The Economist’s Solution To Clean Energy And Global Warming

[modest]

Quite right, unfortunately everyone seems to have completely ignored your question despite it being a very important one.

It is about the first time I have ever seen this rather obvious point mentioned, it is certainly not mention in the

corporate and government media.

Well... I wouldn't pay any attention to the media, but I really am curious about this.

 

If is so odd we spend so much time worrying about something that is going to happen whatever we do, the real issue

is not global warming but how we are going to manage when the fossil fuel runs out.

When fossil fuel runs out global warming will be seen as a godsend. It will be much easier to keep warm and alive

with global warming, trying to prevent global warming is insane.

That could be, but I would rather not be so pessimistic. Clearly our industrial boom was largely in part to gas, oil, and other hydrocarbons... and clearly those resources are finite and quickly coming to an end. But, I don't think the end of the oil age has to be so catastrophic that a change in climate is the least of our worries. There are other sources of energy and we are in a good position to capitalize on them.

 

It seems sensible to me — I think I said this earlier in the thread — that we should curtail our use of hydrocarbons no matter what the reason. If global warming seems like a good reason to stop burning so much fossil fuel and adopt some Brazil-like energy plan then so be it. For whatever reason, it will help ease the transition into the next big thing.

 

Our goal has to be avoiding the unhealthy. If global warming will end up being more unhealthy for our species, or the loss of the thing that currently fuels our civilization, I don't know. But, either way, we seriously need to think about using some source of renewable energy. Not only is change not always a bad thing, in this case, it is the only good thing. Don't you think?

 

 

Also it is clear there have been no negative effects of global warming so far despite us having burnt around half

of the fossil fuel.

I am tempted to agree with you. I wonder, however, if that is the best indication of things to come. Of course, I can't know that and I'd distrust anyone who says they can.

 

 

Burning the remainder will make little difference, rather like adding a further jumper when you already have 3 jumpers on.

Yes, that is the question I'm most curious about. Although, I wouldn't say "the remainder", because economically we can't burn the remainder any more than we can run our cars on diamond dust. Before gasoline reaches $15 or $30 per gallon people will stop using it. It's inevitable. The real question I have is the damage done to the future of our species by way of the environment before that type of thing happens in the different energy markets. I have a feeling that neither the predictions of climatology or economics (let alone anthropology and sociology) are accurate enough to give anywhere near those kinds of predictions.

 

Pity the answer will likely outlive us all.

[Qfwfq]

I’m wondering if I’m missing anything.

Yeah, the fact that market rule won't be nearly sufficient to provide a satisfactory solution to such a delicate problem with potentially devastating effects.

 

There's an old saying, at least over here: the mother of idiots is always pregnant. What does this imply about this matter? It means that those who can afford the expense will continue their old comfortable habits and so will many of those who inexorably would be confronted with even greater expenses than buying the fuel itself. See how many people in Tokyo and similar sea level metropolitain areas are still driving their SUVs and turning their condos into fridges each summer and mild ovens each winter. Ask them how much their property is currently worth and how much they reckon it'll be worth when sea level rises a couple of metres. At the most you might persuade them to pass the hot potato to someone else before it's too late but this of course doesn't change the overall situation. People living at higher levels and yet where the increasingly common heavy precipitations don't pose much threat of mudslides etc. will all the more shrug it off as someone else's problem. People will just keep burning as much carbon as they can afford. Some people are burning forests for rather futile reasons, they don't give a damn.

 

Nope, economy doesn't solve the problem. Only intelligence would, if it weren't such a scarce commodity.

[modest]

There's an old saying, at least over here: the mother of idiots is always pregnant. What does this imply about this matter? It means that those who can afford the expense will continue their old comfortable habits and so will many of those who inexorably would be confronted with even greater expenses than buying the fuel itself.

But we don't expect rich or stupid people to use whale oil in lamps or candles. It was replaced by kerosine and other petroleum products.

 

I'm not saying that economics saved the sperm whale, but we clearly can't conclude that people will continue to use a modern fuel supply so long as it is available — not when something cheaper is available.

