Imagining
Imagine a world where 70% of the 7.4 billion population lives in its developing countries. Imagine a world where more than 70% of the population is considered to be of low income. Imagine a world where, in one continent alone, most of that continent’s 1.2 billion population live in its underdeveloped nations. Now imagine raising the living standard of all these people to first world standards. Imagine how much energy it would take to provide them just the basics, like sufficient food, housing, healthcare, clean running water, indoor plumbing, sewage disposal, … Imagine how much more burning of fossil fuels would be required to provide enough energy for these basics. Twice as much as now? More than twice?
Imagine, too, that the planet where all these 7.4 billion people live is in the midst of a global warming crisis that is raising temperatures to the point that more and more people needed air conditioning in order to cope with the increased temperatures, and that the 30% more energy needed for the additional cooling came from burning fossil fuels; the single greatest cause of global warming. Any additional burning of fossil fuels will increase the rate of global warming, which will further reduce crop production; will further reduce the availability of fresh water; will further increase temperatures — making more and more places uninhabitable; will further increase suffering and deaths worldwide. Burning more fossil fuels to compensate for the damage done from burning fossil fuels isn’t a viable option. Wouldn’t it be far better to spend our a major portion of our wealth on efforts to develop alternative energies?
Over the past 150 years, the first world nations, and of late China, produced most of the greenhouse gases now causing global warming. Do these nations have a special responsibility to house, feed, and clothe those displaced by global warming? A responsibility to find enough sources of alternative energy (renewable energy sources that don’t produce carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gasses that contribute to anthropogenic climate change) to raise the living standard of 5 billion?
What is now known as alternative energy was the biggie of energy sources before the discovery of fossil fuels. Alternative energy never really went away. Of late, we’ve seen a lot of innovation. The water wheels of yesteryear morphed into huge hydroelectric dams. Europe’s wind mills almost went away, but have come back as 90 meter wind turbines. Solar (photovoltaic) cells, known about since the 19th century, have really came along with the development of, and advances made in, semiconductors. Of late, much of the advances in alternative energy have been made in harvesting solar energy (wind and wave are solar energy, too). Hydrogen fuel cell technology seems poised for take-off. Is there enough alternative energy? These guys https://www.rethinkx.com/energy think so. So do a lot of others.
There’s still a lot of room for innovation, for new thinking. First world nations need to redouble their efforts to get off fossil fuels. A really good start would be to divert subsidies now being given to the fossil fuel industry. According to The Environmental and Energy Study Institute https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs
But rather than being phased out, fossil fuel subsidies are actually increasing. The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) report estimates 6.5 percent of global GDP ($5.2 trillion) was spent on fossil fuel subsidies (including negative externalities) in 2017, a half trillion dollar increase since 2015. The largest subsidizers are China ($1.4 trillion in 2015), the United States ($649 billion) and Russia ($551 billion). According to the IMF, “fossil fuels account for 85 percent of all global subsidies,” and reducing these subsidies “would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28 percent and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46 percent, and increased government revenue by 3.8 percent of GDP.” An Overseas Development Institute study found that subsidies for coal-fired power increased almost three-fold, to $47.3 billion per year, from 2014 to 2017.
Speaking to the power of lobbying, ownership by politicians, and ownership of politicians; might say. It’s not like the fossil fuel industry has options; this is their last chance to sell the stuff. The alternative/sustainable folks need to up their game. Imagine if $3.2 trillion had instead been spent on developing alternative energy in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
Big steps are being made in energy storage; especially conceptually. Producing hydrogen from water using solar or wind power would be a great way of storing energy, be a great battery. With alternatives, batteries are key. Batteries of all forms, including chemical, mechanical, hydrogen, … are rapidly advancing. All good.
There is still a lot of room for innovation on the usage end. Improved efficiency, new ways of doing things, new ways of thinking. Old ways, too. Ever heard of Yakhchāl, circa 400 BCE? Some modern day scientists have, and are having a blast with it.
Simple common sense that will require a lot of innovation. And that will require a lot of cash. Ending subsidies to the fossil fuel industry will free up fiscal space dramatically. The weak point will be politics. Getting enough majority power is required and that’s a long way from reality right now. Explicitly targeting the fossil fuel hydra network, which is the most powerful hydra of them all, will take an iron will.
well, we could start by drastically reducing the number of miles we drive.
and the size of the cars we drive them in.
a few other simple steps that would not reduce reasonable standard of living might get us a long way toward “sustainable” (not zero) carbon dioxide emission.
