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According to David Wallace Wells author of the inhabitable earth - a physical hardware kind of decarbonization that pulled CO2 from the air or ocean would be three times the size of the global oil and gas energy. And you’d have to have electricity to power all of that... from a source that doesn’t emit.
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Nov 15, 2019 00:25
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Marxalot posted:That really only works if you bury the dang things. There are some smaller carbon sequestration plants out there with a potential to scale way the hell up, but they're more of a proof of concept than an Actual Thing People Are Doing. The problem is that right now they'd have to be ~commercially viable~ to run, and good luck have fun making synthetic fuels or carbon bricks pulled out of the atmosphere commercially viable against just pulling crude out of the ground. Any industrial process will necessarily (like thermodynamically necessary) consume more energy than would be released from burning that synthetic fuel, so until we have a 100% renewable power grid AND excess generation, it's pointless to build these factories. Trees, on the other hand, are naturally solar-powered as long as we don't gently caress with them.
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Nov 15, 2019 00:32
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As to sail, I think I posted this in a different discussion ... 2010: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jul/25/slow-ships-cut-greenhouse-emissions The world's largest cargo ships are traveling at lower speeds today than sailing clippers such as the Cutty Sark did more than 130 years ago. A combination of the recession and growing awareness in the shipping industry about climate change emissions encouraged many ship owners to adopt "slow steaming" to save fuel two years ago. This lowered speeds from the standard 25 knots to 20 knots, but many major companies have now taken this a stage further by adopting "super-slow steaming" at speeds of 12 knots (about 14mph). Travel times between the US and China, or between Australia and Europe, are now comparable to those of the great age of sail in the 19th century. American clippers reached 14 to 17 knots in the 1850s, with the fastest recording speeds of 22 knots or more.
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Nov 15, 2019 00:52
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Infinite Karma posted:(not being glib, actually a genuine question...) Isn't carbon capture really just "planting a shitload of trees" with current technology? We can cap and trade carbon credits to help control how much carbon gets emitted, but there isn't really much carbon-negative technology out there, much less technology that works better than photosynthesis. There are a few prospects for carbon capture besides trees. Algae was looked into as a source for biofuels, but you can actually just grow it quickly and dump it down a big hole in the ground and cover it up. If you can use sea water instead of fresh water you're not utilizing scarce water resources to do it. Some strains of algae are well suited for this. One of the primary problems with using algae as a fuel source is that you need to get those nice really complex hydrocarbon chains for them to be processed into usable fuel. if you're using them for carbon capture however, all you care about is the volume of carbon that goes into them when you dump them down the drain, not how useful it could be if processed, or the complexity of the processing. This drastically simplifies your requirements for a suitable variety of algae. There are artificial methods for carbon capture as well that are energy intensive. These are obviously counter productive if they don't use zero carbon energy to power them.
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Nov 15, 2019 00:53
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I realize this is a somewhat incorrect place to ask(I also checked in the DIY forum), but is there a source of good info on home solar energy? The marketing is so aggressive it's ridiculous and it makes it nearly impossible to search without some solar sales guy setting up a booth in my living room.
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Nov 15, 2019 00:56
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I own a solar energy company (it's okay if you hate me), I'll answer any questions to the best of my knowledge. What kind of info are you not able to find?
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Nov 15, 2019 00:58
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Infinite Karma posted:I own a solar energy company (it's okay if you hate me),  quote:I'll answer any questions to the best of my knowledge. What kind of info are you not able to find? 1) What systems generally should cost 2) Whether paying your own upfront equipment or leasing from a company is a good deal 3) What can I expect to safe on my bill 4) Is there goverment rebates still in existence 5) Is it still possible to get money back from the utilities for surplus 6) Batteries? If there's a non-heavy-marketing site to direct me to, that's cool
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Nov 15, 2019 01:07
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Infinite Karma posted:What do you mean it only works if you bury them? As long as the plants are alive, they're sequestering carbon in their biomass. They're not perfect sequestration machines but they're pretty efficient at it and in most wet climates take care of themselves for decades to centuries. They're pointing out that most of our carbon came from underground sources, so you'd expect serious carbon sequestration wouldn't be just plant growth forever. I don't know what the numbers are, though
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Nov 15, 2019 01:27
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Infinite Karma posted:I own a solar energy company (it's okay if you hate me), I'll answer any questions to the best of my knowledge. What kind of info are you not able to find? Do you mostly do PV or other stuff?
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Nov 15, 2019 01:29
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VideoGameVet posted:As to sail, I think I posted this in a different discussion ... See if you can come up with a reason why the Cutty Sark, displacing 2100 ton, really isnt comparable to a modern cargo ship. I'll wait.
