Is no one pointing out that this isn’t the part that makes replacing fossil fuels hard? This is focusing on a completely irrelevant metric. It’s a great motivator for why we need to shift but it has no impact on how hard it will be to replace oil. There’s 100 practical reason for why it’s hard, namely that clean energy sources are not under our direct control to scale up and down as we need more/less. We can’t tell the sun to be strongest at 6pm when everyone gets off work so we’ll need more energy. You can force the wind to blow. The best way to solve this is improving battery tech but that’s a HUGE task. What we have currently is a focus on quickly growing increase in clean energy sources as a baseline energy source with a diversified mix of other sources along with natural gas peaking plants that are far cleaner than coal and provide near immediate response times to surges on energy demand which is incredible.
Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
31–40 of 113 posts
Re: Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> An insanely large portion of the CO2 is simply us and our livestock breathing Then explain why China, despite having more than four times as many people as the US, only has twice the CO2 emissions? Can you even link a single study that puts anything but fossil fuel use as the primary contributor (by a wide margin) to atmospheric CO2? Because I couldn't in several minutes of googling. > Presumably the world can much…
How do you know China's or the USA's CO2 emissions? Do you have both countries placed into a container with tools to measure the aggregate CO2 output? Science is based on empirical observation. The map is not the territory & models are often wrong. We don't even know how often the models are wrong.
I am trusting the climate scientists who produced this data because they are the people who've spent their schooling and careers studying this sort of thing and their work has been vetted by the scientific community.
If you have a better standard of judgement then by all means present contradictory data.
Re: Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s funny, I’m not a claimant change denier, but I don’t view emissions as a problem. An insanely large portion of the CO2 is simply us and our livestock breathing. There’s also volcanos, etc. I’m a lot more worried about chemicals outside of CO2. Such as lead or pesticides. CO2 fluctuates massively throughout the year. Presumably the world can much more quickly (due to vegetation) remove CO2 compared to those other…
> An insanely large portion of the CO2 is simply us and our livestock breathing. That is a remarkable claim - do you have a citation? Regarding heavy metal pollutants etc - I agree that those are a concern, but that is more or less orthogonal to the climate crisis.
This claim is not true. I mean, it's so easy to go and read withouthotair.com and see how this stuff can be calculated on the back of an envelope.
Then you can try a little bit harder and do 2nd, 3rd and other order effects and get a bit more precise estimates.
To say that a 2 ton car moving represents a tiny part of CO2 emissions and that breathing is killing the planet is ridiculous.
Re: Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
#34Is no one pointing out that this isn’t the part that makes replacing fossil fuels hard? This is focusing on a completely irrelevant metric. It’s a great motivator for why we need to shift but it has no impact on how hard it will be to replace oil. There’s 100 practical reason for why it’s hard, namely that clean energy sources are not under our direct control to scale up and down as we need more/less. We can’t tell t…
FWIW long distance transmission lines work too. Solar peaks a few hours earlier than demand. So ship that power east two timezones.
Re: Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
#35It's too bad that reality doesn't really care if you have clever accounting tricks to show that "things aren't really as bad as they look!" The only number that matters at all is global green house gas emissions. We need to get that to zero, and it has continued to go up. Imagine you have a drinking problem and your doctor tells you you need to stop drinking alcohol or you will suffer liver failure. You can argue all…
It’s funny, I’m not a claimant change denier, but I don’t view emissions as a problem. An insanely large portion of the CO2 is simply us and our livestock breathing. There’s also volcanos, etc. I’m a lot more worried about chemicals outside of CO2. Such as lead or pesticides. CO2 fluctuates massively throughout the year. Presumably the world can much more quickly (due to vegetation) remove CO2 compared to those other…
Others haven't already pointed out that you're mistaken regarding "an insanely large portion of the CO2 is simply us and our livestock breathing." But also, consider this:
The carbon in the CO2 that you breath out comes from the carbon that you consume. That carbon - by virtue of its state - is part of an equilibrium carbon cycle that makes our planet habitable. I.e. the apple tree consumed CO2 from the atmosphere to create the apple that you ate, and you returned back to the atmosphere the carbon that the tree previously consumed.
