human actions, global climate change, global human solutions
POSTED BY: 1kiki
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 19:38
VIEWED: 60750
PAGE 14 of 111
Normally when a thread devolves to endless trolling between you and Jack I don't scroll up much. But I'm glad I made an exception and found an on-topic reply from you!
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
If you really wanted to keep fuel distribution infrastructure unchanged AND everything the same mechanically for autos, without even going electric or ethanol or hydrogen, but still go green, there is a way: The Methanol-to-Gasoline Process.
FWIW I think IC engines are far too inefficient. So I wouldn't necessarily want to keep everything the same.
The whole thing about ethanol being inefficient was supposedly proved once-and-for-all by calculations done at - iirc - Cornell. At the time the paper came out I actually wrote to them because I was curious about their assumptions behind their calculations. (To get it out of the way, I never got an answer.)
But first of all, they based their calculation on corn. They didn't seem to consider any other kind of plant material. And they based their 'efficiency' calculations on unstated inputs to corn cultivation.
My question to them was about the corn cultivation specifically.
Corn grown for human food has extremely high inputs. It has to be a popular edible kind, it has to be perfect (no blemishes), and if dried, it has to be dried well-enough to not have mold growing on it (Aspergillus flavus - the source of liver-cancer-causing aflatoxin).
Even corn grown for animal feed has a low part per BILLION USDA limit for aflatoxin (20ppb).
To get that high yield of high-quality food/ feed corn many growers resort to planting expensive GMO corn with Bt DNA (Bacillus thuringiensis) genes (to kill off caterpillars and worms that dare munch on the corn plants), and with additional GMO genes for resistance to as many as 5 herbicides. And of course it has to be cultivated, fertilized, 'herbicided', and often irrigated. And after harvesting, unless it's sold fresh as table corn, it needs to be dried enough to not support mold. Just the drying alone requires a huge amount of energy.
That's a lot of energy inputs for traditionally grown corn! My question to the researchers was, did they assume those inputs? Or did they assume that growers might plant generic corn on marginal lands with few, if any, cultivation input$$$? To me, the assumptions behind their calculations could make all the difference in their conclusion.
But as I said, I never did get an answer.
Anyway, the other problem I have is with IC engines. They're terribly inefficient. And even if you're burning biomethanol-sourced fuel you're still putting out fuel vapors and 'products of combustion' - CO, NOx, SOx, aldehydes, ketones, PM10/2.5/0.1 etc.
The self-heating catalyst I read about is over 100% efficient at converting ('reforming') dirty, wet ethanol into hydrogen (because it converts some of the water as well). And of course once you have electricity from your hydrogen fuel-cell, direct electric drive eliminates the need for a transmission (and it has maximum torque at zero rpm), along with regenerative braking that helps reduce energy loss during stopping.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure remains completely intact. And during the transition, it would only need to be partially converted for ethanol, to serve both traditional hydrocarbon fuels and ethanol.
Ethanol/ electric transportation really is "faster, better, cheaper".
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Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum each September. September Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 13% per decade, relative to the 1981 to 2010 average. This graph shows the annual Arctic sea ice minimum each September since 1979, derived from satellite observations.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Hyundai shuts down its engine development team amid focus on electric cars
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Anyway, the other problem I have is with IC engines. They're terribly inefficient.
Hyundai reportedly had 12,000 people working on engines, but they are now being transferred to EV powertrain development: "Researchers at the engine design unit have moved to the electrification design center, leaving only some to modify existing engines. The powertrain system development center is transforming into an electrification test center, while the powertrain performance development center is becoming an electrification performance development center."
https://electrek.co/2021/12/28/hyundai-shuts-down-engine-development-t
eam-focus-electric-cars/
In 2021 Hyundai will sell about 675,375 units, representing 5.27% of the USA market.
https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/hyundai-us-sales-figures/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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New data suggests a massive collapse of Antarctic’s Thwaites Glacier in as little as five years
One thing that’s hard to grasp about the climate crisis is that big changes can happen fast. In 2019, I was aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a 308-foot-long scientific research vessel, cruising in front of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. One day, we were sailing in clear seas in front of the glacier. The next day, we were surrounded by icebergs the size of aircraft carriers.
As we later learned from satellite images, in a matter of 48 hours or so, a mélange of ice about 21 miles wide and 15 miles deep had cracked up and scattered into the sea.
It was a spooky moment. Thwaites Glacier is the size of Florida. It is the cork in the bottle of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 10 feet. The mélange that disintegrated was not part of the glacier itself, but a mix of icebergs and sea ice that had cozied up next to it. Still, the idea that it could just fall apart overnight was mind-blowing.