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Nov 15, 2019 01:36
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:See if you can come up with a reason why the Cutty Sark, displacing 2100 ton, really isnt comparable to a modern cargo ship. I'll wait. And also why reaching a speed isn't the same thing as sustaining that speed for days on end. It took Cutty Sark 104 days to go from Shanghai to London, and that was a race.
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Nov 15, 2019 01:38
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Jaxyon posted:1) What systems generally should cost 1) Labor and compliance (permitting and stuff like that) costs are pretty substantial, so it depends on where you live. California where I work is generally around $3.00 to $3.50 a watt for residential rooftop projects (depending on factors like the roof construction, system size, electrical meter upgrades, and mid-level vs. premium inverters and panels). You can probably find companies that will do it for less, if you use cheaper products. With financing, it's closer to $4/watt. A lot of companies have insane sales tactics and cost cutting that I'm not privy to, but reputable ones have similar profit margins to other construction - 20% to 25% after paying for the materials and the labor to install. This question is pretty tough in general, because it really is a custom project for every building. Publications that say it's $1.50 a watt are full of poo poo though, the materials alone cost more than that unless you're building a power plant. 2) Paying up front gives the best rate of return, and financing a purchase is a middle ground. Leasing is basically only useful if you can't take advantage of tax credits, because it's not as beneficial as financing the purchase. Solar financing in general is pretty bad (high points tacked on or high interest rates, comparable to a subprime auto loan) if you don't get a real loan or HELOC from a bank. PACE programs get a bad name, but they're just an alternative finance type that you can crunch the numbers on. In no case will a system ever be free or zero cost, they will all cost something, but your payments can be less than your power bill was on day 1, with more savings as power rates go up over time (which is the only sales pitch I'll make). 3) That depends on a lot of factors. If you're not a huge energy hog, you can usually offset your bill to $0, and just pay a nominal fee to the power company. Where energy is expensive in California, New York, Hawaii, and some other East Coast states, you can get one of those aforementioned crappy loans and still pay less for your system than your power would have cost. A cash purchase is usually paid back in 5-7 years, and then you have free electricity for the next 20 years or so, which is the expected lifetime of the system. Generally, if your power bill averages over $100 a month on the lowest end, going solar will have a decent rate of return. 4) The big rebate is a 30% rebate from the Federal government. You get a tax credit equal to 30% of the purchase price of the system which is basically a $1-for-$1 rebate towards paying your tax bill. Some states and local jurisdictions have other rebates, too. This rebate is sunsetting though, and will drop a few percent each year for the next 6 years if they don't extend it. 5) Yes and no (except for in Hawaii where it's just no). The utilities do pay you for net power generated, and if you somehow produce more dollars than you use (which can be complicated due to time-of-use power rates), they'll have to cut you a check once a year. BUT, the utilities only have to give you that deal if you're building a system to be energy neutral. If you intentionally build a system to generate excess power by oversizing it, they can decide that you're operating a tiny, lovely power plant, and pay you wholesale rates for your generation instead of retail rates. That said, if you produce more than you use in the spring, and use more than you produce in the summer, they do let it even out to zero without complaining. The tally is your overall yearly production vs. consumption. 6) Batteries are a whole other ballgame. They cost a decent amount, but also have a small rate of return by charging from solar and selling back to the grid at peak times. As backup power, unless you build an insane battery system, they'll basically keep your fridge running for a few hours and probably a few power outlets to charge your phone, but won't power your whole house, they just don't have the juice. They also have a much shorter lifetime than solar PV, on the order of 10 years instead of 25-30 years. There are also separate, higher state rebates for batteries that you can combine with the federal tax credit.
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Nov 15, 2019 01:47
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QuarkJets posted:Do you mostly do PV or other stuff?
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Nov 15, 2019 01:50
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At what kwh rate would you consider A PV array to be uneconomical for the average residential user? Like, at what point does the utility just price solar out because the rate of return is too long?
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Nov 15, 2019 01:58
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:See if you can come up with a reason why the Cutty Sark, displacing 2100 ton, really isnt comparable to a modern cargo ship. I'll wait. I guess we can never come up with a solution then. 
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Nov 15, 2019 02:12
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Thank you! That's a great response
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Nov 15, 2019 02:23
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VideoGameVet posted:I guess we can never come up with a solution then. Do you seriously not understand what I am trying to say? Sail is dead and gone and at best can help to reduce fuel costs. The cutty sark is an order of magnitude smaller in terms of volume than even the smaller cargo vessels today. You cannot move a modern cargo vessel in any kind of timely fashion with sail. It just does not have enough motive power. The sail area required would be utterly monstrous. Which leaves nuclear, fossil fuels, and cutting global trade by 90+%.
