Climate change/oblivion: breaking point or slow death spiral?

Daffy
Full Member
this isn’t technology. “technology is simply a word for something that doesn’t work yet” Douglas Adams.

This is industrial machinery. It’s not the most efficient, it requires a lot of power, it is expansive, but it is viable and it IS GREEN if powered by excess renewable energy. Improvements can be made iteratively as more investment and research is made. The most important thing is that it’s available now – it can be started. SAF, Fission are all greenwashing, H2 and fusion just aren’t viable at current technology and infrastructure levels.

Scrubbing CO2 from the air industrially will never be a popular option. You state it yourself “if powered by excess renewable energy.”. That if isn’t an “if”, it’s a “we can’t”.

A few years ago in the middle of the middle class gravy train that was the feed in tariff people would happily spend tens of thousands on solar panels knowing they could game the system and get get a very good return on their investment. “Excess” is synonymous with “no market for it” though, no one is spending that money (domestically or commercially) if the price per kWh drops. To produce an full time excess (not just a short lived one on a sunny/windy day) would require monumental levels of government money.

The average UK persons carbon footprint is ~13t/year

It takes 140kWh to scrub 1t of CO2 from air.

=1820kWh

To generate that:

250W panel -> 265Wh per year (UK average)

So you need to add 7 extra panels per person, that’s 21 per house, on every house, and they wont fit, so that’s 21 panels worth of other land. On top of what you need to actually power your house/car (although yes some of that is offset).

Then all you need to do is build a lot of billion pound process plants to scrub the CO2, treat it, compress it.

And find somewhere to put it.

And hundreds of miles of pipelines to connect them.

And then it all needs either oversizing so it can do it all in the sunlight/windy hours, or you need huge energy storage systems.

Because there are thousands of jobs out there just waiting for fleet of out of work pilots to come begging… 🙄

Climate change doesn’t care about jobs, money, the value of your investments, it’s just physics in action, you need to rework economics (the completely made up by humans thing) to fit reality not the other way around.

Climate change doesn’t care about jobs, money, the value of your investments, it’s just physics in action, you need to rework economics (the completely made up by humans thing) to fit reality not the other way around.

I’m all for smashing capitalism.

But convincing people to fly less, drive less, go vegetarian and turn their thermostat down all at the same time will be easier.

Well said TINAS.  Nicely illustrates the issues

Scrubbing CO2 from the air industrially will never be a popular option. You state it yourself “if powered by excess renewable energy.”. That if isn’t an “if”, it’s a “we can’t”.

A few years ago in the middle of the middle class gravy train that was the feed in tariff people would happily spend tens of thousands on solar panels knowing they could game the system and get get a very good return on their investment. “Excess” is synonymous with “no market for it” though, no one is spending that money (domestically or commercially) if the price per kWh drops. To produce an full time excess (not just a short lived one on a sunny/windy day) would require monumental levels of government money.

The average UK persons carbon footprint is ~13t/year

It takes 140kWh to scrub 1t of CO2 from air.

=1820kWh

To generate that:

250W panel -> 265Wh per year (UK average)

So you need to add 7 extra panels per person, that’s 21 per house, on every house, and they wont fit, so that’s 21 panels worth of other land. On top of what you need to actually power your house/car (although yes some of that is offset).

Then all you need to do is build a lot of billion pound process plants to scrub the CO2, treat it, compress it.

And find somewhere to put it.

And hundreds of miles of pipelines to connect them.

And then it all needs either oversizing so it can do it all in the sunlight/windy hours, or you need huge energy storage systems.

• Most panels are now 400W+, so you can (almost) half that.
• Wind is far more energy dense per unit land/sea area than solar (and we have a lot of it) and can be used whilst still maintaining agriculture.
• As for scaling – yes, but that’s a problem we’ve been solving for a century.  We have no problem scaling established technologies that don’t have huge regulatory concerns.
• We also don’t need to be capturing carbon 24/7.  We run it only when there’s excess capacity, so energy storage for CC isn’t required.

Like I said all they way back at the start.  My partial solution is purely dependent on funding and scaling.  There’s no hitherto unknown tech that needs developed, there’s no need for mass adoption or immediate change.  All it needs is borrowing on a scale like we’ve seen during the pandemic or financial crisis.

No one else has presented a viable solution that will be accepted by people all over the world and can be started almost immediately and be in action within half a decade.   No one.

