Weather

[cx]

One problem I have with the advertising and promoting the use of EVs and the production of "renewable" electricity and the great reduction in cost of these "advances" is the lack of transparency of the "government" subsidies that have been, are being, and will continue to be poured into them. And since we all know the government doesn't have any money, and doesn't produce anything, we also know that we, the citizens, are paying for all that. None of it is being done because it can stand alone as good business, it's being done because it doesn't need to be good business at this point. Will it some day be good business? Probably, but only because it was initially forced upon us by our benevolent government. And I, for one, don't care for that sort of progress.

But let me stop there before this turns into a political discussion and is deleted.

[Kman]

Some serious upgrades to our grid will be needed in coming years if everyone is expected to move to electric vehicles.

And some advances in the capacity of the EV batteries will have to come about before I'd ever be interested. What is a five-hour trip for me to see some family across state would be 40-50 minutes longer in an EV due to stopping to charge, but I'd not even use a half -tank of gas.

Not to mention if I'm visiting someone that doesn't have a charger, I have to go somewhere and sit while I wait for my car to charge up.

And what if you run out of battery power somewhere? Can't exactly call for someone to bring you a can of electricity, right? And I'm hearing these batteries last a decade or so, and cost many thousands to replace.

Lots of advances are needed before they can compete with gas-powered vehicles. I know I'm only pointing out the negatives here, but to convince the entire population of U.S. drivers to switch over is going to require some better features from the EV world.

[jadnashua]

The Lucid Air can go about 520-miles on a charge, but that's an expensive anomaly - more and more are showing up with 300-miles or so...how long can you sit in the vehicle before you need a pit stop? Charge while there at a DC fast charger while there or catch a snack. But, the battery tech is improving. And there are some EVs out there, if you can find a powerful enough charging station, can accept up to 350Kw/hr input, meaning a fairly significant charge in a short time. The battery tech is improving every year, and solid-state batteries will start to show up in limited quantities next year, with more to come where they last longer, hold more, and can be recharged faster.

Some of this is pushed by demand and the bill passed this year will improve the DC fast charging network that will require them at least every 50-miles on interstates. IT will take some time, but they are coming.

There are car services that can bring charging to you, but they are not that common as people actually don't regularly run them down to zero, just like most people don't drive their ICE until the tank is empty and the engine quits.

Fuel cell power is quite clean if you have excess power, which happens today, especially at night if it happens to be windy. As I said, peak power use is late afternoon, early evening. Most people can achieve a full recharge at home in maybe 4-8 hours, depending on the size of their battery and how much power you can provide them...so, overnight when the demand drops means no additional power needs to happen...the load evens out though the day and night if things are managed intelligently. Plus, there are a few vehicles today that can provide V2G, and more are likely to show up in the next five years (it's common in Japan), that allows a plugged-in vehicle to become a stored battery source so peaker plants may not be needed, at least as much. That's an expensive asset that may not be used often that we're paying for that may not be used all that often.

Tesla has shown their batteries have been holding up for over 300K-miles...how long to you keep a vehicle? Most people get tired of them way before then. My first EV was 8-years old when I sold it, and the battery had lost maybe 5% of its maximum capacity. These things are not like the battery in a cell phone. Different chemistry with (usually) liquid cooling and smarter charging logic, so you don't damage them while either charging, or during heavy use. I have a PHEV now, and most of my miles are done on electric, but I just as easily did a trip from NH to MI and back (over 2000-miles) where I did not recharge...just stopped to fill the gas tank. A good interim solution, at least for me. Local miles all electric, with the ICE backup, when needed...with a full battery and tank, on the interstate, over 500-miles range, and nearly the same when the battery is discharged - maybe 450-miles or so.

Things are not perfect. Many families have more than one vehicle, and an EV is likely to handle your typical day-to-day use.

You have to start somewhere...

[jerrymlr1]

Originally Posted by Jim

Green energy and EVs are the low-hanging fruit

The low hanging fruit is the American citizen, picked off at will by it's own gov and other world govs, in particular the ccp.

Originally Posted by Jim

You have to start somewhere

Start with china. Even google can't censor the images that are available to view. Air and water are so polluted over there that 50% of the water in china is unusable for anything at all. Even industry can't use it. The images of polluted waterways and air in china are abundant and horrific. They paint mountains that use to be green with vegetation so as to look "alive." Yet, no one in our gov says a word about the ccp filth. Then again, they are not the low hanging fruit that can produce the easily extracted $$ from the American citizen.

Originally Posted by john kerry

America could reduce its carbon emissions to zero & it wouldn't make a difference because of what China & India are doing.

