Climate Change

[Supermoon]

There are certainly some things that should be explored like carbon capture or other technologies, but those all come with big, unknown risks. We see what is happening when humans fuck with the climate so what’s to say we won’t do something even worse trying to fix this problem by blotting out the sun? But as the effects of climate change get worse the bigger risks we will have to take.

The only way to solve this problem is to massively shift the economy away from fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. We are also beholden to OPEC which creates all sorts of bad outcomes geopolitically, where the American economy is in large extent controlled by our enemies.

Nothing is perfect, and the risks of certain renewables should be discussed but it mostly seems like the anti-renewable rhetoric is all coming from people who don’t want anything to change

[altacoup]

What’s the current thinking of geoengineering as a viable option? Saw this, though I take take any anything from Tabarrok or the freakonomics guys with a big dose of skepticism:

Geoengineering first came to much of the public’s attention in Levitt and Dubner’s 2009 book SuperFreakonomics. Levitt and Dubner were heavily criticized and their chapter on geoengineering was called patent nonsense, dangerous and error-ridden, unforgivably wrong and much more. A decade and a half later, it’s become clear that Levitt and Dubner were foresighted and mostly correct.
The good news is that climate change is a solved problem. Solar, wind, nuclear and various synthetic fuels can sustain civilization and put us on a long-term neutral footing. Per capita CO2 emissions are far down in developed countries and total emissions are leveling for the world. The bad news is that 200 years of putting carbon into the atmosphere still puts us on a warming trend for a long time. To deal with the immediate problem there is probably only one realistic and cost-effective solution: geoengineering. Geoengineering remains “fiendishly simple” and “startlingly cheap” and it will almost certainly be necessary. On this score, the world is catching up to Levitt and Dubner.

Fred Pearce: Once seen as spooky sci-fi, geoengineering to halt runaway climate change is now being looked at with growing urgency. A spate of dire scientific warnings that the world community can no longer delay major cuts in carbon emissions, coupled with a recent surge in atmospheric concentrations of CO2, has left a growing number of scientists saying that it’s time to give the controversial technologies a serious look.
“Time is no longer on our side,” one geoengineering advocate, former British government chief scientist David King, told a conference last fall. “What we do over the next 10 years will determine the future of humanity for the next 10,000 years.”
King helped secure the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, but he no longer believes cutting planet-warming emissions is enough to stave off disaster. He is in the process of establishing a Center for Climate Repair at Cambridge University. It would be the world’s first major research center dedicated to a task that, he says, “is going to be necessary.”

Similarly, here is climate scientist David Keith in the NYTimes:

The energy infrastructure that powers our civilization must be rebuilt, replacing fossil fuels with carbon-free sources such as solar or nuclear. But even then, zeroing out emissions will not cool the planet. This is a direct consequence of the single most important fact about climate change: Warming is proportional to the cumulative emissions over the industrial era.
Eliminating emissions by about 2050 is a difficult but achievable goal. Suppose it is met. Average temperatures will stop increasing when emissions stop, but cooling will take thousands of years as greenhouse gases slowly dissipate from the atmosphere. Because the world will be a lot hotter by the time emissions reach zero, heat waves and storms will be worse than they are today. And while the heat will stop getting worse, sea level will continue to rise for centuries as polar ice melts in a warmer world. This July was the hottest month ever recorded, but it is likely to be one of the coolest Julys for centuries after emissions reach zero.
Stopping emissions stops making the climate worse. But repairing the damage, insofar as repair is possible, will require more than emissions cuts.
…Geoengineering could also work. The physical scale of intervention is — in some respects — small. Less than two million tons of sulfur per year injected into the stratosphere from a fleet of about a hundred high-flying aircraft would reflect away sunlight and cool the planet by a degree. The sulfur falls out of the stratosphere in about two years, so cooling is inherently short term and could be adjusted based on political decisions about risk and benefit.
Adding two million tons of sulfur to the atmosphere sounds reckless, yet this is only about one-twentieth of the annual sulfur pollution from today’s fossil fuels.

Even the Biden White House has signaled that geoengineering is on the table.
Geoengineering remains absurdly cheap, Casey Handmer calculates:

Indeed, if we want to offset the heat of 1 teraton of CO2, we need to launch 1 million tonnes of SO2 per year, costing just $350m/year. This is about 5% of
the US


’ annual production of sulfur. This costs less than 0.1% on an annual basis of the 40 year program to sequester a trillion tonnes of CO2.…Stepping beyond the scolds, the gatekeepers, the fatalists and the “nyet” men, we’re going to have to do something like this if we don’t want to ruin the prospects of humanity for 100 generations, so now is the time to think about it.