I’ve said from the start, it’s not sexy, efficient or has the sweeping change that many seem to want/require, but it is viable and will have an impact in the short to medium term.

Because there are thousands of jobs out there just waiting for fleet of out of work pilots to come begging… 🙄

So we burn the planet to protect the jobs of private jet pilots? This is a ludicrous position. We can help out of work pilots find other work, or maybe we just pay them off to stop doing what they do, but carrying on with business as usual isn’t an option for obvious reasons.

Yes dazh friends very happy being a pilot flying people round the world to buy shirts. He’s ludicrously wealthy himself and doesn’t care much or at all about green issues. It’s a funny old world.

Seems a good few people can’t/won’t use a bin  so bloody good luck “educating” or “convincing” people to significantly alter their lifestyle.

howilearnedtostopworryingandlovethehydrocarbons

I’m in the  slowly then suddenly camp, with the sudden part being ww3.

It amazes me how as a species we are individually and collectively cleaver but also individually and collectively selfish. Also we keep looking at technology to save us, yet it’s technology that’s caused it.

I also believe that governments are duly aware of the catastrophic impacts over the next few decades but are politically tied or blind to it. Putin was/is trying to get In their first with Ukraine (the bread basket of Europe)…..

nickc

See – if the folks who are “committed green” cannot decide amongst themselves becasue the offered solutions is not the “perfect ideal solution that I want” then they become just as intransigent to the point it becomes pointless bickering. We can hardly be surprised then if govts aren’t doing anything.

Governments are doing plenty… unfortunately it’s mainly aimed at making people feel better for all but irrelevant gestures and/or ignoring the developing world and outbidding them on less CO2 intensive products.

Japan and France are years ahead with clean energy, Japan especially is moving into more fusion that will both be useable directly in industry (smelting) and also produce hydrogen whilst “green countries” like Germany are closing their clean fission plants in order to use more coal.

Yes dazh friends very happy being a pilot flying people round the world to buy shirts.

Think if I had a friend like that they wouldn’t remain so for very long. Funny how we excuse or tolerate extreme examples like this on the basis of friendship. I would see your friend as a direct threat to my kids’ future and safety and be sure they knew it but hey-ho maybe I’m an extremist. 🤷‍♂️

It’s fascinating watching people here trying to argue with and contradict Daffy, whose day job is literally trying to fix climate change and implement carbon capture. This is, in my opinion, probably the biggest problem related to dealing with climate change: when people latch onto whatever conspiracy theory or random evidence supports their point of view instead of considering the whole picture.

Maybe the whole “I don’t trust experts” thing is limited to the UK, but I doubt it.

Well this was a cheery lunch time read.  Unless we all (the world) start working together we are bascially stuffed.

It needs change in every country, every politician, every economy, every individual.

We are screwed.  I am worried about my kids.   And I too think it will be war that wipes us out, or many of us, probably due to countries scrabbling for resource.  I note with interest the renewed interest in heading to the moon – wonder if that is part of a bigger ‘lifeboat’ type plan by the nations that can afford it

For my part, we have cut back on flying drastically (soon to have our second overseas holiday in 8 years…), down to one car owned since 2017, always walk or cycle where possible.  Drill into the kids about the environment.  I’ve done as much home mods as I can afford, things like solar and further insulation just cost too much for me to able to do even though I would like to.  And controversially I’m not sold on electric cars yet, personally I think its much more environmental to stop keep creating yet more vehicles and run the ones we have until no longer viable.  focusing on car emissions misses the point about the cost to produce and decommission.   Just one example – was talking to a student at soton uni and he was doing a study on the particles produced from brake dust – the extra weight of the EV meant much higher particulates than a similar sized combustion engine

Daffy, you’ve just added more evidence that you can’t cut emission 50% as you claimed by stopping business class. Even if you replace 50% business class volume with normal seats you don’t cut emissions 50% because the business seats used to be sat in by people who sit in the ecoomy seats that replace them.

Low cost carriers which don’t even have a business class are 34% of European flights. The A320 is Airbus’s best selling aircraft, those sold with business class only have 12 business class seats. Longer haul planes can have more with up to 5 business class for 13 economy. That still doesn’t allow for a 50% saving if you eliminate them.

