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Sucking CO2 From Air Is Cheaper Than Scientists Thought (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: While avoiding the worst dangers of climate change will likely require sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky, prominent scientists have long dismissed such technologies as far too expensive. But a detailed new analysis published today in the journal Joule finds that direct air capture may be practical after all. The study concludes it would cost between $94 and $232 per ton of captured carbon dioxide, if existing technologies were implemented on a commercial scale. One earlier estimate, published in Proceedings of the National Academies, put that figure at more than $1,000 (though the calculations were made on what's known as an avoided-cost basis, which would add about 10 percent to the new study's figures). Crucially, the lowest-cost design, optimized to produce and sell alternative fuels made from the captured carbon dioxide, could already be profitable with existing public policies in certain markets. The higher cost estimates are for plants that would deliver compressed carbon dioxide for permanent underground storage. David Keith, a Harvard physics professor and lead author of the paper, is also the founder of Carbon Engineering, "a Calgary-based startup that has spent the last nine years designing, refining, and testing a direct air capture pilot plant in Squamish, B.C.," reports MIT. "Carbon Engineering plans to combine the carbon captured at its plants with hydrogen to produce carbon-neutral synthetic fuels, a process the pilot facility has already been performing." The company has secured $30 million, but is seeking additional funds to build a larger facility that will begin selling fuels. CNBC notes that Carbon Engineering is owned by several private investors, including Bill Gates.
I love reading stories like this. They best way to protect the environment is to make it profitable to do so. This is absolutely how we win.
Plan 4: Replace desktop computers and server racks with wind powered abacuses
I've done that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just to make the US CO2 neutral! Maybe the Pentagon has some trillions laying around somewhere.
Now that we know how much it should cost to remove CO2 from the sky, we should begin taxing corporations and products that release CO2 in the atmosphere. The money would then be used to pay other corporations to capture CO2 from the atmosphere.
There has been a long history of using environmental capital without consequence and that needs to come to an end if we're going to save this planet.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If there was only some natural process that did this already for free. Well a fellah can certainly dream...
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
At 20kg per year per "mature tree", that's only 50 trees per ton of CO2 per year
The slashdot servers run on a beowulf cluster of wind powered abacuses. You insensitive clod.
I might be a bit naive here, but isn't using the captured CO2 as an alternative fuel just going to end up with it in the atmosphere again? I mean the fuel will need to be burned and then it'll go right back where it came from so you end up with the same problem. In my mind the only sustainable solution would be to bury the stuff underground, or somewhere that it can't go back into the atmosphere.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
So according to this study from 2013, we are putting about 40 billion tons of CO2 into the air every year.
Even with this new downwardly-revised estimate, the cost of taking it out again comes to somewhere between 3.7 trillion dollars and 9.2 trillion dollars. Per year. Every year.
It's an interesting piece of research, but don't start celebrating in the streets just yet.
Between $94 and $232 ? I had assumed it be somewhere between $100 and $250. Apparently I was wrong.
If they can do that next step of actually making hydrocarbon fuel from it, then the biggest source of CO2 into the atmosphere, burning oil = turning stored CO2 into atmospheric CO2, goes away.
In other words, the amount of CO2 we put in the atmosphere drops if they can make fuel by pulling CO2 from the air.
Wouldn't it be strange if we actually can store solar power as fuel. Because storing solar energy is another big PITA we have to solve.
Producing fuel from the harvested CO2 is just delaying the actual release, as the fuel will be burned again and released as CO2 into the atmosphere (I'm sure harvesting is not going to be 100% efficient, so even if you are re-harvesting it, it isn't really a closed loop cycle).
Better would be to harvest CO2 for the production of carbon fibre and nanotech materials, as that would take it out of the loop on a longer term basis, while still having a useful and valuable byproduct (the lack of which is the disadvantage of just burying it). I'm not a tree, nor a chemist, so I don't know how difficult the separation of CO2 to C and O2 is, but it seems obvious that solutions should be aiming in that direction.
They claim carbon capture for $200/ton.
Ethanol is 786 kg/m^3, but is only a little under half carbon, call it half, but give them 50% for extra cost of getting useful fuel.
So about 1.3 cubic meters of 190 proof booze for $200...everybody will be able to afford a whole swimming pool of vodka! If it wasn't bullshit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Fox Translation: "Scientists Suck"
Table-ized A.I.
Think of the plants, what are they going to breath?
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
It will take *at least* as much energy to recapture the CO2 released by fossil fuels as the provided when burned originally (basic 2nd law of thermodynamics). And remember that at most 25% of the original fossil fuel energy was useful, so a conservative estimate would be that any process which recaptures the Co2 releasd orignally back into stable solid sequestered form will take 5-10x the original useful energy released when burning the fossil fuel. And that 5-10x energy will need to also be *zero CO2* emitting energy. Donâ(TM)t let people dazzle us with techno-babble unless they claim the 2nd law of thermodynamics magcally doesnâ(TM)t apply
Source? Most everything I've read suggests global biomass is decreasing. Logging, clear-cutting, desertification, etc. is outstripping gains elsewhere - we're doing a bang-up job of banging up the ecosystem.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Here's a 3 year old video on a US Navy project doing this same thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This Navy project is not new but they have people on the project go around to conventions and such to speak on it. They show good economics, being able to convert CO2 and hydrogen from any natural water source into a liquid fuel for aircraft and other uses. All they need is some funding to ramp this up to something that actually produces fuel for military aircraft.
The largest consumer of fuel in the USA is the US Air Force. The largest air force in the world is the US Air Force. The second largest air force in the world is the US Navy. The third largest air force in the world is the US Marine Corps. If we can get the US military to use the technology that they already have to produce jet fuel then that would be a major win in so many ways.
