We Still Have No Idea How To Eliminate More Than a Quarter of Energy Emissions (technologyreview.com) 224
Climate discussions typically center on the need to replace fossil-fuel power plants with technologies like wind turbines and solar panels. But a new paper in Science offers a stark reminder that there are still huge parts of the global energy system where we simply don't have affordable ways of halting greenhouse-gas emissions. MIT Technology Review: Air travel, long-distance transportation and shipping, steel and cement manufacturing, and remaining parts of the power sector account for 27 percent of global emissions from the energy and industrial sectors. And the authors say we need much more research, innovation, and strategic coordination to clean up these sources. "If we're really ambitious about meeting our climate targets, we need to be tackling these hard sectors now," says the paper's lead author, Steven Davis, an earth system scientist at the University of California, Irvine.
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. We can power all those items with nuclear power. We are just too scared to develop it from the point of "highly dangerous" to "very safe".
All technology is dangerous at first. But if we let that scare us, we are screwed.
Re: Bullshit (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, we can eliminate all of those energy emissions with nuclear power.
Completely eliminate them. Utterly.
Also War, Poverty, Discrimination, Starvation, Children without Shoes, and the losing Rangers season.
Gone forever. Thanks to our friend, the Atom.
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And cars will fly 10x the speed of sound which will be handy when you're trying to make your flight to vacation on the moon! Ahhhh, the ATOMIC AGE!
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit. We can power all those items with nuclear power.
Nukes can work for cement, which just needs heat for the kiln. But nuclear aircraft? I don't think so. An iron blast furnace uses metallurgical coal (converted to coke), as an integral part of the process. You can't just drop in nuclear as a replacement.
Like TFA says, we need new tech. Business leaders and politicians can't save the world. Only nerds can do that.
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Nukes can work for cement, which just needs heat for the kiln. But nuclear aircraft? I don't think so.
There is already serious talk about electric airplanes. For which one presumably needs a boatload of electricity. Isn't nuclear power up to the task, at least in principle?
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
There is already serious talk about electric airplanes.
Electric planes may work for short hops, like Boston to NYC, or London to Paris. But there is no way they can go from SFO to Shanghai without some profound breakthroughs. Long haul is where most aviation energy consumption occurs.
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This is a case where the hyperloop might actually be useful.
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What nonsense. If you can figure out how to put a nuclear power plant on a plane with electric propulsion, you'd be able to fly it non-stop for years.
Although, putting a fission reactor on a plane is also a bunch of nonsense.
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"Although, putting a fission reactor on a plane is also a bunch of nonsense."
Why?
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"Although, putting a fission reactor on a plane is also a bunch of nonsense."
Why?
Because the tickets will be $100,000 each to cover the costs.
Seriously, if you have to ask "Why?" you need to get your clue meter adjusted.
There are plenty of other more cost effective carbon neutral solutions. Running jets on peanut oil [scientificamerican.com] would cost 1% of airborne nukes.
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Weight. May as well use batteries.
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Nonsense. Mount a couple of wind turbines on the wings and let them generate power for your SFO to Shanghai flight.
This might actually work [phys.org].
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It's not the amount of electricity needed - it's the storage and transport of that electricity on a plane. The absolute best batteries available today are around 1.8 MJ/kg in storage. Compare that with jet fuel which is around 43 MJ/kg. Now cut the range your airplane can fly by a factor of (43/1.8) ~24 and you'll see the issue.
Battery powered airplanes are a curiosity, but to be useful in any meaningful manner, you have to figure out how to increase battery capacity by 20X. Or it just won't fly.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
The absolute best batteries available today are around 1.8 MJ/kg in storage. Compare that with jet fuel which is around 43 MJ/kg. Now cut the range your airplane can fly by a factor of (43/1.8) ~24 and you'll see the issue.
That is not a fair comparison. A battery can convert 95% of its energy to thrust. The best turbofan jets can reach about 36%. So ((43 * 0.36)/(1.8 * 0.95)) = ~ 9.