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THIS HOT TOPIC
Irrefutable proof of global warming: Earth’s atmospheric temperature is already high enough to melt the permafrost (part of year freezing, part melting, more melting than freezing) without further human help. The permafrost (I’m not exactly sure what that is) reportedly contains twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere now (may not be all in gas form but believe will all end up in gas form eventually: one and a half trillion tons to add to 750 billion tons now). The more it melts, the more carbon dioxide is released, the hotter it gets, the more it melts, etc.: more than enough to eventually turn the earth into a pole to pole swamp — the normal condition of the earth for the majority of the last 500 million years (see video).
https://www.pbs.org/video/polar-extremes-mfaum5/
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At first (last year) I thought the only way out was for all electric output to go nuclear — that was the physics of course; not the politics, good luck. My reasoning was that in 100 years the human population would need 10X more electricity — and I couldn’t see doing all that with windmills and photovoltaic).
I’m figuring thermonuclear to come along in about 50 years — for however that feeds into all of this. The technological way is well charted but it will take tremendous R&D working out. (see The Future of Fusion Energy by Ian Kershaw — must be good; I could only read about half of it). https://www.amazon.com/Future-Fusion-Energy-Popular-Science-ebook-dp-B07MYTCRNS/dp/B07MYTCRNS/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=
Then, I came upon carbon capture technology.
[cut-and-paste]
Carbon capture technology: practicably end global warming – even reverse it — for 5% of GDP with a reasonably lo-tech process – once the price to gets down to $100 a ton?
According to a Businessweek article, worldwide we add 34 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. Said article says Squamish Engineering, in B.C., Canada expects to launch a plant that will remove a million tons a year, located somewhere in the Permian Basin in Texas. Squamish says it can do this for $200 a ton.
My back-of-the-envelope calculates that, when the price reaches $100 a ton, then, worldwide we can keep cool for $3.4 trillion a year – less than 5% of world GDP. US kick-in about one trillion – out of $20 trillion GDP. That figure would grow as US economy grows – but: for every trillion of growth only additional $50 billion would go for removal, leaving us $950 billion ahead: set for the life of the planet. (closest link I could find) https://www.magzter.com/article/Business/Bloomberg-Businessweek/A-Big-Step-for-the-Sky-Vacuums
[snip]
Snag: where to put all the carbon we capture.
If we are putting 34 billion tons or carbon in the air now — could we be doing 340 billion tons a year 100 years from now — if we don’t replace carbon with thermonuclear? 100 years from now hopefully earth will be rich enough to go completely thermo. And here comes 1.5 trillion tons from the permafrost.
Better get busy finding room to hide lots of carbon. Did somebody say: The Green New Deal … is not remotely sufficient to stabilize global warming at a non-catastrophic level?
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Where to find or create storage space for many trillion of tons of dry ice (captured CO2) while the world awaits totally nuclear, thermonuclear and renewable energy:
At 100 pounds per cubic foot of dry ice (frozen CO2), a 100 foot X 100 foot X 100 foot block would contain a 100 million pounds, or 50,000 tons. At a cost of $100 a ton to capture CO2 from the atmosphere, it would cost 5 million dollars to capture enough to fill one cube.
15 trillion tons of dry ice would take up the volume of 300,000,000 such cubes (15,000,000,000,000/50,000). At 50 blocks per mile — both width and length — that would come to 120,000 square miles of frozen CO2 (300,000,000/2500). That would fit into a space 3000 miles long and 40 miles wide.
5% of GDP to capture, 5% of GDP to contain = 10% of GDP to keep C02 from turning our world from turning into Venus — while awaiting a completely non-carbon fueled civilization. May have to contain the stuff forever, but shouldn’t cost much.
Possible design: storing dry ice containers at the bottom of the oceans could utilize the massive pressures at that level to hold the containers intact.
AT THIS POINT I WAS PUT WISE THAT “CARBON FIXATION IN BASALT FORMATIONS IS PROBABLY A LOT CHEAPER THAN MAKING DRY ICE.” MY NOTES PROBABLY MORE USEFUL TO THE READER THAN ANY SUMMATION.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-43789527
Turning carbon dioxide into rock – forever
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/underground-injections-turn-carbon-dioxide-stone
What happened next startled the team. After about a year and a half, the pump inside a monitoring well kept breaking down. Frustrated, engineers hauled up the pump and found that it was coated with white and green scale. Tests identified it as calcite, bearing the heavy carbon tracer that marked it as a product of carbonation. * * * * * Measurements of dissolved carbon in the groundwater suggested that more than 95% of the injected carbon had already been converted into calcite and other minerals. “It was a huge surprise that the carbonation happened so fast,”
https://www.pnas.org/content/105/29/9920
Among geological storage techniques, CO2 injection into deep saline aquifers, or its reinjection into depleted oil and gas reservoirs, has potentially large storage capacity and geographic ubiquity (6–10).