This idea of carbon neutral fuel production is dependent on a carbon neutral energy source. We have this carbon neutral energy source in nuclear power. The US Navy knows how to operate nuclear power safely. The US Coast Guard is desperate for some new ice breakers, let them have them and make them nuclear powered. Making more nuclear powered US Navy and US Coast Guard surface ships, and this fuel synthesis process to fuel the support aircraft and auxiliary boats, means a big dent in consumed petroleum. Add in some nuclear power on shore to power airports and military bases, and make the fuel for the vehicles that come and go, and that's another big dent in petroleum consumed.
Electricity might work for cars and trains but that won't work for boats and planes. A large enough ship can be nuclear powered, and we should embrace that wholeheartedly for military and civilian ships. Planes won't fly without kerosene. We now get kerosene from digging it up from the ground but we can get it from seawater if we just develop the technology and take the problems of digging up petroleum seriously.
I can't take anyone seriously on the threat of global warming if they do not include nuclear power in the solution. They mention this great process of pulling carbon from the air to turn into fuel but say nothing of where the energy to power it comes from. That says a lot to me. They can't bring themselves to admit that nuclear power is necessary to make this viable. The US Navy has no such aversion to nuclear power. We can at least allow the US Navy to develop the technology they have. Like so many things the US military develops it is likely to find its way into the civilian market in time.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
It won't happen unless we start building nuclear power at any price.
I hear this all the time, "We can't use nuclear power, it's too expensive." What of solar power? What do people have to say about that? "We have to subsidize solar power so we can develop the technology and make it cheaper than coal." Okay then, why not subsidize nuclear power so we can develop the technology until it is cheaper than coal?
We dumped a lot of money into solar power and it still costs two or three time that of natural gas. We put next to nothing into nuclear power and it's about 1-1/2 times natural gas. Just think if we did some research on nuclear power and took bringing down the cost seriously. If we put the price reduction curve of solar energy from the research we had in the last 40 years and put that on what nuclear energy cost then we would in fact have nuclear power too cheap to meter by now.
Here's the thing on nuclear power, it's already cheaper than coal. That might have a lot to do with the taxes and regulation on coal in the past decade or so but if being cheaper than coal is the benchmark then we've reached it already. Solar power is not yet cheaper than coal and it is not likely to get there in the next decade. I'm fine with subsidies on solar power so long as nuclear power gets something too. Nuclear power isn't even asking for subsidies anymore, they are merely asking permission to build.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The scientists are saying "stop throwing your trash on the streets". But everyone else only thinks the alternatives are the only ones you've proposed.
I hear this all the time, "We can't use nuclear power, it's too expensive." What of solar power? What do people have to say about that? "We have to subsidize solar power so we can develop the technology and make it cheaper than coal." Okay then, why not subsidize nuclear power so we can develop the technology until it is cheaper than coal?
Did you miss the part where nuclear reached 100 GW of installed capacity in 1970s and where solar reached the same in the 2010s? Nuclear had a forty year headstart - and forty more years of subsidies of course. "Why not subsidize nuclear power so we can develop the technology until it is cheaper than coal?" Well, what the hell were they doing those forty years? Apparently they should have already reached that point by now. Oh, but they didn't. Are you going to give them forty more years?
Nuclear power isn't even asking for subsidies anymore, they are merely asking permission to build.
Heh. "Hinkley Point subsidy bill quadruples as power price forecasts fall". Yeah, not really asking for subsidies at all...
Ezekiel 23:20
Or make methane? Much easier, apparently.
Ezekiel 23:20
US oil consumption 2017-2018, up 6.3% or 1.2 million barrels per day!
China up 3.8%, India up 10%, globally up 2.5%
Looks like we are hardly at the beginning of a renewables revolution and oil production is increasing worldwide.
Incredible!
No need to worry about CO2 Anymore, because it is "Cheaper Than Scientists Thought".
So cheap, that this 'new' Thought, will be demonstrated... soon... very soon.
Two weeks.. from the looks of it.
Just plant some trees and they will suck CO2 from the atmosphere and change it to green matter.
Logging doesn't contribute to atmospheric CO2. Those logs end up in houses, that is, sequestered for decades at least.
Turn the captured carbon into diamonds! I didn't know what Rihanna was talking about with "Diamonds in the Sky", but now I get it.
-- Make America hate again!
Buring 100 gallons of gasoline produces about 1 Ton of CO2. So extracting CO2 is about the same cost as buring the gasoline that put it there.
I hear this all the time, "We can't use nuclear power, it's too expensive." What of solar power? What do people have to say about that? "We have to subsidize solar power so we can develop the technology and make it cheaper than coal." Okay then, why not subsidize nuclear power so we can develop the technology until it is cheaper than coal?
The total cost per megawatt of nuclear is about double solar/offshore wind + battery storage.
That's the real cost. Subsidies are only used to make them commercially viable alternatives to coal.
What you are proposing is guaranteed high subsidies for many decades, and a bunch of unknown costs because we are sure to find new safety issues and haven't figured out what to do with the waste yet. Alternatively, we have some temporary subsidies on a clean form of energy that will become the cheapest form of generation ever (cheaper than subsidised coal) within a few decades at most.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Did you miss the part where nuclear reached 100 GW of installed capacity in 1970s and where solar reached the same in the 2010s? Nuclear had a forty year headstart - and forty more years of subsidies of course. "Why not subsidize nuclear power so we can develop the technology until it is cheaper than coal?" Well, what the hell were they doing those forty years? Apparently they should have already reached that point by now. Oh, but they didn't. Are you going to give them forty more years?
Different strokes for different folks...
There is no one size fits all solution to power generation. If you live in a large country, preferably one with reliably clear skies, maybe grid scale solar farms or solar thermal power generation are a good fit. For small countries, especially those with widespread and frequent cloud cover, solar is not an ideal investment. I'm not sure where you're getting the figures you quote from but in the UK nuclear currently generates as much as (if not more than) solar & wind, both on and offshore, combined. It's gas that's currently the poster child for cheap power - but I'll leave further comment on this for further down. Globally, nuclear power currently generates roughly three times as much power as wind and solar combined, with coal still topping the charts (~20 times) closely followed by gas (~18 times).