Global warming has never been about weather. It's always been about power. All based on the lie that C02 is a poison, when in reality abundant C02 is a huge benefit. Plants thrive on abundant C02. Farms produce better crops with abundant C02.

As for lithium EVs, 500 million gallons of water is used to produce one ton of lithium. 63% of all the water in Chili is used for lithium production and there is a major water crisis because of it. And who are the producers of lithium? Aside from one small source in Nevada, not the US. Certainly not good news if our country wants to be energy independent.

Then there are the other materials used which are mentioned in the video in Davy's link, which also points out other facts about solar and windmills.

"Gratitude for CO2: It Continues to Feed the World !" (Vijay Jayaraj Aug. 04, 2021
Vijay Jayaraj holds a master of science degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, England:
".../... CO2 added to the atmosphere since the industrial era has had no observable impact on rainfall patterns whilst directly helping plants to grow better. In the big climate conferences no reference is made to the role of CO2 in plant growth and its relevance to global food security. Instead, CO2 is wrongly branded as a toxin.
The climate bandwagon has managed to brainwash the global community about simple biology and chemistry taught to school children. The very CO2 that has been responsible for providing life and enabling rapid greening of the world is vilified."
India underwent famines until the sixties. Thanks to the growing CO2 rate in the atmosphere, to the mechanization of agriculture and synthetic fertilizers, not only India succeeded in feeding a population now 3 times that of 1960 but it has become a net exporter of foodstuff !!!

Clean energy/climate change is a lie, meant to bring down the west, courtesy dc&ccp.

[jerrymlr1]

Originally Posted by CX

I expect that as soon as the temperature dips below 40 degrees, Texas will have no alternative but to declare war on Florida!

No need for that CX. I talked to a weatherman in the know and he says TX has 2 coming next year

I lived in Houston for a short spell and College Station for a little longer short spell. Went to Lake Somerville fairly often. The entire lake dried up once. TX has seen it share of dry spells.

[cx]

Originally Posted by Jerry

TX has seen it share of dry spells.

You could post that one in bold type, Jerry!

I've oft commented that the average rainfall in Texas is determined by adding the droughts and the floods and dividing by two. Ain't no average years.

Back when I was building new houses out in the county, I missed more workdays due to floods than any other weather phenomena.

But there are some downsides to living here, too.

[jadnashua]

The vast majority of excess CO2 is absorbed by the oceans...the pH is decreasing. This is affecting lots of things. This is from the Smithsonian https://ocean.si.edu/conservation/ac...fication-graph

For every 1 scientist that says increases aren't a problem, there are hundreds that disagree. As opposed to what Trump said on Tuesday about the oceans rising 1/8" in 300-years, try 7-8mm per year the last 15 or so years with increasing rates likely in the next 10-years or so. This is from NASA https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_res...historic-data/

CO2 IS a greenhouse gas, and it does help the atmosphere to hold solar energy which warms things.

The oceans absorb far more CO2 than plants do, but one of the bigger CO2 sinks is the Amazon, and that is being cut down.

Chile isn't using any high-tech methods to extract lithium. This US source, if it works out, could produce 40% more than the whole world currently uses. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/the-...t-lithium.html

Prior to CARB and the EPA, places in the USA were downright unhealthy. Things are better now, but still not ideal. That would not have happened without government pushing things like gas guzzler taxes and fuel economy mandates. Water is cleaner, too.

FWIW, China is installing huge quantities of solar panels and wind turbines. If US companies were looking out more for the country versus their investors, and government didn't make it easier to invest overseas versus here, we'd still manufacture more of our own goods. Society has gotten to buying things cheap and throwing them away versus buying quality and keeping it. China is filling in the gaps by supplying what we ask for. It's not that we couldn't make the stuff, we don't.

[jadnashua]

Rice university researchers have found a room temperature, inexpensive catalyst triggered by light that can break ammonia (NH3) into hydrogen and nitrogen. Liquid ammonia is easy to transport, and energy dense. 78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, and it's not a greenhouse gas. This would be fairly easy to make green hydrogen locally as shipping hydrogen is fairly energy intensive as it needs to be compressed first to be efficient.

A company in Texas has recently demonstrated a way to extract hydrogen from exhausted oil wells, of which there are thousands around the world. They've worked out a mix of bacteria that they inject into the well bore, and it digests any of the remaining fossil fuels into hydrogen and CO2...they have to work out how to trap the CO2, otherwise, it's no better than burning that fuel. THere are also natural deposits of hydrogen underground. Most of it is produced by natural radiation breaking down certain igneous rocks into hydrogen in the process. Tapping that is being researched.

