Can We Fight Climate Change By Giving the Ocean an Antacid? (nbcnews.com) 109
Oceans naturally recycle carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a massive scale, reports NBC News. So a Canadian startup named Planetary Technologies is "attempting to harness and accelerate that potential by adding antacid powder to the ocean."
The theory goes that by altering seawater chemistry, the ocean's surface could absorb far more atmospheric carbon than it does naturally. The company is developing an approach that would turn the waste products from shuttered mines into an alkaline powder. They would deliver it into the water via existing pipes from wastewater treatment or energy plants to avoid having to build new infrastructure....
Planetary intends to recycle mine waste from a defunct asbestos mine in Quebec to produce pure magnesium hydroxide, which the company believes would help accelerate the ocean's carbon uptake ability in the areas where it's used. The strategy is inspired by the natural process of chemical rock weathering, where rain — which is slightly acidic — "weathers" or erodes the surface of rocks and minerals, and then transfers that alkalinity to the ocean via runoff.... [T]he company intends to start running small-scale ocean pilots — adding their antacid and measuring the change in carbon absorption — in Canada and the U.K. later this year.
But it's just one of "a growing number of strategies" to "leverage" the ocean in fighting climate change: In 2021, the National Academies of Science published a landmark report advocating further research into ocean-based carbon removal methods, in light of the growing scientific consensus that reducing emissions alone will not be enough to stave off the devastating effects of climate change. The report highlighted everything from large-scale seaweed farming to shooting lasers to electrochemically change the water's chemistry, while acknowledging that research on the viability and potential trade-offs of these strategies is nascent at best.....
One startup intends to spread ground minerals over beaches in Long Island and the Caribbean, in the hope that they will gradually wash away and alkalinize the beaches there. Another method that's gained traction involves using underwater pipes to pump up nutrient rich water from the ocean's depths to promote phytoplankton growth on the surface.
Planetary intends to recycle mine waste from a defunct asbestos mine in Quebec to produce pure magnesium hydroxide, which the company believes would help accelerate the ocean's carbon uptake ability in the areas where it's used. The strategy is inspired by the natural process of chemical rock weathering, where rain — which is slightly acidic — "weathers" or erodes the surface of rocks and minerals, and then transfers that alkalinity to the ocean via runoff.... [T]he company intends to start running small-scale ocean pilots — adding their antacid and measuring the change in carbon absorption — in Canada and the U.K. later this year.
But it's just one of "a growing number of strategies" to "leverage" the ocean in fighting climate change: In 2021, the National Academies of Science published a landmark report advocating further research into ocean-based carbon removal methods, in light of the growing scientific consensus that reducing emissions alone will not be enough to stave off the devastating effects of climate change. The report highlighted everything from large-scale seaweed farming to shooting lasers to electrochemically change the water's chemistry, while acknowledging that research on the viability and potential trade-offs of these strategies is nascent at best.....
One startup intends to spread ground minerals over beaches in Long Island and the Caribbean, in the hope that they will gradually wash away and alkalinize the beaches there. Another method that's gained traction involves using underwater pipes to pump up nutrient rich water from the ocean's depths to promote phytoplankton growth on the surface.
Do Not Fuck With The Ocean or Atmosphere (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say all efforts like his should be banned by all countries, there is not way the risk of permanent harm to the oceans and wildlife therein is not vastly worse than whatever benefit you are seeking.
Same goes for all efforts toots crazy things into the atmosphere.
If you want to figure out ways to reduce CO2, fine, but significantly altering ocean chemistry to absorb more CO2 will just end up destroying the thing you are "helping".
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I think we need to do both. Maybe if we could halt all carbon emissions tomorrow we would be OK, but given how long it's going to take to do that (emissions are still rising; we haven't even hit the top of the curve yet), I think we need techniques to remove carbon from the atmosphere in addition. The difficulty is making sure that this isn't used as a free pass to keep emitting.
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None of what you say is true. [juliansimon.com]
Economically free people come up with solutions faster than problems become serious, leading to better, longer, healthier, richer lives, as actually measured over decades.
This theory derives from observations, and makes repeatable, repeated, testable, and tested predictions.
It is as solid as relativity, quantum mechanics, and evolution.
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Nope. There is no precedent for what we are facing. You may lie to yourself however much you want, it will not change the facts of the situation.