I also think you're being more than a little unfair in your characterisation of research into nuclear power, and subsidies for it. Mainly what the industry has been doing for the past 40 years is running and maintaining the plants already in existence, managing and dealing with the waste products of fission, and fighting a losing battle with public perception over the hazards of nuclear power. There has been very little (towards virtually no) research done on new reactor designs. We spend orders of magnitude more on nuclear weapons research than we do on nuclear power research. GP is correct in this. If we had actually been doing research building new plants wouldn't be the clusterfuck it's turning out to be.
Nuclear power isn't even asking for subsidies anymore, they are merely asking permission to build.
Heh. "Hinkley Point subsidy bill quadruples as power price forecasts fall". Yeah, not really asking for subsidies at all...
You are right, technically this is a subsidy, in the form of a guaranteed pricing contract.
However, the headline is misleading. The reason for this apparent increase is based on predictions of gas prices well into the future - but this affects the predicted subsidies for power generation from all other sources too. From that very article: Estimated total subsidy for Hinkley Point (over the lifetime of the guaranteed pricing contract, not the lifetime of the plant) ~£29.7 billion; Estimated subsidies for wind, solar and biomass (over their generation lifetime) ~£30.6 billion.
Now, it would be disingenuous of me not to point out that I'm comparing subsidies for a single nuclear plant with subsidies for an entire class of generation source, but it's important to note that these subsidies on renewables are another factor in the predicted cost of future power, and are thus directly responsible, albeit partially, for driving up the 'subsidy share' of the cost of Hinkley Point.
As a final point, I am always a little skeptical, as should you be, of pricing forecasts made several decades into the future. I'm old enough to remember the boom years of North Sea gas. Those, like the gas, are gone - but at the time there was not even a suggestion that such was even conceivable. As a result the UK now imports a vast amount of its gas, mostly from Russia. Domestic fracking is an environmental and, hence, political hot potato, and it is unlikely that it will ever provide significant amounts of our gas. Ru
Maybe nuclear could be made cheaper by offering the construction/maintenance jobs to the lowest bidder ?
That's the real cost.
Depends how you define real cost. If you define it as money spent on engineering construction and materials, then there's nothing "real" about the cost of nuclear and there hasn't been since the 60s.
Burning a gallon of fuel releases 20 pounds of CO2. That means this carbon capture solution would add. one or two bucks to the price of a gallon of gas. It may be a tenable alternative to abandoning fossil fuels.
This article begs to differ https://www.scientificamerican...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Climate change is solid science, and the way to stop it in this case is tech.
Climate change denialism is a rejection of science, in favor of greed.
Determining a way for humans to survive it's own self created disasters is not "eco-fascist" nor propaganda.
Founder of startup says his business model is like totally valid and stuff!
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Nuclear power has been heavily subsidized all along, in particular it is the only energy production that is not insured for accidents, so insurance costs are effectively supported by the state, that is the population.
Didn't even read the headline then?
This is a company that thinks they can remove carbon at an industrial scale and turn it into fuel, making planes, ships, cars far more sustainable.
Can you just replace your desktop computer with a wind powered abacus and never post again please?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
This seems like a bad joke. According to TFA:
"Crucially, the lowest-cost design, optimized to produce and sell alternative fuels made from the captured carbon dioxide, could already be profitable with existing public policies in certain markets (see “The carbon-capture era may finally be starting”). "
So they are extracting it, converting it to fuel, and reselling it. Wont that put it right back where it came from?
More people die falling off roofs installing solar than die from anything nuclear on an annual basis. The "fallout risk" is higher in running 1960s-era reactors past their designed lifetime instead of building replacements. So why don't we make it easier to build replacements that have vastly improved safety systems?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Climate change is solid science, and the way to stop it in this case is tech.
Who are you to decide for me that it should be stopped? Perhaps I want warmer weather. Perhaps I want more foliage and larger crop yields due to increased CO2. Perhaps I want northern Canada, Siberia, Greenland and Antarctica to open up and be usable for agriculture and human habitation. Perhaps I want my property that is 5 miles from the coast to become coastal property.
All we ever hear is "climate change bad, must stop, ugh" but why? Ignore the crazies who claim that a few degrees change in the temperature is going to mean the death of the planet, we've been a whole lot hotter with a whole lot more CO2 in the past and the world was teaming with life so that is hyperbolic bullcrap.
So why shouldn't we want a warmer climate, why shouldn't we want northern areas to become more moderate, more land to open up, more plant life? Let's get real here folks, it amazes me how the supposed environmental climate change zealots don't realize this is all a scam about money and redistribution of wealth.
How much does it cost to buy beach front property in the US today? I imagine the rich folks in West Palm Beach are opposed to rising oceans because it means they lose property. Or what would it mean if the US was suddenly no longer the bread basket of the world because the plains got drier but the Canadian tundra became warm enough for large scale agriculture?
And what happens to so called carbon credits? The airlines are paying a tax now due to the Paris Accord but where does that money go? Supposedly it is to help developing nations switch from fossil fuels. Who is managing that activity, managing that money? Follow the dollars and I bet you'll find plenty of pockets being lined before it gets to these developing nations.
Just search for the carbon credits scam Al Gore tried to get adopted. Companies could pay to offset their carbon footprint in a cap and trade model and that would go to an exchange he was a founder of. Exactly how does that reduce CO2?
Rising temperatures and rising CO2 are not a threat to human existence, we've existed during ice ages and we've existed during hotter periods. We'll be fine. So the only reason for all this b***s*** is money and all of you climate zealots, many of who I bet were also supporters of Occupy Wall Street, are the exact definition of useful idiots that certain politicians and oligarchs are thrilled to lead around by the nose.
The climate changes, always has, always will. It might have been influenced by dinosaur farts in prehistoric times, humans might be having an impact on it today, don't know, don't care. The world changes, we adapt, always has, always will.
How about you tell me why you think the climate needs to stay exactly one state and one state only, how is that beneficial to the Earth, the animals, the plants or us?
