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Climate Scientist: Climate Engineering Might Be the Answer To Warming
Lasrick (2629253) writes "Tom Wigley is one of the world's top climate scientists, and in this interview he explains his outspoken support for both nuclear energy and research into climate engineering. Wigley was one of the first scientists to break the taboo on public discussion of climate engineering as a possible response to global warming; in a 2006 paper in the journal Science, he proposed a combined geoengineering-mitigation strategy that would address the problem of increasing ocean acidity, as well as the problem of climate change. In this interview, he argues that renewable energy alone will not be sufficient to address the climate challenge, because it cannot be scaled up quickly and cheaply enough, and that opposition to nuclear power 'threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change.'"
I'd be leary of either overcorrecting for climate change or having massive unpredicted effects. I'm all for trying to fix the problem. I just don't think our climate modelling is yet good enough.
LOL! good luck with THAT!
Right. There isn't an engineer or a group of engineers smart enough to do that without dire consequences.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
While we've proven we can engineer nuclear power plants, we've also proved we're completely incompetent at maintaining them.
While it's not a solution most people want to consider, pumping sulfuric acid into the atmosphere would counter act the green house effect. But it's sort of the "old lady who swallowed the fly" issue since we then would need to figure out what to do about all the acid rain.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
So if global warming is real, and it's due to us fucking around with nature with total disregard of side-effects, then the answer is to fuck around with nature some more?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
So you would need a way to lock up the wood after the tree is cut down.
Where do you think coal comes from?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
good thing we didn't cover the poles with dark soot, like they were calling for in the 70's to stop the impending ice age.
Watch Snowpiercer - good movie.
had not be so busy getting a knobber, we might not have this problem:
Then again AlGore would not have a job being a global alarmist alarmist either...
"BAS: Are you surprised that so many environmental groups remain vehemently opposed to nuclear power?
Wigley: “Saddened” would be a better word. Often the main concern of those groups is proliferation—the use or theft of nuclear material to make weapons. I think that that is a misrepresented issue as well. One of the saddest things was when the Clinton administration shut down the program on fast reactors.1 Clinton, [Al] Gore, and John Kerry are to blame there. If that program had not been shut down, and fast reactors had continued to develop, within maybe three years we could have started building Integral Fast Reactor systems with the whole nuclear cycle on one site—reprocessing waste materials onsite and having very little residual waste to deal with. If that had happened, I don’t think we would have a global warming problem now at all. We could have started on a pathway of rapid introduction of fourth-generation nuclear technology, and we would have gained 20 years in solving the climate problem
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
If anthropogenic global warming is not only real but as apocalyptic as its proponents claim, we will not only have to go nuclear but we will have to geoengineer our way out of it. None of the processes outlined in this article, like spraying high-albedo compounds into the upper atmosphere, can run away. We can implement a method to the point where we start to get observable effects, and then back off if problems develop. In other words, we need to be as adventurous and willing to assume large-scale risk now as we were when we ran the Manhattan Project.
To put it another way: the greenhouse effect, if it is actually happening, is already a form of geoengineering. It is making cold countries warm. If it's going too far, the geoengineering steps in this article are what it might take to arrive at the stable, human-based optimum we want for our long-term survival.
millions of years, pressure, and plate tectonics.
.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They are a carbon sync, but no so much a carbon sink.
This guy is a climate scientist but obviously knows jack-all about energy systems.
he argues that hat renewable energy alone will not be sufficient to address the climate challenge, because it cannot be scaled up quickly and cheaply enough, and that opposition to nuclear power 'threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change.'"
Which ignores the fact that both solar and nuclear have had recent explosive growth, while the last time a nuclear plant came in on time and on budget was back in the 50's when they thought that radiation was good for you.
that we can't just end the carbon binge we are on?
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
Didn't any of you people watch "The Time Machine"?!
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Where do you think coal comes from?
From the Carboniferous.
Ezekiel 23:20
I didn't notice any links to the article in Science that was mentioned. Here it is, although it is paywalled. If you search for the title ("A Combined Mitigation/Geoengineering Approach to Climate Stabilization") you might find some non-paywalled copies or preprints.