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The problem is that economically free people only address problems that affect them in most cases. If they can simply externalize their costs, i.e. the history of industrial development, they do.
That's why governments like schemes like carbon trading. They hope that by creating an incentive to solve those problems, economically free people will. Unfortunately what often happens is that they divert their efforts to cheating the system to avoid those costs, rather than not emitting so much CO2. See relocation
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Re:Do Not Fuck With The Ocean or Atmosphere (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely right! The ocean is on the alkaline side already, and doesn't need any further alkalinity - not that puny efforts like this would have any noticeable effect.
But the principle is vital. Individuals and corporations should NOT be tampering with the fundamentals of the environment. Tipping stuff into the oceans or the atmosphere, or scattering dust to screen out sunlight, is insanely risky.
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Tipping stuff into the oceans or the atmosphere, or scattering dust to screen out sunlight, is insanely risky.
And yet, that's what we've been doing for the last 200 years. It isn't long ago the common practice for getting rid of toxic stuff was to simply put it in barrels and dump overboard.
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Indeed, that was the first thing I thought when I read this. Do they not realize how big the ocean is? That we're talking billions of tons of co2 per year? That's a lot of Tums.
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Making the ocean more alkaline would counteract ocean acidification caused by climate change. In principle this wouldn't be a bad thing. The ocean is becoming more acidic and it's causing all kinds of problems with sea life. So this idea tackles two related problems at the same time...
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My question is, what other effects could this have? I would think pH is not the only factor at play, so does combining carbonic acid and a base really result in no side effects at all? Hopefully it does and this works, but that doesn't seem right.
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Finding that out is... kind of the point of doing this research. I know nobody reads articles around here, but it was actually an interesting read.
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So hopefully we get another story when the experiment is done.
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I would say all efforts like his should be banned by all countries, there is not way the risk of permanent harm to the oceans and wildlife therein is not vastly worse than whatever benefit you are seeking.
Same goes for all efforts toots crazy things into the atmosphere.
If you want to figure out ways to reduce CO2, fine, but significantly altering ocean chemistry to absorb more CO2 will just end up destroying the thing you are "helping".
No. We need to learn geoengineering, and FAST. For all we know we're on the verge of next Ice Age, and for all we know it could happen any moment, because we do not even really know what triggers them. And we need to be ready, with the technology and science to stop that.
You Gaia worshippers need to finally drop the ridiculous idea that there's some Mother Nature that will Provide and Protect if we only do not sin through industrialization. Newsflash: the Earth is just a ball of mud hurtling through space
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"Doctor, all this heroin is making me so tired. Can you give me some meth to even things out?"
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No. We need to learn geoengineering, and FAST.
Not doable. No, really not. The problem is a few orders of magnitude too large and will become pressing a few 1000 years too fast.
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We've massively engineered the climate accidentally in a few hundred years; what makes doing it on purpose impossible in less than a few thousand?
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Because doing something out of greed and stupidity that happens to have a global effect is vastly different from doing something _else_ that does not really make anybody rich in a coordinated and targeted fashion? The problem is not the base tech. The problem is managing the thing and getting people on board. And that is infeasible at this size.
Re: Do Not Fuck With The Ocean or Atmosphere (Score:2)
all efforts like his should be banned by all countries
Exactly this. With all these ludicrous idea's that I read about altering the atmosphere, dimming the sun or further alterating the oceans.. One idiot somewhere will proceed with some insane idea and experiment with our global ecology somewhere unless next COP puts a halt to such madness.
Haven't we messed up enough already!? The solution to global warming has been well known for decennia and is very straightforward: an immediate and drastic reduction of e
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You're an expert in ocean chemistry now? Unbelievable...
Re: Do Not Fuck With The Ocean or Atmosphere (Score:1)
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Betteridge's law says no (Score:3)
So expect to see a lot of articles about why now that we've all admitted the climate change is real and we're not pretending anymore that it's not we don't really need to do anything about it except wait for the scientists to come up with something. We certainly don't need to take any positive action against the cause of climate change. No siree.
Re: Betteridge's law says no (Score:2)
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Climate town. Check it out, this is an ongoing strategy.
I have to admit i didn't foresee the "Average Pool Player" YouTube guy getting degrees in biochem & climate science & starting perhaps the most entertaining & informative new channel on climate change
Re: Betteridge's law says no (Score:2)
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If they were smart, they would be using the money to research battery technology.