As it turns out, the ice breakup I witnessed was not a freak event. A few weeks ago, scientists participating in the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a $25 million five-year-long joint research program between the National Science Foundation in the U.S. and the Natural Environment Research Council in the U.K., presented their latest research. They described the discovery of cracks and fissures in the Thwaites eastern ice shelf, predicting that the ice shelf could fracture like a shattered car window in as little as five years. “It won’t scatter out into sea as quickly as what you saw when you were down there,” Erin Pettit, a glaciologist at Oregon State University and one of the lead principal investigators in the ITGC, later told me. “But the basic process is the same. The ice shelf is breaking up and could be gone in less than a decade.”
Given the ongoing war for American democracy and the deadly toll of the Covid pandemic, the loss of an ice shelf on a far-away continent populated by penguins might not seem to be big news. But in fact, the West Antarctic ice sheet is one of the most important tipping points in the Earth’s climate system. If Thwaites Glacier collapses, it opens the door for the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet to slide into the sea. Globally, 250 million people live within three feet of high tide lines. Ten feet of sea level rise would be a world-bending catastrophe. It’s not only goodbye Miami, but goodbye to virtually every low-lying coastal city in the world.
More at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/doomsday-glaci
er-thwaites-antarctica-climate-crisis-1273841/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The case for a more radical climate movement
Author Andreas Malm on the failures of climate activism and the need for escalation.
Has the climate movement failed?
It’s hard to look at the world at this moment and not conclude that the answer is yes. Despite all the activism, despite all the protests, despite all the warnings, the world is still in many ways hostage to the fossil fuel industry.
A new book by Andreas Malm, a professor of human ecology at Sweden’s Lund University, asks a simple but perplexing question: Given the stakes, why hasn’t the global climate movement become far more radical than it is?
It’s a fair question. If we as a species were serious, if we really believed what we already know about climate change, we would be doing everything humanly possible to shift course. And yet we’re not. Even the most ambitious policy proposals on the table, with little chance of passing, are scarcely sufficient. This is the starting point of Malm’s book, and if you follow his logic it leads to some conclusions you may find uncomfortable.
He says it bluntly: We should “damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed.” For Malm, we have a choice: Destroy the property that’s destroying the planet, or sacrifice the Earth on the altar of that property.
Malm’s book — it’s titled How to Blow Up a Pipeline — is obviously meant to provoke. But embedded in the provocation is a morally serious challenge to how we think about, and act on, the crisis humanity faces. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it. For instance, I think his summons to violence vastly overstates our ability to “control” such violence once it’s unleashed. I’m also less confident in the strategic utility of violence (even if it’s limited to the destruction of property, as Malm recommends) considering the enormous blowback that might result from it.
I reached out to him for this week’s episode of Vox Conversations to talk about how we got here, why he says it’s time to escalate, and the problems — both obvious and subtle — with such a radical approach.
More at https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/22691428/vox-conversatio
ns-climate-change-andreas-malm
Download the free book by Andreas Malm, How To Blow Up A Pipeline -- Learning to Fight in a World on Fire from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.tv/search.php?req=Andreas+Malm+Pipeline
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
https://getcomics.info/other-comics/firefly-35-2021/
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Greetings from COP26
Before arriving in Glasgow, the phrase I heard most in connection with the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) wasn’t “just transition” or “sustainability” or “resilience.” It wasn’t “carbon capture and storage” or “green hydrogen” or “renewable energy.” It was “shitshow.”
I heard this from friends, activists, university colleagues. Everyone agreed that COP26 would be some kind of performance, the needle on the end of delusion. Greta Thunberg put it best in a speech she delivered one month before the conference at the Youth4Climate summit in Milan: “Green economy blah blah blah, net zero by 2050 blah blah blah . . . climate neutral blah blah blah . . . Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises.” Only nonsense named the truth of what would take place. Of what wouldn’t take place.
The heads of state themselves seemed primed for failure. On October 25, a week before COP26 began, British prime minister Boris Johnson addressed twenty-five of the planet’s future leaders at the Children’s Climate Press Conference in Downing Street. Hunched over a desk, his tie twisted, he lowered his eyes and mumbled discouraging words. “I’m very worried,” he said, “because it might go wrong, and we might not get the agreements that we need.”
A few days later, President Biden announced a much anticipated “framework” for the Build Back Better Act. A bargaining chip of sorts, robust regulations at home would restore confidence in the United States as a climate leader abroad. Unfortunately, its promised clean energy standard was now missing the key mechanism to transition the entire electricity sector (the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after transportation) to renewable energy by 2035. Gone, too, were penalties for polluting industries and a border tax on imports from polluting nations. Without these, the goal of halving 2005-level emissions by 2030 was unlikely. Gutted, the bill would bleed out little more than $300 billion in tax incentives for new-fangled technology.