A percentage which is falling daily. Nuclear has a waste problem and a fallout risk. Solar and wind have no such issues. People recognize this and are acting accordingly with their interests. Most would rather live near some solar panels than a fission plant no matter how safe people claim it to be.
I'd rather live near a nuke plant and far, far away from any large grid scale solar installations. I don't want to deal with any of the heavy metals that would leach off of the panels, no matter how slowly they leach.
As for the waste problem with nuclear, it's a solved problem. Unfortunately, like everything else nuclear, including safety measure on newer designs, we aren't allowed to implement the solutions. We have reactor designs that could burn the "spent fuel" for power generation, but since they will produce fissionable "weapons grade" isotopes that can be extracted we can't build them.
Just as a side note - the same thing that makes those isotopes very useful for weapons makes them ideal as a fuel source for a reactor too.
We have reactor designs that can burn the fuel down a such a low radiation risk that a guy could literally shovel accidental fuel spills up into a wheelbarrow with little risk of radiation related health issue... providing he isn't exposed for long times / too often. It's just that those aren't allowed to be built because " nu-cler enremogy is the devil, mmmm-kay" morons.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Older nuclear plants cost more to run, so they need subsidies. The fuel disposal cost is also high (where they burn 5% of the fuel and dump the rest).
I have lots of fun woodworking, but there's a lot of carbon released in getting to those trees, harvesting them, transporting them, and turning them into something you can build something out of. They don't float 'em down a river to a water powered sawmill anymore, and only hobbyists air dry or solar kiln the boards.
Nuclear power, so safe no one will insure it. Wait...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Warmer climate means crazier weather including more intensive hurricanes and tornadoes. Just because you are an as well doesn't care about other people, doesn't mean other people don't. You also can't easily relocate entire state like Florida especially for the less well off. And while some places may become more habital, many more places will be destroyed. Plant and animal life is hard to adjust to such quick changes.
It remains to be seen whether making fuel with captured CO2 and hydrogen will be economical on a large scale on Earth, but I bet it will have niche uses at least.
But developing this technology for use on Earth may assist future Mars exploration.
Robert Zubrin's "Mars Direct" and related proposals (you don't have to buy into his grand plan to appreciate the value of its components) relies on producing fuel on Mars for return trips, and to power exploratory vehicles, from the carbon dioxide and water that is found there. This would use a nuclear reactor to provide the electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, the first of which would be store cryogenically, the second of which would be converted into methane from the CO2 that makes up most of the Martian atmosphere. which would then also be stored the same way.
Although you can use hydrogen as a rocket fuel directly, it has a couple of big problems - its very low density, and its very low boiling point. It is much harder to store, and to use in a vehicle. The rocket engine performance of methane or propane is quite good and would be much easier to work with.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
You're mistaking the goal here. The goal isn't to produce energy. Although you could use renewable forms of energy to produce the carbon neutral fuel, it would be far more efficient to just use the renewable energy directly.
The goal is to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with the side benefit that you can put the carbon into something usable to offset the cost of doing so.
What's new in this article is that the cost of doing that is a lot lower than originally expected, and with current markets, even profitable.
If each of us planted a tree, it would consume enormous amounts of CO2 over its lifetime, it would produce O2 for us to breathe, and it would look great for many years. Of course this doesn't have the advantage of making some alternative-energy mogul rich.
More people die falling off roofs installing solar than die from anything nuclear on an annual basis.
And no solar installation has rendered a 1000 square mile area permanently uninhabitable. What is your point?
The "fallout risk" is higher in running 1960s-era reactors past their designed lifetime instead of building replacements.
There is no such thing as an industrial scale fission reactor without the risk of contamination. No new reactor designs have eliminated this failure mode. In fact no theoretical fission reactor designs have eliminated the risk either. It's the fatal flaw in the technology and its what scares people. Yes people overreact about it but that should surprise no one since people aren't rational animals. Until we solve that problem (along with the waste problem) nuclear fission is probably not going to become a bigger percentage of our energy portfolio than it already is.
So why don't we make it easier to build replacements that have vastly improved safety systems?
Because we still haven't eliminated the risk of large scale radiation contamination nor have we solved the waste disposal problem. Yes there are better designs out there. No they haven't solved the problem and it's obvious that people are not comfortable with that fact.
History suggests that those 1960s era nuclear plants were not so safe... And back then there was no plan for dealing with waste, it was something we (as in people living in 2020) were supposed to have solved with magic new technology.
Perhaps there is a reason why nuclear turned out to be expensive.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The science is interesting on how they made changes to the capture device to make it more efficient. There are too many assumptions in the study. A big one of them is how much profit can be generated from creating synthetic oil from combining captured CO2 with H to create it. The previous study that is referenced where it was $1000 per ton was storing the CO2 after capture which made it more expensive.
I would prefer the raw numbers of how much it costs to go from Air to CO2 as a raw product. Then go about the costs and profits of what can be created or how expensive it would be to store the CO2.
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
And back then there was no plan for dealing with waste, it was something we (as in people living in 2020) were supposed to have solved with magic new technology.
We do have new technology that can deal with the waste. Politics is the reason we aren't dealing with it, not science.
By "have" you mean "built some experimental reactors that broke in interesting and expensive ways", which isn't a great pitch to investors.
The bottom line is you have to explain why nuclear is better than renewables and storage, and it just isn't. It would have to be a lot cheaper and you would have to demonstrate a working system to handle the waste and a way for it all to be profitable and explain why all that hassle is preferable to just building wind turbines.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Climate change denialism may be a rejection of science but that hardly makes ANYTHING under the environment and climate science umbrella "solid" science. Solid science gives accurate answers to 9 decimal places each and every time. Climate science models don't even give consistent accurate results or even agree on outcomes. Just because this science is our best guess doesn't mean our confidence level in it should be high. And really, I know the issue has gotten overly politicized so views are extreme but this particular wing of science and those who support it have been preaching various flavors of doom and gloom for decades to get funding and while the environmental movement is going strong the doom and gloom scenarios thus far have never come to pass.