There's a novel energy storage system installed in one Scandinavian city that is being looked at for use elsewhere. What's somewhat common in parts of Europe is central community heating that produces hot water or steam and distributes it to homes and businesses in the area. They're using an insulated silo filled with dry sand where they have resistance heating elements and a liquid heat exchanger embedded in the sand. They're using excess green energy to heat the sand. That energy could come from solar panels, wind, geothermal, or hydroelectric for those times when that capacity exceeds what the grid needs instantly. IT has worked well for the last few years, and others are in the works. That stored heat could be used for many things other than just space heating...anywhere heat is required in manufacturing processes. Store it during off-peak hours where the energy is cheaper for those times when it's not.

In the seas north of Scotland, they have a prototype ocean current generator operating that has been working well. It appears that it can successfully be scaled up larger, and is possible to use with slower currents whereas this one is between some islands that channel the water, acting like a nozzle, speeding it up. The Gulfstream is slower, but it's possible to use a simlar technique to do the same thing.

A company called Heliogen has a facility running in the Mohave desert that uses heliostats to concentrate heat energy into a storage tower that is fed from the up to 1000C temperatures created by the mirrors. They can store enough energy to keep producing useable heat for over a week, so 24/7. THey make enough heat to produce concrete (a typically big creator of CO2), and melt steel or aluminum, or produce electricity. Operating today. Scalable, and usable in many areas that aren't regularly cloudy. Solar energy produces about 10,000x more energy than the world is currently creating to generate electricity today.

Research continues to improve the solar panel conversion efficiencies.

Recent research on ocean levels and increased strength of storms indicates many shorelines are likely to experience significant coastal erosion.

The infrastructure bill passed earlier this year funds various research into how to produce more green energy all in the hope that it can limit the output of greenhouse gases.

There's a lot of research going on, and some promising results are being developed, but it will take an open mind and a rethinking of priorities to make them work out.

[Mathman]

CX, how do you feel about government oil subsidies? Oil was subsidized the same way in the beginning and is still highly subsidized.

How much is oil subsidized in the US?
The Environmental and Energy Study Institute found that the US government alone spends $20 billion every year on direct fossil fuel subsidies. Of that figure, around $16 billion goes towards oil and gas, while the remaining $4 billion benefits the coal industry.

[cx]

Kirk, I'm not in favor of the federal government forcing you at gunpoint to finance anything that benefits me or anyone else, including you, with the possible exception of the temporary direct defense of the nation from foreign attack and then only as prescribed by the Constitution.

The fossil fuel industries currently do not need forced public subsidies to survive. The "alternate" fuels industries will not need such subsidies when their time has come, either.

[jadnashua]

Political players push money towards people they think can help them get re-elected. Most people in Congress, if they weren't already millionaires, are when they leave office, so staying in power is to their advantage.

If you go way back, serving in Congress was considered something like a responsibility...like getting drafted into the military...something that was a passage of youth and expected...Once done, you went back home to your 'real' life. Something to consider about term limits which we implemented for the presidency. Too much of a 'good?' thing doesn't often end well.

This is a far cry from weather, though! It's one reason why we have no agreement about anything that might impact local oil, gas, coal industry. Given a choice, though, I'd rather be installing and servicing solar, wind systems rather than mucking around with drilling oil or underground in a mine. Geothermal is potentially viable in many parts of the world, so drilling tech can have other uses.

[cx]

And if we get any more political here, Jim, TPTB will hafta close the weather thread, eh?

[jadnashua]

Here's some food for thought.

Survey photos from the 1950's of Arctic Alaska found no beaver ponds and woody shrubs and trees were mostly nonexistent. A recent satellite review identified 11,377 beaver ponds. These speed up any otherwise environmental climate changes because the deeper water does not freeze which melts more permafrost, which releases more carbon dioxide as the stored organic materials start to be decomposed by microbial actions. That warmer 'island' then enables different animal populations potentially driving out current ones.

[cx]

Originally Posted by Jim

That warmer 'island' then enables different animal populations potentially driving out current ones.

Yep, things change. Maybe the new animals will be better than the old ones? Won't likely bring back the Mastodons, though. Well, maybe not.

And all that melting may mean there is actually a Northwest Passage, that many peoples have wanted for hundreds of years.

[jadnashua]

No NW passage likely as at the time, the sea levels were much lower because a bunch of the water was locked up in ice...

It's been millions of years since the CO2 levels were as high as they are now, and the rate of change, at least from what we can tell from research today is in the scale of decades versus millennia - i.e., little time for creatures to adapt so some radical changes.

To go from no beavers there to at least thousands in about 50-years and no beaver ponds to over 11K at least to me implies a pretty radical change.