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/scientists-in-iceland-are-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-rock/
Two years later, almost all of the CO2 had morphed into carbonate minerals. * * * * * The team’s breakthrough, reported in the journal Science in 2016, led to the scaling up of the CarbFix project – fixing CO2 into rock, literally – at the Hellisheidi geothermal power station * * * * * The process does, however, require large amounts of desalinated water – about 25 tonnes of water per tonne of stored CO2 – so they are working on adapting it to saltwater.
Climate researchers have long recognized that highly reactive basaltic rocks could be a solution to the carbon storage problem. In addition to being common around the world, basalts contain high concentrations of calcium and magnesium ions that chemically react with CO2 to make calcite, dolomite, and magnesite. Moreover, dissolving the CO2 in water above ground and then injecting it into subsurface basalts bypasses the slower and less secure stages of conventional carbon storage. * * * * * The team found that over 90% of the injected CO2 had been converted into minerals within 2 years of injection. * * * * * “But also the way that we inject is that we dissolve the CO2 in water prior to or during injection. This means increased security as well, because by dissolving the CO2 we’re killing the buoyancy of the CO2. The CO2-charged fluid is heavier than the groundwater in the formation where we are injecting, so it has the tendency to sink rather than to rise up. This increased storage security.” * * * * * Mineral carbonation has been gaining interest in recent years, Snæbjörnsdóttir said. “People often believe that this can only be done if you have geothermal [heat], but that’s not the case,” she said. “The things that you need for this to work are just a source of CO2, [water], and reactive rocks.” * * * * * “We know that basalts like we have here in Iceland are perfect for this method,” she said, “but there might be rock types that are less reactive but still reactive enough. If some of those rock types are feasible to use for this method, we could broaden the applicability even more.” * * * * * The team is also looking into how well offshore injections using seawater might work.
https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/climateChange/CCS/howCanCo2BeStored.html#ocean
We need to understand more about saline aquifer storage, but current research shows that several trapping mechanisms immobilise the CO2 underground, reducing the risk of leakage. The IPCC says that for well-selected, designed and managed geological storage sites, CO2 could be trapped for millions of years, retaining over 99 per cent of the injected CO2 over 1000 years.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6291/1312
The scaling up of this basaltic carbon storage method requires substantial quantities of water and porous basaltic rocks (9). Both are widely available on the continental margins, such as off the coast of the Pacific Northwest of the United States (12).
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-iceland-carbon-dioxide-cleaner-air.html
Around 25 tonnes of water are needed for each tonne of carbon dioxide injected. * * * * * “That is the Achilles’ heel of this method,” says Snaebjornsdottir. * * * * * “I agree that the process uses a lot of water, but we gain a lot by permanently getting rid of CO2 that otherwise would be floating around the atmosphere,” says Aradottir. * * * * * Experiments are currently under way to adapt the method to saltwater.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/26/climate/oman-rocks.html
https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/11/27/carbon-dioxide-removal-climate-change/
OH, OH; ONE MORE CAVEAT
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/21515461/renewable-energy-geothermal-egs-ags-supercritical
Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout
“An engineering problem that, when solved, solves energy.”
By David Roberts
Denis
i think you are stuck in the box i was talking about.
there is no need for energy use to continue to increase. we can get along fine without gas cars, or even cars that use a lot of electricity. or maybe even without cars at all, if we plan our cities intelligently.
as for “physics” vs “politics” i suggest the”physics” of nuclear energy may not be as benevolent as you seem to think. we don’t need it. or artificial carbon capture. that’s just doing more of what brought us here in the first place. much as i hate politics, i think (and Jefferson thought) that democracy was safer in the hands of the ignorant masses than it was in the hands of the “experts.” at least the ignorant masses will tell you where it hurts. the experts haven’t got a clue. “oh yeah, my calculations show that by pumping enough sulfur dioxide into the air we can stop global warming.” no doubt true, and nothing can go wrong. right?
Herbert
i guess I was assuming a sudden outbreak of common sense.
won’t happen. it takes a country nof people who are already hurting and a charismatic leader who is also honest.
of course, a simple population crash will do it. and for a while people will remember and try, becuse they have to, to live with nature. After that it will take some “religious” leaders to invent superstitions to make them behave themselves. Then the religious leaders will overreach. Then the mockers will inaugurate an “age of reason.” then… but you have heard this story before.