No Significant Relief from Global Warming

Chris L Peterson wrote in
:

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 10:36:39 -0700, Jibini Kula Tumbili
Kujisalimisha wrote:

Heh. And solar is still subsidized in the US by a couple orders
of magnitdue more per MwH than fossil fuel generation.

I've put in a couple of small PV system in the last few years,
and will put a good sized one in my new house. There are no
subsidies, not for the panels, not for the electronics, not for
the batteries.

Unless you manufactured everything yourself, yes, the manufacturers
were subsidized.

But the real killer, the thing for which there simply isn't a
vaiable solution, is energy transfer times. You can put enough
gas into a car to travel 300+ miles in about three minutes.

Not a problem, given that the vast majority of driving is under
50 miles,

But not *all*, *always*. Ever hear of a vacation?

with plenty of slow charge time between. For longer
trips, there will be hybrids, exchangeable batteries, and other
solutions.

Hybrids are still using gasoline. Exchangable batters have the
exact same problem: you need a dozen times as many charging
stations to service the same number of vehicles per day, and a 30
MW power line coming to run them. "Other solutions" are vaporware.

People need gas stations because they don't have
gasoline at home or at work.

And because they travel beyond the driving range of their vehicle.

They do have power.

But not enough to put 300+ miles of dirving into their car in three
minutes.

And, again, many people rent. There's no power by my parking spot,
nor on the street.

And with lots
of cars on chargers, they become a major part of the storage
system for a wind/solar supplied grid.

There isn't a single car on the market today, nor any planned, that
feed power back into the grid. Nor a charging station that would
allow that.

No, it's not a myth. Electric cars will soon be fine for a
second vehicle...

It's not really an issue,

Only ify ou're so deluded that you are not longer interacting in
the real world.

as they're not going to have a choice.

Tell that to Gray Davis. He messed with California's cars, and got
handed his ass in a recall election.

Electric is going to be the only game in town unless people want
to pay a fortune for a specialty vehicle.

Mighty tasty Kool-Aid you're smoking there, son.

Battery technology does not utilize much in the way of rare
earths.

It does utilize ltihium, which has its own issues.

Lithium is domestically produced.

Not in sufficient quantities for 60 million cars a year. By orders
of magnitude.

Why would there be if we're not dependent upon foreign sources
for materials?

China is the biggest producer of rare earths. Which are used in
battery production, and wich are absolutely required for the
electronics needed for charging.

No, they're not.

Yeah, they are. Until a few years ago, they were the only
commercial porducers.

The only place rare earth elements are
potentially involved is in the motors, and not necessarily
there. And in any case, we can buy from China.

China has already manipulated the market to protect domestic usage.
You are, literally, hallucinating if you believe otherwise. It was
quite newsworthy at the time.

China has their
own military to defend their own interests. They aren't a third
world country that we need to maintain a military presence in as
is the case with petroleum.

That is precisely why they can get away with manipulating the
market to protect their own interests.

Not when you scale it up to the 60 million cars manufactured
every year. (And there isn't enough lithium production to
support that anyway.)

It's always amusing to see people who lack imagination and
ignore the fact that there has never been a new technology that
didn't rapidly result in the creation of whatever it needed in
the way of support.

It's always amusing to see someone to ****ing stupid and delusional
that they literally hallucinate the world they want to live in.
They get so confused when reality bits them in the ass.

Keep smoking that Kool-Aid, son. You're gonna need it.

--
Terry Austin

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

Quadibloc wrote in
:

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:52:56 PM UTC-7, Chris L
Peterson wrote:

No, they're not. The only place rare earth elements are
potentially involved is in the motors, and not necessarily
there. And in any case, we can buy from China.

For a while, recently, China decided to monkey with its rare
earth exports to favor domestic users. This caused quite a
worldwide panic.

And the reopening of mines in the US.

The panic was somewhat unwarranted. The minerals from which rare
earth metals are extracted are widely available in many other
countries. The only problem is that the only facilities that
refined those ores were in China, because it was cheaper to do
that there than anywhere else.

And that it takes years to reopen mines and build refineries.

So if China declined to export rare earth metals, we could make
do with last years' smartphones for a while, and then make our
own. And we could then enact tariffs to protect the investment
in the replacement plants when China decided its ploy wasn't
working and decided to undersell them.

Like they did with solar panels, resulting in punitive tariffs
imposed on their solar cells.

Trade wars aren't good for anybody, but they're a lot worse for
China than for the US. Very disruptive in the meantime, though.

It was perhaps more legal to do what was done - point out that
what China was doing violated trade agreements it had signed.
But trade agreements that force countries to export raw
materials instead of manufactured goods *are* inherently
exploitive, so I couldn't whole-heartedly root for that.