I'd rather live near a nuke plant and far, far away from any large grid scale solar installations. I don't want to deal with any of the heavy metals that would leach off of the panels, no matter how slowly they leach.
This paper simulates leaching in a landfill by crushing the panel and running an acidic solution over it. When they did that, they found the leachate to be far over the federal limits for heavy metal content. But when it wasn't acidic, there was minimal contamination.
Given that large grid scale solar installations aren't a) crushed and b) having acidic fluid run over them continuously, I think you can stop worrying about leachate.
By all means, avoid living near a solar panel recycling or disposal facility. But also don't live near a facility that makes or disposes of any other electronics, because you'll have the same issue.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
In addition, logging does a ton of soil disruption, and there's a lot of carbon sequestered in the soil. As the soil is churned as new plant growth happens, a lot of carbon gets released. If the plants that re-grow are trees, over a century they'll suck a lot of that back out of the air. But if they aren't they won't ever have the biomass available to store that carbon.
So it's not only the carbon used to harvest, ship and process the trees, it's the soil carbon released too. Not a lot of people really grasp how much carbon isn't in the air, and is instead in water, soil, and rock.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
"many of who I bet were also supporters of Occupy Wall Street"
.001%, by all means, keep paying me interest, having to borrow it back, and paying interest to me on that interest in a massive debt cycle while being too dumb to realize you outnumber me a 1000-to-1 and could erase that debt without impacting any significant number of people negatively. If you aren't in the 0.001% you must have somehow been duped into looking out for someone elses self interest. Here is a hint, if you and a thousand of your friends find yourselfs picking cotton, kill the guy with the whip, don't give two shits about his investment and plight, trust me it is the right plan.
Okay, you had to me here. This, the complaint about wealth redistribution... the only reason to be opposed to these things if you are in the tiny fraction hoarding wealth at the expense of everyone else. I'd be all for it as well if I were one of the top
The main advantage to nuclear power is consistency. Obviously, various forms of energy storage reduce that problem for things like wind and solar. The difference will almost certainly reach a point where it's small enough that it doesn't matter for ordinary household electricity, but it will never be zero. Nuclear reactors will most likely also have the advantage of size and portability in certain situations, but those will be specific niches, like large ships and spacecraft.
Don't get me wrong, I'm completely in favor of using as much solar and wind power as we can. But nuclear reactors can be much better than they were the 1970s. Of course, I still haven't given up on fusion reactors, so what do I know.
Well I don't know about you but for the past 35 years I've heard almost nothing about nuclear except captain plant massive lakes of glowing yellow ooze and how it is going to kill you. Nuclear has a serious PR problem.
Given that large grid scale solar installations aren't a) crushed and b) having acidic fluid run over them continuously, I think you can stop worrying about leachate.
Yeah, it's not like there is a source of carbonic / sulfuric ( if there is any kind of volcanic aerosols in the air at the time) acid falling from the sky onto the panels occasionally.
Just because the leaching is slow, doesn't mean that the metals won't build up over time. If we are lucky the soils will filter them out ( and become contaminated ), if we aren't so lucky we face the danger of heavy metal poisoning of underground water reservoirs over time.
Just like "who cares about CO2 levels 100 years from now" came back to bite us in the ass, "who cares about heavy metals in water reservoirs 100 years from now" will also bite the poor bastards living at the time right in the ass.
If I get heavy metal buildups I want it to be because I am doing something fun with heavy metals, not just because I live near a solar farm and increase the environmental concentration by a few PPM in the essentials for living.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
"lternatively, we have some temporary subsidies on a clean form of energy that will become the cheapest form of generation ever (cheaper than subsidised coal) within a few decades at most."
Oh what is that? It certainly isn't wind or solar at efficiencies they'll see... ever. Also solar is far from clean, just because it doesn't dump CO2 into the air doesn't make the manufacturing and composition of the panels even close to okay.
Logging isn't actually a significant problem. Loggers plant new trees. The reason the rainforests are depeleting on the large scale is actually the millions of poor people who live in places with rainforest attempt to scrape some kind of a living off the land.
Sure, but they do plant trees to replace them. The big issue is the rain forest and most of that is being chopped down by the locals not loggers.
Google Baotou Lake. It's a byproduct of solar panel and wind turbine production.
This is all true. Keep in mind that the pilot plant is running in British Columbia, where cheap carbon neutral power is available from hydroelectric sources. As long as you have to get the CO2 out of the atmosphere, the news about the economics is good. But it is probably better to use the electricity directly for end uses than to have to chase all the CO2 around afterwards.
This does open up some interesting markets for locations that have abundant power available. If some sort of global payment system could compensate the people running the scrubbers, people could burn fossil fuels wherever they want and send the check for cleanup to Canada. Of course, increased hydro power demand will be met by Indians (First Nation) by cries of "Muh fish!"
Have gnu, will travel.
Maybe - there's an awful lot of illegal logging in rainforests though - and I really doubt those loggers replant.
Plus, much (most?) of the tree is routinely thrown away - only the trunk and possibly major limbs become logs.
And even if you do replant - it will take many decades for the new tree to sequester as much carbon as was released in the harvesting and micro-ecological aftermath.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
> Loggers plant new trees
Yep, and in a few decades or centuries those new trees will support an ecosystem to rival the one that collapsed with the original tree. Doesn't do us much good today though. Especially if the new trees are harvested before they ever rival the original. Not to mention places like Oregon, where aggressive logging is done in a "checkerboard" pattern which is actually devastating to the non-logged squares as well - with the devastated regions being massive incubators for fungi and microbes that then attack the surrounding multi-century old trees that are hard-pressed to fight off such an aggressive attack.
But yes, slash-and-burn is a problem - as is small time and illegal logging: there's a lot of logging that doesn't get done by respectable, professional loggers in it for the long term - especially in rainforests.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
including more intensive hurricanes and tornadoes
Funny that isn't the conclusion from NOAA.
