The Planet is Toast

2020hindsight said:

I mean , have a look at the last bar in this graph - that's Australia, and the red is the percentage coal we use ... bludy disgraceful - we are environmental vandals here.

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I would argue that it is more appropriate to look at total fossil fuel use for electricity than focusing only on coal.

Oil is a limited resource. Once we've tapped the easy (lower pollution) sources we end up using tar sands, coal liquefaction, shale etc. Much the same applies to gas.

Factor that in and it's better to use coal in power stations and save the oil for other uses from both an environmental and economic perspective.

If we use the oil and gas for electricity today, then we end up with coal, shale etc based transport fuels tomorrow. We save a bit of emissions now, but they soar tomorrow. Environmentally, the last thing we want to be doing is turning solid fuels into liquids or gases.

LNG is another one. Factor in the energy use to make it, losses during shipping etc and at best it's as polluting as oil. Factor in the loss of gas as as future transport fuel and coal starts to look decidedly "green".

So I'd evaluate the countries on the basis of total coal, oil and gas contribution to electricity generation rather than simply looking at coal. In many ways I'd actually view LNG and oil use as worse than coal simply because of what it's setting us up for tomorrow.

Also there are non-environmental issues with oil and gas too. Use either of those and we're going to have to find a way to get the stuff from the countries that have it. That's primarily Iran, Qatar and especially Russia in the case of gas. Odds are that ain't going to be either peaceful or clean in the long term.

Personally, if I was going to ban any type of new power station construction then it would be gas-fired baseload plants, not coal, for the reasons above. Cleaner now but committing us to soaring emissions in the not to distant future.

Another point about fossil fuels is transport losses. Gas is terrible - LNG ain't clean by any means. And shipping coal (or anything else that's bulky) around the world isn't too climate friendly either.

So to the extent that we're going to use fossil fuels, it makes sense to use the low grade resource (coal) and not the high grade resources (oil and gas) that can be more efficiently used directly for heat (eg gas hot water at 80% efficiency versus using far more gas to heat the same water via electricity). And use the fuel locally where possible.

As for nuclear, if we're going to use something non-renewable then it makes sense to put the nuclear power in countries that don't have local fossil fuel resources. Japan is a country that should logically be using far more nuclear than coal, oil and gas combined for this reason. So too any other country that imports fuel.

So it doesn't make sense to me for Australia to use nuclear power. Whilst someone is using coal, it makes sense to do it as close to the mine as possible. So send the uranium to Japan (stop selling them coal) but don't waste that very high grade, low bulk resouce by using it here.

Mining coal in NSW and road / rail freighting it straight past a nuclear plant in order to export it would be the height of environmental and economic madness. Better to sell the uranium and burn the coal here if we're going to use it anywhere.

As for how a near-100% renewable grid would work, the main points are as follows:

Geothermal as the major baseload source. Other than large scale hydro, which we don't have enough of, it's the only non-intermittent renewable source we have.

The point about hydro relates to storage. It's by far the most practical means of balancing short term supply and demand in any grid due to the technical characteristics of hydro turbines. A hydro plant can easily go from zero to 100% virtually immediately. And a hydro plant can stop incredibly fast too. It's like comparing the acceleration, turning and stopping times of an ocean liner with a motor bike.

For example, here is the output for 2 (of 6) of the Poatina (hydro, Tas) units that were in service feeding the bulk transmission system yesterday.

5:50am - offline
5:55am - 1% of capacity
6:00 - 21%
6:05 - 48%
6:10 - 24%
6:15 - 2%
6:20 - 2%
6:25 - 32%
6:30 - 67%
6:35 - 94%
6:40 - 102%
6:45 - 100%

Here is Cethana power station output (hydro, Tas) later that same day:

17:35 - 79%
17:40 - 98%
17:45 - 88%
17:50 - 90%
17:55 - 87%
18:00 - 87%
18:05 - 5%
18:10 - 64%
18:15 - 3%

No coal or nuclear plant can efficienty follow load like that. Never has been able to and probably never will.

In the case of a 100% renewable national grid, much of the additional hydro power would come from pumped storage rather than natural flow hydro.

Solar thermal is the other key. It nicely ramps up output during the day and falls somewhat (though not to zero) at night. Exactly the same pattern as routine (excluding heating / cooling loads) daily fluctuation in power demand. Solar thermal thus can provide most of the energy not provided by geothermal or natural flow hydro.

Wind is relevant really only to Tas. It integrates quite nicely (up to a limit) with a large storage based hydro system. Wind can thus, through integrated operation, add baseload energy in Tas whereas it doesn't on the mainland. There are limits however.

Operation depends on system integration. It's quite possible to get reliable power supply from intermittent sources as long as (1) there is some long time (months) in advance predictability as to the periods of no production and (2) the system is integrated.