I no an idustry expert butI’ve been on a guided tour of the Toulouse factory, I didn’t see any aircraft with the kind of business volumes you’re claiming.

You’re presenting a distorted view of aviation to suit your greenwashing agenda. The idustry says 12% business class flyers with those 12% business class  emitting 3 times the CO2. I’l go with that.

Just stop flying.

Yup, slowly then WW3 for me.

Climate change has been talked about as an issue for what 40 years?  It’s been a major issue for 15 years.

Yet our global CO2 emissions are increasing year by year (apart from 2020) and global population is still increasing.  We haven’t even levelled it off.

Individual responses to heatwaves are to buy air-con units, we deal with floods by buying bigger cars with more ground clearance.

Greenwashing is everywhere.  “I know we shouldn’t fly to Florida for our summer holiday and have 3 skiing holidays, but it’s OK because we have a Tesla and only eat free range chicken”.

At the last COP summit there were more O&G reps than national leaders and what was the outcome?  The middle east agreed to stop cutting down their rainforests, Brazil agreed to do pretty much nothing, Australia said they would dig up about 5 tonnes of coal less each year and the UK proudly announced they would build 3 more wind turbines.  At some point in the future.  Probably.  Meantime the real headline was that developed nations would give some money to some third world countries to offset the damaging effects of climate change.  And that was announced as a significant triumph.

TJ is right.  Catastrophic climate change is baked in and we are arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  And no, I don’t have any answers.

Also we keep looking at technology to save us, yet it’s technology that’s caused it.

it people that are the problem, technology is merely a tool.

Is cargo okay?

I am worried about my kids.

Yeah, what may happen in my kids’ lifetime is what worries me too. At the moment it feels a bit like a disaster movie plot unfolding in slow motion.

I’m also a geologist and I’ve made my peace with what’s coming. I watched the first episode of Chris Packham’s new show last night on my four year old phone (don’t have a TV). Generally avoid this kind of thing now because the over-wrought music and moody-gazing-off-camera shots have me throwing the phone at the wall, but I’m a sucker for anything concerning the End Permian Extinction. I suspect Packham gets it, and he even came close to implying it in this episode – we’re **** but it’s ok, the planet goes on. You just need to take the long view.

I no longer fly, don’t own a car (or an e-bike), decided not to have kids, don’t eat meat unless I’m out on the hill – but I’m not delusional, it makes no difference. And to answer the original question: gradual deterioration, tipping point, global conflict.

on my four year old phone (don’t have a TV

Genuine question, why did you feel the need to state that?

 …gradual deterioration, tipping point, global conflict.

It’s not just this thread, it’s any thread once the bickering and the I’m more cleverer than you shit starts

Because choosing not to own a TV, with the carbon cost of making it (drilling for the oil for the plastic, mining the rare earth metals for all the circuit boards etc) and the carbon cost of shipping it (in a ship running on bitumen fuel) and the carbon cost of running it (from your biomass fuelled power station), and not buying a new phone with the same costs on a smaller scale aee good environmental decisions and relevant to the thread.

I suppose a particularly unpleasant person with no knowledge of what they’re talking about would call it virtue signalling. Which if it is, I’m all for.

And of course air cargo isn’t okay. If we need it from the other side of the world in a plane (perishable food etc) we can eat something else. Any other air cargo is non-critical. It’s just stuff.

Yup, slowly then WW3 for me.

I think the opposite order is more likely. i.e. WW3 (started because of “land grab” due to fear of climate catastrophe and food shortage) then climate catastrophe (because of war efforts) then mass famine & disease (the result of the previous two).
The irony is that trying to save the human population because climate change eventually lead to more human and climate disaster. LOL!

I no longer fly, don’t own a car (or an e-bike), decided not to have kids, don’t eat meat unless I’m out on the hill – but I’m not delusional, it makes no difference.

This is a pertinent point – individuals doing all they can to minimise their impact on the planet is a very honourable thing but we know that it is going to take much, much more than that. The problem is that it won’t happen on a global scale, there are too many politicians with fingers in too many pies, too many vested interests and intent only on pleasing the majority of their voters and keeping their donors happy. Then, one day in the future, when the whole shit-show is about to implode everyone will look at everyone else and ask ‘why didn’t we do something to stop this happening’?

Genuine question, why did you feel the need to state that?

Genuine answer: are you being obtuse, or do you not understand context?