[Qfwfq]

But we don't expect rich or stupid people to use whale oil in lamps or candles.

You should say... except for Tormod. :hihi: But anyway:

It was replaced by kerosine and other petroleum products.

Sure, because whale oil is no more comfy and handy for lazy bums to use. Further, only animal conservationists are against it, climate-wise it isn't much worse than other carbon fuels so it isn't nearly the same matter of short sighted stupidity.

 

...not when something cheaper is available.

Of course, as long as you also weigh convenience and practicality. But still I don't see the price of the barrel being sufficient to turn enough parties to low emmission energy forms, despite the public spending to incentivate some of them. These climate changes are already occurring and people shrug them off. IOW even with some steps against it, market rule is still driving the combustion of fossil and other carbon containing fuels. Go figure.

[modest]

You should say... except for Tormod.

:)

 

But still I don't see the price of the barrel being sufficient to turn enough parties to low emmission energy forms

Ok, I'm not trying to make an argument. Clearly pirates and Norwegian oil lamps aren't going to threaten the species from global warming. That point can't be argued.

 

The fossil fuel markets will crash. That point can't be argued. If we tried to keep fueling our civilization with oil, despite it being the less convenient thing to do, it would end up being $500 per barrel, $10,000 per barrel, $20,000 per barrel, and so on. Long before that point there will be no incentive for oil companies to invest in digging it up and the Somali pirates are going to have a hard time of that on their own.

 

The only open question is which comes first:

 

1. Because of the crash of the fossil fuel markets civilization either takes a catastrophic hit with no means of keeping entropy low — or we capitalize on some renewable energy source like the sun — before major damage to the species from global warming.

 

2. We manage to burn enough hydrocarbons (and quickly enough) to damage the species before either of the two above scenarios plays out.

 

I suspect the answer is far more likely to be #1, but that is a complete guess.

 

One thing that I can do a little more than guess at is how the IPCC's models don't have a realistic sense of future emission scenarios. There is literature making the point:

 

Anthropogenic global warming caused by CO2 emissions is strongly and fundamentally linked to future energy production. The Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) from 2000 contains 40 scenarios for future fossil fuel production and is used by the IPCC to assess future climate change. Previous scenarios were withdrawn after exaggerating one or several trends. This study investigates underlying assumptions on resource availability and future production expectations to determine whether exaggerations can be found in the present set of emission scenarios as well. It is found that the SRES unnecessarily takes an overoptimistic stance and that future production expectations are leaning toward spectacular increases from present output levels. In summary, we can only encourage the IPCC to involve more resource experts and natural science in future emission scenarios. The current set, SRES, is biased toward exaggerated resource availability and unrealistic expectations on future production outputs from fossil fuels.

 

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j6577353716vqn5h/

 

more bluntly:

 

The increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is coursed by an increasing use of fossil fuels; natural gas, oil and coal. These have so far resulted in an increase of the global surface temperature in the order of one degree.

 

In the year 2000 IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released 40 emission scenarios that can be seen as images of the future, or alternative futures. They are neither predictions, nor forecasts and actual reserves have not been a limited factor, just the fossil energy resource base.

 

This paper is based on realistic reserve assessments, and CO2 emissions from resources that cannot be transformed into reserves are not allowed. First we can conclude that CO2 emissions from burning oil and gas are lower than what all the IPCC scenarios predict, and emissions from coal is much lower than than the majority of the scenarios.

 

IPCC emission scenarios for the time period of 2020 to 2100 should in the future not be used for climate change predictions. It is time to use realistic scenarios.

 

http://www.springerlink.com/content/j6577353716vqn5h/

[Qfwfq]

I don't know about the IPCC and it doesn't matter if they got it wrong. What I don't get in your last post is your logic about markets. Could you straighten it out? For one, it sounds as if you ought to believe that diamond mining isn't worth the effort because their market value is too high...:rolleyes:

 

What I will say is what I left out before: Keep in mind that the price of something cannot remain high if nobody is buying it. So the implication is that as long as there isn't another reason against the burning of oil, the price of it won't make people do it much less than its availability.