Predictability is why we need geothermal (consistent just like coal), hydro (flexible and very predictable), solar thermal (reasonably predictable and has some short term storage) rather than too much wind (unpredictable) and photovoltaic (no storage doesn't work at all on Winter evenings when demand is high).

As for droughts (not just rain, but wind, sun etc droughts too) I'll say this. Yes they happen. But if you have adequate storage and integrated system management across a properly designed system with adequate capacity then reliability is very high. Not absolutely reliable, but any well designed hydro system can beat coal or nuclear for reliability and a geothermal / solar / hydro system ought to be more reliable than a hydro-only system and therefore more reliable than coal.

Smurf1976 said:

I would argue that it is more appropriate to look at total fossil fuel use for electricity than focusing only on coal.

Oil is a limited resource. Once we've tapped the easy (lower pollution) sources we end up using tar sands, coal liquefaction, shale etc. Much the same applies to gas.

Factor that in and it's better to use coal in power stations and save the oil for other uses from both an environmental and economic perspective.

If we use the oil and gas for electricity today, then we end up with coal, shale etc based transport fuels tomorrow. We save a bit of emissions now, but they soar tomorrow.

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so you reckon more (CO2) now, less later. mmmm

I'll have to think about that m8 -

but I more or less agree that it is wasteful to use oil for power

2020hindsight said:

so you reckon more (CO2) now, less later. mmmm

I'll have to think about that m8 -

but I more or less agree that it is wasteful to use oil for power

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Quite simply the world doesn't have sufficient gas resources outside the Middle East and Russia for there to be a major switch to it for power generation. So if we use it for power then we won't be using it for something else.

Some rough figures for Victoria to illustrate the point.

If we switched all brown coal use to gas then total stationary energy greenhouse emissions would be about 45% below present rates.

However, if we had done that then Bass Strait gas would now be totally depleted and we'd be far more reliant on coal not just for electricity, but for everything else as well. And that puts total emissions about 80% above present levels.

So we could cut emissions 45% now. And then send them 80% above present levels in a decade or so and keep them there forever.

Factor in the loss of gas for transport use and, in view of peak oil, we end up relying on coal for that as well. And that's one incredibly polluting process.

I'll make one prediction however. No private investor will go anywhere near gas-fired power by 2020 in this country. And the plants being built now will end up every bit as much an economic millstone as all those oil-fired plants built worldwide in the 60's and 70's. Indeed gas is already becoming uncompetitive (too expensive) in WA right now.

I suppose I could agree that gas-fired power permanently cuts emissions to the extent that it will probably end up being so expensive that nobody can afford to use it. That's the ultimate in energy conservation, but not really a good outcome IMO.

Latest UN climate change report is out, and as expected nothing short of scary ....


http://http://www.usatoday.com/money/topstories/2007-11-17-1076370395_x.htm


I reckon this could be the precursor to the mother of all asset bubbles, might make dotcom look like a walk in the park ?

Or, as he put it when talking to The Sunday Age: "The continuing growth in human numbers multiplied by the growth in consumption per person has brought us to the point whereby human activities are on the same scale and scope as the natural biological, chemical and geophysical processes that built the biosphere. And that's never happened before."

Lord May said it was urgent that humanity constrained its population growth.

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http://http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/11/17/1194767024566.html


Finally someone who can attract an audience has said it, maybe its time someone had a long hard talk to followers of Abramatic religions etc ...

I think Western nations are in a great position to reduce populations because of our aged Population's, population reduction is happening naturally for us.

Smurf1976 said:

Geothermal as the major baseload source. Other than large scale hydro, which we don't have enough of, it's the only non-intermittent renewable source we have.

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The only thing the worries me with Geothermal energy is if everyone starts using it, what will happen when we start drawing huge amounts of heat energy from the earth will we upset the balance. You do not get something for nothing.

Jellyfish wiped out Northern Ireland's only salmon farm, with more than $2.06 million worth of stock massacred in the attack.

The jellyfish, covering an area of around 26 square km, engulfed the Northern Salmon Company's cages off the province's northeastern coast, suffocating 100,000 fish, the firm's Managing Director, John Russell, told Reuters on Thursday.

"It was sheer devastation - I've been 30 years in the salmon industry and I've never seen anything like it," Russell said.

Staff on their way to give the fish their morning feed noticed a "reddish-brown tinge" to the sea and then realised the boats were struggling to make headway through an expanse of jellyfish up to 35 feet deep, Russell said.

"A few hours later all our salmon were dead, the bulk of them suffocated."

The attack, by a type of jellyfish known as a "mauve stinger", happened late last week off the coast of County Antrim, an area popular with tourists.