I don't think there is much of a taboo on discussing climate engineering. It's just that all of the proposals I have heard about are just stupid / won't work / would screw up things more, etc. Then there is the "what could possibly go wrong" factor.
It's fine to discuss climate engineering but they'll have to come up with something much better than anything now out there.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Give a time frame for "just end" that would not put the whole world back into the stone age? The #1 cause of pollution (or carbon de-sequestration for you pointy types) is poverty. http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/...
Just think about how it will be if you are drinking your starbucks that was heated by burning cow dung...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Well, no.
Whether there are too many of us is debatable, but it is NOT debatable that the rate of population increase has been decreasing steadily for decades.
Current projections show population peaking under 12 billion, and declining thereafter.
So, no, we're not continuing to multiply "at a obscenely accelerating rate".
So, I'll assume the rest of your rant is as devoid of fact as the part I quoted, and not waste time either reading or responding to it.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Back before white rot fungus evolved to break down lignin. So the plants fell and their woody parts did not ever decompose. Now they are broken down into CO2 and Methane through biological action.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Well, it might taste better. :)
I love good coffee. Therefore I can't stand Starbucks.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Uh, have you noticed that the countries with the most wealth seem to have the least children? So my (naive) view would be that increasing the "material expectations" of the population, by increasing the wealth of the masses, has a better chance of avoiding dangerous overcrowding than keeping the majority of the world poor. One-child policies like China's, while on the extreme side, are also effective.
I suppose when you talk of "material expectations" you are thinking of North Americans and their rampant consumerism. I submit that this is not a problem with "human beings" so much as a problem with Americans and other affluent cultures. "Human beings" are certainly capable of living with less; most often this occurs due to lack of wealth, but there are a lot of things that we could voluntarily give up without harming our quality of life.
For example, when you go to McDonald's, do you really need the 3 napkins they give you automatically? Does your Big Mac really have to come in a box that you immediately throw away? Could re-usable plastic cups be used instead? Likewise in our home life, I know most people could find, if they wanted, ways to reduce waste and use less energy. Did you know you can turn the stove off before you remove the pot, and it can keep cooking for up to several minutes? Did you know apples with blemishes are safe to eat? Personally, I have a good quality of life as I try my best to reduce waste, but I know many of my peers waste a lot of food and goods and their lives are no better for it. I submit that this is an issue of human culture rather than human beings.
Look, real climate change impacts are cradle to grave for power sources.
When done that way, nuclear fission causes water to heat, the mining process is extremely impactful, and the amount of risk and capital required make it no more efficient than reducing the impact of existing coal power plants by converting them to more efficient (as in double the output per ton of coal) by cogeneration.
The problem is really one of massive subsidies for wrong-headed energy sources.
Coal, oil, and natural gas.
Get rid of the tax exemptions for those and the below-market rate leases for drilling and exploitation and shipping and the market self-corrects.
Take the money saved by removing those exemptions and put it into low-cost 1 percent capital loans to build solar, wind, and micro-hydro power sources instead. The problem with those sources is coming up with the capital to switch, not the cost to operate (solar is already cheaper than everything except coal, for example, and that's with massive coal subsidies and tax exemptions).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What they want is control over global industry, insane amounts of unaudited "international aid money" and absolute moral authority.
Solve the problem and you take away their power, their money, and their claims to moral superiority.
This is something they will never let die.
If we fixed the climate tomorrow they'd still be harping about it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So does the US. The Constitution gives the government the power to coin money. The Fed gives the government zero cost borrowing. The Modigliani-Miller theorem of finance shows that how you finance a good idea doesn't matter. If climate engineering is a good idea, we can finance it.
Finance should never be used as an excuse not to carry out a good idea.
Lets suppose, we just exclude the U.S., and then we have the consensus that GW is human caused.
set off a few nuclear bombs deep underground at a supervolcano and that should cause it to throw enough debris in to the atmosphere blocking enough sunlight to cool the planet off and possibly cause a mass extinction event
wheres my Nobel Prize? if obama can get one for making stupid comments then so can I
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
... trying to keep everything just like it is in the 1980s (or whenever) may do more damage than just letting it cycle naturally.