And there's still nowhere near enough lithium being produced for 60
million cars a year.

--
Terry Austin

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

Quadibloc wrote in
:

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:52:56 PM UTC-7, Chris L
Peterson wrote:

It's always amusing to see people who lack imagination and
ignore the fact that there has never been a new technology that
didn't rapidly result in the creation of whatever it needed in
the way of support.

Never?

I always thought that of 100 new technologies, 99 of them never
catch on, and thus don't get what they need for support.

The first thing electric cars need is electricity that isn't
made from fossil fuels. If the electricity they use comes from a
coal-fired generating plant, there is no benefit from a carbon
point of view. There could still be a local environmental
benefit for things like photochemical smog.

The more centralized the energy production, the easier and more
effective (and cost efficient) the pollution controls can be. And
coal is disappearing in electrical generation.

That isn't the fatal flaw in electric cars.

If *that* were to happen, then we would be reducing carbon
emissions by so much that we almost wouldn't need to force
people to switch to electric cars. Which do not have as much
range as gasoline cars for the same price. And a *battery*
doesn't have the same life span as a gas tank, because it has to
do much more work.

Those aren't the fatal flaw, either. (And both are well on their
way to not being true any more. Range will double in the next
couple of years, as the ltihium metal batteries go into production.
Life span will increase greatly, too, though battery packs will
still likely cost more than a new engine for a while.)

Still, it is indeed to be expected that if we get governments
that take global warming seriously, gasoline cars will indeed be
phased out.

Not until there are electric cars that can actually do everything
gasoline cars can do. Which there aren't, and won't be within our
lifetimes.

Myself, I'd prefer a different course:

1) Switch all electrical power generation to hydro, nuclear,
and, where possible, renewables;

2) Bring in gas rationing; switch public transit to electric
*trolley buses*, and improve public transit. People will be
expected to use public transit to commute to work.

Yeah, hold your breath on that. California has dealt with
government messing with our cars before. And not kindly. The new
gas tax will be removed come November, in a way that prohibits the
legislature from ever trying again. What you propose isn't possible
in a democracy when the technology to replace gasoline cars simply
doesn't exist. And it doesn't.

Then for people to use gasoline-powered cars to go shopping and
go to the cottage for the weekend won't produce so much carbon
as to be a problem.

And it's all possible with *proven technology*, without hoping
for better electric cars than we have at present.

You're smoking the same Kool-Aid as Chrissie is.

As a bonus, it will improve employment opportunities for people
who can't afford a car. And it will save the environmental
impact of manufacturing all those new cars for people - and wear
and tear on the existing gasoline-fuelled cars, which now won't
have to be junked!

I mean, really, if you want to be environmental...

I'd rather have a job, and food to eat. And so would everyone else,
except delusional losers who can't manager either on their own
anyway.

--
Terry Austin

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

Chris L Peterson wrote in
:

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 23:21:45 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc
wrote:

On Tuesday, January 23, 2018 at 10:52:56 PM UTC-7, Chris L
Peterson wrote:

It's always amusing to see people who lack imagination and
ignore the fact that there has never been a new technology
that didn't rapidly result in the creation of whatever it
needed in the way of support.

Never?

I always thought that of 100 new technologies, 99 of them never
catch on, and thus don't get what they need for support.

Sure. I was referring to the technologies that _do_ catch on,
and electric cars are certainly going to be in that category.
They're cheaper to produce, more reliable, much more energy
efficient to operate, don't pollute, have better performance.
They represent an unstoppable trend on many fronts. And that, of
course, will drive the development of all manner of associated
and supportive technology and infrastructure development.

The first thing electric cars need is electricity that isn't
made from fossil fuels. If the electricity they use comes from a
coal-fired generating plant, there is no benefit from a carbon
point of view. There could still be a local environmental
benefit for things like photochemical smog.

That's not entirely true. Even from a pure carbon standpoint,
electricity produced by natural gas at a modern large power
plant results in much less carbon released than the equivalent
energy produced by an internal combustion engine.

If *that* were to happen, then we would be reducing carbon
emissions by so much that we almost wouldn't need to force
people to switch to electric cars.

If you think people are going to have to be forced, you're not
understanding the technology. These cars are so superior in so
many ways, that's all that most people will want. Demand will
drive that market.

Not until they can do everything that people use gasoline cars for.
Which they don't, and won't, for a long, long time, if ever.