But that isn't fair either, because when you burn fuel you are no longer carrying the fuel, so the plane gets lighter and uses less fuel per mile further into the journey. The weight of a battery doesn't change. The batteries are deadweight during landing, making landings more dangerous and requiring longer runways.
Batteries need to improve by a roughly a factor of ten to be competitive for long haul aviation. That is unlikely.
A compromise may be to use electrical energy for the takeoff, possibly with a mass driver with the batteries on the ground. This means smaller, quieter, and safer jets (since they don't have to be beefed up for takeoff thrust) as well as shorter runways.
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I always thought this might be the winning application for fuel cells - high energy conversion and loss of mass as you go (or maybe a single dedicated turbogenerator instead of fuel cells?). With liquid hydrogen there could even be an additional advantage - vapor boil-off could cryogenically cool a superconducting engine, although I doubt the small efficiency gain here would balance the safety issues of finicky superconductors. Certainly electric jets will be the future once energy storage mechanisms are fo
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H2 has really good energy density per kg (142 Mj/kg, vs 42 for jet fuel) but pretty bad energy density per liter (9 Mj/l vs 37 for jet fuel). So it only makes sense if it can be "burned" at much greater efficiency. A H2 fuel cell is typically about 60% efficiency, vs 36% for the best jets.
Jet fuel can be stored in tanks inside the wings, leaving more space in the fuselage for cargo and passengers. Cryogenic hydrogen needs one big tank inside the fuselage to minimize surface area.
So batteries may make sen
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It was tried by both Americans and USSR. But the problems were shielding and contamination of the environment. Maybe now, there could be electric engines and nuclear batteries like in The Fifth Element.
#http://mentalfloss.com/article/53184/brief-history-nuclear-airplanes
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One could almost say nukes are REQUIRED for a fully electric vehicle fleet.
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BUT, if we used nukes for everything everywhere it makes sense (like almost everything except transportation), we'd be way better off than we are now. Imagine only using fossil fuels for transportation. Even that will be decreasing and cars and trucks go more and more electric.
One could almost say nukes are REQUIRED for a fully electric vehicle fleet.
But it leaves many large and powerful environmental/anti-pollution and similar political groups high & dry for primary issues to fund-raise with. Many politicians would lose a great number of issues on which to campaign. Issues are kept 'alive' by both sides for purposes of fund raising, elections, and general demagoguery. Besides, the many thousands of protest signs, flyers, ads, etc are already designed & printed, solving issues means new costs for the next issue.
On the other hand, whatever crisis
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Here's a powerful interest for you: Value.
Solar generation, including storage, has fallen to the point that it is often the cheapest option. Cheaper than coal (which isn't all that cheap) and significantly less than natural gas peaker plants. 10-year production contracts at under 3 cents per kWh are the norm.
But don't believe me. Do a bit of googling or check out this [greentechmedia.com].
You are correct that there are powerful interests on both sides, but both will soon disappear. The green energy advocates will be unnec
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Solar generation, including storage, has fallen to the point that it is often the cheapest option.
Nuclear would be cheaper to the point of out-competing solar/wind while being less damaging to the environment if only the anti-nuke nutjobs and NIMBYs didn't both prevent more modern and safer designs including breeder types from being built and force them to carry the costs of extreme over-regulation, much of which does not materially affect safety at all but are giveaways to political cronies that massively increasing cost.
Issues around nuclear power have become another set of perennial political footbal
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We need something affordable if we are going to deal with climate change. If you insist on nuclear people will reject it on price and stick with cheaper alternatives.
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Using the Thorium fuel cycle in molten salt reactors (LFTR) has always been the way to go with nuclear power.
Indeed. Other than NOT WORKING [wikipedia.org], LFTRs are great. LFTRs are an armchair engineer's wet dream: they work fantastic in theory, as long as you ignore messy details like reality.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Many steel plants already use induction furnaces for for melt processes, but the addition of coke to remove impurities is a required part of the process. Using induction heating with a much smaller carbon injection reduces the footprint from steel production, while CO2 capture and electrolytic splitting becomes possible with massive energy sources. In other words, capture the CO2 that does come off, and re-split it to carbon and oxygen, which also lets you re-use the carbon on the next batch of steel. Bonus.