Detractors claim that geoengineering is playing god, fraught with risk and uncertainty. But these arguments are riddled with omission-commission bias. Carbon emissions are, in essence, a form of inadvertent geoengineering. Solar radiation engineering, by comparison, seems far less perilous. Moreover, we are already doing solar radiation engineering just in reverse: International regulations which required shippers to reduce the sulphur content of marine fuels have likely increased global warming! (See also this useful thread.) . Thus, we’re all geoengineers, consciously or not. The only question is whether we are geoengineering to reduce or to increase global warming.

https://marginalrevolution.com/margi...ring-revisited

The tech behind carbon capture is already proven and 100% will need to be used to keep the planet’s climate in the goldilocks zone. The issue is how to generate energy on a scale that can run the machines that capture carbon without introducing more carbon into the atmosphere.

If this actually pans out it could be a massive game changer.

https://twitter.com/alexkaplan0/stat...44616528453633

[Cocximus]

Carbon capture is and will continue to be like plastic recycling.

[altacoup]

Carbon capture is and will continue to be like plastic recycling.

Completely wrong. If we are able to get to zero emissions (which would be a massive massive win) we’ll still need to remove the carbon we’ve already put in the atmosphere. Many environmentalists are firmly against carbon capture because they believe it’ll allow carbon producers to continue on the same path. But that’s a similar mentality to those who say batteries and solar aren’t perfect so let’s not scale them up.

[skaredshtles]

The tech behind carbon capture is already proven and 100% will need to be used to keep the planet’s climate in the goldilocks zone. The issue is how to generate energy on a scale that can run the machines that capture carbon without introducing more carbon into the atmosphere.

Superconductivity at room temp sure would help things like this, I'd imagine.

ETA: see you've already linked the article from the science thread.

[old goat]

A friend of mine--a Lawrence Livermore Lab geophysicist--is involved in a massive carbon capture project, in Australia if I remember correctly. He thinks carbon capture could potentially remove about 10% of the needed carbon reduction.

Adding sulfur to the atmosphere seems like a bad idea--didn't we spend a lot of effort to reduce sulfur emissions (ie acid rain). To reduce CO2 without creating new problems will be very difficult due to the magnitude of the problem.. The problem is not the environmental damage caused by CO2, or solar power, or electric cars, or windfarms, or dams, but the damage caused by 8 billion people. The earth is not capable of sustaining anywhere close to that human population by any foreseeable technology.

[Trackhead]

In before people start posting alarmist shit from the media about this: I like this website. They find experts in the field of many things, ask opinions of studies, evidence, etc. Their summaries are superior to some shitty headline written by some douche with no relevant experience sitting in an office building in New York.

Google AMOC and look at all the bullshit clickbait headlines. I hate the media.

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

[SumJongGuy]

Nuclear Winter would also do it..

[PB]

Nuclear Winter would also do it..

Or artificial vulcanism; no rads is better.

[old goat]

In before people start posting alarmist shit from the media about this: I like this website. They find experts in the field of many things, ask opinions of studies, evidence, etc. Their summaries are superior to some shitty headline written by some douche with no relevant experience sitting in an office building in New York.

Google AMOC and look at all the bullshit clickbait headlines. I hate the media.

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

The pieces I read in the MSM emphasized the uncertainty and made clear a lot of experts were unconvinced. But yeah, the headlines. Even papers like WAPO and NYT have people--I'm thinking high school students to write alarmist headlines that often have little to do with the articles. Of course since most people never read past the headline . . .

[k2skier112]

Site C is rife with corruption and cronyism. The site selection itself was a total clusterfuck and it should've been veto'd at the first reading. There were and are better locations. Furthermore, BC Hydro is a shell of the solid company it once was, and is now a union breaking piece of shit that cares more about profits than doing what's its original mandate was.

I'm a strong believer in Canada's CANDU reactors, and having worked in depth with both Westinghouse and OPG I can whole heartedly say we are shitting the bed on not building more (expansion at bruce doesn't count). We could be building enough to power the entire country and become a export powerhouse, but unfortunately the boomer generation seems to still be scared of their shadows when it comes to nukes. We have some of the most optimal spent fuel storage locations in the world, and our governing agency is actually staffed with competent engineering faculty that support advancement.

It's not a Liberal thing, it's not a Cons thing, it's a stupid-fucking-uneducated-loud-mouth-dumbfuck generational thing.