Oh yea, we want to go back to 1980? Shesh, does ANYBODY here remember what LA looked like in the 80's? Apart from all the women in big hair and the plaid suits going out of style? No, don't want to go back to the orange brown haze myself.
I remember, as a kid, flying into LA and seeing that thick brown layer over the entire valley.
Look, we had the Clean Air Act and it worked. The same goes for switching from tax-subsidized and tax-exempted Coal, Oil, and Gas to cleaner fuels. Get rid of the tax exemptions and remove the "grandfather" permits for inefficient old power plants. The market will self-correct to cheaper Solar fairly quickly, if you can provide low-cost capital in low-interest loans from part of the money we save by removing those inefficient tax subsidies for coal, oil, and gas.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
People are overly concerned about nuclear fission due to radioactive waste.
Nuclear fusion, on the other hand produces no or little waste, and yields much more energy to boot.
We've done fusion before, with hydrogen bombs.
All we have to do is contain it in a powerplant, and all the worlds energy problems are over.
http://www.stolk.org/tlctc
Tom Wigley is one of the world's top climate scientists
That's damning with faint praise. It's springtime. The climate ninnies are out in full force.
I thought that the ninnies where only out in force when they where flying out to attend their "global warming" conferences, usually during an unusually cold snap.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
we have to get over the social issue first.
There is no social issue, there is only a propaganda issue. People have been told over and over that nuclear is the ultimate evil thing. They just need some counterbalancing facts about how it can be safe and that in fact it's safer than coal... then start by replacing coal plants with small really well contained nuclear plants, and expand from there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nuclear power is the slowpoke when it comes to scaling owing to its high cost: http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-C...
I think you're wrong:
"To grow a pound of wood, a tree uses 1.47 pounds of carbon dioxide and gives off 1.07 pounds of oxygen. An acre of trees might grow 4,000 pounds of wood in a year, using 5,880 pounds of carbon dioxide and giving off 4,280 pounds of oxygen in the process."
http://www.forestecologynetwor...
Besides being a carbon sink, trees also scrub pollution and hold groundwater, working to prevent landslides.
"Although forests do release some CO2 from natural processes such as decay and respiration, a healthy forest typically stores carbon at a greater rate than it releases carbon."
http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/47...
The market will self-correct to cheaper Solar fairly quickly, if you can provide low-cost capital in low-interest loans from part of the money we save by removing those inefficient tax subsidies for coal, oil, and gas.
Shesh, nope. First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas. There ARE significant subsidies and tax abatements for renewable energy already. Second, The problem is the huge drop in natural gas prices due to fracking and the increased production it has made possible. Projections are clear, we will have at least a decade of natural gas prices in the current range. It is what is driving old (and newer) nuclear plants out of business and it is driving electric rates so low that renewables are simply not viable.
Handing out low cost capital to solar ventures is STUPID unless you just want to loose the money. Remember Solyndra? There is a reason this company failed and it's not just because it was mismanaged and sucked cashless by a political contributor to the party in power or under cut by manufacturing in China... Solar is simply NOT viable yet for industrial or even small scale use outside of areas that have the correct kinds of weather (even then it's all but marginal and has really long ROIs). Most of the US doesn't have the right kind of weather to make solar work, even if costs where cut in half. It's going to be cheaper to make electricity by natural gas for a LONG time, especially over solar.
:
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Sadly almost all of us live in the lower atmosphere, you insensitive clod.
That is all.
To add some data to the current replies to this comment, I suggest you look at the graph here: https://www.census.gov/populat... Between the growth peak in the early 60s of over 2%, we've reduced it to %1. The latest annual letter from the Gates Foundation provides some good background about what's ACTUALLY been improving in the world: http://annualletter.gatesfound...
I am all for it.
Lets put the entire IPCC panel and all of the other Yahoo scientist wannabes that contributed to the report on a rocket and send them to Mars.
They can geoengineer all they like.