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Nov 15, 2019 02:39
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Tab8715 posted:According to David Wallace Wells author of the inhabitable earth - a physical hardware kind of decarbonization that pulled CO2 from the air or ocean would be three times the size of the global oil and gas energy.  Infinite Karma posted:What do you mean it only works if you bury them? As long as the plants are alive, they're sequestering carbon in their biomass. They're not perfect sequestration machines but they're pretty efficient at it and in most wet climates take care of themselves for decades to centuries. Some of it ends up becoming soil, but lot of that carbon winds up back in the atmosphere after decomposition. It's a good passive way to get the poo poo out of the air though. Also forests are neat. But yeah look, most people don't really complain much when we say that we need to transition away from ICE engines to electric wherever possible. Using chemical fuel pumped out of the air is just a different method of power storage essentially. Normal EVs would require hilarious amounts of batteries, while synthetic fuels -are- the battery. Also there's literally no way to do long haul shipping via batteries so we're either going to get it out of the air, the ground, or just starve a few billion poors about it. That said, I think most people view synthetic fuels as more of a long term "why the gently caress are we only giving the fusion guys a couple billion a year oh god that would fix literally everything" thing than something that would be viable immediately. Comrade Blyatlov posted:See if you can come up with a reason why the Cutty Sark, displacing 2100 ton, really isnt comparable to a modern cargo ship. I'll wait. Sails. The size of Texas.
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Nov 15, 2019 02:46
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I will work on the S/V TexasSail
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Nov 15, 2019 02:49
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angryrobots posted:At what kwh rate would you consider A PV array to be uneconomical for the average residential user? If I had to pull a number out of my rear end, I'd say below $0.15/kWh is where PV isn't as lucrative, but that's not reality where I live. Installation costs are also lower in some of the cheaper places like Arizona. Costs are $0.40/kWh or higher for a lot of my customers due to high usage, I think the top rate in SDGE is $0.59/kWh during the summer peak? The trick the utility is doing lately is shifting peak hours to 4 to 9 pm, which is when the sun has already set (but is when everyone is getting home from school and work), so PV might be generating power at $0.24/kWh, but the house is consuming energy in the evening at $0.50/kWh. This "energy arbitrage" is where batteries make their value back.
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Nov 15, 2019 03:36
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Do you seriously not understand what I am trying to say? Sail is dead and gone and at best can help to reduce fuel costs. The cutty sark is an order of magnitude smaller in terms of volume than even the smaller cargo vessels today. You cannot move a modern cargo vessel in any kind of timely fashion with sail. It just does not have enough motive power. The sail area required would be utterly monstrous. The kite sail stuff is being deployed to reduce fuel consumption. I get the scale issues.
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Nov 15, 2019 03:47
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Infinite Karma posted:I couldn't say off the top of my head, to be honest. Between tiered rates (where energy is cheaper if you don't consume as much) and time-of-use rates (where energy is cheaper at off-peak times and during off-peak months), you have to do a little statistical analysis spreadsheet for every individual user to see what average kWh rate they're even paying over time. That's pretty much what I expected. Locally we're at about $0.11/kwh (no tiers or ToU rates) and most people I've talked to with grid tied arrays have been displeased with the return. I assumed from your comments earlier about expected returns that you must be dealing with utility rates that were much higher.
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Nov 15, 2019 03:59
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More on the subject The kite sail concept has recently received a lot of interest. This rig consists of flying a gigantic kite from the bow of a ship using the traction developed by the kite to assist in pulling the ship through the water. Other concepts that have been explored were designed to have the kite rig alternately pull out and retract on a reel driving a generator. The kite used in this setup is similar to the kites used by recreational kiteboarders on a much larger scale. This design also allows users to expand its scale by flying multiple kites in a stacked arrangement. The idea of using kites is currently the most popular form of wind assisted propulsion on commercial ships, largely due to the low cost of retrofitting the system to existing ships with minimal interference with existing structure. This system also allows a large amount of automation using computer controls to determine the ideal kite angle and position. Using a kite allows the capture of wind at greater altitudes where wind speed is higher and more consistent.[2] This system has seen use on several ships recently with the most notable being MS Beluga Skysails, a merchant ship chartered by the US Military Sealift Command to evaluate the claims of efficiency and the feasibility of fitting this system to other ships.[3]
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Nov 15, 2019 04:15
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You should really pick up a copy of his book. Scaling nuclear power isn’t something that can just be willed into existence.
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Nov 15, 2019 04:27
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Tab8715 posted:You should really pick up a copy of his book. Scaling nuclear power isn’t something that can just be willed into existence. Except for the countries that did it and it currently being a fifth of the us electrical supply. Your other alternative is death*. Make your choice~ *though probably not too much of it for us, the relatively well off american internet forums posters
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Nov 15, 2019 04:54
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Marxalot posted:Except for the countries that did it and it currently being a fifth of the us electrical supply. Your other alternative is death*. Make your choice~ I wonder how long it would take us now with current demand, future demand along with politics...
