Idiotic Environmental Predictions

[Lord of Planar]

You've been using a DENIER BLOG to look for "sources" for years?
Well, I have to say that explains a lot!

LOL... No, you are delusional.

 

[Lord of Planar]

You never link WUWT.

You just crib graphs and concepts and arguments from it and pretend it came from ‘40 years of papers that I’ve read’.

We’re on to you dude.

Is there a method to your malice?

 

[Nickyjo]

I have a plan, but it is unlikely that the people who demonize energy use will care for it.
The first step is to acknowledge that Humanity first and foremost has an energy problem, not a CO2 problem.
CO2 may well be a symptom, but limiting CO2 is not the solution.
Our problem is that we do not have enough naturally stored hydrocarbons in the ground, to allow
the people who are currently alive to live a first world life style for very long.
The path of humanity is unsustainable! This is a much greater problem, than if added CO2 can causes some warming.
The solution to the problem is energy storage, how does nature store energy, mostly as hydrocarbons.
Man made, carbon neutral, fuels, can allow humanity a sustainable path foreword, until we find a better solution.
Why are we not doing it already, economic viability! The man made fuels will become cost competitive,
when oil is between $85 and $95 a barrel.
Why would this be better than electric cars? It would address every aspect of transportation, (roughly 30% of global emissions)
with a solution that is already compatible with existing demand and infrastructure!
It also would dovetail in nicely with the surplus solar and wind duck curve.
This will happen without any regulation, and everyone will use the new fuel, because, it will be the lowest price one at the pump.
This would eliminate new CO2 emissions from all transport, globally, because the fuel is made from atmospheric CO2,
so the CO2 released when the fuel is burned, is net zero.
More important is that it would allow low density, poor duty cycle energy sources like wind and solar to
be stored seasonally, to be used when needed, not just when generated.
It would also separate global energy from the countries that have supplies of oil.

Don't understand. What are the man-made carbon neutral fuels that we are not using enough of?

 

[istodolez]

Don't understand. What are the man-made carbon neutral fuels that we are not using enough of?

Long's favorite thing is "carbon neutral" carbon-based fuels. There's some small testbeds running programs to make organics out of CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere.

It's intriguing but I am waiting to see if it can scale to be as big a topic as he is suggesting.

 

[Threegoofs]

Is there a method to your malice?

Yes, and that method doesnt usually consist of telling other people they are fools for reading blogs, and then using a blog to come up with a sketchy graph unsupported by data and being too embarrassed to reference the blog.

Moreover, when questioned, I dont deflect and talk about how I’ve been reading climate literature for forty years and saw it somewhere there, but happened to crib it off some website that is demonstrably fake science.

But thats just me.

 

[longview]

Don't understand. What are the man-made carbon neutral fuels that we are not using enough of?

About 11 years ago, researchers started looking at ways to store solar energy, in Germany.
At roughly the same time Audi, bought an old refinery to experiment with making fuel from
Carbon from the air, Hydrogen from water, and electricity.
The Audi venture spun off to form Sunfire energy,
Sunfire e-fuel
The Naval Research Labs also started looking into making jet fuel from ocean based CO2, water and electricity at sea,
to enable carrier groups to make all their own fuel.
The economics is fairly well understood, The Navy says the conversion efficiency is 60%,
While Sunfire says when scaled up, they expect an 80% efficiency.
I will use the 60% as an example.
A gallon of gasoline contains 33Kwh of energy, so to make that at a 60% efficiency, it takes 55 Kwh of electricity.
If the plant making the fuel, can buy wholesale electricity for $.05 a Kwh, it would take $2.75 to make a gallon of gasoline.
A barrel of oil can produce 35 gallons of usable fuel, so $2.75 X 35 = $96.25,
That is roughly the point where the refinery would find it less expensive to make their own feedstock, as opposed to buying oil.
While I used the 60% number, Sunfire is claiming a higher percentage of efficiency, so the price will like be lower.
Sunfire is building the first demo plant to make fuel now in Norway,
Power to Liquid plant
The process of storing electricity as fuel is generically called Power to liquid.
The first fuel from the Norway plant will be blended at 10% with normal jet fuel, to meet the airlines
emission standards in Europe.

 

[RedAkston]

Moderator's Warning:

@Lord of Planar @istodolez knock it off

 

[longview]

Long's favorite thing is "carbon neutral" carbon-based fuels. There's some small testbeds running programs to make organics out of CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere.

It's intriguing but I am waiting to see if it can scale to be as big a topic as he is suggesting.

I keep trying to tell you, this is the path of least resistance, and I see all sorts of trend lines converging this way.