However,
LEAVE THE EARTH ALONE ALONG WITH TH REST OF US YOU MORONS WHO WANT TO PLAY GOD WITH THE ONLY KNOWN HABITABLE PLANET WE KNOW OF WITH YOUR FAKE SCIENCE.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
In what way would deindustrialization and the attendant five-billions deaths be considered "simple". Heck, I'd bet there'd be some political push-back on your idea after as few as one-billion deaths.
Considering that climate engineering would cost us only a tiny fraction of cost of deindustrialization -- and has a chance in hell of actually working -- it's the approach we should be taking the most seriously.
What right does any government have to do this? What right does any "climatologist" have to do this? These are the new priests? Believe us for we speak the true gospel?
The fuck I trust any of the above to fix anything nor do they have to right to start fucking with the atmosphere, oceans, etc.
By US law, the Fed returns its profits to the Treasury every year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01...
How did you get from here:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani%E2%80%93Miller_theorem)
The basic theorem states that, under a certain market price process (the classical random walk), in the absence of taxes, bankruptcy costs, agency costs, and asymmetric information, and in an efficient market, the value of a firm is unaffected by how that firm is financed.[1] It does not matter if the firm's capital is raised by issuing stock or selling debt. It does not matter what the firm's dividend policy is.
to here?
"The Modigliani-Miller theorem of finance shows that how you finance a good idea doesn't matter."
Enough of this talk of efficiency and carbon neutrality and environmentalism - in the long run none of these measures will do jack shit for the real problem.
Environmental catastrophe is not inevitable. Developed for god knows what reason, we've had the solution for years. Terrible, but costs almost nothing, and more humane than war.
Mark my words we shall see this come to pass, since restraint is against everyone's moral and religious views.
The value is unaffected by finance. If it's a good idea, how you finance it does not matter. Fear of debt should not be used as a reason not to finance a good idea.
Shesh, nope. First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas.
Do a little research. Here's a starting point.
It's going to be cheaper to make electricity by natural gas for a LONG time, especially over solar.
That depends on how bad the fracking earthquakes get.
Stockholder banks get a guaranteed 6% dividend.
Yes. Look at the political influence of the fossil fuel companies. Koch, Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell...
thegodmovie.com - watch it
This is truly insane. We have here a science that has proven beyond any doubt that it is incapable of predicting any property related to climate (surface temperature, stratospheric temperature (they even call it a mystery in the peer reviewed literature), humidity at altitude, cloud height, you name it, All of these properties are central to the understanding of the atmosphere and climate. They get nothing right. And now somebody is even thinking of giving these scientists that have proven they know nothing the power to experiment on a global scale, potentially even killing the majority humanity and every other living creature! Please people, for the love of your children, wake the fuck up! Before anybody is even remotely thinking of tampering the atmosphere on a global scale, make sure that they can predict just about every property there is so that we have reason to believe in the outcome. Otherwise, this is like performing brain surgery with a 375 magnum.
First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas..
The fossil fuel "subsidies" they speak of are nothing but specious reasoning. Seriously: all but an irrelevant fraction of the "subsidies" amount to "we don't believe fossil fuels are being taxed punitively enough, therefore the absence of those punitive taxes means they are receiving a subsidy".
It's a basic begging the question fallacy.
Look at this link: Global fossil fuel subsidies amount to $1.9 trillion – IMF
Today, in advanced economies, fossil fuels do not get much the way of direct subsidies – although they do still exist, for example Germany spends 0.07% of its GDP supporting coal and the US spends 0.05% of its GDP on petroleum. But fossil fuels do continue to benefit from subsidies in those economies in the form of mispriced taxation levels.
In advanced economies, “subsidies often take the form of taxes that are too low to capture the true costs to society of energy use, including pollution and road congestion,” the IMF said. “Taxes imposed on energy are not high enough to account for all the adverse effects of excessive energy consumption, including on the environment,” says the David Lipton, First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF."
Even the Iraq war is literally a fossil fuel tax subsidy in their mind. Don't debate these people: either their logic is broken so there's no point in trying to use reason, or they are being deliberately disingenuous so there is no way to engage in an honest debate.