1) Switch all electrical power generation to hydro, nuclear,
and, where possible, renewables;

Nuclear is dead. It has no future. Most countries don't want to
take the risk, both real and political, and it's simply too
expensive and introduces too many problems. There are
technological fixes to much of that, but the time and cost of
developing them is much greater than what's involved converting
to wind, solar, and fully carbon sequestered natural gas.

2) Bring in gas rationing; switch public transit to electric
*trolley buses*, and improve public transit. People will be
expected to use public transit to commute to work.

An excellent idea in principle, although one that I doubt will
serve most people in the U.S. I do think that automated cars and
car sharing will provide some of these benefits, though.

And it's all possible with *proven technology*, without hoping
for better electric cars than we have at present.

We don't have to hope. Electric cars are already cheaper

No, they're not. The same model is more expensive, even *with* the
subsidies. Retard.

and
better for everything except range.

And refueling time. Especially on long trips.

And the development pace is
rapid. The technological risks here are very small.

But the laws of physics are immutable. Three megawatt charger to
add enoguh miles of drivign to match gasoline. Per charger. Deal
with it. Or hallucinate a better world, as you are now.

As a bonus, it will improve employment opportunities for people
who can't afford a car. And it will save the environmental
impact of manufacturing all those new cars for people - and wear
and tear on the existing gasoline-fuelled cars, which now won't
have to be junked!

Shared ownership achieves similar goals.

If ridesharing were going to catch on, it would have in the 70s.

--
Terry Austin

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

On Wed, 24 Jan 2018 07:17:29 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc
wrote:

As for nuclear: without it, carbon-free means obsessing about how much
energy we're using, which is diametrically opposed to moving
towards a future in which human labor is valued highly while material
things are cheap in comparison. One
where humanity's wealth and power over nature increase, seemingly without limit.

I think that solar is capable of producing vastly more energy than
nuclear. It is solar that will gift us with abundant energy (although
that's no reason not to be as efficient as technology will permit).

But regardless of that view, I think I'm just stating a fact. Nuclear
has no future for widespread energy generation. It would require
radical new technology for that to change, and I don't see any real
investment in developing such technology. Too expensive, too
politically dangerous, too environmentally and economically risky. And
increasingly unnecessary.

On Wednesday, January 24, 2018 at 10:04:36 AM UTC-6, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Wed, 24 Jan 2018 07:17:29 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc
wrote:

As for nuclear: without it, carbon-free means obsessing about how much
energy we're using, which is diametrically opposed to moving
towards a future in which human labor is valued highly while material
things are cheap in comparison. One
where humanity's wealth and power over nature increase, seemingly without limit.

I think that solar is capable of producing vastly more energy than
nuclear. It is solar that will gift us with abundant energy (although
that's no reason not to be as efficient as technology will permit).

But regardless of that view, I think I'm just stating a fact. Nuclear
has no future for widespread energy generation. It would require
radical new technology for that to change, and I don't see any real
investment in developing such technology. Too expensive, too
politically dangerous, too environmentally and economically risky. And
increasingly unnecessary.

It may already be too late, no matter what we do. All around the arctic there are vast stores of permafrost which are now melting. That melting is releasing vast amounts of carbon and methane which have been stored away for millennia. All this will be dumped into the atmosphere at rates that dwarf human pollution. This stored carbon exceeds present atmospheric carbon by a factor of 3. All this, of course, has been set in motion by humans digging up and burning fossil fuels. That is akin to setting a torch on fire which is then thrown into a huge pile of wood. The resultant bonfire will be impossible to stop.

And besides the carbon and methane, the permafrost also stores large amounts of bacteria which have been shown to re-activate when thawed out. The bacteria will happily munch on the biomass trapped in the permafrost, releasing more methane and CO2. Some scientists now worry that they will also cause health problems that are totally unknown, and for which we have no immunity. Happy hunting, future descendants.

Razzy

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 23:25:31 -0800 (PST), Quadibloc wrote:

On Monday, January 22, 2018 at 4:46:04 PM UTC-7, Rodney Pont wrote:

It's not just producing co2 that matters. If we used more wood for
things and less metals it would help. I was at my doctors last week and
the couch had a wooden frame. That's carbon that's not in the
atmosphere and a lot less was created making the frame than would have
been if it had needed metal.

Wooden objects usually have to be shaped by *human hands*. Whereas metal
objects can be cast or stamped. So that makes them much more expensive,
unless they're imported from a low-wage country, and _then_ they cost
foreign exchange.

John Savard

A lot of wood products are CNC machined.
--
Email address is a Spam trap.