There will be a point where the battery technology will be convincing enough to get even small cities etc to move to it, and who get there first will be the next oil baron.
They are (Score:1)
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Indeed
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Of course, this way they will lose everything in the end, but their vision does not extend that far.
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Trying to come up with any excuse to avoid switching to renewable power.
Why would anyone need an excuse to not use renewable power? There's nothing more fashionable today than being "green" so there must be some barrier to entry. That barrier is cost, renewable energy costs more than fossil fuels. I'll see people point to the lower LCOE of wind and solar vs. fossil fuels to "prove" it costs more for fossil fuels but those numbers don't take into account that fossil fuels are a store of energy that we can draw from as we desire while wind and solar are energy sources we can o
I certainly hope you were paid for that (Score:1)
At the moment we burn fossil fuels because we have in transition to renewables. It would be incredibly almost childishly naive to assume that the people who own all those fossil fuels aren't going t
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Equating "green" energy with social justice bullshit can't happen without some help of those that are advocating for the "green" energy. I can agree that those invested in fossil fuels will do what they can to protect their investment but they can only do so much on their own. If the rest of the energy market shifts to something else there's nothing the fossil fuel energy market can do to stop them. They might try lowering prices but that only works so long as they can run their business at a loss, at so
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Why would anyone need an excuse to not use renewable power?
Everybody who makes billions of dollars by not using renewable energy would.
There's nothing more fashionable today than being "green" so there must be some barrier to entry.
Yes, the fact that changing infrastructure takes time.
;;;A handful of extraordinarily wealthy people as well as several nation-states have trillions of dollars in fossil fuel assets. Renewables are basically going to slash the value of those drastically.
If it is true that renewable energy is going to ruin the value of fossil fuel assets then the smart move would be to be the first one out.
Huh? That makes no sense. If renewable energy is, in the future, going to ruin the value of your assets, the smart move is, first, sell as much fossil fuel now as you can, and, second, delay the time that your assets drop to zero.
The last one still holding fossil fuel assets is the person that lost all their money.
"Abandon a trillon dollars worth of assets" is not "the smart move."
Oil companies aren't in the business of making oil, they are in the business of making money. If there's no money in oil then they will do something else.
They already own trillions of dollars worth of assets. Abandoning them makes no sens
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Why in the world do you think that people who make money by maintaining the status quo wouldn't want to maintain the status quo?
I'm not claiming they would not want to maintain the status quo, I'm pointing out that they are powerless to maintain the status quo once someone offers a better alternative. I'm sure the people invested in the horse as a means of transportation were really interested in maintaining the status quo but at some point they could not compete with the automobile. The first people to realize that the future of transportation was the automobile would want to sell off their investment in horses while they were st
Things change slowly [Re:Betteridge's law says no] (Score:2)
You don't seem to making a distinction between present and future.
Nothing happens instantaneously. Oil companies have assets that are generating trillions of dollars right now. They are not going to abandon those assets, that would be idiotic. They are already paid for. If and when the transition to renewables happens, it will happen slowly. It won't be, all of a sudden the assets switch "from being worth trillions of dollars into being worth nothing."
LIkewise the value of renewables won't suddenly switc
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Why would anyone need an excuse to not use renewable power?
Good question, why don't we ask the guy who constantly makes excuses for diverting that investment to nuclear power instead? I think his name was AppleMan or MacDude or something like that.
Re: Betteridge's law says no (Score:2)
Renewables are doing nothing of the sort. If they were so lucrative and inevitable, capitalists wouldâ(TM)ve been all over it. If you want to replace carbon based fuels, you need to replace it with something feasible, except all the green nut jobs have done is delayed and worked against the only solution we have. The oil industry has largely gone bust as the resource becomes more scarce, the power that once made up most of Canada, Northeast US and Texas is now held by a small group of big companies mos
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And then there are people like you with big egos and zero understanding. People like you are what is going to eventually kill us all.
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At this point we're in the bargaining stage. Trying to come up with any excuse to avoid switching to renewable power.
Yep, pretty much. And time is running out fast and already _has_ run out on avoiding a really large global catastrophe that will last a few centuries. All we can do is avoiding making the catastrophe even larger, but there does not seem to be any real will to do so. None of the "magic" solutions that would allow us to continue as we currently do will work, ever. The human race does not have the capability for measures on this level. And it certainly does not have the insight or the will.