The real killer is concrete production, as the cooking off of CO2 to create portland cement is actually one of the major sources of CO2 in America. Again, capture and reprocessing becomes possible with the availability of cheap power, though I personally think alternatives to traditional cement need to be found.
In any case, abundant energy at low prices derived from an "assembly line" 6th generation walk-away safe nuclear reactor would solve pretty much every one of the problems out there when it comes to carbon emissions and energy. And that merely assumes fission. With Lockheed supposedly producing a "semi-truck sized" fusion 100MW fusion plant that could be parked next to any major factory, the game changes even more.
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Many steel plants already use induction furnaces for for melt processes, but the addition of coke to remove impurities is a required part of the process. Using induction heating with a much smaller carbon injection reduces the footprint from steel production,
That is complete nonsense.
Either you make steel from ore, then you need coke.
Or you recycle already made steel, then you don't need coke.
There is no middle ground.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Informative)
Cheap electricity.
Guess what? You can extract iron from ore using electrolysis as well.
Iron Metal Production through Bulk Electrolysis [mit.edu]
Green Iron [newscientist.com]
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...you make steel from ore, then you need coke...
This is currently true. There are no commercial processes to make iron without carbon as a reducing agent 2FeO + C -> 2Fe + CO2.
But iron can in principle be reduced electrolytically [phys.org], like we do with aluminum.
There is no middle ground.
The process is currently under development, so there is no middle ground at the moment. This is the sort of thing TFA is discussing.
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The real killer is concrete production
Well, there's this [cnn.com] at least.
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A nuclear plant could easily power a processing plant to produce methane from the CO2 in the air and water (Sabatier reaction).
Sure, if by "easily" you mean complicated and extremely expensive. Or are we assuming that nuclear power is "too cheap to meter"?
Many steel plants already use induction furnaces for for melt processes
Those are "mini-mills". They make steel from steel. They don't make steel from ore.
but the addition of coke to remove impurities is a required part of the process.
The coke removes the oxygen, which is MOST of the iron ore. It is the iron that is the impurity.
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Nukes can work for cement
Well, sort of. Even if you powered the kilns with nuclear power, you would still have to deal with the CO2 emissions that come directly from the heated limestone, which is roughly HALF of the overall carbon emissions involved in cement production.
Source: http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2... [columbia.edu]
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We need to come up with an emission-free ceramic as an alternative to concrete in construction.
Or just reduce the construction. A transportation system based on Hyperloop pods would use WAY less concrete than our current highways.
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What if I want to go somewhere that the hyperloop doesn't?
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Roads to remote areas are not made with concrete. They use asphalt, gravel, or dirt.
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Nukes can work for cement, which just needs heat for the kiln. But nuclear aircraft? I don't think so. An iron blast furnace uses metallurgical coal (converted to coke), as an integral part of the process. You can't just drop in nuclear as a replacement.
The emission of CO2 from cement making is more fundamental to the process than it is for iron making.
Cement releases CO2 from the most fundamental chemical reaction required to make it: converting limestone to lime. This is the reaction: CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2. The release of carbon dioxide is unavoidable.
Iron on the other can in principle be made electrolytically [phys.org] although the process needs more development before it can be commercialized.
About half of the CO2 released gets recaptured by the cement over the
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We can however sequester this CO2 emissions by growing plants and burying the cellulose underground, which after a few million years of lagering will become hydrocarbons.
That is silly, wasteful, and pointless. We can just sequester the CO2 directly. A shale formation that held billions of cubic meters of CH4 for millions of years will have no problem holding CO2.
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How do you want to power an airplane with nukes? Safely?
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How do you want to power an airplane with nukes? Safely?
The nukes are on the ground, and used to produce fuel. See the reaction by jnaujok, up above.