Either way, it's a good idea to know where their talking points are coming from.
According to the story yesterday, we should triple the energy we get from renewables and nuclear. I don't think that's going to take the whole world back to the stone age. It sounds like developing more advanced technology and engineering to me.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Having programmed large parts of a control loop for a nearly 1000 tonne instrument with only 6 degrees of freedom and about 11 engineering parameters, with response times of the order of a second, I'd hate to be responsible for the programming of a servo control loop for a 5.9terratonne complex biological system with response times of centuries.
Imagine the ringing oscillations of that.
And what's the step function when we finally do cark it as a species? Self-solving problem, I guess.
I wish this where true. Here in australia, our new conservative government is in the process of shocking the locals by attempting to recreate the american GOP dream in a country that neither wants it or even understands what the hell the new government is doing.
Hey lets dismantle the UHC so we can have a complete screw-up of a system like the americans. Lets defund science because our science advisor thinks the world is 6000 years old and the CSIRO professors keeps saying embarassing things about climate change like "We should move to renewables" so we'll just fire them instead. Wheeeeeeeee!
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Not only is it a good idea, but it may be a necessary idea (to our survival). And the idea that ppl don't want to finance it? I know, let's spend more money on weapons to invade other nations on false pretenses. That's a way better use of funds.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
China has some of the worst pollution on the planet, due largely to their improving living standards.
So even if climate change turns out to be "absolute crap", developing nations have a vested interest in clean technologies.
So basically, they're proposing beginning amateur terraforming on the only habitable planet we have?
Not sure I think that's such a grand idea. So much that could go wrong experimenting with terraforming on the only ball we got to play with.
Climate engineering works so well, even a caveman can do it. After all, how else can we explain the end of the last ice age?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Hmmm... no energy or a few degrees higher temp and global catastrophe from climate change? I'll take the latter please. I like energy. Everyone likes energy, it makes people happy (seriously, countries with more energy available to population are more prosperous.)
So the short answer? Absolutely not. We cannot end the binge. We need other ways to fuel it, and in fact, we need MORE energy.
Shesh, nope. First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas.
The IMF reckons that subsidies before tax to fossil fuel industries was about half a trillion dollars in 2009. So you might be mistake about that. (Or 1.9 trillion if you count externalities).
electric rates so low that renewables are simply not viable.
PV solar is ridiculously cheap because of a glut, but wind turbines are becoming genuinely cheap and efficient. They're both viable in certain circumstances and places. PV solar is viable if it is generated at the point of use, as so circumvents the need for the infrastructure of the grid. Wind is viable in certain climates. Geothermal is viable if you have the geology. Hydro is also viable if you have the geography.
Solar is simply NOT viable yet for industrial or even small scale use outside of areas that have the correct kinds of weather (even then it's all but marginal and has really long ROIs). It's going to be cheaper to make electricity by natural gas for a LONG time, especially over solar.
Prices are dropping and efficiency is increasing. I agree that taking into account costs associated with the grid, PV is generally not at grid parity. But people are talking about hitting grid parity with PV by the end of the decade. And for a roof-top unit supplying power to the house, it is already better than grid in many places. (assuming that this means that the transmission costs can be ignored).
Isn't this what the "Chemtrails" conspiracy theorists say is going on right now?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I won't touch Starbucks or any other tax avoiding company i know about.. plus almost all chains of coffee houses produce shit coffee, more like hot milk with a touch of coffee taste.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
well, yeah, but yellowstone is not man-made and absolutely nothing can be done about it at this point in our technological time, maybe in a few hundred/thousand years they may be able to vent off the pressure in volcanos
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
With the way that china does things, there is ZERO chance that they will change anything. Heck, they continue to expand with 2 new coal plants each WEEK.
There is a chance - new technology that is cheaper.
We don't need consensus. There's a body a science which says it is caused by humans, and no body of evidence that says it isn't. You can play a piano and sing "Feelings" as loud and as tunelessly as you like. Nothing your feelings tell you will change reality.
