What you mentioned here is for sure true, but mainly the pertinent data revolves around burning the stuff. All the petrochemicals aren't doing this, its the ghg, mostly from combustion.
Sorry to quote in this way, it isn't meant to editorialize, only to organize my response:
> [...]the problem with this idea is that it is easy to pick a few things here and there that can be done without petroleum. [...] The world would come to a grinding halt if we stopped using petroleum.
Its super useful and there's no reason to quit using it entirely. We don't even have to, there are many other means of doing what we need to do without it releasing ancient carbon stores into the atmosphere.
Everything bound up in the petro supply chain is clearly beyond the scope of my comment here and education in general, but the only way to approach reasoning about this issue is with single examples. Its too easy for somebody to gish gallop about the huge scale of industry involved, and quickly lose the fact that CO2 has to be the target. NMOG and Methane and nitrogen oxides as well, but mainly CO2.
Nobody will clear the table with a single "we can just X" or "we can't because we'll lose X". Its definitely much more involved, just as you say. One thing I strongly agree with you about is that nuclear energy is likely a critical help to this endeavor.
The largest global sources are, unsurprisingly, electricity/energy, transportation, and manufacturing, but also consider the global hegemony that for the most part turns on controlling and using this strategic resource, ever since WWI. That is all about burning it in large part.
Maybe we need a "Breton Woods" for carbon, as triggering and possibly unpopular as that may be. I'm certainly not betting on that turn of events, but we may just end up resorting to a different type of nuclear power if we just keep the blinders on ...
> Its definitely much more involved, just as you say.
That's all I am trying to convey. I am mostly sick and tired of the reduction of reality to a single variable or culprit and then pounding on that ad-nauseum as if that is actually how we are going to solve anything. This is how one gets to stupid ideas like seeding the ocean with chemicals to promote CO2 capture. What? I don't care what anyone says, that's far more likely to kill all life on earth than save it.
Our history is full of unintended consequences of sure "solutions", like that island in Australia, where they introduced one species to get rid of another. The end result is that they swapped one plague for another that might actually be worse. We can't even do something like that successfully --because reality isn't a single variable problem-- and we actually dare to suggest we can modify climate at a planetary scale? The hubris in this kind of thinking is thick and dangerous.
The single variable reduction is how we get idiot politicians like AOC pushing absolute nonsense day after day. Because it is simple they are successful at linking <variable> to "bad" and, after that, position their hairbrained idea as the savior. This kind of thing should inspire projectile vomiting, not a following.
> One thing I strongly agree with you about is that nuclear energy is likely a critical help to this endeavor.
Nuclear has been the elephant in the room for decades. OK, I get it, plants build in the 1960's might not have been optimal. We can say that about cars, planes and even ballpoint pens. That's the history of humanity. Well, I think we can build them to be very safe these days. Don't build them where a tsunami can hit them, etc. To paraphrase, there's a list for that (or there should be).
What's interesting about nuclear is that you can simply (OK, not so simple) connect them to the grid and your energy and power delivery capacity instantly increased, 24/7/365. Build a 1 GW class plant and you have 1 GW, rain or shine.
Nuclear, from my perspective, is the ONLY way we can support the conversion of the entire ground transportation fleet to electric power.
Here are the results of a simple model I threw together trying to answer a simple question:
How much power do we need to support the entire US fleet of cars going electric?
The simplest assumption is one where 100% of the fleet uses 8 hour long charge cycles:
daily charge energy 50,000 Wh
cars 300,000,000 cars
long charge 8 hours
fast charge 0.5 hours
Portion charging long 100%
Portion charging fast 0%
% of long-chargers charging simultaneously 100%
% of short-chargers charging simultaneously 0%
Total daily energy requirement 15,000 GWh
Cars long-charging simultaneously 100,000,000 cars
Cars short-charging simultaneously 0 cars
Power for simultaneous long charging 1,875 GW
Power for simultaneous short charging 0 GW
Total power requirement 1,875 GW
This isn't realistic, you are not going to have 300 million cars charging simultaneously during the same eight hours. Or, are we?
If every hour we have, say, 1/8 of the entire fleet plug in for eight hours to charge, what's the maximum number of vehicles that will be charging simultaneously at any point in the day? The assumption is that car will charge for eight hours and be off charge for 16.