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Deaths per terrawatt hour (Worldwide):
Coal (world) 244.00
Oil 52.00
Biofuel/Biomass 50.00
Peat 50.00
Natural Gas 20.00
Coal (US) 10.00
Wind 0.15
Solar 0.10
Hydro 0.10
Nuclear (world) 0.04
Data from here [nextbigfuture.com]. The Nuclear number is inflated by Chernobyl, which represents over 95% of the deaths from nuclear power.
These represent numbers from t
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We don't need to develop it from "highly dangerous", it hasn't been "highly dangerous" since well before the first Civilian nuke plant was built (before I was born).
Note that even accompanied by a cataclysm (Fukushima) or an insane test regime (Chernobyl), casualties were, essentially, nonexistant.
Chernobyl (the insane test regime) caused about 100 deaths among the people at the site at the time (mostly firefighters)
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Nuclear powered air travel and cement? Who the fuck mods this stuff up?
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Sorry, how do you make concrete with nuclear power as an ingredient?
There are solutions to these problems and it's got nothing to do with nuclear power, nuclear power can be used to generate electricity, we already know how to do that cleanly.
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Well, I do [wikipedia.org], but you won't like it. Basically, you put the fuselage of a plane on top of a tank filled with nuclear bombs, and you drop them one at a time into a combustion chamber, where they go off, and a big hunk of metal protects the passengers from radiation and directs the explosion to cause thrust. Then, at the right point in the ballistic trajectory, a parachute comes out, and the "airplane" lands somewhere within a few miles of
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Mmm, there are easier ways. [wikipedia.org]
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Well sure. Ostensibly, all you need is a small fission reactor, and you could easily power an electric-powered "jet" design, but where's the fun in that? :-)
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Nuclear powered air travel?
Using synthesized fuel, presumably.
Three quarters is good (Score:5, Insightful)
If the headline is correct, that means we can eliminate 3/4 of energy emissions. That sounds like a win to me.
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The headline is misleading. They just wanted to focus on a 25% that seemed structurally important and therefore "hard", but the next 25% is also "structural" for advanced democracies whose citizens, for example, enjoy their morning latte with a newspaper before catching a cab to work in a highrise office tower, and the remaining 50% is "structural" for global corporations needing to make quarterly growth targets. Maybe in all that you could arm-twist a total 10% that is not important enough to some stakehol
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We don't need to eliminate emissions. We need to close the carbon cycle. Eliminate emissions from ground transport and energy production goes a long way. But for this last 1/4 we could do things like switch to biofuel.
Mind you the article is woefully narrow focused. We won't be able to eliminate emissions for many other reasons. Our oil dependence goes well beyond the need to drive down to the shopping centre and soar through the air. I am typing this to you right now on a keyboard brought to you by the oil
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And what, specifically do we need for the remaining 27%?
Time.
Hey, how convenient!
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I have.
How to solve the problem (Score:3)
Put the companies executives in a dome that is over their production facilities. /s
I'm sure they'll figure it out quickly.
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I'm sure they'll figure it out quickly.
You can't throw money at every problem and expect an outcome. That's a fundamental tenet of discovery and invention.
Let's work on energy efficiency! (Score:5, Insightful)
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and you recycle your bath water for washing cloths...etc...etc
Don't your municipal water plant already do the water recycling part?
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Let's not forget what happened with LED lighting.
25 years ago, an average home's exterior was illuminated by a 60-watt incandescent bulb next to the front door. Now, that same home is probably illuminated by 200 LITERAL watts of LED floodlights.
Plus, in the real world, there are lies, damn lies, statistics, and "nnn-watt equivalent" claims for LED lights. At this point, NOBODY genuinely believes anymore that a LED light claiming to be "60-watt equivalent" is literally going to generate light that's visually
Simple: Sunset all internal combustion engines (Score:4, Insightful)
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Running electric cars on electricity from coal power plants produces more CO2 than cars with ICEs, not to mention all the environmental damage from mining the elements for battery production. Therefore we should get rid of coal power plants first. As long as electricity is generated from coal it would help more to reduce electricity consumption and to shut down these power plants.
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veryone knows that ICEs are grossly inefficient, even if they are powerful, but let's face it: they're over 100 year old technology at this point.
An replace them with what? electric motors are over 100 year old technology too.
