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Is Global Warming becoming unstoppable?

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To get the cheeks turning back.

On my station wagon I have a sign on both sides in bold letters "Climate Emergency" and only today a bloke asked me if it was my car and he said "congratulations on what you do"

We must try.
 
explod said:
To get the cheeks turning back.

On my station wagon I have a sign on both sides in bold letters "Climate Emergency" and only today a bloke asked me if it was my car and he said "congratulations on what you do"

We must try.
Click to expand...
Nice, it has taken how many years, for someone to ask about the sign on your EH station wagon.:D​
 
basilio said:
Another option might be to use the solar/electrolyser/hydrogen process to replace current natural gas use in a home. Can work but the cost effectiveness seems puzzling.
Click to expand...

Something I'll note about the cost issue in the context of residential use is that it doesn't necessarily need to be the cheapest option, it only needs to be one that consumers are happy to use.

It's only in trade exposed industry, anything where we're competing with the rest of the world, where paying an extra 1 cent / kWh kills the idea stone dead. With household, you could in many cases double the cost of doing something when compared to the cheapest option and it would still be a goer.

For home use hydrogen powered cooking, heating etc may well prove to be popular even if it costs twice as much as electric. Comes down to marketing, consumer preferences and so on not just price. :2twocents
 
Smurf1976 said:
Something I'll note about the cost issue in the context of residential use is that it doesn't necessarily need to be the cheapest option, it only needs to be one that consumers are happy to use.

It's only in trade exposed industry, anything where we're competing with the rest of the world, where paying an extra 1 cent / kWh kills the idea stone dead. With household, you could in many cases double the cost of doing something when compared to the cheapest option and it would still be a goer.

For home use hydrogen powered cooking, heating etc may well prove to be popular even if it costs twice as much as electric. Comes down to marketing, consumer preferences and so on not just price. :2twocents
Click to expand...
Good point, perhaps.

It is certainly true that many consumer preferences are created through clever marketing, visual appeal, snob appeal, newness appeal, "I have to have a new kitchen " appeal.

From my experience gas is the preferred cooking medium for cooks. Easier to control and so on.

Another point in the conversation is the advice of installers and companies selling products. If they are making a better dollar on a system and/or if it is an easier install there will be more encouragement of customers to go that way.

In the big picture however maybe we have gone past the point of allowing traditional promotional forces to determine how we generate energy and what we produce.
 
AGL has already stated they will close their coal generation, if consumers are prepared to pay the extra money required, presumably to replace it.
 
sptrawler said:
AGL has already stated they will close their coal generation, if consumers are prepared to pay the extra money required, presumably to replace it.
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Nah. Wind and solar are far cheaper to generate electricity.

The coal stations are at the end of their life and replacements costs and running costs not to mention the environmental impact makes them dodo's .:)
 
basilio said:
Nah. Wind and solar are far cheaper to generate electricity.

The coal stations are at the end of their life and replacements costs and running costs not to mention the environmental impact makes them dodo's .:)
Click to expand...
That is very true Bas, the thing is they want someone to pay for their replacement.
It is a bit like the NBN, it needed doing but the telco's didn't want to pay for it, so the general public paid for it and then get charged more to use it.
We have a funny way of taking responsibility for something that should in reality be the responsibility of the service provider IMO.
I think it is their responsibility to replace their aging infrastructure, they will get the benefit of increased profit margins, so when their plant wears out either they replace it or go broke.
If that means the State Governments get back into generation so be it, at least the profit goes to the Government, not the shareholders.
Snowy 2.0 and the Tassie battery, should in reality give a lot more head room to install renewables. When they are complete, the Governments probably will make it a condition that large installations have to include storage.
Just my thoughts and guesses.
 
sptrawler said:
Snowy 2.0 and the Tassie battery, should in reality give a lot more head room to install renewables.
Click to expand...

The business model for the Tasmanian projects is really quite simple.

