Joined: 15 May 99 Posts: 3797 Credit: 1,114,826,392 RAC: 3,319 |
Some technological trends can be extrapolated, some cannot. For example, I can imagine nineteenth-century "researchers" predicting that in 2020, fully half of the urban workforce would be employed keeping the streets cleaned of horse poo, based on the assumption that the following nineteenth-century realities would continue: 1) There would be no street transportation but human-powered and horse-powered. 2) Only half the adult population (men) would be available to do this. 3) The job would have to be done manually ie with a shovel. Someone actually did make a similar prediction, namely that a similar fraction of the population would be employed as telephone operators. They did not foresee automated calling. |
Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30933 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
Some technological trends can be extrapolated, some cannot. Something will have to change "Assuming a 20 percent annual growth rate, we estimate that after [approximately] 350 years from now, the number of bits produced will exceed the number of all atoms on Earth," Melvin Vopson, physicist at the University of Portsmouth in Britain, wrote in a new paper published Tuesday in the journal AIP Advances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine#Storage_capacity_and_growth |
W-K 666 Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 19318 Credit: 40,757,560 RAC: 67 |
More news on those perovskite solar panels. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/15/uk-firms-solar-power-breakthrough-could-make-worlds-most-efficient-panels-by-2021 Somehow I don't think that a 25% increase in output is a big enough game changer to enable that 100*100 mile solar farm to power the whole of the US. ******* off topic rant! Why do reports have no maths capabilities? 27.3 / 22.n = ~ 1.33 according to the sub heading Oxford PV says tech based on perovskite crystal can generate almost a third more electricity /rant |
Sirius B Send message Joined: 26 Dec 00 Posts: 24907 Credit: 3,081,182 RAC: 7 |
After 2 years, just under 1% failure rate. The way ahead? |
Sirius B Send message Joined: 26 Dec 00 Posts: 24907 Credit: 3,081,182 RAC: 7 |
At the moment, a lot of the energy we produce is wasted because of electrical resistance, being lost as heat.1 potential solution? |
ML1 Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 21017 Credit: 7,508,002 RAC: 20 |
At the moment, a lot of the energy we produce is wasted because of electrical resistance, being lost as heat.1 potential solution? Thanks for that. That's one giant leap towards some fabulous unobtainum, for real in real life! Certainly a fantastic leap in usable temperature to at last reach 'room temperature' (Scandinavian-style or Eskimo-style that is!). Another view is given over on: Good news: Boffins have finally built room-temperature superconductors. Bad news: You'll need a laser... wrote: ... The material then transforms into something that can superconduct electricity: its electrical resistance vanishes as its electrons are free to move unhindered. Before this substance can be used in real-world applications, the team needs to figure out, among other things, how to make the powder at larger quantities. Truly fantastic! The really important part of that material mix is that we now have a 'high temperature' example of superconductivity that we can now study and engineer further for practical use. We have some very clever yet unappreciated scientists who really can engineer the atomic structure of materials! Keep searchin', Martin See new freedom: Mageia Linux Take a look for yourself: Linux Format The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3) |
ML1 Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 21017 Credit: 7,508,002 RAC: 20 |
Well, I think we're as far away from room temp superconductivity now as we were before this new discovery. The "big deal" with this first material example is that:
See new freedom: Mageia Linux Take a look for yourself: Linux Format The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3) |
rob smith Send message Joined: 7 Mar 03 Posts: 22456 Credit: 416,307,556 RAC: 380 |
Solar & wind are a lot more effective than you think. Couple either (or better both) to storage systems and the area required is remarkably small. I recall some recent figures where it was said that the whole energy requirements of the UK could be met many times over from a solar+storage farm less than the area of the Isle of Wight. Storage technology is an area where some real thought needs to be applied. Just now the vast majority of the thought is being applied to various battery systems, but there are other ways like pumped-hydro, pumped-pneumatic, phase conversion. And as for generation, what about geothermal? At least one country, albeit a small one (Iceland) gets a very large proportion of its energy from geothermal sources. In the UK there are a few areas that appear to be promising, think about the old health spa towns where there is an abundance of (very) hot water fairly close to the surface and the technology to extract usable energy from that is already well established. Bob Smith Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society) Somewhere in the (un)known Universe? |
rob smith Send message Joined: 7 Mar 03 Posts: 22456 Credit: 416,307,556 RAC: 380 |
Geothermal springs are usually at 100F. Probably the springs at bath are the most famous but are mainly a tourist attraction as are those at Rota Rua in New Zealand. At Tunbridge Wells it has a Chalybeate spring which contains a significant level of dissolved mineral salts, with iron and manganese contributing to its characteristic flavour. Basically the Spa towns contained mineral springs not geothermal springs. The very fact that people travelled out of dirty London in the 1700's into the fresher countryside air, most likely did more for their health than a few cups of spring water. Well, sorry to disavow you of your ill-founded theories we have had one town that's had a geothermal district heating system in place for about 25 years. http://www.britgeothermal.org/research/uk.html So, while not at Icelandic temperatures there are practical solutions available and in use. As to the rest of your comments, you need to do a bit of research before getting things so wrong. For example, today, a rather dull Friday lunchtime the metered solar input to the grid is running at about 3GwHr (~8% of total demand) - for a near-real-time figure have a look at https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk which tracks the demand and inputs. As far as I can see this figure does not include the multitude of domestic installations, so the figure is going to be somewhat more than that, but then the domestic panels will reduce grid demand so effectively are zero contributors to the grid balance. Bob Smith Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society) Somewhere in the (un)known Universe? |
Sirius B Send message Joined: 26 Dec 00 Posts: 24907 Credit: 3,081,182 RAC: 7 |
With the aim to be carbon neutral, this has to be a plus in achieving that. The potential of the resource needs to be promoted to government and commerce to encourage investment in this form of low carbon energy. |
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