I suppose a particularly unpleasant person with no knowledge of what they’re talking about would call it virtue signalling

It is virtue signaling. And I’m not that unpleasant. I’ll give you the no knowledge bit.

Genuine answer: are you being obtuse, or do you not understand context?

Not being obtuse. I understand context. Have another think about it.

Adversity has caused massive changes in human responses throughout our history,  I refuse to believe that there is no hope and fully believe that solutions both known and unknown will be found and implemented.

Sorry but the doomsayers can get on the b ark, there has to be hope and I have it.  No question there will be huge hardships as a transition happens but I fully believe that in time there will be long term positive outcomes

The food inflation caused by the Ukraine war will be insignificant compared to the effect of severe draught.

It is virtue signaling. And I’m not that unpleasant.

Just the occasional foray into that pastime?

Interesting comparing an STW thread from 10 years back, my earliest contributions went with the hack but there is a shift in the general tone of the threads – from denial to resignation.

Global warming update!

The link in my own post on that page still works if anyone is interested why three geologists on the same thread mention the Permian:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event

from denial to resignation.

A convenient combination which doesn’t require anyone to change anything. Resignation is no different to denial, actually IMO it’s worse because people who are now resigned to catastrophe are essentially abandoning their/other people’s kids to a life of misery so that they can continue with their noses in the trough safe in the knowledge that they won’t be around to experience it. It’s f***** pathetic quite frankly.

Earth, Series 1: 1. Inferno: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0fpwly8 via @bbciplayer

The STW skimming appears to screw up the link to that new show I mentioned. Looks like the final episode might be relevant.

Just the occasional foray into that pastime?

I try to avoid it when I can, but it happens from time to time.

zeitgeist on here but his book Fully Automated Luxury Communism

I admit I have not read the entire book but have read bits and watched some videos on it and it’s fantasy.

Daffy, you’ve just added more evidence that you can’t cut emission 50% as you claimed by stopping business class. Even if you replace 50% business class volume with normal seats you don’t cut emissions 50% because the business seats used to be sat in by people who sit in the ecoomy seats that replace them.

Are you a bit simple?  An A350-1000 has a 2 class layout at 300 seats of which ~60 (depends on carrier) are business class.  A single class layout is 480 seats, that’s what it’s safety rated for.  So, and as I said you get 180 MORE SEATS!!!!  Exactly as I said.  You also save around 5 tonnes of WEIGHT!

Low cost carriers which don’t even have a business class are 34% of European flights. The A320 is Airbus’s best selling aircraft, those sold with business class only have 12 business class seats. Longer haul planes can have more with up to 5 business class for 13 economy. That still doesn’t allow for a 50% saving if you eliminate them.

   I NEVER SAID 50%!  I said almost 50%.  If we presume that long haul is 70% of emissions, and that approximately 50% of those emissions are directly related to business and first, then couple that with business aviation which is 2-4% of global emissions, you’re at 39% of total emission and that doesn’t even take into account short haul aircraft and their business class emissions (Lufthansa, BA, KLM, United, AA, etc, etc.  You’re getting mighty close to 50%, aren’t you?

I no an idustry expert butI’ve been on a guided tour of the Toulouse factory, I didn’t see any aircraft with the kind of business volumes you’re claiming.

This right here is the depth of your knowledge on aviation  – a factory tour of one of the assembly lines at Toulouse.  I was involved in the design of the A350 for crying out loud.  You couldn’t even be bothered to go and check the types of aircraft you’re spouting about.  On the otherhand I’ve have spent a lifetime removing weight and improving performance all of which reduces fuel used.  My personal accountability runs to the millions of tonnes of fuel saved- and I understand not only the aviation sector in extreme detail, but also its context and its trajectory.   I’m here every day trying to make it more sustainable, but also recognise that aviation is to CO2 what the SUV is to car emissions, It’s just an easy target for lazy environmentalists and in the grander scheme is muddying the water where there are real targets which could be dealt with right now.

You’re presenting a distorted view of aviation to suit your greenwashing agenda. The idustry says 12% business class flyers with those 12% business class  emitting 3 times the CO2. I’l go with that.

NOTHING I’ve said is biased, everything I’ve said can be borne out by facts.  Even your silly figure above

12% are business class but are emitting 3* the Co2

  – my simple math makes that 36% and that doesn’t include its effects on aircraft weight.  So 36% of emission, + business aviation at 2-4%, so 38-40% and then aircraft cabin weight…How close are we to 50%?  Almost? Like I said on Page 2.