 

Long before that point there will be no incentive for oil companies to invest in digging it up and the Somali pirates are going to have a hard time of that on their own.

No, long before that it will be too late to chatter about how to prevent disaster. Unless the figures are due only to devaluation of course. Let me illustrate with a hyperbolic example; suppose people found it cool to do something with water, that removes it from the cycle, but it harms the environment in the long run and suppose it could be done just as easily with brine from the oceans too. Even when the human race is drawing cubic kilometres of it a day, when do you expect the price of the brine to make them stop? If you leave it to free market they will keep doing it long after its effects have destroyed every form of life on this planet, they'll keep doing it from their graves and the levels of the ocean will still have hardly decreased because of it.

 

Fortunately, carbon containing fuels are not nearly as abundant as ocean water. Unfortunately, they are far more abundant than what it will take to make it too late, without some radical change in the very near future. Unfortunately, it isn't just the price of fossil fuels because, as it goes up, you see an increasing use of firewood to which doesn't help to increase overall photosynthesis.

 

The short story is that if you sit around waitng for free market to solve this problem, it is far worse than expecting our crummy politicians to solve it.

[modest]

What I don't get in your last post is your logic about markets. Could you straighten it out? For one, it sounds as if you ought to believe that diamond mining isn't worth the effort because their market value is too high...:rolleyes:

I said earlier in the thread "[we] can't burn the remainder [of fossil fuel supply] any more than we can run our cars on diamond dust".

 

What I will say is what I left out before: Keep in mind that the price of something cannot remain high if nobody is buying it.

Right, and if nobody is buying it there isn't an emission problem. I have a feeling my premise got lost.

 

Earth can sequester a certain amount of anthropogenic atmospheric carbon each year. Emitting more forces the equilibrium level of CO2 in the atmosphere up and emitting less forces it down. If we continue emitting above that level (my premise) then fuel prices will quickly become prohibitive. If we don't then we are alleviating the problem rather than aggravating it.

 

Of course that premise is flawed, and that's my point. In the real world as fossil fuel supply decreases demand in alternative fuels will increase and we will emit less and less CO2. The problem is that the climate models which everyone is thumping don't recognize this fact. They assume that the world population will double while less developed nations become more developed, GDPs will go up across the board — all fueled by hydrocarbons indefinitely. This is the one thing we can be sure won't happen.

 

So we don't know what a realistic economic future will do to the climate.

 

So the implication is that as long as there isn't another reason against the burning of oil, the price of it won't make people do it much less than its availability.

Part of what makes hydrocarbons cheap is the large scale nature of the beast. We can afford giant tankers to transport, upkeep on giant refineries, massive exploration and drilling, partly because there is so much product in both supply and demand.

 

It wouldn't take much to strip all of that infrastructure away from oil and coal, for example. As soon as the investment into wind or solar (or whatever the case may be) gives better returns, all of the money will go there. It would be a paradigm shift. I don't think it possible to model when that type of paradigm shift will happen, but it either has to happen or the large low entropy state of civilization as it exists now will fail.

 

Fortunately, carbon containing fuels are not nearly as abundant as ocean water. Unfortunately, they are far more abundant than what it will take to make it too late, without some radical change in the very near future. Unfortunately, it isn't just the price of fossil fuels because, as it goes up, you see an increasing use of firewood to which doesn't help to increase overall photosynthesis.

At the precipice of peak coal and oil, a "radical change in the very near future", as you say, is inevitable whether we want it or not. I don't trust the conclusion that it will be too late any more than I would trust the conclusion that it won't be.

 

I don't know what you base your conclusion on in that regard, but I haven't seen it.

 

~modest

[sigurdV]

Renewable energy is typically clean energy.

 

Fossil fuel is a limited resource. As supply diminishes price rises.

 

The largest, and really the only, impediment to renewable energy like solar is that there are cheaper energy sources available. It isn’t economical to use renewable energy right now because it can’t compete with cheaper methods.