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You got us last time (Score:2)
It's not shit going into the ocean, it's fertilizer.
What could... (Score:3)
What if it works? (Score:2)
Ya, no ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The theory goes that by altering seawater chemistry, ...
Ya, there's no way we accidentally screw that up and end up killing all the algae, that produces about 70% of all the oxygen in the atmosphere (citations below), or killing something essential to the ocean food-chain. No way! /sarcasm
Google: algae ocean oxygen [google.com]
Understanding Global Change [berkeley.edu]
ocean has reservoir of antacid already (Score:1)
plenty of calcium carbonate on floor of ocean, if we back off with carbon pollution instead of messing up ocean chemistry even more then the acidity of ocean will decrease naturally and we'll quit the abnormal accelerated dissolving of that calcium carbonate (interesting topic in itself)
making huge alkline spots on the surface of ocean isn't the answer, could cause disasters, ocean is supposed to have slight acidity though somewhat greater pH than present.
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...if we back off with carbon pollution...
By "carbon" do you mean carbon dioxide - CO2 - the gas without which most life on Earth would die rapidly? The gas whose atmospheric concentration right now is near to the lowest it has ever been since life began? A higher concentration of which increases the fertility of plant life, allowing much more of it to grow in a given area - thereby providing more food for animal life?
Yes, by all means let's get rid of it. If we want to wipe out all the mammals and a lot of other species.
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An excess of carbon dioxide makes the ocean too acidic, damaging the shells, skeletons and exoskeletons of sea creatures, causing food chain issues.. This is already happening. I am more concerned about this than the exaggerated and 'hot model' climate change hysteria.
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Re: ocean has reservoir of antacid already (Score:2)
What? Where is your evidence that atmospheric carbon is the lowest it has been since life began? Or even that it is lower now than it was 50 years ago?
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https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
It's always easy to show that some quantity is increasing rapidly: it's just a matter of choosing the period to measure and the starting date. The Wikipedia article I cite above has page after page about how high atmospheric CO2 is, and how fast it's increasing. Only towards the end of the article do you come across a short section on the geologic record, which shows that during most of the time when life has existed, atmospheric CO2 was much higher than it is today.
As for t
Altering seawater chemistry will release CO2 (Score:3)
The ocean becomes more acidic as it absorbs more CO2. So if you make it less acidic, the CO2 will evaporate again and increase the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We solve one problem to create or increase another. The only good way to solve the problem is to reduce the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere not altering seawater chemistry...
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that depends on what you are adding. if it forms a solid precipitate with the CO2, especially something that can sink to the ocean floor, it removes CO2 from the waters in a pretty permanent way.
Medication is not the preferred course (Score:2)
Preventative behavior is usually better than medication.
When you apply medication to address a problem, you find that everything has side effects.
Think of applying MgOH2 as medicating the environment.
Fix the air chemistry with new water chemistry... (Score:1)
...what could go wrong?
Test in your own private lake (Score:2)
Create your own man made private lake and test there
Climate Fear Mongering = Dumb Ideas are OK (Score:2)
The "climate change deniers" weren't so much denying climate change as fearful of the downstream effects of the fear-mongering.
And so here we are with a multitude snake oil peddlers stepping up with the quick fix. Can we really fundamentally believe that there is a single thing that can be done to slow/stop/reverse something so complex as the planet's climate? Dumping something in to the ocean, blocking sunlight, injecting something in to the atmosphere ... can these all seem more reasonable than altering
Hire Sponge-Bob! (Score:2)
He can easily fix all your 'seawater chemistry' needs
professionally grown algae blooms? (Score:2)
WTF??? What they're describing are what they claim global warming, sorry, climate change are exacerbating. Sounds like the cure is worse than the disease.
Suicide Pact! (Score:2)
Biosphere Modification Is Coming (Score:2)
It doesn't matter if everyone decides its illegal, someone is going to do things like this regardless. It's only a matter of time.
repurposing waste from mines (Score:2)
The problem with this plan is the mine was actually mining something to begin with or it would not be there. What they are mining is most likely a heavy metal or has heavy metals dissolved in the affluent waste water used for processing the product. This waste water has been described as battery acid filling up these open mining pits. If you attempt to put this water in the ocean you will be poisoning the entire food chain in much the same way that mercury is already doing.