On Wed, 24 Jan 2018 08:35:31 -0800 (PST), Razzmatazz
wrote:

It may already be too late, no matter what we do. All around the arctic there are vast stores of permafrost which are now melting. That melting is releasing vast amounts of carbon and methane which have been stored away for millennia. All this will be dumped into the atmosphere at rates that dwarf human pollution. This stored carbon exceeds present atmospheric carbon by a factor of 3. All this, of course, has been set in motion by humans digging up and burning fossil fuels. That is akin to setting a torch on fire which is then thrown into a huge pile of wood. The resultant bonfire will be impossible to stop.

And besides the carbon and methane, the permafrost also stores large amounts of bacteria which have been shown to re-activate when thawed out. The bacteria will happily munch on the biomass trapped in the permafrost, releasing more methane and CO2. Some scientists now worry that they will also cause health problems that are totally unknown, and for which we have no immunity. Happy hunting, future descendants.

I do think it is very likely that we will continue to see temperatures
rise for long enough that major economic and social upheavals will
result. Stopping it at this point would probably require expensive,
risky, and poorly developed sequestration and geoengineering
solutions.

On Wed, 24 Jan 2018 08:44:48 -0700, Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha
wrote:

Not until they can do everything that people use gasoline cars for.
Which they don't, and won't, for a long, long time, if ever.

They already do more than gasoline cars in most of the ways that cars
are used.

We don't have to hope. Electric cars are already cheaper

No, they're not. The same model is more expensive, even *with* the
subsidies. Retard.

Only because of the economies of scale. Not because of anything
intrinsic to the designs.

And refueling time. Especially on long trips.

Again, that's only relevant to a small fraction of automobile usage.
And there are already solutions.


And the development pace is
rapid. The technological risks here are very small.

But the laws of physics are immutable. Three megawatt charger to
add enoguh miles of drivign to match gasoline.

Your numbers are outdated. And ignore the addition of local power
generation, which is coming along nicely.

Shared ownership achieves similar goals.

If ridesharing were going to catch on, it would have in the 70s.

I'm not talking about ride sharing.

On Wed, 24 Jan 2018 08:32:11 -0700, Jibini Kula Tumbili Kujisalimisha
wrote:

Unless you manufactured everything yourself, yes, the manufacturers
were subsidized.

They were not.

Not a problem, given that the vast majority of driving is under
50 miles,

But not *all*, *always*. Ever hear of a vacation?

Ever hear of renting a gasoline hybrid for a vacation? Ever hear of
taking along a portable generator to provide a temporary hybrid?

with plenty of slow charge time between. For longer
trips, there will be hybrids, exchangeable batteries, and other
solutions.

Hybrids are still using gasoline. Exchangable batters have the
exact same problem: you need a dozen times as many charging
stations to service the same number of vehicles per day, and a 30
MW power line coming to run them. "Other solutions" are vaporware.

You need almost no charging stations, except at businesses and homes.

And there's nothing wrong with having liquid fuel based hybrids for
special needs. The point is that the amount of such fuels burned is
reduced by a couple orders of magnitude. To the point it ceases to be
a problem.

People need gas stations because they don't have
gasoline at home or at work.

And because they travel beyond the driving range of their vehicle.

Not often.

They do have power.

But not enough to put 300+ miles of dirving into their car in three
minutes.

Not necessary.

And, again, many people rent. There's no power by my parking spot,
nor on the street.

There can be.



And with lots
of cars on chargers, they become a major part of the storage
system for a wind/solar supplied grid.

There isn't a single car on the market today, nor any planned, that
feed power back into the grid. Nor a charging station that would
allow that.

Ah, the Luddite returns. I wonder how we ever got automobiles, given
that when they were first invented there wasn't a fueling station in
the country.

No, it's not a myth. Electric cars will soon be fine for a
second vehicle...

It's not really an issue,

Only ify ou're so deluded that you are not longer interacting in
the real world.

as they're not going to have a choice.

Tell that to Gray Davis. He messed with California's cars, and got
handed his ass in a recall election.

They aren't going to have a choice because almost no manufacturers
will be making gasoline cars. Too expensive, too many problems, even
without legislation issues.

Lithium is domestically produced.

Not in sufficient quantities for 60 million cars a year. By orders
of magnitude.

That's far from certain. It's also far from certain that lithium will
remain central to battery technology.

Why would there be if we're not dependent upon foreign sources
for materials?

China is the biggest producer of rare earths. Which are used in
battery production, and wich are absolutely required for the
electronics needed for charging.

No, they're not.

Yeah, they are. Until a few years ago, they were the only
commercial porducers.

I wasn't saying China wasn't the major source of rare earths. I was
saying that rare earths are not an important element in the batteries
or the electronics.


That is precisely why they can get away with manipulating the
market to protect their own interests.

Their interest is in selling to foreign countries! So what's the
problem?