The mauve stinger, noted for its purplish night-time glow, is more commonly found in warmer Mediterranean waters.

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http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=328019

Failing crops, record droughts, now legions of killer jelly fish taking out fish farms! Is mother nature planning to starve us mere humans for our evil ways?

Kimosabi said:

ha, those pictures are nothing, try these out for size:

Chemtrails or Contrails, you decide???

28.06.2007 Dover England 08:45


Chemtrails (Aerial Spraying) Over Esperance, W.A

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Kimosabi,
I still find this fascinating - thanks

http://home1.gte.net/quakker/documents/chemtrails_over_america-interesting_reading.htm

http://home1.gte.net/quakker/documents/chemtrails_over_america-interesting_reading.htm#into_thin_air

Previously explaining the government’s position, Lieutenant Colonel Michael K. Gibson of the U.S. Air Force wrote U.S. Representative Mark Green in August 2000 and stated, “The term ‘chemtrail’ is a hoax that began circulating approximately three years ago which asserts the government is involved in a joint federal program of covert spraying of the public.”

.......

Before you believe Gibson’s and the government’s “denial,” do an Internet search for the following terms: Joint Vision for 2020; weather as a force [multiplier]; owning the weather by 2025; Eastlund; and Edward Teller. Two scientists working at Wright Patterson Air Force Base confirmed to Alive that they were involved in aerial spraying experiments. One involved aluminum oxide spraying related to global warming and the other involved barium stearate and had to do with high-tech military communications.

The U.S. government has a long history of denying inexcusable covert operations. These are the people who told you about the joys of nuclear radiation and Readi Kilowatt, that Agent Orange could defoliate a tropical jungle overnight but was harmless to humans. ....

The Pentagon would now have you believe that the mass sightings of chemtrails all over North America are collective hallucinations, even though the boys at the government’s Lawrence Livermore experimental lab admit that they’ve discussed all this aerial spraying and run computer simulations on the effects of weather modification for military and peacetime purposes.

A brief history of the chemtrail phenomenon can be traced to a Washington state man who told award-winning investigative reporter William Thomas that he’d become ill on New Year’s Day 1999 after watching several jets make strange lines in the sky. Within six months, Thomas, writing primarily for the Environmental News Service, had detailed over 700 eyewitness reports of chemtrails from 40 states. .......

.....
Last May, the West-Quebec Post spread chemtrails photographs across its front page (the Canadian press has been much more open to investigating the phenomenon). Fred Ryan, the Post’s publisher, reported that his readers had been photographing and comparing the aerial activity for some time.

While the U.S. government is busy with the latest in a long series of covert experiments, and contemptuously attempts to convince eyewitnesses that they’re crazy, non-governmental organizations are quietly circulating a proposed UN treaty titled Permanent Ban on Basing of Weapons in Space; listed under the heading “Exotic weapons” is the term “chemtrails.” This treaty is a direct outgrowth of UN General Assembly Resolution 55/32, passed 138-0 with three nations abstaining (the United States, Israel and Micronesia).

Sooner or later the government will declassify documents, as it inevitably does, showing that it engaged in aerial spraying for military and environmental purposes. Until then, the government will continue to tell us we don’t see what we obviously see.

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2020hindsight said:

Kimosabi,
I still find this fascinating - thanks

http://home1.gte.net/quakker/documents/chemtrails_over_america-interesting_reading.htm

http://home1.gte.net/quakker/documents/chemtrails_over_america-interesting_reading.htm#into_thin_air

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Well, was it not only a few weeks back the Russkies were "chemically treating" the skies over Moose-cow to "ensure fine conditions" for some whizz-bang parade??

Shirley we don't think the Yanks or Brits would let the Russkies control the weather without having a dip themselves?

Now here's a thought - maybe China needs to seed the atmosphere over the Olympic Stadium with some sort of "Atmospheric Cleansing Agent" (TM) to eliminate the pea-soup S.M.O.G. that will otherwise blot out the spectacle?

Ah, the bind we smart humans have got ourselves into.....


AJ

Aussiejeff said:

Shirley we don't think the Yanks or Brits would let the Russkies control the weather without having a dip themselves?

Now here's a thought - maybe China needs to seed the atmosphere over the Olympic Stadium with some sort of "Atmospheric Cleansing Agent" (TM) to eliminate the pea-soup S.M.O.G. that will otherwise blot out the spectacle?

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pretty close AJ, - certainly (it seems) the "Weather Modification Department" plans to shoot a heap of rockets (with silver iodide) into the air around the Olympics.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/china/ig13ad01.html

Ready, aim, fire and rain
By Pallavi Aiyar Jul 13, 2007

BEIJING - After weeks of watching the mercury soar, hardening the already cracked earth of their wilting orchards and farms, a group of farmers on the outskirts of Beijing gather in the Fragrant Hills that line the western fringe of China's capital city. Unlike their ancestors, they do not assemble to perform a rain dance or gather in a temple to pray to the Lord Buddha to bring the rain.