But if you find fairly pure carbo
how does it affect... (Score:2)
We're like a buncha junkies, needing another fix. (Score:2)
Wow, guess we really screwed up huh? Welp, I'm sure if I just keep polluting, using different chemicals, it'll make everything better! WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG!?
Another idiotic idea (Score:1)
Spoiler alert-you're an ass. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason we can't do that is that it will ruin the whole "green economy" effort the big lobbies are pushing.
Yeah. Screw "Big STOP Poisoning Everyone!" Long live air and water pollution, and while we're at it, lets return to the good old days of styrofoam fast food packaging, ban reusable plastics, because "once is enough," plus landfills need those bags and 6-pack can carrier rings to control wildlife populations, and why not... bring back leaded gasoline already!!! SLASH S in case it wasn't obvious.
Don't you just hate when people want to live in a world that isn't a giant tire fire inside a dumpster fire on top of a mountain of burning dirty diapers and radioactive waste? So annoying!
Re: Spoiler alert-you're an ass. (Score:2)
Stopping doing bad stuff is good. What's not good is actively messing with ocean chemistry.
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"What we should be worried about is running out of oil. Countless products we use for our civilization rely on it"
Which is why the fact we've burned so much for so long & didn't aggressively pursue alternatives & efficiency after the 1970s OPEC embargo is mind-boggling
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If humans had pursued fuel cell technology from when it was discovered in 1839, as much as steam and the internal combustion engine, we'd all be running on H2 by now, with no looking back, and no environmental crisis. And if the dog hadn't stopped to have a crap, he would have caught the rabbit. Anyway, we should be working on fuel cells and green H2 more now, instead of wasting time on EVs which can only be charged by the electric infrastructure in North America and Europe. People there will have EVs out
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The world cannot run on hydrogen fuel because hydrogen does not exist in nature in a form we can burn it for fuel.
Where is this "green H2" supposed to come from? We'd have to make it from something, because again hydrogen is not something we can just pump out of the ground to burn. Are we going to make this from wind and solar energy? Okay then, how are we going to store and transport this H2? We don't use hydrogen as a fuel because hydrogen likes to leak out of everything. There's a phenomenon called
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The world cannot run on hydrogen fuel because hydrogen does not exist in nature in a form we can burn it for fuel.
Where is this "green H2" supposed to come from? We'd have to make it from something, because again hydrogen is not something we can just pump out of the ground to burn. Are we going to make this from wind and solar energy? Okay then, how are we going to store and transport this H2? We don't use hydrogen as a fuel because hydrogen likes to leak out of everything. There's a phenomenon called "hydrogen embrittlement" where hydrogen will react with metals to cause cracking.
And that is a greenie lie. Yes, there is such a thing as "hydrogen embrittlement", no it's not an insurmountable problem as the greenies like to pretend. All it takes to stop it is just a damn protective coating of plastic inside that metal tank. Or teflon. Or even just not using your regular steel, but an alloy resistant to this thing. Yes, such things exist, as much as greenie propagandist like to pretend they don't.
We like hydrocarbons as fuel because they can be easily stored in metal tanks. Not only that but hydrocarbons will protect metals from oxidation, and we can use hydrocarbons to lubricate and cool machines made of inexpensive metals. Hydrogen as a fuel would just get engines and pumps to grind themselves to pieces if not meticulously engineered and maintained.
Sure, if you try to pump hydrogen into your regular car engine designed for gasoline, bad
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Again, we do know how to design engines for hydrogen, and even better, for cars the standard approach is to run hydrogen through fuel cells and feed an electric engine off that. Fuel cells have about 50% efficiency, electric engine close to 100%, standard ICE has what, 30-something-ish%? And as an added bonus you don't burn anything, so you don't turn air into NO2.
One problem with fuel cells is that batteries have O(99%) efficiency, and fuel cells have half that. And I'm pretty sure that's before you factor in all the energy wasted compressing the hydrogen, which reduces that 50% number even further.
The other problem is that hydrogen has a tendency to leak. Just take a look at the number of failed launches of Artemis 1, most of which were a direct result of the choice of fuel. And that's just for a simple combustion system.
