Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!

[krpeters]

Since we're talking about global warming *and* solar power... let's take it to the next level. Parabolic Space Mirrors. Too cold for you in New Hampshire? *sizzle* Just bake the whole state using a 100-mile wide orbiting mirror. Instant weather control too, fry those clouds as they come in. You might not want to aim one at the eye of a hurricane, though.

Getting back to reality... the most readily available alternative energy source is CONSERVATION. It's a whole lot easier to cut our energy use by 20% (just stop buying SUVs!) than it is to increase the supply by 20%.

[atul]

I've for some time liked to think the relation between real world and economics as a relation between chaotic system and an attempt to model it through linearization. Basically, you take the local (current) trend, and assume it is going to last for a while, optimize on that assumption, and after a short while look where you are and repeat. The problem with this is that you might end up staying in the locally highest hill and miss the mountain range just a short way away.

What has that to do with anything? Basically, using fossil fuels is the current local optimum, despite the fact that it might do bad stuff to environment and won't last anyway. Getting rid of even a portion of fossil fuels won't happen with anyone who is looking on quarterly profits at helm. Because for accountants the trinity of coal, oil and natural gas is the way to go for now.

Can't say, though, that the proposed options would sound workable.

For instance, centralized/distributed sun and wind. It's never clear which the PV/wind advocates advocate. Either it's distributed and everywhere, with everyone making their own electricity and backed up by huge transmission grid getting juice from somewhere else, or then it's large plants in uninhabited lands supplying electricity to far away places. The problem with large grids isn't just losses to resistance in wires (which you could theoretically avoid by using fictional room-temperature superconductors), but also the fact that if you build huge network, you start getting issues with inductance and general network stability. There's a very good reason for my country having a DC connection only to our eastern neighbour, even if that connection transmits GW-class power.

Solar/wind might get really nice and cheap given time, but I still haven't seen any solution to the problem that when such an intermittent power sources start to contribute more than 10% of total annual electricity, the whole grid will have to start to operate on their terms. Basically after that point there might be times when 100% of current power needs will be supplied by wind... or 0%. And the rest of production must follow.

Big industry's quite keen on this carbon capture and storage. But much of what I've seen has been little but glorified greenwash. For one the scale of the projects are still way too small - several MW projects. And this thing scales much? Also even if the capture part would be possible without expending too much extra energy, the storage part is still unresolved. Geological storage is suitable only in selected locations (old oil fields). Mineral storage is absurd (use a ton of Calcium to store two tons of CO2?) at least where I'm looking at. And dumping it to sea bottom and assuming it won't come up doesn't strike me as too good either. Also the fun part is, that every storage option assumes some percentage to be leaking annually. Basically CCS isn't a way to mitigate CO2-emissions, but a way to _delay_ them. Talk about future generations.

Nuclear gets the political opposition from the other competitors across the board. It should be seen as something that compliments other CO2-light options, not as a horror flick waiting to happen. Even waste is a more political problem than technical one (hint: US is not nearly most advanced nation in resolving the waste issue). Problem are also the advocates bashing regulations: the regulation in such a high-risk/low probability field are important and everyone's friend. At least when done correctly, and followed also.

Anyway, no silver bullet for providing energy, your stance towards climate change non-withstanding. Diversifying energy base won't give profits next year, but anyone who figures the stuff out and has muscle to pull it through will probably remembered as a visionaire.

My few eurocent rant.

[Omnirizon]

agree and am responding to everything you've said atul, i just don't want to quote it because it is so long

there is a sociologist here at my university studying the history of oil use. others have done the same, such as Timothy Mitchell from your side of the pond.

the most interesting thing is the degree to which early oil and automobile companies had to _create_ an oil economy, it was by no means the natural or even the best choice, it was simply the most profitable one. Electric automobiles and cars were actually the norm as the auto was being invented in the late 19th century. it was only due to collaborative efforts between oil and auto that killed the electric car and created the gas powered ones.

it gets deeper than that even. some historians recount the degree to which oil and auto then had a strong influence on the creation of our modern period's infrastructure in america; the creation of streets and suburbs over rail and public transportation. all moves designed to create a dependency on oil and the auto.

in the late 20th century, further efforts to create electric cars were then, literally, shredded by oil and auto.

[Illuminated One]

Huh, where did they get their energy from?
Even now batteries can't compete with gas. And a battery that is recharged often will get worse.
Back then they didn't even have electric light everywhere afaik.

I think it's mostly due to practical reason that oil was adapted. Slow cars with very limited range vs. fast cars with good range.

[atul]

Originally petroleum was just a toxic waste by-product from extracting "better" oil qualities from the stuff you pump out of ground. So there was a lot of incentive to turn it into something useful.

But the electric cars used to outperform petrol cars. Basically, who would be mad enough to hop onto an experimental device using highly flammable fuel that you could easily crash? Madness, I tell you. I've heard the version that it was the mass production that finally settled the fight between petrol and alternatives, but I could be wrong. Anyway electric network was in operation way before gas station networks were built.

I'm not too keen on all the conspiracy stuff with big oil vs public transportation, but it has happened that perfectly viable public transportation has been trashed in favour of cars, giving rise to claims that public transportation isn't viable in smaller communities. Resident Finns on the forum might want to check out Rovaniemi's history, I can't speak for other countries. But, thread carefully on the conspiracy front, it's easy to classify people a bit strange in the head if they go lone gunmen a lot.

