Solving climate crisis will require a total transformation of global energy

I take your point and I agree with you in principle, but I suspect a bridge will be needed to get from here to there.

 

We do need a 'bridge', Jack, and I'd suggest that instead of bringing paralysis and near-bankruptcy on every economy in the world by shutting down all existing coal and natural gas power plants, we should put bleeding-edge electrostatic scrubbers on the exhausts of all the coal plants, continue replacing them SLOWLY with natural gas power plants -- and -- making it an international top priority to initiate a "Warp Speed"-plan to harness hydrogen fusion for power production!

If we really did make a "Manhattan Project" combined thrust at mastering hydrogen fusion, we'd have a cheap, endless power supply, running on two molecules found in sea water, that produces no polluting aftereffects at all, as you probably know.

 

Sign me up.

 

You really think this is feasible?

I thought it takes too much energy to split the H atom to be worth the effort?

 

We don't have anything that really 'works' yet, but even back in the mid-1970's (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth) we had a Tokamak experimental hydrogen fusion facility at the University of Texas (at Austin). Today, there is an effort that plods along in an organization of nations that comprise "ITER": https://www.iter.org/ . Whatever they're doing, it ain't making headlines....

 

I know about the Tokomak facility, and they are failing which is why they are not news anymore. It is a narrowminded government run facility.

Here is a better one that is proceeding slowly:

Aneutronic Fusion (LINK)

Additional LINK

Focus Fusion Society

 

There is a price to be paid for rigid renewable energy ideology.
“Renewable Energy Dogmatism” – The New Red Menace?
David Middleton
Guest “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Renewable Energy Dogmatism Party?” by David Middleton Renewable Energy Dogmatism Is Turning the World Red. Just Ask…

 

It was a good year for coal.
@Greta: IEA Expects 2021 To Be Record Year For Global Coal-Fired Electricity Generation…”Highs As Soon As 2022″!
By P Gosselin on 18. December 2021

Share this...
Despite all the billions invested in green energies, they haven’t been able to prove themselves as a reliable source of electricity. Wind and sun are just too volatile, and inefficient.

So it’s little surprise that the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that the amount of electricity generated worldwide from coal is surging towards a new annual record in 2021,



Photo: IEA

The rise in coal-fire power generation undermines efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and potentially putting global coal demand on course for an all-time high next year, the International Energy Agency said in its latest annual market report. The jump in coal-fired power generation is attributed to “the rapid economic recovery.”

After falling in 2019 and 2020, global power generation from coal is expected to jump by 9% in 2021 to an all-time high of 10,350 terawatt-hours, according to the IEA’s Coal 2021 report, which was released today. The steep rise in natural gas prices has also increased demand for coal power by making it more cost-competitive. . . .

 

The truth is that for years to come, civilization must (MUST) continue to rely on fossil-fuels for energy -- or -- for mankind to go back to near-prehistoric 'lifestyles'. Sure, it would be wonderful if we had hydrogen fusion reactors, but we don't... and nobody seems to want to make the enormous R&D investments necessary to master the needed technology. Plus, for reasons that I've never understood, people are completely BLIND to using bleeding-edge electrostatic-scrubbers, for the time being, to remove pollutants from coal plant emissions -- which DO exist, by the way, right here, and right now!

Nevertheless, libs/greenies think that putting all our research money into 'boutique' solutions like solar, wind, tidal-movements, 'biomass', etc. is a great idea (while crushing the economies of the world with punitive 'carbon taxes'). Do I need to repeat for the 5,000th time that the dreaded CO2 makes up a mere 0.04% of the Earth's atmosphere...?! Any who disbelieve that fact are free to LOOK IT UP!

At any rate, on our current trajectory it's safe to say that 'this will not end well'....

 

Some very poor choices are going to lead to uncomfortable outcomes in some places.
Which Country Or U.S. State Will Be The First To Hit The Renewable Energy Wall?
December 17, 2021/ Francis Menton

• 
  In the fantasy of wealthy woke environmentalists, the world has recognized that it is on the brink of an existential climate crisis that can only be avoided by rapid elimination of the use of fossil fuels, and the transformation of the world energy economy to be based upon “renewables” like the wind and sun. The generation of electricity will be “decarbonized” by some time in the 2030s, and the world will reach “net zero” carbon emissions by around 2050.
  
  
• In the real world, anyone with eyes can see that this is not happening. The countries with the large majority of world population (China, India, the remainder of Asia, and Africa) mouth a few platitudes to appease the foolish Western elites, even as they continue to build hundreds of new coal and other fossil fuel facilities.
  
  
• Even the U.S. federal government, under left-wing Democrat control, has had its ambitious “Green New Deal” plans stalled in Congress. Worldwide, fossil fuel usage continues on a steady upward trajectory, pretty much as if the whole decarbonization obsession didn’t exist.
  
  
• But then there is that handful of very wealthy, small population jurisdictions that have convinced themselves that they can save the planet by eliminating their own fossil fuel use and substituting wind and solar power, even as the rest of the world laughs at them behind their back.
  

READ MORE

 

The Germans are being reminded of energy reality.
Germany Burning More Coal, Renewable Energy Share Falling
Eric Worrall
Greenpeace blames the German Merkel government for not being green enough. . . .