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We could also run the remaining ICEs on carbon-neutral bio/synth fuels.
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carbon-neutral bio/synth fuels
You're joking, right?
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Why would I be joking?
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
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I've worked on ICEs since I was in my mid teens, and that was a long time ago now. ICEs are massive, messy, finicky, and over-complicated for what they have to do, and they produce toxic gasses that are no good to anyone. We need to get rid of them. Might take 20,30,40,50 years, but it needs to happen. Coming up with 'alternative fuels' just draws the process out and makes it more painful for everyone. Wouldn't
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I agree, I'm not arguing against electrification at all, I'm saying that an inability to go completely ICE-free doesn't mean we're stuck with fossil fuels.
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Can't can't can't can't can't can't can't can't can't can't can't can't can't
That's all I hear from some people. Are you not paying attention?
OF COURSE WE CAN. What you really are saying is:
I don't WANT to!
I'm not talking about obsoleting ICEs next year, or even next decade. I'm talking about 20, 30, 40, 50 year plans to stop using them. Can you possibly think that far ahead? Try, please.
Let the market do it. (Score:3)
Stop paying people to drive everywhere [uspirg.org]. Stop telling businesses how many parking spaces they have to provide for their own customers. Stop making poor, compact neighborhood subsidize urban sprawl [strongtowns.org]. And then internalize the negative externality of burning fossil fuels, perhaps with a revenue-neutral carbon tax and dividend so it isn't a burden on the poor.
I think the market can solve the problem, if we would let it.
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If the neighboring business is unwilling to capitalize on the parking shortage, then they deserve to fail. The role of government is not to force businesses to succeed.
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Or... it'll gridlock our streets when people decide it's cheaper to let their car drive itself around the block for 2 hours than it is to pay for parking.
Or we'll get to have FOUR daily peak traffic periods... one when people are driving to work, one when people's cars are driving home so they can park for free, one when they're driving back to the office at 3, then doing laps around the block for up to an hour, and one when they're driving their owners home.
Believe me. It WILL happen. In the grand scheme o
First things First (Score:3)
How'bout we do the 3/4 that's doable first, instead of, you know... not doing it because the last 1/4 is hard.
Aviation is already looking at creating electric motor planes that run on batteries.
I go one further and suggest using microwaves emitted from high locations (above most birds) that top off the batteries periodically, maybe even making the batteries essentially a backup for emergency landings (huge weight and efficiency savings).
That of course is just one idea as opposed to "We Still Have No Idea"
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Aviation is already looking at creating electric motor planes that run on batteries.
Nothing requires kerosene (aka jet fuel) be produced from oil.
Right now, other sources of kerosene are too expensive. They won't always be.
The energy density of hydrocarbons is extremely useful. We will keep using them because they are so useful. What will change is where those hydrocarbons come from.
Hydrogen, partially (Score:2)
However, where CO2 emission is part of the actual industrial process such as converting iron to steel (adding carbon via coke is the entire point) or kilning cement (CO2 is part of the chemical reaction for some types of cement), there really isn't a good means of re
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Hydrogen can be used as a drop in replacement for anything running internal combustion or just combustion for heat
Not really. Burning hydrogen produces far less heat than burning an equivalent volume of hydrocarbon, because the hydrocarbons are far denser. So at a minimum, you'll need a different "burner" to get sufficient heat.
Also, hydrogen is really, really, really small. It has this unfortunate ability to pass through the walls of the tank holding it because it's so small. So to store hydrogen for any significant length of time, you need a really thick tank to help keep it in....really thick tanks and vehicles,
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Hydrogen is a nightmare fuel. It can escape through solids and embrittle steel on the way, and it has to be stored at high pressure to be practical in a vehicle.
Hydrogen powertrains are shitty compared to other options. Hydrogen ICEs are less powerful than those that run on fossil fuels or especially ethanol, and they're still ultra-complicated ICEs. Fuel cell powertrains are even more expensive than battery EV powertrains with their costly batteries.