In summary, neither our model projections for the 21st century nor our analyses of trends in Atlantic hurricane and tropical storm counts over the past 120+ yr support the notion that greenhouse gas-induced warming leads to large increases in either tropical storm or overall hurricane numbers in the Atlantic. While one of our modeling studies projects a large (~100%) increase in Atlantic category 4-5 hurricanes over the 21st century, we estimate that such an increase would not be detectable until the latter half of the century, and we still have only low confidence that such an increase will occur in the Atlantic basin, based on an updated survey of subsequent modeling studies by our and other groups.
Therefore, we conclude that despite statistical correlations between SST and Atlantic hurricane activity in recent decades, it is premature to conclude that human activity–and particularly greenhouse warming–has already caused a detectable change in Atlantic hurricane activity. (“Detectable” here means the change is large enough to be distinguishable from the variability due to natural causes.) However, human activity may have already caused some some changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observation limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).
But hey, what does NOAA know about climate science.
Nuclear power, so safe no one will insure it. Wait...
Safe? Man safety has nothing to do why no one will insure it. Nuclear is the single safest form of power we statistically have. The insurance comes in the form of the same risk that you perceive along with the cost that all those pesky people tend to live and therefor cost money.
History suggests that those 1960s era nuclear plants were not so safe...
History suggests every chemical and industrial process was not so safe. The entire process and generation industry made major safety strides without a change in cost, and many of them are far more complicated and far more dangerous than a simple nuclear reactor.
Perhaps there is a reason why nuclear turned out to be expensive.
Yep. Fear leading to government involvement leading to unmanageable bureaucracy made it expensive. Not much has changed in the designs other than that they are now inherently far safer and the residual risk is managed by far better safety systems.
Anecdote: I once held a $100000 piece of paper in my hand. I assume all the value was in the actual paper and the golden toner used to print on it because god knows I ordered the exact same identical model numbers of all components safety system for another project (only more of them) without the piece of paper that said Nuclear 1E and it came in significantly cheaper. I do wonder if maybe it cost a lot of money to print those two letters, or maybe the signature at the bottom was in unicorn blood. Oh yeah and we had to then pay some expensive regulators to come and look at the expensive piece of paper I assume to take a DNA sample of that unicorn blood.
Horrific as it is, it sounds like it's most a byproduct of neodymium production. While that's obviously used in electric cars and wind turbines, I'm pretty sure you'll also find it in many coal and nuclear plants.
While the Mountain Pass Mine in California doesn't have a stellar environmental track record, it does prove that you can extract rare earths with a lot less impact than the chinese operation. The bigger issue is that we treat these things as commodities without regard to the external costs that go into producing them. We need a "blood diamond" type movement for rare earths to put more pressure on consumers to demand better from their electronics providers
You know, everyone seems to be such gods-be-damned fanboys about GMO crops, so how about we get these companies to develop a plant whose sole purpose is two-fold: (1) Grow and spread like weeds, and (2) Suck up and sequester CO2, and return us nice clean O2?
The study concludes it would cost between $94 and $232 per ton of captured carbon dioxide.
Can this be done at home and used to recharge my SodaStream carbonators? Will I need an adapter? How many 14.5 oz carbonators will I need to hold one ton of CO2?
That's much less than the price of the sugar needed to make the booze. Vodka isn't expensive...what are you Finnish?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm wondering what could possibly make you put a solar panel into landfill instead of recycling the glass, silver and silicon. It's still worth money even when it's totally dead. Oh, and that CdTe panel is a red herring anyway. There's only 5% of them, unless the share dropped again. Tellurium mining simply doesn't scale.
Ezekiel 23:20
Basically it's a question of storage, if we were able to efficiently store electricity, we could let nuclear/hydro plants run at full output, and store excess -- rather than worry about overloading the grid, and having to adjust output accordingly.
On an aside, Bonneville dam in OR (and Grand Coulee in central WA i'd presume), can produce so much electricity they wind up paying other producers to stop generation in order to prevent overloading the grid.
Also AFAIK: Bonneville could produce even more, but not all of the generators were installed/operational.
Doesn't really matter whether it's burnt or allowed to rot (i.e. metabolically "burnt" by fungi) - either way the carbon is released as atmospheric CO2.
Now, if it was made into charcoal instead that would at least reduce the immediate impact - and if the charcoal was then mixed into the soil it would become extremely stable while making the soil richer (don't ask me how that works, but charcoal acts as a sort of "catalyst fertilizer" that doesn't get consumed.) Of course how much additional ecological damage would be done by the mixing?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You missed the part where you are comparing nominal power output and ignoring that a nuclear power plant outputs its nominal power for 95% of the time while solar for 5%.
Nuclear power to expensive, thank a hippie. Nuclear power not safe because we are using designs from 1960 and can't update them? Thank a hippie. Can't move nuclear waste from one site to be reprocessed? Thank a hippie.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Did you miss the part where nuclear reached 100 GW of installed capacity in 1970s and where solar reached the same in the 2010s? Nuclear had a forty year headstart - and forty more years of subsidies of course. "Why not subsidize nuclear power so we can develop the technology until it is cheaper than coal?" Well, what the hell were they doing those forty years? Apparently they should have already reached that point by now. Oh, but they didn't. Are you going to give them forty more years?
They were fighting nuisance lawsuits that stopped/slowed construction.
Research was defunded by politicians wanting to get the votes of "environmentalists".
Various environmentalist leaders now recognize they were wrong in impeding nuclear.
And there is a second benefit you and many others fail to consider. Modern reactor designs do more than produce electricity. They also clean up nuclear waste by consuming some of that old waste as fuel. The benefits of this cleanup need to be part of the calculation.
History suggests that those 1960s era nuclear plants were not so safe
Actually US coal has released more radiation into the environment than US nuclear.
And back then there was no plan for dealing with waste, it was something we (as in people living in 2020) were supposed to have solved with magic new technology.
