Climate Change, 'Greenhouse' effects: Solutions #3

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Profile Gary Charpentier Crowdfunding Project Donor*Special Project $75 donorSpecial Project $250 donor
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Message 2068951 - Posted: 22 Feb 2021, 0:39:39 UTC

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Message 2068961 - Posted: 22 Feb 2021, 2:28:30 UTC - in response to Message 2068951.  
Last modified: 22 Feb 2021, 2:28:57 UTC

Cover it all in solar cells

Better than melting all the Arctic ice and permafrost?...


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Message 2068976 - Posted: 22 Feb 2021, 8:26:46 UTC - in response to Message 2068961.  

And doing so ignores the not inconsiderable problems of getting the power from the Sahara to where it is wanted in Europe, never mind the USA.
(Also many such schemes ignore the fact that solar is only directly available during daylight hours at the panel so one either needs a whole interconnected network of such farms in different time zones, or some way of storing energy for use during panel-night.)
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Message 2069707 - Posted: 2 Mar 2021, 15:51:18 UTC - in response to Message 2068976.  
Last modified: 2 Mar 2021, 15:51:50 UTC

And doing so ignores the not inconsiderable problems of getting the power from the Sahara to where it is wanted in Europe, never mind the USA.
(Also many such schemes ignore the fact that solar is only directly available during daylight hours at the panel so one either needs a whole interconnected network of such farms in different time zones, or some way of storing energy for use during panel-night.)

We have high efficiency "DC interconnectors" that you can imagine can replace the existing leviathan fleets of dirty big old oil tankers.

And we have multiple different good tech for overnight storage of solar power.

The next steps are to work through the infrastructure costs, politics, and the inevitable delaying tactics of the existing dirty old fossils industry.

We can can quickly and efficiently go clean, given the political impetus.


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Message 2069708 - Posted: 2 Mar 2021, 15:54:10 UTC
Last modified: 2 Mar 2021, 15:54:32 UTC

Here is another following in the tire tracks of Elon Musk and Tesla:


Volvo Cars to go fully electric by 2030


If Sweden can do that, why not the rest of the world?


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Message 2069715 - Posted: 2 Mar 2021, 17:16:27 UTC - in response to Message 2069708.  

Here is another following in the tire tracks of Elon Musk and Tesla:


Volvo Cars to go fully electric by 2030


If Sweden can do that, why not the rest of the world?


All on our only one planet,
Martin

If Transport is to go 100% electric, then at 2016 petroleum product usage we need 30 trillion kWh of energy to replace it. An increase of 20% over present day electricity production.

Even if plans are in place to increase electricity production rather than replace old dirty stations it takes more than 10 years to get approved, built, commissioned and connected up.
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Message 2069719 - Posted: 2 Mar 2021, 17:24:43 UTC - in response to Message 2069715.  
Last modified: 2 Mar 2021, 17:27:08 UTC

If Transport is to go 100% electric, then at 2016 petroleum product usage we need 30 trillion kWh of energy to replace it. An increase of 20% over present day electricity production.

Even if plans are in place to increase electricity production rather than replace old dirty stations it takes more than 10 years to get approved, built, commissioned and connected up.

Which is why we already have for the UK a lot of new electrical capacity that is in the process of being built up, hopefully all to be ready in time.

The biggest spoilers are the ridiculously expensive nuclear plans all suffering delays and going badly over budget from a very expensive start in the first place... That sort of money can cleanly rebuild our national grid and double the renewables capacity and still leave cash to spare for storage...

The joker in the UK strategy is what might be done with the promise of hydrogen...

Whichever way we go, will it all be soon enough?


There are multiple threads there to watch!


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Message 2069732 - Posted: 2 Mar 2021, 20:48:37 UTC

Is this a good way to go?


Chinese £3,200 budget electric car takes on Tesla
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A budget electric vehicle (EV) selling in China for $4,500 (£3,200) is now outselling Tesla's more upmarket cars.

The compact car is proving a big hit for state-owned SAIC Motor, China's top automaker. The Hong Guang Mini EV is being built as part of a joint venture with US car giant General Motors (GM).

Last month sales of the budget electric car in China were around double those of Tesla...

... The cars are being marketed as "the people's commuting tool"...


Could that 'take off' in the USA?



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Message 2069742 - Posted: 2 Mar 2021, 21:52:06 UTC - in response to Message 2069732.  

Interesting, but sadly I doubt that the tiny car would make a substantial impact on the US (or even European) car markets. Simply, it's too small as it has been scaled around the average person in China and not the average European let alone the average American. That said, given the price and inducements reportedly being offered it is hardly a shock that it is outselling Tesla (free road tax, a tenth of the price etc.). Having been in several major Chinese cities I would say anything that reduces the number of ICE engines in use will be a good thing.
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Message 2070806 - Posted: 16 Mar 2021, 3:23:03 UTC

Climate change: Jet fuel from waste 'dramatically lowers' emissions
A new approach to making jet fuel from food waste has the potential to massively reduce carbon emissions from flying, scientists say.

