Can Solar & Wind Fix Everything (e.g., Climate Change) with a battery break-through?

[TommySr]

 

[svetz]

Electricity “Out of Thin Air” – Offers Clean Energy 24/7
Opinion: I'd say this wouldn't scale, but isn't hygroelectricity where lightning comes from? Something like 90 kWh per strike?

Pope Francis: "Climate change at this moment is a road to death"

The World Meteorological Organization reported that extreme weather caused two million deaths and $4.3 trillion in economic losses over the last 50 years1. Developing countries were hit hardest, seeing nine in 10 deaths and 60 per cent of economic losses from climate shocks and extreme weather1.

NBC News reported that the world’s oceans have gone ‘crazy haywire,’ with the majority of coral reefs in peril2. They also highlighted that cities are looking for new ways to keep people safe as extreme summer heat looms.

Antarctic sea ice reached a record low last year

Greek skies turned an eerie orange from North African dust, giving the atmosphere of the Greek capital a Mars-like filter

 

[TommySr]

Electricity “Out of Thin Air” – Offers Clean Energy 24/7
Opinion: I'd say this wouldn't scale, but isn't hygroelectricity where lightning comes from? Something like 90 kWh per strike?

 

[aenyc]

Electric Van Sales In Decline​

LCV Registrations

https://www.smmt.co.uk/vehicle-data/lcv-registrations

Whilst EV car sales remain sluggish, the market for electric vans is even worse. The government’s ZEV mandate demands that 10% of van sales are electric this year, and this figure rises rapidly in the next few years.


https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pathway-for-zero-emission-vehicle-transition-by-2035-becomes-law

However sales of the useless things gave actually fallen this year, and only account for 4.9% of the market.

Fleetworld sum up the problem:

The Association of Fleet Professionals (AFP) said several major van makers now insist that a proportion of all vehicle orders must be electric vans in order to reflect the percentage of ZEV vehicles they are now legally required to sell – creating a dilemma for fleets that can’t go electric yet.

AFP chair Paul Hollick explained: “It’s quickly becoming a widespread practice that when a fleet wants to order a quantity of vans, manufacturers are asserting that a percentage is electric – often 10% to reflect the 2024 ZEV mandate.

“The problem is that some fleets just don’t have a role for these electric vans within their business. Their payload and range requirements mean there is no operational profile for which the electric van can be practically used, or there is no suitable charging infrastructure.”

Hollick said that the situation presented a dilemma for fleets – whether to switch to manufacturers not insisting on order quotas, to not replace existing diesel vehicles and keep operating them for longer, or to buy quota electric vans and use them for occasional lighter duties or simply park them up.

“All of these courses of action are far from ideal. Changing van supplier can be quite an arduous task for fleets, meaning that the whole van unit has to be rethought including fitting out. Hanging onto older vans that really need to be replaced means that you are likely to experience problems with reliability and has potential risk management and environmental implications.

“Lastly, it’s just not viable to buy expensive assets such as electric vans and not really use them in the operational roles where you actually need a solution.”

https://fleetworld.co.uk/zev-order-quotas-creating-dilemmas-for-van-fleet-replacements-warns-afp

I suspect we are going to see increasing numbers of imported vans, which in turn will exacerbate the problems for UK manufacturers.

 

[aenyc]

Climate Change Reporters Call the End of Fossil Fuel – in the Middle of Record Demand​

“… Even though we might be seeing record high prices at the moment, and therefore record high revenue for governments, the overall trend is going to be downwards. …”

The fingerprints of climate change are all over a budget navigating an economy in transition
By climate reporter Jess Davis and climate lead Tim Leslie
Posted Sat 18 May 2024 at 5:35am
…
Modelling of natural disasters in different climate scenarios could see government spending increase exponentially.
…
Preparing for the end of the fossil fuel era
While it’s full of figures and tables, the budget also is an opportunity for the government to draw attention to things it thinks are important. And this year it highlighted an unexpected boon from record fossil fuel profits.
“Strong corporate profits, including from iron ore and coal prices in late 2023 and the very early part of 2024 exceeding those assumed in MYEFO and robust demand, contribute to an upgraded company tax outlook,” the papers say.
But it is also warning that we can’t keep relying on these profits in the future.
“Australia’s exports will be increasingly comprised of low carbon products. Over 97 per cent of Australia’s trading partners have set net zero targets,” the papers say.
Grattan Institute Energy and Climate Deputy Director Alison Reeve says Australia needs to be ready for this drop.
“As the world commits to net zero and coal, oil and gas start to decline, there should be less tax revenue coming into the government as well and that also has an effect on the budget,” she said.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-18/federal-budget-2024-climate-hange-impacts/103847322

This in my opinion is a prime example of the fantasy world climate believers live in.