By AGW supporters, you mean your friendly denialists, right? After all, only members of that group claim that global warming will actually be good for our species => they are the only people who could validly be called "AGW supporters".
http://www.forbes.com/sites/en...
Except that most "subsidies" that oil companies supposedly get are subsidies for OTHER people that happen to benefit oil companies. Also a lot of the remaining "subsidies" are tax credits that lots of other industries get for manufacturing.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Building nuclear plants would be faster than building a lot more renewable sources? No way. Nukes might be necessary, but it takes a long time to get from planning to power production. Building more factories to build more wind machines and then installing those is going to be quicker, even where it requires more transmission lines. The other route to meeting energy needs is conservation. Many of us are very tired of hearing about it, but it only takes a glance around to see how much is wasted. People driving empty pickups and SUVs, parking lots lit up brighter than cloudy days (with fixtures that send light somewhere besides downwards), houses and especially business structures with little insulation, heat pumps using ambient air rather than earth or bodies of water for sinks/sources, water heaters maintaining temperatures 24/7, traffic signals insensitive to traffic conditions, buses and delivery trucks that stop & start every minute without capturing any of the energy during deceleration, PCs that stay on 24/7 without sleeping, roofs with heat-absorptive coverings, PATIO HEATERS, houses without integrated HVAC/water heating/refrigeration systems (that would be almost all), processes that use millions of gallons of drinking water when less energy-intensive water sources would do, excessively energy-intensive farming, transportation of low-value goods around the world due to ridiculous trade rules, shipping that refuses to supplement their fossil-fuel thrust with wind, dump trucks hauling dirt around because architecture isn't designed for the site but vice versa... blah blah blah.
We could cut energy use in the US by 50% without even much inconvenience. I'll not resist nukes when a bit more effort is spent avoiding waste.
I base my statement on the speed with which such groups claim such rights and powers and the hesitation/resistance/etc they show when those same privileges are threatened.
They won't give up the money or the power.
And most human organizations work the same way.
Imagine if they were a corporation? Or a rival government... would either give up the money or the power? Of course not.
Well these are all human organizations.
As to your demand for citations... you're funny.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
PV will NEVER be at "grid parity" on it's own. The sun does not shine at night and solar collection works horribly when it is raining during the day. Like I've said elsewhere, you are not going to run an electric grid using more than a few percent from solar, at least not the kind of grid we are used to and depend on. The same issues apply to wind power, except that the wind sometimes blows at night and when it is cloudy. Problem with both though is that you never really know how much power you are going to get from these sources so you simply cannot easily plan ahead.
Problem then becomes, how to keep the electric grid stable. One thing that is often not understood about the grid is that you must ALWAYS balance usage with generation capacity. This takes advanced planning to project the expected load and match that with the capacity. There is no planning capacity for solar or wind, you get what you get. This means that you have to over build wind and solar and under commit generation capacity based on the weather forecasts. In fact, I've been told that you can only really plan for about 50% of the projected capacity for a wind farm. So that means you usually are producing (and able to sell) only half of the power you generate with a windmill, which halves your profit and doubles your costs.
Renewables are helpful, but wind and solar don't work AT ALL on a cloudy calm day, what do you do then? Turn off the power? I don't think I would like going back to the stone age every so often. They are NOT an answer, and they are NOT viable.
You need to review that report from the IMF. The IMF report is WORLD wide, and if you look at what they call subsidies, the US rates lowest as a percentage of GDP. Also, the IMF includes things like subsidies for buying home heating oil for fixed income or poor citizens who find themselves unable to heat their homes, or helping with electric bills and other such support as being an subsidy. So, I would maintain that here in the USA the net of energy subsides are pretty much inconsequential and is really mostly already spent on renewables or on citizen welfare, not for the direct benefit of "big oil" or large companies.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Shesh, nope. First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas.
Do a little research. Here's a starting point.
So the IMF calculated the "subsidies" they found to be $500 Million in the US http://www.imf.org/external/np... and the site *you* send me to is claiming BILLIONS? Something is amiss here. I smell a rat, so lets ask some questions.