Currently, most of the food scraps that are used for energy around the world are converted into methane gas.

But researchers in the US have found a way of turning this waste into a type of paraffin that works in jet engines.

The authors of the new study say the fuel cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 165% compared to fossil energy.

This figure comes from the reduction in carbon emitted from airplanes plus the emissions that are avoided when food waste is diverted from landfill.
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Message 2071883 - Posted: 26 Mar 2021, 22:33:06 UTC

https://cleantechnica.com/2021/03/25/all-eyes-on-4-million-diesel-killing-hydrogen-locomotive-in-california/
Hydrogen gets props as a zero emission fuel. When deployed in a fuel cell, it reacts with ambient air to generate electricity. Water is the only byproduct. However, shadowing the tailpipe is a long, dirty tail. Almost all of the hydrogen circulating the globe today is produced from fossil energy, mainly natural gas.
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Message 2071965 - Posted: 27 Mar 2021, 22:01:58 UTC

Announced by the British English Government, late on a Saturday evening after Parliament has already gone home for a holiday recess:

Green Homes Grant scheme to insulate houses axed

A much-promoted grants programme to help UK householders insulate their homes is to be scrapped within days.

The Green Homes Grant (GHG) reached just 10% of the 600,000 homes the chancellor promised would be improved.

The scheme will be stopped on Wednesday and the cash allocated to a separate insulation fund run by councils.
To be fair, I wouldn't fight to save the scheme in the current form. The chumocracy have made a complete horlicks of it, as usual. But to do it this way?

I think I smell the smell of a big scoop on the front page of one of the Sunday newspapers. We'll find out in the next hour or so.
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Message 2072769 - Posted: 7 Apr 2021, 18:10:53 UTC - in response to Message 2071965.  
Last modified: 7 Apr 2021, 18:16:31 UTC

... To be fair, I wouldn't fight to save the scheme in the current form. The chumocracy have made a complete horlicks of it, as usual. But to do it this way?...

The biggest effect to go usefully efficiently Green is to break up the presently in force all-too-effective effective house building monopoly that everyone suffers. Those few companies have extremely profitably minimized standards, exploited unskilled labour, and pushed house sales prices to extraordinary heights, all for incredibly badly sloppy build.

We also have deliberately (very profitably) restricted supply, and a boom-bust cycle whenever our government panics about the housing supply.

Totally, a blight across our landscape, and ever more costly to our planet, that is getting ever more expensive to remediate...

But politics, and lobbying, and party donations and all that...


Oh what a glorious mess!

Nothing short of an overhaul throughout the entire process is required.


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Message 2072771 - Posted: 7 Apr 2021, 18:16:12 UTC

For a brief example of what can be done:


Britain's electricity system 'greenest ever' over Easter
wrote:
Great Britain's electricity system was the greenest it had ever been at lunchtime on Easter Bank Holiday Monday, its operator has said.

Sunny and windy weather, coupled with low demand for power, led to a surge in renewable sources of energy, National Grid Electricity System Operator said.

It meant low-carbon energy sources made up almost 80% of Britain's power.

There was no coal generation on the grid and just 10% of power was from gas plants, the operator added...

... By comparison, on Tuesday, 24.8% of Britain's energy came from fossil fuels, most of which was gas (combined cycle), while 45.2% was renewable energy sources...


Way to go...!

All needed sooner rather than later too late...


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Message 2073142 - Posted: 12 Apr 2021, 11:41:39 UTC

France moves to ban short-haul domestic flights

Lawmakers voted in favour of a bill to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
That doesn't quite cover everywhere (Paris - Marseille is just over 3 hours minimum). But it's a lovely run, the bar is open, and the tickets are cheap(-ish). Beats our poxy little HS1 into a cocked hat any day.
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Message 2073328 - Posted: 14 Apr 2021, 16:41:57 UTC
Last modified: 14 Apr 2021, 16:42:12 UTC

Another positive yet small step?


NZ to launch world-first climate change rules
wrote:
New Zealand is to become the world's first country to bring in a law forcing its financial firms to report on the effects of climate change.

The country wants to be carbon neutral by 2050 and says the financial sector needs to play its part...



Good, but good enough?

Or all yet oh far too slow to save us all?


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Message 2073486 - Posted: 16 Apr 2021, 12:43:34 UTC

A very simple no-cost dumb but smart fix:


'Whitest ever' paint reflects 98% of sunlight
wrote:
Scientists in the US have developed a paint significantly "whiter than the whitest paint currently available".