Its not magic when the scientists understand the process but the engineers have not yet built the machines. By the way, we've built reactors that do consume old nuclear waste as fuel.
Perhaps there is a reason why nuclear turned out to be expensive.
The decades of lawsuits from "environmental" groups, the interference of politicians catering to the "environmentalists"? Some of the environmentalist leaders now admit that this hindrance of nuclear was a mistake, that nuclear is part of the non-fossil fuels solution we need to address global warming.
Don't forget the environmental impact of the batteries that will be needed to store power for when the sun isn't shining, or the wind not blowing (or blowing too hard), or time shifting its use (ex charging the car at night when rates are lower).
You said:
I'd rather live near a nuke plant and far, far away from any large grid scale solar installations. I don't want to deal with any of the heavy metals that would leach off of the panels, no matter how slowly they leach.
When I pointed out how that seems to be an irrational fear that isn't backed up by data, you've now changed to:
Just like "who cares about CO2 levels 100 years from now" came back to bite us in the ass, "who cares about heavy metals in water reservoirs 100 years from now" will also bite the poor bastards living at the time right in the ass.
So you've gone from "solar might be bad for me, I don't want to live near it" to "solar might be bad for someone some time in the future so I don't want to live near it". Do you understand how stupid your argument against solar is in that context?
If you're going to irrationally hate solar, go for it. But don't try to rationalize it. The facts don't match up with your fear.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Maybe - there's an awful lot of illegal logging in rainforests though - and I really doubt those loggers replant.
I think you may be confusing loggers with the farmers and ranchers who are converting rainforest to agricultural lands.
No, the irrational one here is you:
You can't seem to grasp the concept that even at PPM heavy metals build up in bio-systems. Hence why living near a coal plant is bad, one of the many reasons actually.
You also can't seem to grasp that 1: ignoring the problems won't make them go away, 2: the problems can affect an area now AND become worse over time, and 3: how to construct / deconstruct an actual argument.
And there is no "solar might be bad" for those that live near extremely large installations, it is and will be. It's simple chemistry. Whether steps can be taken ( or even will be at first, after all they cost money ) to mitigate this is yet to be seen.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
Got any other imaginary scary things about solar you'd like to make up? The computer you are using to type this drivel has the same dangerous stuff in it that your strawman argument has.
Got any degrees that even remotely touch on basic chemistry or geology?
My computer isn't getting rained on with and saturated with weak carbonic and sulfuric acid to mobilize those heavy metals. I don't know about you, but I treat my electronics better than that. Well, yours seems to need to be drool-proofed, so maybe it's not so bad if it gets a little extra wet. Hell maybe it would wash some if the drool away.
QED it isn't a solved problem.
Yes it is. Saying it isn't a solved problem is like saying sewing up a knife wound isn't a solved problem because the doctors weren't allowed to perform the surgury that they know how to do.
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
And there is no "solar might be bad" for those that live near extremely large installations, it is and will be.
If it is, you've got proof. Show me the research.
I took the time to show you some research that found that the amount of heavy metals leached from panels are negligible unless you crush them and continuously run an acidic solution over them. Your trite response of "omg, acid rain" is stupid, and I assume you know that.
If you've got evidence, present it. Otherwise you're the irrational one. That is pretty much the definition of believing something without evidence.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
a nuclear power plant outputs its nominal power for 95% of the time while solar for 5%.
No, they really don't.
Ezekiel 23:20
Did you miss the bit where installed capacity is not the same as generated power?
Given the 30% annual solar growth, considering the average generation only makes it 45 years of headstart instead of 40. Practically the same thing.
Ezekiel 23:20
QED it isn't a solved problem.
That's a very strange usage of the abbreviation.
Ezekiel 23:20
I've googled it. It has apparently nothing at all to do with solar power, or even wind power with induction generators. It does have a lot to do with Chinese carelessness, though.
Ezekiel 23:20
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, taking all of the factors that you mentioned into play, a 2012 Nissan Leaf emits 226 grams of CO2 per mile in my zip code. Average emissions are 381 grams of CO2 per mile in my zip code.
Does that take into account that the Nissan Leaf is a small car, where most people drive bigger cars?
Climate change is solid science, and the way to stop it in this case is tech.
Climate change denialism is a rejection of science, in favor of greed.
Determining a way for humans to survive it's own self created disasters is not "eco-fascist" nor propaganda.
If it's solid science, why do they keep calling it a consensus? They can't prove CO2 has anything to do with warming and you know it, or should. I can show by showing you the historical records that CO2 follows warming, doesn't cause it. That's because of increased biological activity. This isn't hard.
Greed is charging for "carbon credits" and walking away with the money, which is exactly what they're doing. It's a scam.
|But, the way science works is that whatever the best theory we have at the moment has to be our working hypothesis.
Sure, climate science by the very nature of what is being studied is overly complex and chaotic, and will probably never approach 'real' physics levels of certainty.
But if the best theory we have at this time says we are fucked, then we should dedicate a lot of brainpower and resources to slightly unfuck ourselves.
Sure! Also give some resources to people investigating if we really are as fucked as the prevailing theories predict, just in case.
But unless someone comes up with better, more consistent models of climate fuckery, we should believe the 'mainstream' science, and take it as truth.
> Nuclear has a waste problem and a fallout risk This is correct, but as many others pointed out: There is no continuous research to solve (or improve) this nuclear waste problem. For example, What happened to this research that proposed using Lasers to transmute nuclear waste? https://www.newscientist.com/a... Only Europe followed this research: https://eli-laser.eu/
I am pretty sure the atmosphere will move the high CO2 into the low atmosphere.
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You mean the republicans "Lets call it climate change as it is less scary then global warming"?
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
I'd rather live near a nuke plant and far, far away from any large grid scale solar installations. I don't want to deal with any of the heavy metals that would leach off of the panels, no matter how slowly they leach.