WHAT is a subsidy to you? A "special" tax break? A check that gets issued from the government directly to a producer? Neither of these exist. What we have is a bunch of people (like the authors of pricefoil.org) who are not above misleading people to trick them into believing their cause is just. They are LYING to you.... Wake up!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So...It wasn't clear to me if you mean you think we need "other" carbon fuels, or other non-carbon fuels...Cause I clearly asked about staying on our carbon binge. You seem to be saying that since we need energy (I don't disagree) we need to continue our reliance on carbon fuels. Did I misunderstand you?
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
I think when the Fed expands its balance sheet, as it did by a factor of two in a week in 2008, that money is not connected with the stockholder banks,
Actually, in certain circumstances, this exact thing is happening and they are viable. I have a friend that lives in rural Iowa, and the power company there is incentivizing him to get off the grid using solar and wind generation, with battery storage. It's too expensive for the power company to continue supplying power to him and his neighbors and improve the grid so that the power is reliable, so they are trying to get rid of those customers that are having the trouble. That's grid parity in play, right there. It's obviously not an urban issue, so no one here is going to care and I'll get flamed for this, but it is indeed grid parity. As time goes on and the grid ages and individual demand increases, this type of instance will happen closer and closer to the urban centers.
This is certainly NOT progress if what you say is actually true. But I think there might be more to your friend's story.
I'm willing to bet there is a government regulation angle, where to encourage PV development the utility is being forced into this and sees it as another regulatory cost. I'll also bet that it's not really about keeping the grid stable, but keeping the government off their back. I say this because it is technically simple to keep the grid stable and maintain the infrastructure. But trying to integrate the "on again and off again" nature of PV or Wind power is complicated, technically difficult and contributes to instability and costs to the grid operator.
However, this is Iowa.... There is lots of open space in Iowa with nothing but barbed wire between it and the north pole...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I consult my extensive science fiction library, a paper-based resource precariously sheltered from giant lighting bolts and acid rain.
searching...
searching...
searching...
merging...
reporting:
Venus is the nearest site for which data is available...
Our search yields this synthesis:
(1) use nukes to blow away 99% of the atmosphere
(2) seed with anerobic bacteria to break down the acidic crud and get MORE CO2
(3) seed with photosynthetic bacteria to get some O2
(4) enjoy our orbital habitat for a few centuries
(5) Profit!
If this had been an actual disaster, you would have had to pay the invoice before the reveal. And the check would have to clear.
--
We forget that the people typing on these contraptions we are are simple tools.
Nice story, but evolution of fungi is so fast that the lag between proliferation of lignin-producing plants and lignin-degrading funghi is negligible. Coal was formed in wetlands, where the combination of an enhanced sedimentation rate and a waterlogged soil that poorly transports oxygen resulted in the organic matter being buried and sealed before it could fully decompose. A prominent example where the process is still active today are peatlands, which sequester carbon at a rate of about 1mm of peat per year. Another example are mangroves, which arguably better reflect the circumstances under which some of the coal that is mined today was formed.
Problem with both though is that you never really know how much power you are going to get from these sources so you simply cannot easily plan ahead.
They work when you have a hydro dam behind them that can be altered to meet demand, it doesn't need to be gas or coal.
To use solar and wind when isolated from the grid, you need batteries.
On the power station level, there are options; Thermal storage in liquid saltpeter is pretty efficient, and that has been used in commercial plants for over 5 years last month. There may be better solutions (so to speak) now.
This means that you have to over build wind and solar and under commit generation capacity based on the weather forecasts.
Or support with Hydro. Or store the energy, perhaps thermally. Away from good grid infrastructure, it might be cost effective to had the consumer store their own energy.
But over building and under committing is another option. It's just not the only one. The other choices don't require halving your sales though, so I'd go with one of them.
if you look at what they call subsidies, the US rates lowest as a percentage of GDP.
Funny metric. It's the subsidy as a percentage of cost of the fossil fuel that affects the market, not that the US has a lot of GDP from low-energy-cost industries such as IP compared to other countries.