 

The Native Americans are not on board.
Native Americans Rejecting Biden’s Green Energy Revolution Infrastructure
Eric Worrall
Native Americans recoiling in horror at plans to desecrate their lands, by extracting the minerals and building the transmission lines President Biden needs to fulfil his promise of a green…

 

Here's a hopeful sign.
Why Scientists Think Fusion Power Will Work
Daniel Kolitz, Gizmodo

 

If you mean the issue of catastrophizing climate change, you are correct.

I watched a movie made in 1991 featuring Rutger Hauer. The movie was set in 2008. Here is the opening scrawl of the movie (Split Second).

We are always told the end of the world is 10 or 20 years away and the purveyors of this madness are never held to account for their ridiculous predictions. What was never predicted was the greening of the globe due to climate change and radically increased crop yields due to climate change. Those are pretty easy predictions to make but "the experts" were incompetent enough to make them. I predict more greening in the next two decades and increased crop yields.

In the end, the only thing that really matters is crop yields. Lose those crop yields and people starve to death. People 1,500 years from now will understand that better when the next ice age hits and all of Canada is covered in ice. (If our descendants are lucky, perhaps we will have put enough CO2 into the atmosphere by then to prevent it.)

 

During global COOLING time:

Science Alert

An Incredible 45-Day Storm Turned California Into a 300-Mile-Long Sea... And It Could Happen Again

SEAN KANE, BUSINESS INSIDER

LINK

=====

State Map in the link worth seeing as it shows the extent of the inland sea flooded area.

 

I'm not so sure. When the doomsayers are definitively proved wrong about CO2, I think they might just shut up, slink away, and pretend they never said boo.

At least inveterate doom-cryer Paul Ehrlich did pay his lost wager to Julian Simon.

Those are mainly due to increased CO2, not climate change, and I did predict them more than 40 years ago.

I think you mean incompetent enough not to make them.

It's possible that a quiescent sun will reduce temperatures and crop yields despite increasing CO2. Look for the liars to alter the temperature records again to turn cooling into warming, and blame CO2.

CO2 has too little effect on temperature to stop an ice age. But we will be able to stop it from space, assuming anti-fossil-fuel hysteria has not abolished modern civilization.

 

A dose of financial reality may help some to escape from climate madness.
European nations walk back their ‘climate ambitions’ as the exorbitant price tag becomes clear
Guest Blogger
The political class remains rhetorically wedded to its earlier foolhardy promises, and the media is too enamored of reality-detached activists such as Ms. Thunberg. . . .

 

The EU's energy walk-back continues.
EU: Natural Gas and Nuclear are now Green Energy
Eric Worrall
The long predicted collapse of the EU renewable energy push has finally arrived. The EU has effectively just admitted renewable energy does not work, by moving to extend their definition…

 

Well said! It has been pointed out in this Forum for years, by myself and others, that the über-awful CO2 makes up a WHOPPING, HORRIFYING 0.04% of the Earth's atmosphere!

Source: UCAR Center for Science Education

 

The sunshine of lush solar subsidies may be dimming.
Net Metering Rethink: Rooftop Solar in Trouble (a hidden subsidy in addition to ITC)
Guest Blogger
Solar as a grid source of electricity is uneconomic, from the rooftop to the large solar arrays. So various government interventions pushed by the solar lobby must come to the…

 

Which is why liberal/progressive folks continue to harp on it. They simply assume no one will challenge them on their idiocy.

 

You and Pollycy are not challenging the science. The fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a trace gas making up a little over
400 ppm of the atmosphere is irrelevant. Diatomic molecules don't absorb infrared radiation.

why-are-some-gases-called-greenhouse-gases (ksu.edu)

WHY ARE SOME GASES CALLED GREENHOUSE GASES? WHAT ARE GREENHOUSE GASES? Earth’s atmosphere is composed of a variety of gases. Some are greenhouse gases (GHGs) and others are not. GHGs in Earth’s atmosphere include: Water Carbon Dioxide Methane Nitrous Oxide Ozone CFCs/HCFCs Sulfur Hexafluoride While many people know that carbon dioxide and methane are important GHGs, it is less common for individuals to know that water is the primary GHG in our atmosphere. It keeps the earth’s temperature relatively constant, especially compared to other planets that have extreme cold and extreme hot temperatures. Other gases in Earth’s atmosphere that are NOT GHGs include: Nitrogen Oxygen Argon Helium Neon Hydrogen Carbon Monoxide These non greenhouse gases, plus water, make up over 99% of the gases in the atmosphere. Only tiny amounts of helium, neon, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide gases actually exist in the atmosphere.

ONLY MOLECULES WHOSE SYMMETRY CHANGES CAN BE GREENHOUSE GASES The key point to remember is this → only gases with molecules whose symmetry changes can be classified as greenhouse gases

HERE IS THE BOTTOM LINE: A molecule is only a greenhouse gas if stretching can change its symmetry. This happens because IR light can only change molecules that can absorb IR light energy. As it turns out, molecules whose symmetry does not change cannot absorb light in the IR region. DOES THE SYMMETRY OF OTHER GASES CHANGE? Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen are NOT greenhouse gases This illustration shows that the symmetry of these molecules cannot change. Even if the bonds were to stretch, they would not lose symmetry, so they cannot be GHGs. These are NOT greenhouse gases Of course molecules without bonds cannot change their symmetry at all, so none of these are GHGs: helium, argon, and neon.