 

[istodolez]

I keep trying to tell you, this is the path of least resistance, and I see all sorts of trend lines converging this way.

If it cannot be economically scaled it isn't the path of least resistance. I don't doubt for one minute that it is technically possible and that someone is doing testbed level work with it.

I'm not sure why this is a problematic point but I'll repeat it: we've all seen promising technology that just couldn't be scaled. And I fear your hope is that this will perfectly supplant all fossil fuels which, I'm willing to bet, it won't even come close.

You are taking a fully oxidized form of carbon and reducing it then recombining it. It is going to be EXTREMELY costly to take all those steps barring some fancy catalysts etc.

I'm not saying this is a bad idea....quite the opposite. I just don't think this is going to be any more promising than the other more established systems we have that can be put in place a lot faster.

 

[longview]

If it cannot be economically scaled it isn't the path of least resistance. I don't doubt for one minute that it is technically possible and that someone is doing testbed level work with it.

I'm not sure why this is a problematic point but I'll repeat it: we've all seen promising technology that just couldn't be scaled. And I fear your hope is that this will perfectly supplant all fossil fuels which, I'm willing to bet, it won't even come close.

You are taking a fully oxidized form of carbon and reducing it then recombining it. It is going to be EXTREMELY costly to take all those steps barring some fancy catalysts etc.

I'm not saying this is a bad idea....quite the opposite. I just don't think this is going to be any more promising than the other more established systems we have that can be put in place a lot faster.

I do not think they would be spending $100m on a demo plant that they have not already worked out how to scale the process up.

 

[istodolez]

I do not think they would be spending $100m on a demo plant that they have not already worked out how to scale the process up.

You'd be surprised.

 

[Lord of Planar]

I do not think they would be spending $100m on a demo plant that they have not already worked out how to scale the process up.

I'm skeptical on the viability of such ventures. I do hope such things do occur, but the odds really are against it. Prototype, and the progress that is intended lead up to bigger and better designs often fail to be financially viable.

 

[longview]

You'd be surprised.

All I can say, is keep an eye on what companies are buying up wind and solar farms.
The oil companies know they will need lots of carbon free electricity to make fuels.

 

[Nickyjo]

About 11 years ago, researchers started looking at ways to store solar energy, in Germany.
At roughly the same time Audi, bought an old refinery to experiment with making fuel from
Carbon from the air, Hydrogen from water, and electricity.
The Audi venture spun off to form Sunfire energy,
Sunfire e-fuel
The Naval Research Labs also started looking into making jet fuel from ocean based CO2, water and electricity at sea,
to enable carrier groups to make all their own fuel.
The economics is fairly well understood, The Navy says the conversion efficiency is 60%,
While Sunfire says when scaled up, they expect an 80% efficiency.
I will use the 60% as an example.
A gallon of gasoline contains 33Kwh of energy, so to make that at a 60% efficiency, it takes 55 Kwh of electricity.
If the plant making the fuel, can buy wholesale electricity for $.05 a Kwh, it would take $2.75 to make a gallon of gasoline.
A barrel of oil can produce 35 gallons of usable fuel, so $2.75 X 35 = $96.25,
That is roughly the point where the refinery would find it less expensive to make their own feedstock, as opposed to buying oil.
While I used the 60% number, Sunfire is claiming a higher percentage of efficiency, so the price will like be lower.
Sunfire is building the first demo plant to make fuel now in Norway,
Power to Liquid plant
The process of storing electricity as fuel is generically called Power to liquid.
The first fuel from the Norway plant will be blended at 10% with normal jet fuel, to meet the airlines
emission standards in Europe.

Thanks. Is there a resistance to using these things or developing them further and why?

 

[longview]

Thanks. Is there a resistance to using these things or developing them further and why?

There seems to be, I suspect that the environmental movement has spent so much time demonizing the oil companies, it is difficult to backpedal and say they could be part of the solution.

 

[istodolez]

There seems to be, I suspect that the environmental movement has spent so much time demonizing the oil companies, it is difficult to backpedal and say they could be part of the solution.

OR, maybe, just hear me out on this: the petroleum companies have given environmentalists reasons to distrust them. I dunno.

 

[istodolez]

Thanks. Is there a resistance to using these things or developing them further and why?

There should be no resistance toward developing carbon-neutral fuels. But the idea that taking a fully oxidized form of carbon, reducing it and then re-building larger organics like alkanes etc just sort of screams "prohibitively expensive". Which puts it firmly in the same category as leveraging our current green energy technologies which CAN be utilized immediately.