 

We are nearly upon the precipice of peak oil and peak coal.

 

Given the previous four postulates, the clean energy problem (and global warming by extension) is going to solve itself shortly without intervention. Once it becomes more expensive to extract and transport oil and coal than it is to produce and transport clean energy, no one will use it... at least not in a worrisome amount.

 

I’m not an expert and I’m sure this has occurred to plenty of people, so I’m wondering if I’m missing anything. Why, in other words, are ‘dirty’ energy, and global warming, problems that need to be fixed with the likes of Kyoto, rather than problems which are inevitably and shortly going to shortly fix themselves?

 

~modest

Theres a risk of disastrous effects ...say the release of all buried methane... Maybe turning earth into another Venus!

 

Better fix than get fixed ;)

[Qfwfq]

Well, I can't sort your logic out, I still find it confused.

 

I don't trust the conclusion that it will be too late any more than I would trust the conclusion that it won't be.

 

I don't know what you base your conclusion on in that regard, but I haven't seen it.

The threat is already becoming fact and we are quite far from the sole effect of dwindling availability in a free market causing the shift.

[modest]

Theres a risk of disastrous effects ...say the release of all buried methane... Maybe turning earth into another Venus!

 

Better fix than get fixed ;)

If you mean deep sea methane I couldn't say. I would suspect that such an event, if it were possible, would be most likely triggered by lowering sea levels perhaps at the beginning of a period of glaciation, but I really don't know.

 

 

Well, I can't sort your logic out, I still find it confused.

If we continue to emit more CO2 from fossil fuel than earth can sequester the price will become prohibitive. I'm not sure how to make it more simple or seem less confusing.

 

The threat is already becoming fact and we are quite far from the sole effect of dwindling availability in a free market causing the shift.

That could be. I wish it were something that could be more accurately modeled so that we could do more than guess.

 

~modest

[Eudoxus]

We've been on the precipice of Peak Oil for seventy years. It'll happen eventually, but stop pretending that you know when it will happen, or even if it's happened. Peak oil has been predicted every year since 1970 and production keeps going up. Like I said, we will hit that wall eventually, but unless you can demonstrate degrees in geology, oil extraction, business, and economics, with years of experience in the petroleum industry, or can cite a study done by people with collectively all of those, don't assert that you know when peak oil is coming.

[modest]

We've been on the precipice of Peak Oil for seventy years. It'll happen eventually, but stop pretending that you know when it will happen, or even if it's happened. Peak oil has been predicted every year since 1970 and production keeps going up. Like I said, we will hit that wall eventually, but unless you can demonstrate degrees in geology, oil extraction, business, and economics, with years of experience in the petroleum industry, or can cite a study done by people with collectively all of those, don't assert that you know when peak oil is coming.

 

You've misjudged my position, but believe me — I've done the same thing myself when joining an ongoing thread — more times than I'd admit

 

The real question I have is the damage done to the future of our species by way of the environment before that type of thing happens in the different energy markets. I have a feeling that neither the predictions of climatology or economics (let alone anthropology and sociology) are accurate enough to give anywhere near those kinds of predictions.

I don't think it possible to model when that type of paradigm shift will happen

I suspect the answer is far more likely to be #1 [the crash of the fossil fuel markets before catastrophic climate change], but that is a complete guess.

I wish it were something that could be more accurately modeled so that we could do more than guess.

[AmanShah]

I have a solution to this pollution related problem:

I am inventing a gravity engine which is Non-Perpetual

http://blogs.scienceforums.net/realfreeenergy/

 

Even MIT scientists have developed an artificial leaf that produces energy:

 

The Artificial leaf is an excellent invention.We could have vehicles carrying a water tank which supplies water to this device which then converts water into H2 and O2 which can power a compact fuel cell for vehicle power train.I think this device is one of the most promising device.It is even better than having an electric car with expensive batteries such as tesla model S having a range of 480 Kms per charge.