 

It is relevant, but in the opposite way: 400ppm -- indeed, the pre-industrial level of ~280ppm, or even the Ice Age low of ~180ppm -- is already so much CO2 that the atmosphere was already completely opaque in the relevant IR wavelengths, so adding more can't make much difference.

 

The fact that you are making this argument indicates that you don't have a basic understanding of the importance of trace gases like carbon dioxide
to our climate. The earth's surface would be covered in ice and would be about 33 degrees Celsius cooler without the trace gases carbon dioxide and methane.

Even a person with no understanding of climate science should be suspicious of the argument that you are making because it implies 2
possibilities, nearly all climate scientists are either dishonest or stupid. Neither option is reasonable, therefore you should have spent a few minutes
researching your position before posting a comment. The climate scientists skeptical of mainstream climate science don't make this stupid argument
unless they are lying.

 

There is a significant positive radiation imbalance at the Earth's surface that has existed for many decades. Most of that energy imbalance results
in oceans getting warmer, with much smaller amounts melting sea ice, glaciers, warming the land surface, and warming the troposphere.
Something is causing that radiation imbalance and numerous studies have concluded that it is rising levels of greenhouse gases. There is no
known natural cause.

Adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does increase radiative forcing and the graphs below indicate that the amount of forcing
is very significant for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As more carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere, more absorption lines
are added to the CO2 spectrum, mainly at the "wings" or ends of the absorption spectrum. This is found through line-by-line radiation transfer
codes that model the atmosphere.

Wikipedia:
"For a well-mixed greenhouse gas, radiative transfer codes that examine each spectral line for atmospheric conditions can be used to calculate the forcing change ΔF as a function of a change in its concentration. These calculations may be simplified into an algebraic formulation that is specific to that gas.

Carbon dioxide[edit]
A simplified first-order approximation expression for carbon dioxide is:
,
where C is the carbon dioxide concentration in parts per million (ppm) by volume and C0 is the reference concentration (278 ppm in year 1750}) prior to substantial anthropogenic changes.

The atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases due to human activity has grown especially rapidly during the last several decades (since about year 1950). The 50% increase (C/C0=1.5) for carbon dioxide realized as of year 2020 corresponds to .

The Wikipedia article, Radiative forcing - Wikipedia, also describes direct observations of the earth's energy budget that corroborate the effects
that increased greenhouse gases have had on reducing outgoing energy at the top of the atmosphere.

Direct observation
Earth's radiation balance has been continuously monitored by NASA's Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) instruments since year 1998.[48][49] Each scan of the globe provides an estimate of the total (all-sky) instantaneous radiation balance. This data record captures both the natural fluctuations and human influences on IRF; including changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols, land surface, etc. The record also includes the lagging radiative responses to the radiative imbalances; occurring mainly by way of Earth system feedbacks in temperature, surface albedo, atmospheric water vapor and clouds.[50][51]

Researchers have used measurements from CERES, AIRS, CloudSat and other satellite-based instruments within NASA's Earth Observing System to parse out contributions by the natural fluctuations and system feedbacks. Removing these contributions within the multi-year data record allows observation of the anthropogenic trend in top-of-atmosphere (TOA) IRF. The data analysis has also been done in a way that is computationally efficient and independent of most related modelling methods and results. Radiative forcing was thus directly observed to have risen by +0.53 W m−2 (+/-0.11 W m−2) from years 2003 to 2018. About 20% of the increase was associated with a reduction in the atmospheric aerosol burden, and most of the remaining 80% was attributed to the rising burden of greenhouse gases.[46][52][53]

A rising trend in the radiative imbalance due to increasing global CO2
has been previously observed by ground-based instruments. For example, such measurements have been separately gathered under clear-sky conditions at two Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) sites in Oklahoma and Alaska.[54] Each direct observation found that the associated radiative (infrared) heating experienced by surface dwellers rose by +0.2 W m−2 (+/-0.07 W m−2) during the decade ending 2010.[55][56] In addition to its focus on longwave radiation and the most influential forcing gas (CO
2) only, this result is proportionally less than the TOA forcing due to its buffering by atmospheric absorption.


Radiative Forcing - Climate Observer (substack.com)

In Figure 2b below, the results of analagous calculations using the Column Radiation Model are plotted over the same graph. There is some variation that occurs between vertical profiles, but the mean value appears to be close to the generalized value of radiative forcing for a carbon dioxide doubling.




Figure 2b. depicts the result of calculations from the Column Radiation Model for a Northern Hemisphere, a Southern Hemisphere, and a Tropical vertical profile, plotted over the Figure from Myhre et. al. 1998. The mean logarithmic curve is close to that of the simplified expression. Radiative forcing does differ somewhat depending upon the vertical profiles of clouds, humidity, and temperature.