Well, eight hours into the day we will, in fact, have 300 million cars charging simultaneously. After a full 24 hours from the start of this approach, the minimum number of cars charging simultaneously will be 187.5 million and the maximum 300 million.
So, yes, at peak utilization we will will have 300 million cars, requiring that we deliver 50 kWh in 8 hours, which means a peak requirement of 1,875 GW.
This means we need nearly two thousand giga-watt class nuclear power plants to support a fleet where 100% of the vehicles will slow charge.
What happens when some percentage of the fleet needs to fast charge? I am defining fast charging as delivering 50 kWh in 30 minutes:
daily charge energy 50,000 Wh
cars 300,000,000 cars
long charge 8 hours
fast charge 0.5 hours
Portion charging long 80%
Portion charging fast 20%
% of long-chargers charging simultaneously 100%
% of short-chargers charging simultaneously 20%
Total daily energy requirement 15,000 GWh
Cars long-charging simultaneously 240,000,000 cars
Cars short-charging simultaneously 12,000,000 cars
Power for simultaneous long charging 1,500 GW
Power for simultaneous short charging 1,200 GW
Total power requirement 2,700 GW
Now we need 2,700 giga-watt class nuclear power plants in order to be able to deliver the power needed to support the bulk of the fleet slow-charging and the remainder fast-charging spread across the day.
TWO THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED nuclear power plants.
Even if I am off by a factor of ten (I threw this together and it is very simplistic), that means nearly 300 nuclear power plants to be built in, say, 30 years. We have to build ten per year and we had to get started yesterday.
This is the kind of thing I look at when I talk about not reducing reality to single variables. The amount of energy we delivery by using petroleum is of a scale that is hard to imagine. To go electric we have to find alternative means to deliver some percentage of that energy (because electric cars are more energy-efficient than IC vehicles) to every car on the road every day. This task is far from being simple. Beyond that, the unmitigated mess that US politics has become over the last few decades virtually guarantees we cannot build a single nuclear power plant, much less ten, fifty or a hundred.
Frankly, I have no clue how this could even be possible. I think we are going to have some number of people driving electrics and, in the hubris of it all, we are going to ignore the fact that we are going have to burn twice or three times more coal to charge those cars every day. It has all the potential to be a larger mess than what we currently have.
I would love for someone to take the time to develop and publish a better model than my mindlessly-simple quick calculation. I know a lot of subtlety could be introduced. That said, I somehow don't think we can escape physics.
You may very well be correct, we haven't moved nearly at all on this problem in 50 years, and we are really far behind.
On the plus side, moving combustion from vehicles to centralized sources does a lot for much better efficiency. There is a lot of variation in the efficiency of vehicles that is nearly impossible to control for. Centralized sources can be much more easily managed than aging ICE all over the place.
That definitely doesn't address your main point that we are unprepared to convert.
Thanks for the work you've done preparing your analysis, I've read it entirely. I can sense your frustration with the general ignorance of more or less everybody wrt what we actually need to do. It's something I also feel. When examining the problem the conclusion I have immediately is that the entire industrialized world and probably the rest of the world, basically all of human society, is very tangled in the business of burning petroleum.
You've mentioned a lot of things that ring very true to me, such as the scale of the problem, the political boondoggle (I don't know of another way to say clusterfuck, but that doesn't really capture either) and the nearly complete lack of functional solutions as well as a tendency for incumbent forces to prevent implementing what solutions we do have available.
There are also a lot of vested interests who frankly make a lot of money doing what we do now. The US has also benefited greatly from the status quo of fossil fuel in a geopolitical sense, It's pretty much been the center of global foreign policy since WWI. "Developing" nations such as China (they are definitely developED) are using it too, they're on the same page of the usage story, I don't see anything at all different there.
The only thing that is really gonna do the heavy lifting are economic needs, because as much as I hate to admit it, it's the only language that is useful or understandable at all anymore.
Our conversation is really about nuclear power it seems. I recognize that, but I don't have any solutions to that impasse that we are experiencing. The one thing that I see helping that cause is, weirdly enough, alternative energy like solar, geothermal and hydro electric. Don't lose it on me yet please, I'm not trying to change the subject.