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Nov 15, 2019 05:01
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Tab8715 posted:I wonder how long it would take us now with current demand, future demand along with politics... You can say the same about solar, wind, and just outright "culling of useless eaters of food".
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Nov 15, 2019 05:02
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Marxalot posted:You can say the same about solar, wind, and just outright "culling of useless eaters of food". Of course, but Nuclear is much different animal than those.
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Nov 15, 2019 05:04
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Tab8715 posted:You should really pick up a copy of his book. Scaling nuclear power isn’t something that can just be willed into existence. We don't need to will it into existence because it already happened decades and decades ago.
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Nov 15, 2019 05:10
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Does anyone have a copy of The Inhabitable Earth on hand? I lent my earlier. Someone please quote the chapter that deals with Nuclear Power.
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Nov 15, 2019 05:15
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Tab8715 posted:Does anyone have a copy of The Inhabitable Earth on hand? I lent my earlier. It's "Uninhabitable" from what I can tell but I didn't look -that- hard, and the literal first page of it fucks up on extinction events so that doesn't bode well. The insane doom and gloom of this thing explains your incredibly malthusian worldview at least. e: lmao quote:By the 2090s, as many as 2 billion people globally will be ~white vapor~ and finger trap towers oh god e2: I'd just link the thing but I'm not sure if the pdf I found is free to distribute or not, too busy skimming quote:That we remember the quote:It is a common charge against liberal environmentalists that they live  ok I'm done skimming this thing for quotes. I finally found some solutions this guy put out and it's vertical loving farming, coating your roof with kilz, and carbon taxes
Marxalot fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Nov 15, 2019 |
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Nov 15, 2019 05:35
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If you replaced every Wh of fossil power with nuclear power you'd massively reduce the number of deaths per year overall, even if we multiplied the occurrence rate of nuclear disasters by a factor of 10.
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Nov 15, 2019 05:59
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I remember seeing some chart about fuel use related to growing food, processing it, and getting it to your fridge, and transport was a tiny sliver of it.
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Nov 15, 2019 06:11
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Baronjutter posted:I remember seeing some chart about fuel use related to growing food, processing it, and getting it to your fridge, and transport was a tiny sliver of it. Vertical farms and white roofs, as far as the eye can see! Look I just skimmed the thing so maybe I missed all the Good Parts but this book seems not great. Go read Naomi Klein or something idk. At least from what little I remember she can write and also come up with solutions that aren't just "What if we shut down modern civilization and gave up? Huh? Guys? Where did everyone go? I got a van full of white paint and it needs to get used!" Marxalot fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Nov 15, 2019 |
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Nov 15, 2019 06:16
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It's really hard to argue that a vast nuclear build out is impossible in the same breath that you advocate vertical farms, which will take a lot of electricity to run. Anyways, the answer will always be the same. Build as much green power as you can, electrify everything you can, and tell the market to gently caress itself with a massive government effort. If the government can sustain trillions of dollars of smart bombs and soldiers half a world away, it can sustain a multi decade long program of green power buildouts and education programs to get the workforce needed to do it.
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Nov 15, 2019 06:36
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:If the government can sustain trillions of dollars of smart bombs and soldiers half a world away, it can sustain a multi decade long program of green power buildouts and education programs to get the workforce needed to do it. Of course, it can be done but the US Military is from a country that came out of World War 2 relatively unscathed. The population boomed both socially, economically, etc. and you have more or less a global superpower. This took decades and decades to occur with multiple generations with a population that’s relatively educated and lives in world that is safe, sound and somewhat secure at least compared to the rest of the world. So... yes you are the right that it could be done but just doing it with just Nuclear is even more difficult than just a green transition. The United States and the rest of the world will not end up like France where most of their power is Nuclear.
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Nov 15, 2019 07:01
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Tab8715 posted:Of course, it can be done but the US Military is from a country that came out of World War 2 relatively unscathed. The population boomed both socially, economically, etc. and you have more or less a global superpower. What kind of dumbshit logical progression is this? Do you not see how you completely undermine your thesis, like... twice, in at least two different ways? Are you deliberately doing this?
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Nov 15, 2019 07:11
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The gigantic hyper power can never do what the french did. OK.
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Nov 15, 2019 12:21
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Killer-of-Lawyers posted:The gigantic hyper power can never do what the french did. OK. Especially one that farts out a nearly trillion dollar military budget like its nothing.
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Nov 15, 2019 14:02
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What if we build BOTH nuclear and non-nuclear power.
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Nov 15, 2019 14:52
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