Now consider the carbon that has been isolated from the cycle over billions of years as the planet became habitable to creatures such as ourselves and our non-human friends. That carbon is in the form of coal, oil, etc. If we leave that stuff in the ground we retain the current carbon equilibrium. If we burn it, we change the equilibrium by taking sequestered carbon from the ground that was "locked away" and add it to the atmospheric carbon cycle.
Re: Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
#36Is no one pointing out that this isn’t the part that makes replacing fossil fuels hard? This is focusing on a completely irrelevant metric. It’s a great motivator for why we need to shift but it has no impact on how hard it will be to replace oil. There’s 100 practical reason for why it’s hard, namely that clean energy sources are not under our direct control to scale up and down as we need more/less. We can’t tell t…
This problem is way overstated, as most fossil fuel and nuclear power can't be easily or efficiently ramped down either. We also have energy storage technologies other than batteries: the most common being pumped-storage hydroelectricity (basically a reversible hydroelectric dam, where we pump water up during excess power usage and use the generators during high demand).
Re: Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
#37The article seems incomplete. Sure we may be burning three times more coal than we'd have to if we could perfectly convert it to energy. That has literally never factored into an argument I've seen about renewables - it's always "we currently produce X GigaWatts 24x7, and renewables don't let us do that". Saying we burn coal at 30% efficiency isn't addressing anything useful. And it's one of those articles where many…
Right. When people talk about what percent of our electricity comes from where, its always gigawatts from the power plants, not BTUs of coal.
Re: Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That's misleading and I wrote the article to explain to correct that narrative. There is your first mistake, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves in to. There are literally people denying covid is real/serious while they or their love ones drown in their fluids.
I don't think this is a useful way to think about it: 1. You don't need to convince literally everyone. There are still some people who believe the Earth is flat and probably always will be, but it is not super-relevant to collective actions because they are a tiny minority 2. People do in fact change their minds on things. It usually just happens on larger time scales so while one article isn't moving the needle, th…
The harsh reality is a facebook "meme" about how climate change is a hoax created by "globalist" to take away your rights is way more effective than a nuance article from the "lamestream" media trying to explain the energy efficiency of coal power plants.
If the goal is to convert science deniers or correct their disinformation this was a complete and utter failure.
Re: Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
#39Is no one pointing out that this isn’t the part that makes replacing fossil fuels hard? This is focusing on a completely irrelevant metric. It’s a great motivator for why we need to shift but it has no impact on how hard it will be to replace oil. There’s 100 practical reason for why it’s hard, namely that clean energy sources are not under our direct control to scale up and down as we need more/less. We can’t tell t…
This problem is way overstated, as most fossil fuel and nuclear power can't be easily or efficiently ramped down either. We also have energy storage technologies other than batteries: the most common being pumped-storage hydroelectricity (basically a reversible hydroelectric dam, where we pump water up during excess power usage and use the generators during high demand).
> being pumped-storage hydroelectricity
Which isn't great as far as the "Power Generated" : "Land Used" ratio is concerned.. the same is true of most hydro-electric solutions.
Re: Primary energy vs final energy: why replacing fossil fuels may not be so hard
#40Is no one pointing out that this isn’t the part that makes replacing fossil fuels hard? This is focusing on a completely irrelevant metric. It’s a great motivator for why we need to shift but it has no impact on how hard it will be to replace oil. There’s 100 practical reason for why it’s hard, namely that clean energy sources are not under our direct control to scale up and down as we need more/less. We can’t tell t…
South Australia already has days when solar alone is providing most of it's power [1] [2]. It's not that hard. You scale up renewables, and build curtailing (throwing away excess clean energy) into your cost model (until storage gets cheaper, which it will; Tesla is shipping almost 800 MW of utility scale battery storage per quarter). Australia's entirely grid will be clean by 2030 at their current rate of renewables deployment. Yes, yes, not everywhere is Australia, but the sun and wind potential is significant in most geographies where people exist. Let us not use edge cases to guide our path forward.
[1] https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m (OpenNEM scoped to South Australia, trailing 7 days 30 min granularity)
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-25/all-sa-power-from-sol... (All of South Australia's power comes from solar panels in world first for major jurisdiction)