1. Only show in town.

2. Someone will buy the tickets, only question being who pays be that government, consumers via government or consumers via private generating companies / retailers but ultimately someone will stump up the cash.
 
basilio said:
From my experience gas is the preferred cooking medium for cooks. Easier to control and so on.

Another point in the conversation is the advice of installers and companies selling products. If they are making a better dollar on a system and/or if it is an easier install there will be more encouragement of customers to go that way.
Click to expand...

That's where my thinking is regarding hydrogen.

Even today, gas is rarely the cheapest option on a strictly economic basis. Despite that however, it has a 57% share of the water heating market in SA and for Victoria it's about 70%. It's also high in WA (about 60%) and the ACT (about 50%). In Victoria especially, government policy makes using gas not literally compulsory but hard to avoid in practice and it has an extremely high market share in newly built homes as a result.

Homeowners like continuous flow gas water heaters and, since they're lightweight and easy to install, so do plumbers which leads them to push consumers in that direction in any situation where gas is available.

I could make a pretty strong argument that from an efficiency, economic and environmental perspective a decent quality heat pump is the winning technology. In practice though, well if consumers like gas and hydrogen can fix the issue well then it's a solution. A relatively less efficient solution but a solution nonetheless. :2twocents
 
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The virus apparently has brought about the biggest drop in global emissions in history, there you go @basilio I told you the quickest way to fix emissions is to get people to stop using stuff.:xyxthumbs
 
sptrawler said:
The virus apparently has brought about the biggest drop in global emissions in history, there you go @basilio I told you the quickest way to fix emissions is to get people to stop using stuff.:xyxthumbs
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Yet CO2 emissions remain at post-industrial record highs:
co2_weekly_mlo.png

This NOAA graphic shows daily CO2 averages with black dots, weekly CO2 averages with red lines (Sunday to Saturday) and monthly CO2 averages with blue lines.
 
rederob said:
Yet CO2 emissions remain at post-industrial record highs:
co2_weekly_mlo.png

This NOAA graphic shows daily CO2 averages with black dots, weekly CO2 averages with red lines (Sunday to Saturday) and monthly CO2 averages with blue lines.
Click to expand...
Well Rob you can help fix that, AGL have a plan where if you pay them a bit more for electricity they will plant more trees, so there you go you can go that extra mile and lead by example.:xyxthumbs
 
sptrawler said:
Well Rob you can help fix that, AGL have a plan where if you pay them a bit more for electricity they will plant more trees, so there you go you can go that extra mile and lead by example.:xyxthumbs
Click to expand...
The block we built on was cleared land 30 years ago. Now we have 3 silky oak and 5 iron bark trees, several other varieties of gum trees, half a dozen palm tree varieties around the pool, 3 different fruit trees and some self sown trees we can't get rid of.
Maybe AGL should be paying me.
 
rederob said:
The block we built on was cleared land 30 years ago. Now we have 3 silky oak and 5 iron bark trees, several other varieties of gum trees, half a dozen palm tree varieties around the pool, 3 different fruit trees and some self sown trees we can't get rid of.
Maybe AGL should be paying me.
Click to expand...
We can never do too much.:xyxthumbs
 
There are a thousand ways* to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere and gain other valuable results.
Here is 1001.

Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts of CO2 from air
It may be best near-term way to remove CO2, say scientists, but cutting fossil fuel use remains critical

Spreading rock dust on farmland could suck billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air every year, according to the first detailed global analysis of the technique.

The chemical reactions that degrade the rock particles lock the greenhouse gas into carbonates within months, and some scientists say this approach may be the best near-term way of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
..The rock dust approach, called enhanced rock weathering (ERW), has several advantages, the researchers say. First, many farmers already add limestone dust to soils to reduce acidification, and adding other rock dust improves fertility and crop yields, meaning application could be routine and desirable.
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...lds-could-remove-vast-amounts-of-co2-from-air
 

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