The end of fossil fuel is a fiction. The only downward pressure on fossil fuel use in Western nations is regulatory lunacy and the ongoing export of our manufacturing industry to other nations.

That fossil fuel powered manufacturing is still happening, and we are very much still using the products of a coal based economy, but because the coal and gas burning is happening in other countries, greens frantically pretend we are somehow disconnecting our economies from burning carbon based fuels.

The only question is, what will our descendants do when the coal runs out? Because it is inevitable we will burn or otherwise use every scrap of recoverable fossil fuel on the planet.

There is no chance politicians will leave fossil fuel in the ground. Even the greenest politicians ditch their alleged principles when they strike a rich source of fossil fuel. As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau once said, “No Country Would Find 173 Billion Barrels Of Oil In The Ground And Just Leave Them”

Let us hope when fossil fuel finally runs out, many centuries from now, our descendants have figured out nuclear fusion, because the next best source of carbon after we run out of coal is either limestone or mining the ocean for its CO2 content, and doing either would take a lot of energy.

 

[aenyc]

 

[TommySr]

doing nothing.

 

[aenyc]

TommySr, you need to start educating yourself and not parroting Svetz's alarmism.
Dont peddle catastrophism where there is none.

Instead you should worry about real chemical pollution, bioengineering and geoengineering. These are actual REAL problems.

 

[aenyc]

Cambridge Professor Right to Slam Climate ‘Scientists’ Peddling Catastrophism​

The world of climate science is in a terrible state. Riven with political activists claiming to be scientists, funded by green billionaires and state actors interested only in the Net Zero agenda, reported by blockhead mainstream journalists who believe science can be ‘settled’ – and increasingly being questioned by bored populations fed up with listening to year-after-year, decade-after-decade ‘Jim’ Dale-style claims of boiling and collapsing climates. That is why the recent paper published in Nature by Cambridge Professor Ulf Buntgen has sent shock waves through a heavily-corrupted climate scientific community. At one point, Buntgen referred to the “ongoing pseudo-scientific chase for record-breaking heatwaves and associated hydroclimatic extremes”. He argued that quasi-religious belief in, rather than the understanding of the complex causes and consequences of climate and environmental changes, “undermines academic principles”.

Professor Buntgen is not a sceptic of the idea that humans control the climate by burning hydrocarbons. It is unlikely he would be published in a major journal like Nature if he was. But he is worried about climate scientists becoming activists by failing to work from actual observations. He is also worried about activists who pretend to be scientists. An excellent example of this can be found in the recent Guardian report that portrayed some of the hysterical claims of 380 “top scientists”. Billed as the views of writers of recent International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, a suitable response might have been ‘spot the scientist’.

The Cambridge geography professor observes that there is a thin line between the use and misuse of scientific certainty and uncertainty, “and there is evidence for strategic and selective communication of scientific information for climate action”. Where to start on this one? There is overwhelming evidence that almost any scientific finding that casts doubt on humans controlling the climate thermostat will be ignored, and if that is unsuccessful, traduced or erased from mainstream view. In extreme cases, and certainly if the findings get any publicity, it might be necessary to put a billionaire-funded ‘fact’ checker on the case. A Guardian journalist helped get a science paper, Alimonti et al, retracted from a major journal because it cast observational doubt on claims of a climate emergency. Google has banned its ads from a page showing accurate satellite temperature on the grounds of “unreliable and harmful claims” of global readings. Less than curiously, the readings from this source happen to be generally lower than those produced by heat-corrupted surface readings. The state-influenced BBC has refused to discuss any sceptical view of the anthropogenic science opinion since at least 2018. Meanwhile, a UN communications official states that the world body “owns” climate science, and the world should know it.

Protected by the political and media class, the well-funded arrogance is off the scale. Buntgen notes that activists often adopt scientific arguments as a source of “moral legitimisation” for their movements, which can be radical and destructive, rather than rational and constructive. “Unrestricted faith in scientific knowledge is, however, problematic because science is neither entitled to absolute truth nor ethical authority”, he says. The notion of science to be explanatory rather than exploratory “is a naïve overestimation that can fuel the complex field of global climate to become a dogmatic ersatz religion for the wider public”, he added.