Are these storage places for spent fuel rods operating?
How old are you?
Producing a waste that just might outlast humans is short sided.
I like the idea of small portable reactors for remote places.
We have a giant fusion reactor in the sky we can harness.
Spinning a rotor inside an stator, like all nuke plants do, is antiquated, but it's what we use.
Go watch Metldon on Netflix. I had no idea we came that close or so much radiation escaped.
It's not just "the olds" it's many scientists and geologists that know we can't always contain it, accidents happen

[Bunion 2020]

It's not just "the olds" it's many scientists and geologists that know we can't always contain it, accidents happen

History has proven this time and again.

Maybe reactor technology is getting there. Current waste management has not.

[Cocximus]

As uniformed as general energy gapers go I am a fan of nuclear. Irrational fear halted significant investment and development for 50+ years. Is nuclear waste an issue? Sure, but is it worse than all the CO2 waste we are storing in the atmosphere? Even with a few nuclear accidents would the planet be worse off than what we have now and where we are headed?

Anyways, smart people at the threat of being guiltined if they are found to be corrupt, need to make a decision fast and we need to get behind it. Buldoze anything that's in the way and get it done. A few hippies and some migratory birds are insignificant in face of global warming.

France got it right. They can slowly decommission nukes with solar/wind.

[k2skier112]

Japan defends neutrality of IAEA report on Fukushima water release plan as minister visits plant

https://apnews.com/article/japan-fuk...41de6fdc06d2ea

[SumJongGuy]

It's so damned hot outside that we're actually feeling nice and cool with the indoor temp set around 80ish..

[old goat]

Building enough nuclear plants to replace half of current fossil fuel electricity generation will require 100 or so plants, at a cost of 6-9B each (not including the standard huge cost overruns). The cost of the electricity is estimated at $7000/KWH. Wind power costs about 2 cents/kwh.

[mcski]

China has brought dozens of new nuclear plants online in the last 15 yrs or so. Nobody wants anything in their backyard but with all the nimbys these days it’s prob not that much more push back than the wind farms are getting in some areas

[J. Barron DeJong]

Building enough nuclear plants to replace half of current fossil fuel electricity generation will require 100 or so plants, at a cost of 6-9B each (not including the standard huge cost overruns). The cost of the electricity is estimated at $7000/KWH. Wind power costs about 2 cents/kwh.

That $7k looks like capital cost for capacity. By that metric solar is around $1300.

Actual cost for the electricity provided depends a lot on what assumptions go into the calculation, but:

In 2019 the US EIA revised the levelized cost of electricity from new advanced nuclear power plants going online in 2023 to be $0.0775/kWh before government subsidies, using a regulated industry 4.3% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 6.6%) over a 30-year cost recovery period.

[neufox47]

That $7k looks like capital cost for capacity. By that metric solar is around $1300.

Actual cost for the electricity provided depends a lot on what assumptions go into the calculation, but:

In 2019 the US EIA revised the levelized cost of electricity from new advanced nuclear power plants going online in 2023 to be $0.0775/kWh before government subsidies, using a regulated industry 4.3% cost of capital (WACC - pre-tax 6.6%) over a 30-year cost recovery period.

Seems to me the real comparison would be for solar plus battery storage cost per kWh vs nuclear.

[TBS]

^^^ A quick search sez utility scale storage (capital cost) runs about $3000/kw for 8-10 hr duration

https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/202...attery_storage

[J. Barron DeJong]

^^^ A quick search sez utility scale storage (capital cost) runs about $3000/kw for 8-10 hr duration

https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/202...attery_storage

I’m sure contract prices vary, and cost will depend on storage capacity, but an example of contract price to purchase energy from a solar+storage plant:

The final version of the project delivered will in fact be a 300 MW / 1.2 GWh energy storage installation – with an aggregate pricing of 3.962¢/kWh

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/09/...ge-in-the-usa/

[PB]

Shirley we can come up with a way to expand the grid world-wide such that it's always being charged.

Or set up orbiting solar collection stations that can microwave power down to the surface ..... and in a pinch fry undesirables.

[PB]

Closer to home: cacti checking out - https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/27/us/ph...ses/index.html

[SumJongGuy]

Shirley we can come up with a way to expand the grid world-wide such that it's always being charged.

Or set up orbiting solar collection stations that can microwave power down to the surface ..... and in a pinch fry undesirables.

That also provide additional shade to help cool the planet as needed

[rideit]

So Fukt.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...o-hold-carbon/