I hope that happens. In our university, a research group has tried to develop microalgae that could be used in the production of biofuels (H2, biodiesel). They are using genetic manipulation in that work. If I remember right, they have tried that for more than two decades and have not yet managed to develop a system that would produce fuel with lower costs than competing methods. Maybe they will succeed one day.
Sorry, I donât know what PV means. Please tell.
Greening of deserts would be a nice thing. The problem in that task is not lack of energy, it is lack of water.
One problem with H2 is that losses during transportation are high. H2 leaks through transport tubes. That has hampered plans that H2 would be produced in Sahara by using huge solar power plants and then transported to Europe.
Hmmm⌠Mined uranium can supply the worldâs energy needs for 5 years. More optimistic ideas of turning to nuclear energy hope to extract Uranium from sea water. Hey⌠maybe that can be a bonus product from filtering algae from sea water. LOL
Solazyme says it will be capable of producing competitively priced fuel from algae in 24 to 36 months. link
Huh?
Maybe to protect vulnerable coastal areas, and to guard against the economic, political/religious upheaval that doing nothing would bring about? People here might think that coastal cities can just move or that their destruction wonât affect you, but that is not how it works!
Either that or adapt to living under water. LOL
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Ah, but itâs replicable. You build ten facilities, and go to 0.0001142857%.
When you look at the cost and effectiveness of carbon emission reduction, technology like this is the far better investment.
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Nobody is going to pay $10,000 for a smartphoneâŚbut the more you make the cheaper they get.
And youâre right, the latest carbon emissions agreement apparently has China agreeing to lower the increase in coal burning over the next decade or so. Not lower the coal burningâlower the increase in coal burning.
But you canât just âstop burning carbon.â You need a viable replacement.
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If all this gloom and doom stuff is correct some are in trouble. It is too late for all that. Mitigation strategies are pointless and we have no right to tell third world countries they canât use dirty energy to grow and expand like we did. It cheap and easy to acquire and all around the world shows no signs of reversing.
And yes, it is difficult for people living in coastal areas to relocate but not impossible. Harder for the poor like everything else. It was likewise difficult for businesses to be forced to close by the government for a year, many of which went under. Guess what those people had to do? Find new jobs, sell homes, move, completely change and upend their entire lives. That is how the cookie crumbles sometimes. If the water is rising, you have no choice but to vacate or die. When the next ice age happens people will have no choice in the matter either. Migrate and adapt or perish. Unless âglobal warmingâ is actually a blessing in disguise for humanity that will trade some droughts and flooding in the very recent future to stave off the greater tragedy of ice covering places like my home state with a mile thick sheet as is suggested happened during the last one ~20,000 years ago. We supposedly have been approaching the end of an interglacial period. What does farming look like on top of a mile thick sheet of ice? Itâs not like any of these changes happen overnight or surprise people like a tsunami. Adapt or perish. Mother nature doesnât care about our sense of entitlement. or established societies. They will eventually crumble and fall like all the rest throughout world history.
Vinnie
If? Seriously? We are all in trouble, whether or not we want to admit it. 40% of Americans live near the coast. Believe me, you donât want to see the economic upheaval that will happen when these areas go under water.
Our armed services consider climate change a threat multiplier. More desperate refugees than ever will be forced to try to enter this country, which will in turn radicalize Evangelicals even more.
Weâre all in this together.
Sorry @knor, Photovoltaics: solar power.
And paving deserts with it will change the weather over them proportionately. Sufficiently large areas, square kilometres on up, ten, a hundred, a thousand, and then of thousands, will create hotter air by reflection, hotter air has higher moisture capacity, rises, draws in more from adjacent seas, and cools. It rains. Like at the end of the first fine Dune movie. (The remake is the best homage.)
I hear what you say about hydrogen leakage, it will have to be produced more locally in major use centres. And the storage technology will improve. There is no alternative.
@fmiddel - at least youâre playing the game. Would you invest? You jest. And a thousand facilities would take us to 0.001142857%. A million to 1.142857% In what, a hundred years? That so compares with iPhones⌠not. And thatâs with free, easily captured energy of course.
And youâre right, you canât just âstop burning carbonâ. It will take the rest of the century at least. You have to go flat out with nuclear. With massively redundant wind and solar and hydro and geo and hydrogen alongside. No nuclear and itâs all a waste of time. Utterly and completely doomed.
3 degrees by the end of the century and zero increase⌠and the temperature and sea level will keep on rising for another century. To 2200. To 4 degrees. Even if it maxes out at 3 by 2100, sea level keeps rising. So no, temperature follows then. To 2300. At least. 50 feet. 60. It will take at least 400 years to get back to pre-industrial levels of CO2, temperature and sea level. Call it 500. 2800. Easy. Those PV deserts better bloom.
Or @Vinnie is 1000% right. And global civilization will collapse. We have to address the injustice of inequality by 2100 regardless. Because that guarantees the collapse. We can endure together, or all die apart. Equality will be attained one way or the other.
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China is right now building shiny new plants like they are coming out of a cupcake factory. Many have not even yet begun their operating life. And thatâs the half of it, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and South Korea are adding more.
The science tells us climate change is real, and that it is a crisis.
The science also tells us that this can be slightly mitigated, but not stopped. There is not a prayer of staying within 1.5 or 2 degrees.