One well known activist who frequently claims ‘the science’ to shut down sceptical debate is the BBC broadcaster Chris Packham. Last year, he presented a number of Earth programmes that attempted to link past increases in carbon dioxide to rapid rises in temperature – all in the “terror” cause of drawing links with current and upcoming climate collapse. Alas, the ‘science’ shows that over 600 million years there is little or no link between rising CO2 and temperature. But Packham perfected the art of taking imprecise proxy data from the geological record – imprecise as in a margin of error of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years – and comparing it to accurate modern measurements. You can do that of course, but the BBC should surely be under an obligation to provide space for others to dispute the suggestions. No such obligation is evident, needless to say.

Buntgen finds it “misleading” when even prominent organisations, such as the IPCC, tend to overstate scientific understanding of the rate of recent anthropogenic warming relative to the range of past natural temperature variability over 2,000 and even 125,000 years. “The quality and quantity of available climate proxy records are merely too low to allow for a robust comparison of the observed annual temperature extremes in the 21st Century against reconstructed long-term climate means of the Holocene and before”, he observes. Happily, it didn’t stop Packham working back no less than 55 million years.

Dr. Matthew Wielicki was a highly-regarded geoscientist at the University of Alabama but he left academia last year noting that American universities, “are no longer places that embrace the freedom of exchanging ideas”. He said they would “punish” those who go against the narrative. Contributing to this, he noted, was the earth science communities silence on the false ‘climate emergency’ narrative. “Members of the community routinely discuss the mental health effects of climate catastrophism but dare not speak out”, he disclosed.

For his part, Buntgen suggests that the ever-growing commingling of climate science, climate activism, climate communication and climate policy, whereby scientific insights are adopted to promote pre-determined positions, not only “creates confusion” among politicians, stakeholders and the wide public, but also “diminishes academic credibility”.

Next time you see dopey crinklies attempting to smash the Magna Carta (avid listeners of BBC Radio 4, no doubt), consider that the ubiquitous ‘Daleification’ of climate catastrophe promotion might have gone just a bit too far.

 

[aenyc]

 

[TommySr]

Instead you should worry about real chemical pollution, bioengineering and geoengineering. These are actual REAL problems.

aenyc, you need to keep your head on a swivel

kind of like the frog in water thing, it's the problems you don't see that can put you on your ass.

 

[TommySr]

aenyc, real chemical pollution, bioengineering and geoengineering

aenyc, what can I do about the above issues? other then the tax money I spend on the EPA.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference

what can I do about co2?
convert my ICE to electric.
convert my house to solar and wind.
promote innovative ideas.

give me a problem I can help with, I'm on it like stink on shit

 

[aenyc]

TommySr

1. There is no CO2 crisis. CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 does not cause "global warming". (and even shills like svetz repeat it 1000 times still does not make it so)
2. When you convert to EV you are generating a lot of chemical pollution, in addition to CO2 because the process that manufactures EV batteries, Solar Panels and Wind Turbine blades is one of the most toxic processes known to man, and in addition to being toxic, it actually runs ENTIRELY on diesel fuel and while at it, consumes A LOT more diesel than if that diesel/gas was used to power ICE directly.
3. Innovative ideas are great, but innovative ideas must first be put into environmentally and economically sustainable technologies before we start forcing the world to use things that depend on these "innovative ideas". Horse before the cart, TommySr

So please do us all a favor, stop parroting Svetz, and educate yourself.

 

[aenyc]

The EU Is Spending Billions On Hydrogen-Ready, But Where's The Hydrogen?​

I’m all in favor of hydrogen-powered plants to produce electricity if only we had cheap hydrogen. But we don’t and likely won’t.




A Bad Bet on Hydrogen Hype

Bloomberg cautions Europe’s Spending Billions on Green Hydrogen. It’s a Risky Gamble