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Huh, where did they get their energy from?
Even now batteries can't compete with gas. And a battery that is recharged often will get worse.
Back then they didn't even have electric light everywhere afaik.

I think it's mostly due to practical reason that oil was adapted. Slow cars with very limited range vs. fast cars with good range.

this is what the oil and auto want you to believe. although, it is actually very humanly natural to think in terms of technological determinism.

simply google "early electric cars" or better yet, if you have a university proxy to journal archives like JSTOR, you can read about the history of the car. further, if you have a university library with archived magazines from the late 19th century, you can see the trajectory of development of the car in the magazines and see the kind of propaganda adds ran by oil and auto. if you want to look up the work of Dan Lord, he is compiling and writing on all these things.

there is no practical reason to adopt oil, it was done simply for capitalistic motives. I'm not even so sure speed and range were practical benefits of oil at the time. they are today only due to the amount of investment put in this techonology. But even if it was, that may be why there was so much influence to create sprawling cities with suburbs and no mass trans or rail; this was needed to justify the rational for using oil.

also, if you read on the history of the car, you will see that suitable batteries for it had been developed a century earlier. if we had stuck with battery technology, rather than switching to internal combustion, then battery and electric engine technology would far surpass the alternatives now.

electricity and most of its production methods are too liquid. oil is something that can be easily controlled.

[Edi]

No easy solutions and none that involve a painless outcome.
As far as the global warming discussion itself goes, here is something I think many people participating in this thread would benefit from reading:

Link

It addresses numerous issues regarding global warming, including a discussion of the science and pseudoscience related to it and many other things. It's written by a professor of geology from the University of Wisconsin and his resume can be found here. So we can trust this guy to know what he is talking about regarding this issue, as it pertains to his field of expertise in several ways, as climate is a big factor in many geological areas.

Whether you agree with him is immaterial, but for those who are interested, it could be educational. His other science/pseudoscience pages are also good reading. Often for laughs as much as for anything else.

[licker]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

simply google "early electric cars" or better yet, if you have a university proxy to journal archives like JSTOR, you can read about the history of the car. further, if you have a university library with archived magazines from the late 19th century, you can see the trajectory of development of the car in the magazines and see the kind of propaganda adds ran by oil and auto. if you want to look up the work of Dan Lord, he is compiling and writing on all these things.

Done, but what propaganda are you talking about? Or is any advertising propaganda?

In any case, there were electric cars competing with their gasoline based cousins, but ultimately the technological pace of the internal combustion engine left battery technology behind (as well as steam technology), and as Ford started his mass production lines there was only one vehicle type customers were interested in.

Moving ahead a century there are clearly reasons to prefer electric (or other alternative) vehicles over their ICE counterparts, and few would disagree that the auto manufacturers have done all that they can to keep from having to actually innovate until the last decade.

It should be noted as well that battery powered vehicles have been largely 'inferior' (in terms of power, distance, and price) to ICE. This is not particularly surprising as there was more research and development being done for the ICE chassis' rather than a systematic drive to create 'better' electric cars. We are fortunately in a different mind set today, and there is more interest (which means more funding) to explore alternatives.

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by licker

Done, but what propaganda are you talking about? Or is any advertising propaganda?

In any case, there were electric cars competing with their gasoline based cousins, but ultimately the technological pace of the internal combustion engine left battery technology behind (as well as steam technology), and as Ford started his mass production lines there was only one vehicle type customers were interested in.

Moving ahead a century there are clearly reasons to prefer electric (or other alternative) vehicles over their ICE counterparts, and few would disagree that the auto manufacturers have done all that they can to keep from having to actually innovate until the last decade.

It should be noted as well that battery powered vehicles have been largely 'inferior' (in terms of power, distance, and price) to ICE. This is not particularly surprising as there was more research and development being done for the ICE chassis' rather than a systematic drive to create 'better' electric cars. We are fortunately in a different mind set today, and there is more interest (which means more funding) to explore alternatives.

all advertising is scandalous, of course.

[MaxWilson]

Interesting link, Edi. I'm disappointed that he spends so much time arguing with a straw man: people who think carbon dioxide has zero effect on the climate. He doesn't actually spend any time (in the first third, which is where I stopped) actually defending climatology predictions in any quantitative way, and of course that's where all the real disagreements lie.

"He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense."

In other words, Dutch appears to be arguing with the kooks (who think that "global warming" doesn't exist and carbon dioxide doesn't affect climate at all--do such people even exist?) and not with the people who feel that climatology, particularly the popularized version which includes famines, mass migrations and disappearing continents by 2050, is unsound. What would it take to disprove my skepticism? It would help if AGW advocates would actually honestly answer critiques instead of dodging or condescending, but my doubts would be irrefutably laid to rest if the other system inputs (solar energy) could be kept constant or decreased while CO2 rose, and temperature continued to rise as climate models predict[1]. Do that for, say, ten years, and show a consistent temperature rise, and I'll call the climate models validated. What we have so far looks more like over-fitting the data, to use the machine-learning term.

-Max

Edit: [1] Specifically, if I get to choose the solar inputs and other inputs, you get to choose the CO2 levels, at any level which makes the model still predict a temperature rise. In this case, "I" is obviously not MaxWilson but a generic, skeptic "red force." "You" is also a generic, theory-defending "blue force."