Also, the IMF includes things like subsidies for buying home heating oil for fixed income or poor citizens who find themselves unable to heat their homes, or helping with electric bills and other such support as being an subsidy.
A subsidy is the taxpayer paying for something that helps the companies bottom line, however obfuscated. Expensing of exploration costs is a big money spinner for medium operations, because exploration can be timed to coincide with a good profit year. It turns out that geothermal energy companies have the same tax breaks, but the cost to the taxpayer in lost revenues is almost all from fossil fuel exploration.
If people were willing to finance some planetary climate engineering experiment, one would think they'd also be willing to try the more conservative course of exacerbating the problem no further.
...and get this or something like it to work:
http://phys.org/news199005915....
Extracting CO2 out of the air to preindustrial levels within 10 years would probably give us Valley Forge sort of cold every winter, but certainly no "global warming" would exist after that. The precipitate from that process, elemental carbon, might cover the state of Texas to about 30 ft. deep with such carbon, but we could always burn the ultra-pure carbon as fuel, in everything from formerly coal-fired power plants to the return of the steam locomotive.
All this *sounds* good but It's going to take a heck of a lot of subsidies to include storage of electrical power if you are figuring on going 100% renewables. All this stuff you suggest is rapidly increasing the per-KWh costs of PV and Wind, which is currently marginal ROI.
Battery storage is at best 70% efficient when you subtract out the AC-DC and DC-AC conversion loss. So for all the power you need when the sun doesn't shine and the wind isn't blowing you will have had to collect 43% more energy than you can deliver back to the grid. Plus, you will have to build capacity into your collection systems to both charge the batteries and supplying the losses. Say you get 2 good collection days in 3 (worst case), you will have to build 150% of supply, plus enough capacity to provide your storage losses (about 25% more). This turns out to be something like 170%, which nearly doubles your initial investment in generation capacity (Making your KWh nearly twice as expensive). THEN you need to add to your cost model the price of the industrial scaled storage capacity so you can keep the lights on on a calm cloudy day and night. Conservatively this will more than double the KWh cost again, making your per-KWh cost 3 times larger.
I don't see how you can do this financially without some seriously intensive governmental support, or by driving up the costs by a multiple of 3 for everybody though regulation. Which may be what you are suggesting, but I dare say you haven't really grasped what such nonsense does to an economy.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
All this *sounds* good but It's going to take a heck of a lot of subsidies to include storage of electrical power if you are figuring on going 100% renewables.
It's probably a good idea to go 100% low-to-zero emissions for power generation. Air travel pretty much needs kerosine ATM.
But that includes nuclear, which isn't "renewable", it's just not fossil fuel.
All this stuff you suggest is rapidly increasing the per-KWh costs of PV and Wind, which is currently marginal ROI.
Not all of it. Having a hydro power pick up the variable part of the generation doesn't. And thermal storage by molten saltpeter has large economies of scale. And the cost and efficiency of wind turbines and PV cells are improving on a scale that's hard to believe. (Note that large commercial solar generators tend to be concentration solar rather than PV cells).
Battery storage is at best 70% efficient when you subtract out the AC-DC and DC-AC conversion loss.
Battery storage is okay for a residential home with no grid connection. For commercial sized operations, alternatives like liquid saltpeter off much better efficiency. At concentration solar plants, the heat is captured in the saltpeter first, and so the energy loss from converting electricity to heat and back again does not occur.
THEN you need to add to your cost model the price of the industrial scaled storage capacity so you can keep the lights on on a calm cloudy day and night.
No, industrial storage in saltpeter systems is much cheaper than batteries. Both for initial material costs, and for ongoing maintenance.
Which may be what you are suggesting, but I dare say you haven't really grasped what such nonsense does to an economy.
On the other hand the lack of fuel costs means that the cost of electricity doesn't fluctuate with the whims of the global economy, and Saudi Aramco.
This provides a much more reliable platform for building an economy.
But I certainly agree that the first 30%-40% solar and wind is cheaper than the next 60%-70%, because of the need to fit generation to use. So lets run to that point at least.