Thread for discussing climate change

[Atlanticmike]

I found some really good links on the internet that say some of what you guys say about climate change and some different things.

Some people agree and some disagree.

Should we all be super duper scared of this Glabal Warming crap or just mostly scared?

I'm planning on buying a barge and setting it up in my backyard. I think I could probably have a house built on it within the next year or so. It's going to be large enough so I can install AstroTurf around the house that way my chickens can roam freely and feel like they're actually foraging in real grass while living on the barge. I have it all planned out. I'm also thinking about learning how to fly a helicopter and buying one to put on the barge. Oh, and lots of toilet paper! I'm taking this global warming extremely seriously because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie have convinced me my life is about to change for the worse. Come to think about it! That's the same thing the Mormon church has been telling me for over 40 years. I have the underwear to prove it. Hhmmmm!! So many questions

[Gunnar]

More information from Amory Lovins:

Why modern renewable power doesn’t need a breakthrough in energy storage | Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins shows how the U.S. can run a 2.6x-bigger 2050 economy with no oil, coal, or nuclear energy, $5 trillion cheaper, with no Act of Congress, led by business for profit.

So much of what he describes in the second video here could already have been accomplished if his vision had been more widely accepted and acted upon. Finally we are beginning to realize some of this. Electric cars, for example, are becoming better, more affordable and, I'm sure, will prove to be cheaper to manufacture and sell within a very few years, perhaps even beginning as soon as next year.

[Gunnar]

Buildings of the Future: Net Zero Energy | David Shad | TEDxCSUSM

David Shad is an engineer and futurist who has a solution to the worldwide energy crisis we are experiencing due to exponential population growth. His idea replaces current energy producing means with sustainable and environmentally friendly methods which ensure sufficient energy to power the world today and for years to come. Find out how David plans to turn the biggest culprit of the energy crisis into our greatest asset and how you can do your part to save our planet.

​Fueled by a combination of family history and great passion, David Shad grew up knowing he wanted to be a world-class solution provider. Driven by his desire, he graduated from the University of Southern California, one of the nation’s top engineering schools. But he didn’t stop there—David has become a LEED Accredited Professional, achieved certification of ASHRAE’s Building Energy Modeling Professional, obtained his Commissioning Authority certification, and passed the Mechanical Professional Engineering Exam at age 24 making him one of the youngest to do so in the country. David has always had the desire to make the world a better place through his innovative visions. He is an active leader in the building community and wants to propel society forward by challenging his fellow millennials, the future leaders of the world.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

[Atlanticmike]

More information from Amory Lovins:

Why modern renewable power doesn’t need a breakthrough in energy storage | Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins shows how the U.S. can run a 2.6x-bigger 2050 economy with no oil, coal, or nuclear energy, $5 trillion cheaper, with no Act of Congress, led by business for profit.

So much of what he describes in the second video here could already have been accomplished if his vision had been more widely accepted and acted upon. Finally we are beginning to realize some of this. Electric care, for example, are becoming better, more affordable and, I'm sure, will prove to be cheaper to manufacture and sell within a very few years, perhaps even beginning as soon as next year.

Absolutely nothing wrong with electric vehicles. There's nothing wrong with solar or wind power. But!! The fear being used to convince people we only have a few years before there's no "return to normalcy" is absolutely insane! Climate change has been hijacked and it's being used to scare the bejesus out of the younger generations. There's nothing I can actually say to convince you of this because climate change has taken on a cult mentality.

Here! Watch this then spend the next couple of post calling this man a complete fool.
https://youtu.be/vb-52nlv0qs

THERE WILL BE NO DISSENSION!! Sound familiar?

[drumdude]

Fusion doesn't even make sense with back of the envelope calculations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U

Let us rather say that fusion power is 'unlikely to power a major part of our energy grid by 2040'. It is not going to solve our immediate energy needs. That's not really the same as saying it 'doesn't make sense'.

The way ahead for fusion

As the construction of the ITER tokamak enters its next phase — the machine assembly — now is a good time for a recap of the history and current status of nuclear fusion research.

Nature Physics volume 16, page 889 (2020)

Sometimes small changes can have a big effect. When Ernest Rutherford, Marcus Oliphant and Paul Harteck carried out experiments in 1934, they were “surprised to find that on bombarding heavy hydrogen with diplons [deuterons] an enormous effect was produced”1, whereas in previous studies with alpha particles impinging on a deuterium target, no significant effect had been observed. Besides the discovery of tritium and helium-3, their experiment achieved the first fusion reactions in the laboratory — fusion research took off with a bang.