Just stop flying.

Is a bumper sticker and about as much use to the climate argument as you yourself are.  It’s not going to happen, so how about being a real Edukator for a change, and giving people something to strive for, huh?

Resignation is no different to denial

Although it’s a weird inversion that the two biggest self-proclaimed greens on the thread are both firmly in the “resigned to it” category, while more or less everybody else is in the “lets do everything we still can” category. Which according to @dazh assessment  makes them part of the problem, and everyone else part of the solution.

As for scaling – yes, but that’s a problem we’ve been solving for a century. We have no problem scaling established technologies that don’t have huge regulatory concerns.

Part of the issue is the lack of regulatory bodies, at the moment there is no agreed spec for sequestering CO2 or agreed safe practices for doing it. I work in a company that just developed one of these to remove it at source from the gas coming out the well (which is roughly 10% CO2 and was previously just vented). Even without the difficult bit of trying to scrub it from the air there’s big gaps in our knowledge of how this’ll work.

e.g. do you build stainless steel pipes (cripplingly expensive), or use carbon steel (less expensive, but needs the CO2 to be dry, and not just dry but REALLY dry, and TEG/MEG based de-watering techniques can’t be used as any entrained droplets will then re-absorb water in the pipe and corrode through it). You’ve then got issues with cold embrittlement as it’s dense phase CO2, so any small leaks quickly become catastrophic. And CO2 isn’t just asphyxiating, it’s also considered toxic so leaks are bad.

Give it 30-50 years and a few accidents and maybe we’ll have a better long term understanding and regulatory standards to make it easier.

We also don’t need to be capturing carbon 24/7. We run it only when there’s excess capacity, so energy storage for CC isn’t required.

So how many hours a day will this excess free (not free) energy be available, a few hours mid day from solar (when people might decide that AC is needed if it’s somehow free to run), some windy overnights in the winter (when people might put storage heating on if it’s free).

Because then for every proportional less than 24/7 you’re running the plant needs to be bigger to do the same job. Let’s be optimistic and assume we’ve invested in those 7 extra panels per person and therefore it’s roughly 1/3 of the time, offshore wind IIRC isn’t far off the same sort of figure. Now you need 3x as many CO2 scrubbing machines. And each of these things would be enormous, for scale this is the pilot plant currently in operation:

It removes 1ton a day. You’re talking 2.5MILLION tons a day in the UK. Picture lets say 3 machines, built in Aberdeen, Shetland, Middlesbrough (places with access to offshore reservoirs), each 2.5millions times the size (less a bit for the space efficiency of doing it at scale).

Each machine able to draw 150Gigawatts of power from the grid (the entire national grid consumption currently averages ~12GW?).

Which is why I’m not even addressing whether a solar panel is 400W or 250W. Because either way it’s the equivalent power 50x Sizewell C’s (times 3 if we assume the renewables achieve 1/3 of their nameplate capacity).

So we burn the planet to protect the jobs of private jet pilots? This is a ludicrous position.

I think I’ve maybe been misinterpreted here. I’m not suggesting that pilots’ jobs should be protected, or that flying half way round the world for dinner is a good idea. I’m just saying that solutions such as “just get a different job”, “just move closer to where you shop”, “just get rid of your car” etc. are so utterly simplistic, so devoid of even a basic grasp of what is actually required for these things to happen that my mind boggles how anyone could think it’s a sensible way to approach the problem. “Just stop polluting, it’s simple” ffs 🙄

People are going to need leading by the hand for things to change, governments are going to have to provide pathways for people to achieve what’s required. As said above, until climate change action can be monetised there is little hope that anything meaningful will happen. Source: human history for the past 60 years.

Which according to @dazh assessment makes them part of the problem, and everyone else part of the solution.

Pretty much yes. If we’re going down then we still need to be doing everything we can to prevent it. Anything less is simply indefensible. I’m a uber-pragmatist on this. It’s not a case of doing one or the other or giving up on a particular option because it has a negligible effect, we need to be doing everything that is now currently possible technologically and politically. In future other things will be possible, and when that happens we need to be doing them too. Simply giving up is the worst possible action from every possible viewpoint.