Instead, they grab rocket launchers and a 37-millimeter anti-aircraft gun and begin shooting into the sky. What they launch are not bullets or missiles but chemical pellets. Their targets are not enemy aggressors but wisps of passing cloud that they aim to "seed" with silver-iodide particles around which moisture can then collect and become heavy enough to fall.

The farmers are part of the biggest rain-making force in the world: China's Weather Modification Program.

According to Wang Guanghe, director of the Weather Modification Department under the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, each of China's more than 30 provinces and province-level municipalities today boast a weather-modification base, employing more than 32,000 people, 7,100 anti-aircraft guns, 4,991 special rocket launchers and 30-odd aircraft across the country.

"Ours is the largest artificial weather program in the world in terms of equipment, size and budget," Wang said, adding that the annual nationwide budget for weather modification is between US$60 million and $90 million.

.....

In the beginning, the idea was to ease drought and improve harvests for Chinese farmers, but over the decades other functions have evolved such as firefighting, prevention of hailstorms, and replenishment of river heads and reservoirs. Artificial rain has also been used by some provinces to combat drought and sandstorms. In 2004, Shanghai decided to induce rain simply to lower the temperature during a prolonged heat wave to bring relief to an increasingly hot and sweaty urban populace.

And now China's weather officials have been charged with another important task: ensuring clear skies for the Summer Olympic Games next year.

Zhang Qiang, the top weather-modification bureaucrat in Beijing, said her office has been conducting experiments in cloud-busting for the past two years in preparation for the Games' opening ceremony on August 8, 2008.

She said that according to past meteorological data, there is a 50% chance of drizzle on that day. To ensure blue skies, the Beijing Weather Modification Office is busy researching the effects of various chemical activators on different sizes of cloud formations at different altitudes. The aim is to catch pregnant clouds early and induce rainfall ahead of the big day so that during the opening ceremony the sky is cloud-free.

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China is toast. Think of anything detrimental to anything, then multiply it by 1000 and you have the Chinese economic phenomenom that shall never die. How about drowning in your own gridlock, smog, pollution, overcrowding, unemployment etc etc All is not as it appears, except for the pollution - it's very real.

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You do understand don't you that carbon emissions in China will heat up the whole world?

ST said:

China is toast. Think of anything detrimental to anything, then multiply it by 1000 and you have the Chinese economic phenomenom that shall never die. How about drowning in your own gridlock, smog, pollution, ..... - All is not as it appears, except for the pollution - it's very real.

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I posted this elsewhere, (videos with a message) - a few youtubs on various aspects of Chinese pollution. - no need to see these right through of course

Chinese pollution ? - USA (and us) prepared to ignore international conventions about dumping in the third /second world
E-Waste: Dumping on the Poor , 4m30s
Chinese Pollution Death Tolls, 1m30s
BBC-China's Grime Belt Air Pollution Extreme, 2m50s
Nasty pollution in China, 1m30s

Here's a comment posted on that last youtube - just some American idiot ... incidentally he claims to be "a Republican and a Christian"

We should not let radical environmentalists create all kinds of regulations in China because "pollution" is overstated and exploited in these videos and blown out of proportion. Waste = success. No waste = no money being made.

As a Republicand and a Christian I say we vote to overturn pollution laws in America so we can have a competitive edge again. "global warming" is a myth. GOD is REAL!

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well he might be a Republican
and he might even be a Christian
But I can't see that he is justified in calling himself a member of a humane race. - or human race for that matter

and this also from a previous post:-
reminds me of a quote by Ayn Rand (US novelist - ironically she wrote "Atlas Shrugged" )

Ayn Rand ........Here's what she said about pollution:- back in the 60's or 70's granted - but we are reaping the rewards today ...

"If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States:
1900 - 47.3 years
1920 - 53 years
1940 - 60 years
1968 - 70.2 years (the latest figures compiled [as of January 1971])
Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent "Thank you" to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.-- Ayn Rand, "The Anti-Industrial Revolution," The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution

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btw, adjusted for population.... CO2e per capita , USA 24.3 tonnes , China 3.9 tonnes

2020hindsight said:

pretty close AJ, - certainly (it seems) the "Weather Modification Department" plans to shoot a heap of rockets (with silver iodide) into the air around the Olympics.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/china/ig13ad01.html

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There's nothing new about making rain. Closer to home, Tasmania's been doing it since the 1960's. It's cheap and effective - more than a 20% increase in the central parts of the target areas at very little cost.

And no, it doesn't result in huge white trails across the sky - that's certainly something else IMO.