I don't have a problem with this CO2-->fuels approach so long as it isn't given some special status as a magic bullet to fix the problem. The problem is now too large for a simple fix and the fixes we are forced to take will only get more and more draconian the longer this "debate" goes on.

 

[Nickyjo]

OR, maybe, just hear me out on this: the petroleum companies have given environmentalists reasons to distrust them. I dunno.

As far as I understand from looking at oil company websites, they have been coming around in possibly an attempt to make up for the past, and of course, know there is money to be made in alternatives.

 

[istodolez]

As far as I understand from looking at oil company websites, they have been coming around in possibly an attempt to make up for the past, and of course, know there is money to be made in alternatives.

That would be nice. And, indeed, they have a lot of money to put toward the solutions. But it's going to take a lot of trust building to get everyone to the table.

Petroleum companies have led the charge in attempting to undercut the solid science of AGW. But some seem to be working with it in mind now. Coal companies have sold people on the myth of "clean coal". It's a lot of rhetoric to get past and there's going to be friction between the fossil fuels industry and the environmentalist/climate change groups.

 

[Threegoofs]

There should be no resistance toward developing carbon-neutral fuels. But the idea that taking a fully oxidized form of carbon, reducing it and then re-building larger organics like alkanes etc just sort of screams "prohibitively expensive". Which puts it firmly in the same category as leveraging our current green energy technologies which CAN be utilized immediately.

I don't have a problem with this CO2-->fuels approach so long as it isn't given some special status as a magic bullet to fix the problem. The problem is now too large for a simple fix and the fixes we are forced to take will only get more and more draconian the longer this "debate" goes on.

The even bigger problem is that Longview’s idea isnt just taking fully oxidized carbon, but taking it from the atmosphere - or seawater - where the concentration of CO2 is very small, meaning you need to concentrate it out of a whole lotta air or water, which tends to be really expensive, since capturing a trace, super stable molecule isnt real easy to do to get it in kg quantities, much less gigaton quantities.

The amount of energy needed to make CO2 into a burnable fuel is high - thermodynamics isnt something you can sidestep, but when you add the energy needed to concentrate that CO2 (unless you capture it thru burning emissions- which brings a whole lot of other issues with filtering) its really going to be tough.

 

[longview]

OR, maybe, just hear me out on this: the petroleum companies have given environmentalists reasons to distrust them. I dunno.

That is a given but it is not just the environmentalist. Oil companies have generally not been nice people.

 

[CLAX1911]

There's gotta be an easier way to advance socialism.

Appealing to the eco religion is probably the easiest way.

Real conservationists don't buy into that nonsense.

 

[Glitch]

You just attack whenever you see an opening. Do you have any redeeming qualities?

OK, so please show me the NOAA data on ocean pH from the 80's and earlier.

What happened to it?

I'm not as conspiracy theorist, but missing data makes me wonder.

See:

NOAA Atlas NESDIS 72 - World Ocean Database 2013 - NOAA, September 2013

Page 55 of the above document contains a table that list the number of profile samples taken specifically of the ocean pH. The data collection begins (with very spotty data) in 1920. The number of sample profiles decline significantly during WW II, and then begin increasing again after WW II ends.

Even NOAA admits that its data quality with regard to ocean pH levels prior to 1989 is not very accurate.

Quality of pH Measurements in the NODC Data Archives

...

The uncertainty of these older pH measurements is rarely likely to be less than 0.03 in pH, and could easily be as large as 0.2 in pH. This data set is thus not at all well-suited to showing a change of 0.1 in pH over the last 100 years — the amount of pH change that would be expected to occur over the 100 years since the first seawater pH measurements, as a result of the documented increase in atmospheric CO2 levels and assuming that the surface ocean composition remains in approximate equilibrium with respect to the atmosphere.

{emphasis added}

 

[longview]

As far as I understand from looking at oil company websites, they have been coming around in possibly an attempt to make up for the past, and of course, know there is money to be made in alternatives.

I think the companies who already have the bugs worked out, are hoping for a carbon tax to boost their profits
and kill their less prepared competition.

 

[Lord of Planar]

See:

NOAA Atlas NESDIS 72 - World Ocean Database 2013 - NOAA, September 2013

Page 55 of the above document contains a table that list the number of profile samples taken specifically of the ocean pH. The data collection begins (with very spotty data) in 1920. The number of sample profiles decline significantly during WW II, and then begin increasing again after WW II ends.

Even NOAA admits that its data quality with regard to ocean pH levels prior to 1989 is not very accurate.

{emphasis added}

Good luck finding those tables. I was already there. Like I said, the data appears to have been scrubbed.