That's because you're ignorant at best, but more likely being willfully disingenuous. A nuke plant is jam-packed full of heavy metals, and without continual maintenance they will leach out. However, solar panels which are sold in the developed world these days are required not to leach toxics even if landfilled. The only metals they'll shed in any notable quantity come from their Aluminum frames, and the hardware they're mounted with.
As for the waste problem with nuclear, it's a solved problem.
Really? Why is so much of it sitting around in situations similar and/or identical to Fukushima's failed spent fuel storage, then?
We have reactor designs that can burn the fuel down a such a low radiation risk that a guy could literally shovel accidental fuel spills up into a wheelbarrow with little risk of radiation related health issue... providing he isn't exposed for long times / too often. It's just that those aren't allowed to be built because " nu-cler enremogy is the devil, mmmm-kay" morons.
Nobody is building them because they're expensive to build, and expensive and dangerous to operate.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Saying it isn't a solved problem is like saying sewing up a knife wound isn't a solved problem because the doctors weren't allowed to perform the surgury that they know how to do.
Ask the guy dying from the knife wound whether he cares if the problem goes unsolved for technical, logistic, or political reasons. Wait a few hours, and see how relevant it was to him which of those it was.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The big issue is the rain forest and most of that is being chopped down by the locals not loggers.
Taken in the context of discussing CO2, everything you said is wrong.
Rainforests sequester almost no carbon. Their job is to regulate climate, filter air, and hold down soil.
When loggers harvest trees, they clear-cut diverse groups of trees (except in the redwoods, which tend to only have the occasional bay laurel mixed in) and replant monocultures, or near-monocultures intended to produce a profitable crop as rapidly as possible. However, mature forests sequester more CO2 than developing ones. Repeated timber harvests keep biomass low.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not really, most people side with rich people because they believe maybe one day they will win the lottery and be rich too.
People have also been sold a line of bullshit about how hard work is rewarded. If that were true, Africa would be full of female billionaires. The single strongest correlation with financial success is the economic status of your parents. As it turns out, opportunity is the single most important factor, far beyond how much work you're willing or able to do. But as long as people believe that it's their fault if they're not wildly successful, they'll support the system that's taking advantage of them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
CO2 is relatively easy to get rid of, but we have pollution, which is impacting everybody's health, to deal with, and it is much harder to get rid of.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Sigh... Another case of linking citation with cherry picking your own. Here's the complete NOAA summary. Note that, yes, they do not indeed yet observe detectable changes in ATLANTIC while seeing an emerging trend in PACIFIC. But nowhere in this article refute the link between global warming and tropical cyclones globally.
"Sea level rise–which very likely has a substantial human contribution to the global mean observed rise according to IPCC AR5–should be causing higher storm surge levels for tropical cyclones that do occur, all else assumed equal.
Tropical cyclone rainfall rates will likely increase in the future due to anthropogenic warming and accompanying increase in atmospheric moisture content. Models project an increase on the order of 10-15% for rainfall rates averaged within about 100 km of the storm for a 2 degree Celsius global warming scenario.
Tropical cyclone intensities globally will likely increase on average (by 1 to 10% according to model projections for a 2 degree Celsius global warming). This change would imply an even larger percentage increase in the destructive potential per storm, assuming no reduction in storm size.
There are better than even odds that anthropogenic warming over the next century will lead to an increase in the occurrence of very intense tropical cyclones globally–an increase that would be substantially larger in percentage terms than the 1-10% increase in the average storm intensity. This increase in intense storm occurrence is projected despite a likely decrease (or little change) in the global numbers of all tropical cyclones. However, there is at present only low confidence that such an increase in very intense storms will occur in the Atlantic basin.
In terms of detection and attribution, much less is known about hurricane/tropical cyclone activity changes, compared to global temperature. In the northwest Pacific basin, there is emerging evidence for a detectable poleward shift in the latitude of maximum intensity of tropical cyclones, with a tentative link to anthropogenic warming. In the Atlantic, it is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on hurricane activity. Reduced aerosol forcing since the 1970s probably contributed to the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since then, but the amount of contribution, relative to natural variability, remains uncertain. Human activities may have already caused other changes in tropical cyclone activity that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of these changes compared to estimated natural variability, or due to observational limitations."
The problem with nuclear is 100% perception. I think it is really a missed opportunity to not advance our nuclear technology. Somehow I see some textbook in the future and some child asking about the dark ages (sorry, sort of pun) of nuclear technology where little if any advancements were made, and the teacher responds that they were very very afraid, because they convinced themselves to be.
From what I've heard 99% of nuclear waste is things like gloves, dirt, whatever, and various other non-core materials that are slightly radioactive, have a huge half-life (i.e. they will be like that more less forever), but are only slightly more dangerous to handle than bananas... Of the very small amount of stuff that is left over (i.e. core and coolent like materials), it falls into two categories. The REALLY dangerous stuff that'll kill you from exposure, however it's half-life is extremely short (because it is decaying so fast to throw off so much radiation), so the storage isn't as big of a deal really, other than handling. The second category is the more problematic, in that it is radioactive to be pretty dangerous with any sort of long exposure, but isn't radioactive enough that it still has a pretty long half-life so it is going to be around for a very long time. Trying to do anything for a very long time is pretty hard. However again, from my understanding the reason it is produced like that is that we're using old designs, largely to produce weapons. Presumably in a newer design that same material would be consumed to the point where there is nothing left but a little nub of truly dangerous stuff, but which would dissipate on it's own in the short term so long as it is stored and handled properly.
Given that large grid scale solar installations aren't a) crushed and b) having acidic fluid run over them continuously, I think you can stop worrying about leachate.
Yeah, it's not like there is a source of carbonic / sulfuric ( if there is any kind of volcanic aerosols in the air at the time) acid falling from the sky onto the panels occasionally.
I note that you conveniently left out the crushing part. When the panels are intact, all that stuff is hidden behind glass. When panels break, they are taken out of service and replaced because otherwise, you lose generating capacity. HTH, HAND!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"