Even the president of COP26, Alok Sharma, admitted that the “overarching ambition” of the conference wasn’t to prevent more than 1.5ºC of warming, which the 2015 Paris Agreement warned against, but simply to sustain belief that achieving the target was possible. Forget a more rigorous plan or more just policies: just don’t renege on a (nonbinding) promise you made six years ago. Banners proclaiming “Keep 1.5ºC Alive” were hung around the city. Inside the conference, a mural showed a young brown girl with gold earrings, wearing a black shirt that read “1.5 TO STAY ALIVE.” She stood in water up to her neck. Behind her, a mountain blazed.
More at https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-shitshow-in-glasgow-dean-wilson
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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All the Beijing Winter Olympics snow is human-made. In an Olympic first, though not an achievement to boast about, climate variability has forced the Winter Games to be virtually 100% reliant on artificial snow. The venues are surrounded by an endless brown, dry landscape completely devoid of snow -- part of a trend that is taking place across winter sports venues around the world.
Just one of the 21 cities that have hosted the Winter Olympics in the past 50 years will have a climate suitable for winter sports by the end of the century, a recent study found, if fossil fuel emissions remain unchecked.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/weather/artificial-snow-beijing-olympic
s-climate/index.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Western U.S. and Northern Mexico are experiencing their driest period in at least 1,200 years, according to the new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The last comparable – though not as severe – multi-decade megadrought occurred in the 1500s.
Williams looked at tree-ring data from thousands of sites to conduct the research. They sampled data collected from live trees, dead trees and wood beams preserved at Native American archeological sites. The tree rings gave Williams an insight into drought events dating back to the year 800 AD.
Williams said roughly one-fifth of the current megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions are warming the world, speeding evaporation, and disrupting weather patterns.
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/14/1080302434/study-finds-western-megadrou
ght-is-the-worst-in-1-200-years
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Options for storing wind and solar energy go beyond batteries
Most people only think of batteries when imagining how to store renewable energy. But there are many more ways to hold onto wind and solar power during those times when the wind blows too fast, and the sun shines too bright.
Green hydrogen from Mitsubishi’s Utah facility is already profitable in the electricity markets in the Western Interconnection grid. Green hydrogen could also make money in Europe, where natural gas prices are currently 10 times higher than in the United States.
Mitsubishi Power is developing an Advanced Clean Energy Storage system in Delta, Utah for making green hydrogen. The company plans to use surplus wind and solar power to make green hydrogen, then store it for times when wind and solar run short. Modified natural gas turbines can blend in hydrogen with minimal emissions.
Gas turbine driven electric generators burn natural gas with up to 30 percent green hydrogen without trouble, but Mitsubishi hopes to deliver 100 percent hydrogen pollution-free turbines by 2030. For now, standard gas turbines release highly-polluting nitrous oxides when burning more than 30 percent green hydrogen because the flame is too hot. https://insideepa.com/share/227828
Bloom Energy, a California fuel cell manufacturer, has spent the last decade selling modules that turn natural gas and biogas into electricity. But the same cells operated in reverse become electrolyzers, converting electricity and water into hydrogen and oxygen. https://www.bloomenergy.com/
“Our costs have come down almost every year, on a curve of 12 percent per year,” said Sharelynn Moore, executive vice president of strategy and business development. “We can take excess wind here in Texas, excess solar, and with our electrolyzer, we can produce hydrogen.”
Instead of relying on natural gas from frozen wellheads during the next Arctic blast, Texas could instead rely on free-flowing green hydrogen stored in salt caverns.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20220313173523/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/article/Options-for-storing-wind-and-solar-energy-go-16992090.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Comparing the Operating Costs of Electric Vehicles and Gas-Powered Vehicles
Gasoline prices are inherently volatile—and they always will be
Overall, as of March 2022, driving an EV is dramatically cheaper per mile than driving a gas-powered vehicle. Nationally, EVs are 3-5 times cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered vehicles. In Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, some EVs are 5–6 times cheaper to drive.
The sticker price for EVs are nearing parity with gas-powered vehicles
The lifetime cost of ownership for EVs is thousands of dollars cheaper than gas-powered vehicles, saving EV owners anywhere between $6,000 and $10,000 over the lifespan of the car, according to Consumer Reports.
EVs will become even more affordable if Congress passes clean energy tax incentives—the proposed base EV tax credit in President Biden’s clean energy plan would reduce EV sticker prices by up to $7,500. Congress should pass these clean energy provisions to deliver even greater cost savings for EVs compared to gas-powered vehicles.
https://www.zeta2030.org/news/electric-vehicles-are-delivering-marked-
cost-savings-for-drivers-and-surging-gasoline-prices-are-making-the-cost-savings-increasingly-apparent
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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