Among the first concepts of magnetic confinement fusion devices were the stellarator (with its helically twisted plasma shape), proposed by the American physicist Lyman Spitzer, and the tokamak (which confines the plasma in the form of a donut), introduced by Soviet scientists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm. Another approach (inertial confinement fusion), put forward by John Nuckolls and colleagues, implodes capsules filled with heavy hydrogen isotopes using high-energy laser beams2.

Today’s fusion community actively explores all these paths — alongside other concepts — as we highlighted in a special Insight issue back in 2016. In September 2019, the Nature Conference “Advances and Applications in Plasma Physics” not only brought together scientists working on different fusion concepts but also connected the wider plasma physics community — from astrophysical plasmas to laser–plasma interactions, cold/dusty plasmas and applications. In the sessions dedicated to magnetic confinement fusion, the ambivalence of the audience was tangible: will the ITER tokamak (which is Latin for ‘the way’) live up to expectations and demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion power?

Large-scale international projects come into existence on the timescale of decades rather than years, and ITER is no exception. As Matteo Barbarino recounts in a Comment on the history of nuclear fusion, the ITER collaboration was founded more than thirty years ago by the European Union (through the Euratom treaty), Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States, who were later joined by the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea and India. From the initial proposal to the start of construction in the South of France, around twenty years should pass.

Problems with the design and management issues delayed the start of operations and led to a substantially revised budget of roughly €20 billion. However, following the arrival of Director-General Bernard Bigot in 2015, a root and branch review of the project led to a new baseline design. This revised schedule marked a turning point for the construction of ITER: the first hydrogen plasma discharge is expected in 2025, and the work to achieve this is 70% complete and therefore on track. We spoke to Bernard Bigot and Tim Luce, head of ITER’s Science & Operations Department, about the status of the project. You can read the conversation elsewhere in this issue.

The progress is most strikingly visible at the ITER worksite in St. Paul-lez-Durance, France. Earlier this year, the tokamak building was handed over to the ITER Organization and the 1,250-tonne cryostat base was installed within the required precision of only 3 mm. With the first major components, such as toroidal or poloidal magnetic field coils, also arriving on site, the focus has now shifted from the construction of the infrastructure to machine assembly, a milestone that was celebrated on 28 July.

The next milestones include the commissioning of the liquid helium cryogenic plant and the pre-assembly of the (nine) vacuum vessel sectors with two toroidal magnetic field coils each and thermal shielding, with the first module expected to be installed towards the end of the year. In addition, the first of six magnets making up the central solenoid is expected to be shipped from the United States to France later this year. The solenoid will be the last major component to be installed before the cryostat will be closed up in late 2024, followed by a period of integrated commissioning and testing to prepare for First Plasma.

Of course, these milestones might require some adjustment due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic: work on site has been reduced to critical activities with precautionary safety measures in place and lockdown measures such as the temporary closures of workshops or factories in individual member states might affect the delivery of critical components. A report on the impact is expected this month, but Bernard Bigot believes this not to be a major setback.

The strong performance and vigorous pace of progress demonstrated by the ITER Organization in reaching critical milestones of the new baseline has also shifted public perception. The conversation is now less cynical compared to the first, rather troubled, years of the project — with the growing public awareness that the issue of climate change becomes ever more urgent. After First Plasma, installation of critical components for deuterium–tritium operation such as additional heating or a fuel recycling system will prepare the machine for its ultimate goal: the demonstration of the feasibility of fusion power is expected to commence in 2035. This seems like a long way down the road, but ITER’s recent track record is impressive.

Although ITER will not be the immediate solution to the problem of clean and affordable energy, it will be crucial in informing the design of the next generation of fusion reactors that will produce electricity instead of heat. Scientists are thinking way ahead: conceptual designs for commercial tokamaks as a globally distributable, sustainable supply of energy are already underway. This is the way towards a future with safe and sustainable energy.

It needs to be put into context relative to other human achievements we could be working on. For example, it would be easier and faster to build a space elevator, if we're ignoring the back of the envelope calculations and just believing that time/money is capable of solving all engineering problems. And a space elevator would be much more useful for mankind given that we are already solving the CO2 problem with other power sources and could tap into many more if we had easy access to space.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

More information from Amory Lovins:

Why modern renewable power doesn’t need a breakthrough in energy storage | Amory Lovins

The money shot for the first video is 3:13-3:34. I hadn’t heard the term ‘dispatchable renewables’ used before so if you’re like me here’s the wiki:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatchable_generation

Where I get a little lost on the topic is in the long-distance transmission connections to grids - how far can electricity produced here actually make it to the end user there. So when the ‘dispatchable plant’ fires up its biomass or whatever generator in Raleigh, does that electricity make it to NYC without serious loss? I should just google this, I guess.