Now multiply those problems times a billi
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One problem with fuel cells is that batteries have O(99%) efficiency, and fuel cells have half that. And I'm pretty sure that's before you factor in all the energy wasted compressing the hydrogen, which reduces that 50% number even further.
IF we ever do transform to PV/wind energy generation, then it means we must build TONS of overcapacity. So that we still produce enough energy off-season, with reserves for extreme stretches of unfavourable weather. That means, in-season we will have TONS of surplus energy that noone needs. If energy is free you can have 10% efficiency and still come on top. And you kind of can't use batteries to seasonally shift energy. Store a bunch of hydrogen for a few months? No problem.
The other problem is that hydrogen has a tendency to leak. Just take a look at the number of failed launches of Artemis 1, most of which were a direct result of the choice of fuel. And that's just for a simple combustion system.
Now multiply those problems times a billion cars, and put half of them in an enclosed garage so that if any fuel leaks, it will stay close to the car, and you have a recipe for home explosions. All the detection in the world won't help if the leak is big enough to push the percentage of hydrogen over 4% before the fire department can get there and open the garage door.
Using a compressed gas as a fuel source is a really bad idea. All the other problems with hydrogen just make it an even worse idea.
Hydrogen doesn't "stay close to
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One problem with fuel cells is that batteries have O(99%) efficiency, and fuel cells have half that. And I'm pretty sure that's before you factor in all the energy wasted compressing the hydrogen, which reduces that 50% number even further.
IF we ever do transform to PV/wind energy generation, then it means we must build TONS of overcapacity.
Not necessarily. Unless you're in an isolated grid situation like Texas, underproduction tends to be somewhat localized. Having more grid capacity to bring power from other parts of the country can alleviate a lot of that.
You will end up with some overproduction, though, and hydrogen electrolysis would be a relatively cheap way to do something with that extra energy.
So that we still produce enough energy off-season, with reserves for extreme stretches of unfavourable weather. That means, in-season we will have TONS of surplus energy that noone needs. If energy is free you can have 10% efficiency and still come on top. And you kind of can't use batteries to seasonally shift energy. Store a bunch of hydrogen for a few months? No problem.
Batteries could do the same thing, but you'd be wasting a lot of expensive hardware on storing a charge for a long period of time, which woul
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One problem with fuel cells is that batteries have O(99%) efficiency, and fuel cells have half that. And I'm pretty sure that's before you factor in all the energy wasted compressing the hydrogen, which reduces that 50% number even further.
IF we ever do transform to PV/wind energy generation, then it means we must build TONS of overcapacity.
Not necessarily. Unless you're in an isolated grid situation like Texas, underproduction tends to be somewhat localized.
Seasons are NOT localized. Just an entire hemisphere. And even weather patterns are not as small as greenies like to pretend. You can get 2 or 3 weather systems per continent - not a small chance of all of them being simultaneously lousy for generation.
Having more grid capacity to bring power from other parts of the country can alleviate a lot of that.
And that's easy, right? Sure, once we invent that affordable room-temperature superconductor, AND solve world peace to the degree that there's no problem with a scenario of "today the world depends on Middle East and Russia for its energy". And then we have t
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One problem with fuel cells is that batteries have O(99%) efficiency, and fuel cells have half that. And I'm pretty sure that's before you factor in all the energy wasted compressing the hydrogen, which reduces that 50% number even further.
IF we ever do transform to PV/wind energy generation, then it means we must build TONS of overcapacity.
Not necessarily. Unless you're in an isolated grid situation like Texas, underproduction tends to be somewhat localized.
Seasons are NOT localized. Just an entire hemisphere. And even weather patterns are not as small as greenies like to pretend. You can get 2 or 3 weather systems per continent - not a small chance of all of them being simultaneously lousy for generation.
Seasons don't affect production as much as you seem to think. The angle of the sun reduces the overall level of solar irradiation during local winter, and cloud cover can stop solar in one spot, but you don't ever have complete cloud coverage over a whole country for weeks at a time; it is more predictable than that. And jet stream moving north or south and reducing the amount of wind can happen, but there's never no wind anywhere. And wind produces more power in winter when solar is lower because of hig
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"All it takes to stop it is just a damn protective coating of plastic inside that metal tank. Or teflon. Or even just not using your regular steel, but an alloy resistant to this thing. Yes, such things exist, as much as greenie propagandist like to pretend they don't"
Is Toyota who've been manufacturing the Mirai for a decade & presumably researched the problem for even longer, using these simple technologies?