If we do end up taking seriously the prospect of implementing as much non-nuclear, non-fossil electrical generation as we can, it will have a positive economic effect on the usage of electrical power vs fossil power. This doesn't melt the enormous capacity iceberg that you have very well pointed out, but providing additional economies of scale for this kind of electric power will allow economic forces to begin to favor it vs fossil fuel.
If electrical storage becomes more necessary, we might be in a position to create a demand for additional electric resources including nuclear power. Additional development of alternative sources will drive more innovation, dollars, research and political interest into the usage and creation of this kind of energy.
When everybody wants to have solar panels which are looking more and more economically desirable, they may also invest in storage technologies that allow them to use it more effectively. This kind of thing can augment baseline electrical demand in a variety of dimensions: Politically, it will be much more desirable to create electrical sources, economically it will be easier to achieve because of greater scaling, and the technology will improve as investment increases with the demand. I suspect nuclear energy will be a better sell in a world where there is more understanding of electrical needs.
I don't know how to give nuclear energy a better PR campaign... people just don't understand why its desirable, but its easy to imagine how it could be undesirable. By the same token, people just live their lives with whatever is there, and that's gasoline and whatever makes electricity for them now or whatever they feel culturally comfortable with. As well, there is a clear fact that oil producing corporations have a lot of power, politically and economically, with which to do their own PR, but nuclear energy does not have giant multinationals pushing for its development and use.
It doesn't look good, that's for sure.
I appreciate the effort you have expended making your point, it has benefited my thought process.
This is a very difficult problem to tackle, this idea of a transition to a cleaner and more sustainable way for humanity to live. Like it or not, we had in the order of one to many centuries of optimizing the use of oil to either directly provide or support just-about everything we do and need. It is going to be very difficult to unplug from that.
What we need more than anything else are honest conversations about all of this. Sadly the mixing of political forces (which only exist for the benefit of the political class) and industrial/business/financial forces (which, of course, exist in support of their goals) makes this nearly impossible to address, at least on the time scale of one or a couple of human generations. I think this is a multi-generation problem, meaning, somewhere in the one to two century range.
BTW, I designed and built a 13 kW ground-mounted solar array three years ago. By this I mean, I purchased all the components and physically built the structure and wired it all. I have about three years of minute-by-minute data on solar production. No batteries yet, they just don't make sense in terms of ROI, at all. Eventually, maybe.
I'll just say the solar experience has been "interesting". Homes around mine don't have nearly this size system and they likely spent two to three times the money to install them. I have spoken to a few neighbors who are actually sorry they put money into solar because the size of their systems were calculated based on rates at that time. As rates have gone up they find themselves paying to lease their solar system as well as paying a bundle for electricity.
Going back to honesty in discussing some of the issues of our time. Climate change and the issues regarding atmospheric CO2 concentration often lead to the idea that we have to act immediately to "save the planet" or we are all going to die in twenty years (or whatever nonsense politicians are pushing). This is objectively false and it is amazing to me that the scientific community does not riot against such dishonesty.
Furthermore, understanding the idea that we just can't do anything about atmospheric CO2 accumulation can be verified while armed with very basic high school math and critical thinking.
The first thing you do is look at the graphs we have from reliable and accurate atmospheric CO2 concentration data from the past 800,000 years. Here's that graph:
You then fit straight lines to the graph in order to determine the rate of change of both atmospheric CO2 accumulation and decline. Here are my lines for the decline portion of the data:
Looking at it in rough strokes, it looks like it took, on average, somewhere around 25,000 years for a 100 ppm increase and, say, 50,000 years for a corresponding 100 ppm decrease. In some cases it took twice that time, I am just trying to generalize.
The planet did this entirely on its own...because we were not around or we were insignificant during this time period.
This is extremely valuable data and an equally valuable conclusion because it establishes an important baseline:
If humanity LEFT THE PLANET tomorrow, it would take about 50,000 years for a reduction of about 100 ppm in atmospheric CO2.
I'll repeat that: If we left the planet and all of our technology was shut down, you are looking at a minimum of 50,000 years for a meaningful "save the planet" change in CO2 concentration.