- Doc

[Chap]

Where I get a little lost on the topic is in the long-distance transmission connections to grids - how far can electricity produced here actually make it to the end user there. So when the ‘dispatchable plant’ fires up its biomass or whatever generator in Raleigh, does that electricity make it to NYC without serious loss? I should just google this, I guess.

That's a relatively easy one to answer. If you have two wires connecting a generator to a power consuming unit such as a motor, then the power input into the wires by the generator is:

Pin = I x V, where I is the current passing through the wires, and V is the potential difference (voltage) between the generator output terminals.

If the total resistance of the transmission wires is R, then the power lost as heat in the transmission wires is Ploss = I^2 x R

The trick therefore is to keep transmission losses low by keeping the current small. But you can still transmit a lot of power by making the voltage V very high, since it is I x V that determines the power.

So long distance power lines have very high voltages, and (relatively) small currents. They often also use DC rather than AC, but that is not the main point.

[Res Ipsa]

I found some really good links on the internet that say some of what you guys say about climate change and some different things.

Some people agree and some disagree.

Should we all be super duper scared of this Glabal Warming crap or just mostly scared?

Scared isn’t the point. If you’re standing on train tracks and you hear a train whistle, there’s no point in being scared. The point is to be rational enough to avoid getting smashed by stepping off the track.

To make rational choices, you have to drop the political and emotional BS. You have to stop adhering to liberal, conservatives, or liberal dogma. You have to stop thinking like a Boomer or a millennial or a gen whatever. You have to put aside owning the lives or sticking it to the trumpets.

You have to look at the evidence, figure out if there’s a problem, and, if there is, figure out possible solutions.

So, I don’t care how scared you feel. However, in your place, I’d feel like a jerk for the clowning you are doing in this thread.

[Res Ipsa]

More information from Amory Lovins:

Why modern renewable power doesn’t need a breakthrough in energy storage | Amory Lovins

Amory Lovins shows how the U.S. can run a 2.6x-bigger 2050 economy with no oil, coal, or nuclear energy, $5 trillion cheaper, with no Act of Congress, led by business for profit.

So much of what he describes in the second video here could already have been accomplished if his vision had been more widely accepted and acted upon. Finally we are beginning to realize some of this. Electric care, for example, are becoming better, more affordable and, I'm sure, will prove to be cheaper to manufacture and sell within a very few years, perhaps even beginning as soon as next year.

Absolutely nothing wrong with electric vehicles. There's nothing wrong with solar or wind power. But!! The fear being used to convince people we only have a few years before there's no "return to normalcy" is absolutely insane! Climate change has been hijacked and it's being used to scare the bejesus out of the younger generations. There's nothing I can actually say to convince you of this because climate change has taken on a cult mentality.

Here! Watch this then spend the next couple of post calling this man a complete fool.
https://youtu.be/vb-52nlv0qs

THERE WILL BE NO DISSENSION!! Sound familiar?

So, you going to tell us the main source of CO2 from your backyard chickens, or have you finished congratulating yourself on your last public display of self-righteous ignorance and ready to repeat the same pointless crap?

[Atlanticmike]

Absolutely nothing wrong with electric vehicles. There's nothing wrong with solar or wind power. But!! The fear being used to convince people we only have a few years before there's no "return to normalcy" is absolutely insane! Climate change has been hijacked and it's being used to scare the bejesus out of the younger generations. There's nothing I can actually say to convince you of this because climate change has taken on a cult mentality.

Here! Watch this then spend the next couple of post calling this man a complete fool.
https://youtu.be/vb-52nlv0qs

THERE WILL BE NO DISSENSION!! Sound familiar?

So, you going to tell us the main source of CO2 from your backyard chickens, or have you finished congratulating yourself on your last public display of self-righteous ignorance and ready to repeat the same pointless crap?

Well, my Brahma rooster Frank rides his moped to the convenience store a couple times a week to pick up a 40-ounce. He loves his Malt Liquor!! Out of all my chickens, that dumb mother fxxxer probably produces more CO2 ridin that moped then any other chicken I've ever met. Last year he almost burnt down my new chicken coop smokin a Doobie! I'd eat em, but he's a chick magnet and he can spermify a hen like no other rooster I've ever seen. I've seen a lot of cocks in my life, but Frank has got to be the biggest cock I've ever layed my eyes on. You want me to take a picture of him? I swear! You'll agree with me. Once you lay eyes on Frank you'll say, dang! That's the biggest cock I've seen in my life!