Also, right now hydrogen is practically a fossil fuel. It
I call Bullshit on your Bullshit (Score:2)
Yes, nuclear has the potential to offset a lot of energy use today that currently emits carbon, and it should be investigated in realistic ways. Especially thorium. However, keep in mind that nuclear, just like solar, still has waste products - environmental waste products, and social waste products. There's never a free lunch, and trash comes in many forms.
Also keep in mind, anything nuclear, just like solar, is a terrible energy carrier. You are not likely to power airplanes, cars, houses, medium sized
Really simple (Score:2)
We're going to have to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere, so really all we need to do is put a tax on 100% of emissions. This may raise the cost of certain technologies but the tax can then be used to remove the emissions. This will create a fantastic incentive for companies to find alternatives that give off fewer emissions.
The problem we really face is people that are unwilling to adjust to a new system because they are stuck in their ways.
Not just 25%, more like 75% (Score:2)
The target emitter sources mentioned here are a small part of the problem for developed nations. Unless you can imagine giving up a lot of the lifestyle perks enjoyed in the West, you really cannot find a way to shift something like 75% of current greenhouse gas emissions. That's why the IPPC recommendations and Paris Accords rely on this thing they call "negative emissions" never quite spelled out. Basically, a kind of magic that will remove CO2 not being removed already by the ocean or by land plants. The
Will solve itself (Score:2)
"Air travel, "
In a couple of years all the malls and shopping centers will have closed, because Amazon brings us everything home (No real reason to fly to London anymore) and it will be nice weather in most cold places from where people fly to the south, so no problem there either.
"long-distance transportation and shipping,"
In a couple of years the North-West passage will be open and China is building a railway from China to Europe right now.
"steel and cement manufacturing,"
In Europe most Steel is melted el
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Of course we know (Score:2)
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Suing and taxing? (Score:2)
Cold (Score:2)
I am not sure we want to. A full halt could send us rocketting back down into an ice age, known to come on in as little as a few years -- you just need a good summer with snow pack to keep the planet from summer warming, and then it plunges the second winter into a true frozen hell.
Unlike sea rises and warm temps, which are a financial inconvenience, this will kill billions.
So take it easy.
Still talking about eliminating emissions? (Score:2)
Climate change is absolutely real, and the median forecast for the harm caused is significant.
As a purely empirical matter, the world does not appear likely to greatly curb emission
Confusing List (Score:2)
It is a bit disingenuous to combine cement manufacturing which is all about long term infrastructure in the same list as instant gratification things like air travel and such which really aren't necessary.
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There is concrete that is wasted too. Look at all of the stadiums that get built for the Olympics and the World Cup that go unused after the competition is over. Or how about sports teams, especially in North America, that move into new arenas/stadiums every 20 or 25 years just to have the "latest" toys available. I realize that it isn't much concrete when compared to how much is used in the whole world but it's symbolic of our wasteful ways.
While I agree that a lot of concrete goes to useful purposes there
Ability to mod articles (Score:2)
This is the reason we need to able to mod articles up or down. Who-ever did this 'study' obviously didn't study very hard, seriously, did they even try to google the subject???????????
Concrete:
https://www.google.co.uk/searc... [google.co.uk]
Airplanes:
https://www.google.co.uk/searc... [google.co.uk]
Steel:
https://www.google.co.uk/searc... [google.co.uk]
Shipping: Fucking obvious.
Power: Power storage - a zillion ways to store power.
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Making more products local to the market and not having to transport them long distances is how you do that.
I crunched the numbers a while back. Shipping an item of white goods from China to the UK takes about as much fuel as delivering it from a localish warehouse.
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Yes but not entirely: it's probably closer to half than a third. I expect the bulk shipping of goods from the factory to the port is much more efficient than delivery of individual items.
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The problem is, with real-world economics, it's almost always going to be more cost-effective to manufacture fifty million of some item at one location using some highly-optimized manufacturing process and ship them to where they're needed than it is to throw away your economies of scale and manufacture a million of them at fifty different locations.
3D printing is great for one-off prototyping, and great for situations where getting something sub-optimal NOW is better than having to wait to get something id