For hundreds of millions of years, photosynthetic organism have promoted CO2 to useful biomolecules using the energy of the Sunâs fusion, and that captured energy has been concentrated into hydrocarbon reserves which have been exploited for power. We burn thousands of years of sun for every year of power. Hydrocarbon based fertilizers, and fueled agriculture, automation and mobility have facilitated the human population to explode even where improvement in medical treatment was minimal, and that population increase is riding the tiger, dependent on the continuity of the energy input which gave it rise. What makes all this possible is reversing the chemical energy created by photosynthesis and returning those bonds to their original constituents including CO2, a stable molecule from which no more energy can be squeezed. Everybody here already knows this stuff, so the point is this - it is a thermodynamic reality that there is no way to chemically get rid of CO2 that does not take more energy than was provided in burning hydrocarbon to begin with. Mechanical storage and sequestering may be doable, but will not make much of a dent.
So we cannot be fussy. If we are going to avoid massive upheaval, we better learn how to eat nuclear waste.
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The major barrier to reducing emissions while achieving a viable economic system worldwide is political. There are a number of technologies that can be developed to reduce CO2 emissions to manageable levels, but the rich countries will select some for themselves while the developing and struggling countries will seek the cheapest options no matter what.
The extreme polarization that has characterized the climate change debate is responsible for the state of affairs.
Nuclear should be developed as a safe and reliable option, just as should zero-emissions fossil power, with renewables and biofuels. I have used methanol production as an example of one of a number of approaches - as a chemist I like this option as it will displace the current production method, and it can be used for many many processes, including as a fuel with zero emissions. âGreenâ methanol made from captured CO2 and H2 from water electrolysis, would be in great demand. The market for this renewable methanol is in its infancy. Currently a commercial plant operates in Iceland that captures CO2 and converts it into methanol, using geothermal power with a water electrolysis plant to provide H2. This demonstrates the viability of CO2 remediation through methanol synthesis. A methanol economy has been discussed; methanol is used to make hundreds of products, such as for example, aerosols, fragrances, solvents, clothing, medical protective equipment such as masks, and gloves, carpets, paints, mattresses. Methanol is used as fuel for cars, trucks, ships, cookstoves, kilns, and fuel cells. It can be transformed into numerous products, currently obtained from fossil fuels. For more information, see http://www.methanex.com.
Costs of H2 production vary considerably - my models show that using excess power from suitably designed electricity grids and producing it on site (no delivery costs) renders this option economically attractive.
Be that as it may, the debates and disagreements will continue with little action - this situation surpasses the old âNero fiddled while Rome burntâ.
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This is fundamentally correct - that is why I emphasize cost of converting it into a useable product. If we look at the demand for electricity on a daily basis, we will quickly see there are periods when the demand is much lower than the supply. During these periods the available power can be used to remove CO2 by converting it into products that are currently used, such as methanol (there are other products as well.) the economics stack up; this is one step, along with efficiency measures and stabilizing the renewables added to the grid with suitalbe (baseload) power. This can be safe nuclear and fossil fuel with zero emissions.
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What nuclear waste? Itâs a non-issue. Rationally. And ultimately, with mature, virtuous nuclear technology, there is none.
How does this help?
At last! Thatâs half right. But
The first three words are superfluous arenât they? In other words itâs commercially impossible. No one is ever going to invest in that. Oil and gas extraction will continue for plastic and for far longer. And far cheaper.
I agree. Everybody can accept reduction of emissions when it does not cost anything. When the price of energy and food rises, there is much criticism and demand that politicians should do something to lower the prices. Politicians want to be re-elected, so they rather steal from future generations than continue expensive reduction of emissions.
The same happens in China, with a bit different flavor. China wants to keep its population satisfied and the economy growing. Burning coal is a cheap option to prevent protests - in the short term. In the long term, China is one of the countries that will pay a hard domestic price when climate continues to warm.
By the way, USA will also pay a hard price - drought in some places, flooding in others, extreme storm events and growing illegal immigration. Say goodbye to many coastal cities and agriculture in drying areas. Reduction of emissions may buy time - it matters if New York will drown within a century or five centuries.
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Iâm not an expert so I cannot say if that could be true. I doubt it. Hotter air has higher moisture capacity but if the environment does not have water, air will not have more moisture. Think about Death Valley - are there more rains when temperatures peak? Even if there would be, higher evaporation would suck the water.
Neither am I. But I didnât make it up. Itâs true.
The Thar - Replacing Indiaâs 70% coal power.
The Sahara. Roses have thornsâŚ
when the size of the solar farm reaches 20% of the total area of the Sahara, it triggers a feedback loop. Heat emitted by the darker solar panels (compared to the highly reflective desert soil) creates a steep temperature difference between the land and the surrounding oceans that ultimately lowers surface air pressure and causes moist air to rise and condense into raindrops. With more monsoon rainfall, plants grow and the desert reflects less of the sunâs energy, since vegetation absorbs light better than sand and soil. With more plants present, more water is evaporated, creating a more humid environment that causes vegetation to spread.
The sting in the tail is⌠increased global warming.
Itâs real simple weather physics. PV is much less reflective than sand. That means surface heat. That means convection. That means rain. There is no comparison with Death Valley.
Just to play the gameâŚI would optimistically expect that the technology would be improved with increased investment.
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Thatâs how things generally work.
Like fusion eh? Only taxpayers are that dumb.