Today, the bright yellow power plant tucked behind a graffiti-covered fence burns planet-warming gas to produce electricity. But if all goes to plan, it will one day switch to emissions-free hydrogen. It’s the first, tiny part of a dream energy system being sketched out by policymakers across Europe, who are banking on the green fuel to meet some of the world’s most aggressive climate targets. That dream rests on converting newly built polluting infrastructure to burn hydrogen, a fuel that’ll be many times more expensive than natural gas and that no one has figured out how to move safely and cheaply in bulk.
Governments and companies that are racing to meet net-zero deadlines but worried about energy security can still build billions of dollars worth of gas infrastructure as long as it’s “hydrogen-ready.” Nine of the world’s 10 biggest carbon polluters have published hydrogen strategies and incentives to grow the fuel’s use, which globally already exceed $360 billion, according to BloombergNEF.
Gas-dependent economies including Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and the UK are among Europe’s biggest proponents for using hydrogen and some have plans to use it to generate electricity. But there’s no official definition of what makes a plant hydrogen-ready, opening the door for greenwashing. For power plants, burning hydrogen hasn’t even been tested at scale.
“There has not yet been any measurable progress in the construction of hydrogen-ready, gas-fired power plants,” said Eric Heymann, an economist at Deutsche Bank Research.
Then there’s the problem of moving hydrogen around. The Leipzig plant isn’t hooked up to the grid (and hasn’t yet set up its own electrolyzers), which means the highly combustible fuel will have to be trucked in until the second part of the government’s grand plan comes to fruition. It’s building a €1 billion liquefied natural gas terminal in Brunsbuettel, a town along the North Sea, that will initially import LNG but be designed to also handle futuristic clean fuels.
Hydrogen can only be liquefied at -253C (-423F), well beyond the capabilities of today’s LNG ships. So Germany is planning to import hydrogen in the form of liquid ammonia, a combination of hydrogen and nitrogen that can more easily be turned into a liquid. But ammonia is toxic and handling requires better ventilation systems. Many components in the terminal, including control valves and fire and gas sensors as well as inline devices — most of which have not been tested with ammonia — will also need upgrades, according to Fraunhofer ISI, an energy think tank.

Not Viable But Full Speed Ahead

Germany doesn’t have an ammonia pipeline network and there are limitations to moving it via trucks on an industrial scale because it’s hazardous. That means ammonia will have to be converted back into hydrogen, yet there’s no economically viable technology currently available to do that. The terminal’s operator said it will discuss alternative strategies if none emerge by next year.
Wind and solar produce clean electricity — a commodity the world already uses. Green hydrogen, on the other hand, will require building more solar and wind farms when, in many cases, it would be simpler to just use that clean energy directly. By the time hydrogen is made, stored and burned to make electricity again, there’s nearly 70% less energy than at the start — and the cost has tripled.

Plans Only Exist On Paper

For the most part, the plans only exist on paper. That’s because they only work on paper.

A trial in the UK was cancelled when people made an uproar after learning they would have to replace their furnaces and stoves for new hydrogen appliances.

That does not apply to the situation discussed above which proposes burning hydrogen to produce electricity. However, there is a 70 percent loss of energy in the conversion from hydrogen to ammonia then back to hydrogen to burn it.

This makes no sense anywhere. Nonetheless, Germany is spending $20 billion to make electricity plants “hydrogen ready”.

Wasting $20 billion is a monthly occurrence in the Biden administration, but that’s a lot of money to Germany which unlike the US has budget rules.

China Shock



Germany is feeling the pinch of China shock. But the US is on deck too. A global trade war looms.

For discussion, please see China Shock II Is Coming, the EU Will Be Hit Hard, Then the US

Germany has too much else to worry about to waste money on absurd projects.

 

[TommySr]

So please do us all a favor, stop parroting Svetz, and educate yourself.

aenyc, that parroting you mention can be heard in billions of voices, and 100's of languages all
over the world.

before this topic if I closed my garage door then started my snow shovel I'd be dead in minutes.



after I encountered this topic I can run my snow shovel in the garage with the door closed.



co2 is a problem.

my next step is my mowers.(baby steps are steps)

 

[aenyc]

aenyc, that parroting you mention can be heard in billions of voices, and 100's of languages all
over the world.

No you are parroting people like her


Now we get to Sabine Hossenfelder (Who seems to be very eager to capitalize on the latest scam aka "climate change")

5 minutes of internet research turned out these gems (I decided to look this up because i have quite a bit of interest in various topics in Physics):

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/t9t4kc/what_are_your_guys_thoughts_on_sabine

I particularly love this one:

Before I really knew much about physics, I liked Sabine and thought she was “speaking truth to power” in a way. Now that I know quite a bit more, I find that the majority of her audience is more of the “pop-sci” crowd who aren’t really able to form their own opinions and therefore just believe what she says unquestioningly. Among this crowd, she has positioned herself to be an authority, which she really is not. I find her to be extremely opinionated in a way that does not allow for other opinions to exist, meaning that she sees other opinions as being “unable to accept the truth” (where “the truth” here is really just her opinion). One instance of this is how she hates anything related to naturalness and acts like people who want to use naturalness as a motivation for physics are simply “lost in math” (the literal title for her book), but she conveniently leaves out that naturalness has historically been a very good motivator and has found huge success. She also rails against any future colliders, saying they are a waste of money because no one can guarantee any new discoveries will be made at these higher energies, but this is so antithetical to how science works and human exploration in general, not to mention that if you want to complain about wasted money in society, there are WAY bigger fish to fry (like the inflated military budget for instance, which spends more money in 2 days than the entire LHC cost to build over a decade). I am also a bit turned off by the fact that her new role as a “science communicator” (meaning her YouTube channel) comes across as being a bit of a money making ploy, but then again I guess everyone has to pay the bills somehow.

And this

The reason she is something of a controversial figure in the physics community, is that she has very definite opinions - and they are just opinions - about how science should be done.

She presents these in an extremely authoritative way, as if her understanding of philosophy of science is both all encompassing and absolute, when in fact she is not an expert in philosophy of science, and the field is not understood in such an absolute way that views cannot be challenged anyway.

Because her audience is pretty wide, and she may be the only, or one of the few people they listen to on these topics, her opinions can be taken as received wisdom. This has an actual effect on both the popular perception of fields she decides to target (e.g. String theory), even of the perception of these fields by scientists in other areas who haven't studied them, and consequently on the funding that these fields receive.

It's hard to articulate a strong response to what she does, because she's very dismissive. See her recent extremely rude and dismissive twitter thread against a physicist Arttu Rajantie for an example. Arttu argued clearly on historical and scientific basis that an experiment was worth doing and Sabine dismissed him in a horribly disrespectful way, see her replies at the end of his thread. It's hard to see what more could have been done to convince her.

Another reason it's hard to respond to her is that the reasons for thinking string theory is a productive thing to investigate are quite technical sometimes, and although I'm sure some very talented person could make a convincing counterpoint in the popular science sphere, such a person isn't really out there, or if they are they don't have the same platform as Sabine, or people who follow Sabine take it that when she angrily dismisses someone, that's because their point doesn't make sense. This is not the case, her angry dismissals are an effective tactic to convince people to ignore the argument of her adversary.

There are good reasons to think that string theory is a productive field to study. It's not just 'being lost in the math'. Scientists aren't just cynically studying it for the grant money, it represents a possibly huge leap in our understanding of the natural world. When people say it's not testible, well that's a good argument, but you have to keep in mind that the theory is extremely complicated and still quite poorly understood. It is not at all unlikely that continued study will uncover new aspects of the theory which are accessible to experiment. The only way we ensure that this possible resolution to some of the deepest questions about the universe remains forever untested is to cut funding, and stop exploring it, and that's what Sabine wants us to do.

And this, particularly interesting as this goes into her actual field of study, which is Theoretical Physics

The fantasy behind Sabine Hossenfelder's superdeterminism

Our Executive Director critiques physicist Sabine Hossenfelder's proposed 'superdeterminism,' which aims to account for the theoretical difficulties inherent to quantum measurements without departing from physicalist metaphysical assumptions.

www.essentiafoundation.org

 

[aenyc]

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/gm-says-some-chevy-bolt-ev-owners-should-park-outside-after-two-fires-2021-07-14/

U.S. urges 50,000 Chevy Bolt owners to park outside because of fire risks​

 

[aenyc]

Ford Cuts Battery Orders as EV Losses Top $100,000 Per Car

Ford Motor Co. has begun cutting orders from battery suppliers to stem growing electric-vehicle losses, according to people familiar with the matter, as it throttles back ambitions in a rapidly decelerating market for plug-in models.

www.bloomberg.com

 

[TommySr]

aenyc, over 2000 people die each year by ICE engine fumes. in 2023 4 people died form EV fires.

seems like a step in the right direction.

 

[aenyc]

aenyc, over 2000 people die each year by ICE engine fumes. in 2023 4 people died form EV fires.

seems like a step in the right direction.

That is some bullshit statistic my friend. You are going to have to do A LOT better.
I am beginning to suspect more and more that you are a shill, sadly.

This is NYC alone

Lithium-ion battery fires from electric cars, bikes and scooters are on the rise. Are firefighters ready?

Experts say lithium-ion battery fires pose unique risks requiring specialized training, but CBS News has found gaps in fire safety training, research and regulation.

www.cbsnews.com

And now you are going to tell me i should be worried about ICE fumes? This is like worrying about carbon impact of a nuclear war TommySr.