Tests carried out by researchers at Purdue University on their "ultra-white" paint showed it reflected more than 98% of sunlight.

That suggests, the scientists say, that it could help save energy and fight climate change.

Painting "cool roofs" white is an energy-saving approach already being rolled out in some major cities. Commercially available white paints reflect between 80% and 90% of sunlight, according to lead researcher Prof Xiulin Ruan from Purdue, in West Lafayette, Indiana. "It's a big deal, because every 1% of reflectance you get translates to 10 watts per metre squared less heat from the Sun,"...



Every little bit helps...

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Message 2073487 - Posted: 16 Apr 2021, 12:48:50 UTC

Here's something that should have been done over a decade ago:


Carbon Mapper satellite network to find {pollution} super-emitters
wrote:
A constellation of satellites will be flown this decade to try to pinpoint significant releases of climate-changing gases, in particular carbon dioxide and methane.

The initiative is being led by an American non-profit organisation called Carbon Mapper...



Notice how that is being launched by a CHARITY.

Was there not a "Carbon Mapper" satellite that was to be launched in the 2000's that was delayed and in effect sabotaged by the then Bush administration?...

All a game of how the polluters cannot get 'caught' at their dirt?...


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Message 2073500 - Posted: 16 Apr 2021, 14:19:17 UTC - in response to Message 2073487.  

Look up the MOPITT instrument on the NASA Terra satellite. been on orbit since late 1999, still flying. The instrument team is a small group out of Canada, and the Principal Investigator is English I believe (sounds English from his accent but I never asked him directly). Very nice group of people. We have over 20 years of near constant data from this instrument.

There are several other missions doing atmospheric pollution research, Aura (launched 2004) also, but unfortunately half of it's instruments have stopped working anymore. Dedicated carbon missions like OCO-2 (launched 2014). and many more. https://climate.nasa.gov/nasa_science/missions/?page=0&per_page=40&order=title+asc&search=

no political conspiracy here. things get delayed/sacked for a lot of reasons, that mostly have nothing to do with politics.
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Message 2073518 - Posted: 16 Apr 2021, 16:40:44 UTC - in response to Message 2073500.  
Last modified: 16 Apr 2021, 16:44:30 UTC

Thanks for those.

Looks like the one I was thinking of was:

Orbiting Carbon Observatory: Launch Failure


That had been delayed multiple times and was in the midst of:

Scientists Say Bush Stifles Science...
wrote:
In his final State of the Union address, President George W. Bush devoted several lines to science and technology topics. He called for research and funding to reduce oil dependency and reverse the growth of greenhouse gases..

[Yet:]

... scientists around the country aren't buying what they see as rhetoric not backed by funding. And they are frustrated by what they view as the White House's morality-based politics that they say ignores scientific evidence, distorts facts and leads to outright censorship of reports and scientists...

... "Science establishes facts but facts can unmask bad policy," said Ken Caldeira, a climate and ecology researcher at Stanford University. "Thus good science has been seen as a threat by the Bush administration."

Alan W. Harris, senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute at La Canada, Calif., accused the White House of "systematic suppression of scientific evidence that does not support administration plans."...

... "A president who does not accept evolution is clearly someone who cannot change their mind in face of overwhelming factual evidence,"...

Climate Change Research Distorted and Suppressed
wrote:
... In September 2002, the [Bush] administration removed a section on climate change from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) annual air pollution report, even though the climate issue had been discussed in the report in each of the preceding five years...

... The Government Accountability Project (GAP), a non-profit, public interest organization and law firm, is now representing Piltz. In June 2005, GAP gave the New York Times internal documents from Piltz’s office showing handwritten edits on several 2002 and 2003 scientific climate change reports. The edits increased and at times overstated the level of uncertainty associated with climate science. According to the New York Times, the edits tended "to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust."

The edits were made by Philip A. Cooney, then chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who formerly worked for the American Petroleum Institute and led the oil industry’s drive to prevent restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions...

The worst of times: Bush's environmental legacy examined
wrote:
... see the Bush years as a concerted assault, from the administration's undermining of the science on climate change to its dismantling of environmental safeguards to its support for mining and oil interests.

"He has undone decades if not a century of progress on the environment,"...

... The campaign to keep the public unaware of the evidence on climate change came to light in October 2004 when the Nasa scientist, James Hansen, accused the Bush administration of trying to block data showing an acceleration in global warming.

The full extent of the White House efforts to downplay, distort and outright censor the science on climate change remains unclear...


ISTR that there were various games at play to defund (or 'deregulate') anything and everything that showed the coal, oil and gas industries in any sort of bad light...

With a repeat story by The Trump?...


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Message boards : Politics : Climate Change, 'Greenhouse' effects: Solutions #3


 
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