 

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/artificial-leaf-0930.html

Edited March 24, 2012 by CraigD
Fixed invalid URL

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, Aman! :) Please feel free to tell us a bit about you in the introductions forum.

 

The Artificial leaf is an excellent invention.We could have vehicles carrying a water tank which supplies water to this device which then converts water into H2 and O2 which can power a compact fuel cell for vehicle power train.I think this device is one of the most promising device.It is even better than having an electric car with expensive batteries such as tesla model S having a range of 480 Kms per charge.

 

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/artificial-leaf-0930.html

MIT’s “artificial leaf” is an amazing bit of technology – effectively a solar powered electrolysis machine – but simply putting one or more in water doesn’t generate hydrogen, which can be stored and used to power a hydrogen fuel cell to generate electricity, or burned in a heat engine to do mechanical work. It must be supplied with light.

 

At best, the device is 4.7% efficient, which, taking a typical hydrogen fuel cell efficiency of 50%, a typical high-efficiency electric passenger car (a Nissan Leaf) net energy requirement of 765 J/m, a maximum solar power of 680 W/m², and assuming a light collecting area no larger than the vehicle’s about 8 m² (for example, no fold out reflector panels, such as those allowed in solar car competitions), and the round trip distance I travel to and from my nearby workplace, 20000 m, the system would require about

 

[math]\frac{765 \,\text{J}} {1 \,\text{m}} \cdot \frac{1}{8 \,\text{m}^2} \cdot \frac{1 \,\text{m}^2}{680 \,\text{W}} \cdot \frac{1}{0.047 \cdot 0.50} \cdot \frac{20000 \text{m}}{1} = 106000 s[/math]

 

or about 30 hours, of bright sunlight every day. As obviously we can’t get that much bright sunlight in a 24 hour day, the system can’t possibly work.

 

It’s important, I think, to understand that electrolysis devices don’t get energy from water. They store energy from an external electric source by separating the hydrogen and oxygen in water. They are not fuel-consuming engines, but rather, storage batteries.

[Qfwfq]

I think you missed Aman's point Craig. If it does better than photovoltaic in proportion to cost then it's a great thing.

 

If we continue to emit more CO2 from fossil fuel than earth can sequester the price will become prohibitive. I'm not sure how to make it more simple or seem less confusing.

Now that's simple, and I can say there is no true consequentiality. The antecedent has been true for quite a while and wow if only the price had become prohibitive enough to avoid what is happening.

 

...so that we could do more than guess.

We can. We see mighty changes already, which I don't call no guess.

[AmanShah]

Thanks CraigD.I have also started a thread called "Real Non-Perpetual Gravity Engine" under the category "Engineering and Applied Science"on the

Same website.

 

I will see "instructions forums".

 

Some one was talking of "Nissan Leaf".I would say Tesla Model S is more efficient and world's best full electric Zero Emision car.

Tesla Model S comes with Good safety norms compatibility,like 8 airbags,traction Control,strong rigid structure and moreover,considering the weight of the car,480 Kms. Per charge with 45 minutes charging optional quick charging system is a world record.Tesla is showing the world that electric cars are not too far from everyday transportation in future.Today a tesla Model S costs as much as a 5 series even after green energy Tax benefit.

No other car ,other than tesla Model S offers 480 Kms. Range (full electric) on one single charge.

 

Cheers.

Edited March 25, 2012 by Aman Shah

[modest]

Now that's simple, and I can say there is no true consequentiality. The antecedent has been true for quite a while and wow if only the price had become prohibitive enough to avoid what is happening.

The antecedent is in the future tense and you say it has been true for a while... that's really something. If someone said,

If we continue to extract water from the underground reservoir at the same rate, in 5 years it will be out of water and we won't be able to irrigate our crops

 

Would you reply: "the antecedent has been true for quite a while and wow if we haven't run out of water."

 

 

We can. We see mighty changes already, which I don't call no guess.

"We see mighty changes already" to the price of oil. I don't call that a guess, but it is rhetoric that doesn't solve the question we are guessing at.