If not, then why not? Have they been co-opted by greenie-weenies?
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"All it takes to stop it is just a damn protective coating of plastic inside that metal tank. Or teflon. Or even just not using your regular steel, but an alloy resistant to this thing. Yes, such things exist, as much as greenie propagandist like to pretend they don't"
Is Toyota who've been manufacturing the Mirai for a decade & presumably researched the problem for even longer, using these simple technologies? If not, then why not? Have they been co-opted by greenie-weenies?
Ummmm... Let me get this straight. You're arguing that the problem of hydrogen storage is insurmountable, that is your point, did I get this right, or maybe I'm misreading you? And in support of your argument, you are citing Toyota Mirai, i.e. a living, working real-world demonstration of an actual solution to the problem that actually works, is even mature technology (a decade, by your own words!)?!
Okay. You win I guess. I don't even know how to debate this level of stupidity. I give up.
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Start by arguing with the person who posted the following:
""All it takes to stop it is just a damn protective coating of plastic inside that metal tank. Or teflon. Or even just not using your regular steel, but an alloy resistant to this thing"
Which one of those technologies is Toyota using?
If not them then WHO is using any of your purported solutions in a commercial application?
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Start by arguing with the person who posted the following: ""All it takes to stop it is just a damn protective coating of plastic inside that metal tank. Or teflon. Or even just not using your regular steel, but an alloy resistant to this thing" Which one of those technologies is Toyota using?
Neither, I never made a claim that I'm listing all available solutions, and that nothing except for stuff I mentioned is possible. They use carbon fiber if that's too hard for you too google up, that works too. You turn: care to explain how the hell can you stand by assertion that hydrogen storage is impossible even when faced with real world example of mature tech dealing with that problem? Yeah, didn't think so.
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"care to explain how the hell can you stand by assertion that hydrogen storage is impossible"
care to show where I made that assertion?
"real world example of mature tech dealing with that problem"
newsflash: that example was *mine*.
where are yours?
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Yeah, we can adapt to an atmosphere hot enough to melt lead, full of hydrogen sulfide, methane, and ten to 200 times as much carbon dioxide as today.
https://forces.si.edu/atmosphe... [si.edu]
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Are you somehow mentally challenged? Nobody ever claimed climate change was the problem. The problem is the _speed_ of climate change which is much, much faster than anything can adapt to.
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"holy crap, it says here a giant meteor is headed to the earth. scientists say they can deflect it with an expensive space mission tho"
"it's moot anyways. a giant meteor slamming into the earth isn't a problem, we can adapt. i assume we'll all quickly evolve into silicon-based rock men who can handle the harsh, molten temperatures. the important thing is that we don't disrupt the economy"
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"plus, mammals survived the last giant meteor hit that wiped out the dinosaurs, so we'll be fine!"
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We will not all die.
If all you care about is more than zero humans surviving, we really don't need to do anything differently. Some of us have other goals though.
Re: Spoiler alert-you're an ass. (Score:2)
So, if we had an oil spill, you'd be against adding chemicals to clean it up? Because chemicals are scary...?
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If we found a natural oil spill would you be opposed to cleaning it up?
Oil sands are a natural oil spill. Few people think of them like that but that is what they are. If we were to go in there with heavy machinery, chemicals, and put in a lot of work, then we'd turn that oil spill into fertile land for plants to grow and wildlife to inhabit. For some reason natural oil spills are fine to so many people. I can see how an artificial oil spill is bad, so we might want to bring in heavy machinery and chemi
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So, if we had an oil spill, you'd be against adding chemicals to clean it up? Because chemicals are scary...?
Damaging though they are, I don't think any of the oil spills we've experienced so far had the potential to kill a significant chunk of ocean life. Oil and water don't mix easily, whereas this scheme depends on water-solubility to work.
Adding alkaline compounds to the ocean might help marine life survive. OTOH, we might overshoot and make the ocean too alkaline. Alternatively, there might be some unforeseen chemical reactions that seriously damage the ecosystem. Not to mention the possibility of further asb
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We need to keep the problems around long enough for the various Green Grifters to make their money from the purported solutions.
EU politicians already took the next step (Score:2)
your personal CO2 budget will be made available to you as soon as the biometric ids and digital Euro has been introduced.