At this point the question becomes glaringly obvious:
How does anything LESS than leaving the planet even make a dent on CO2 at a human time scale?
This is important. 50K-years for 100 ppm is not a human time scale. We could very well be extinct by that time due to a virus or collective stupidity. I am going to define "human time scale" to mean a century or less. In other words, something we can wrap our brains around. That also means making plans and taking action today for something that will not deliver results for, say, 50 to 100 years. Imagine the world making decisions in the 1920's for us to benefit from today. That's pretty much ridiculous on the face of it.
And yet, that isn't the problem, is it?
Because of the baseline revealed by this data we know, without any doubt, that anything less than leaving the planet cannot possibly delivery a faster rate of change, a faster decline than 100 ppm in 50,000 years.
Solar panels all over the planet? How is that MORE than leaving the planet?
A billion electric vehicles? Same question.
No more fossil fuels? Nope.
In fact, Google Research boldly set out to show the world that a full migration to renewable energy sources could address the issue. To their credit, when they discovered just how wrong they were, they published the data. In this charged environment these researchers deserve a ton of respect. They went in --and say so themselves-- with a position of believing that renewables could save the planet. What they discovered instead was precisely what I understood through the simple exercise on this graph, that this is an impossibility. Their methodology was different from mine, the result was the same.
"we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope"
"Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work"
"if all power plants and industrial facilities switch over to zero-carbon energy sources right now, we’ll still be left with a ruinous amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It would take centuries for atmospheric levels to return to normal"
"<snip> to see whether a 55 percent emission cut by 2050 would bring the world back below that 350-ppm threshold. Our calculations revealed otherwise. Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use."
"Suppose for a moment that <snip> we had found cheap renewable energy technologies that
could gradually replace all the world’s coal plants <snip> Even if that dream had come to pass, it still wouldn’t have solved climate change. This realization was frankly shocking"
Well worth reading. Like I said, these guys deserve a ton of respect for effectively saying "we were wrong, and here's why".
Why aren't we talking about this AT ALL. This is reality. Not what we are being told by politicians and zealots. Climate change has become a religion or a cult and science has been left far behind. Here are two ways to come to the same general conclusion. One uses a super-simple look at 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 data. The other took a detailed look at mathematical climate and other models. The conclusion was the same: We can cover the planet with renewable energy sources and do NOTHING to atmospheric CO2, or worse.
I've been trying to elevate this to some level of consciousness here on HN any time the topic comes-up. It is often met with a pile of downvotes and attacks. Because, of course, they "know", even though none of the detractors bothered to devote even 1% of the time I have trying to understand actual reality in a sea of nonsense.
Frankly, I am not sure what else to do. In this charged political climate it is actually dangerous to stick your neck out too far. I think you understand now that this is not --I am not-- denying climate change, I am simply saying "the emperor has no clothes" to all the nonsense we seem to be told to focus on.
I think we need to learn to live with whatever is coming. We can't do a thing about it. New industries will sprout to help us manage it. The planet will deal (and is dealing) with CO2 as it has for millions of years.
And that's the other set of questions that the graphs and some research can answer:
How did CO2 increase when humanity was not around to muck it up?
Continental scale forest fires burning for 25,000 years as well as other sources of CO2.
How did the planet bring it down?
Rain, storms, cyclones, hurricanes, and the regrowth of vegetation over 50,000+ years.
So, we have to learn to deal with changing weather patterns and perhaps start helping the planet a tiny bit by planting trees. Judiciously though, because more trees could also mean more fuel to burn. In other words, we could, if not careful, actually increase CO2 if we plant a billion trees and create the conditions for the mother of all forest fires.
Like I keep saying, not a single variable problem. Is it?
Sorry to quote in this way, it isn't meant to editorialize, only to organize my response:
> [...]the problem with this idea is that it is easy to pick a few things here and there that can be done without petroleum. [...] The world would come to a grinding halt if we stopped using petroleum.
Its super useful and there's no reason to quit using it entirely. We don't even have to, there are many other means of doing what we need to do without it releasing ancient carbon stores into the atmosphere.
Everything bound up in the petro supply chain is clearly beyond the scope of my comment here and education in general, but the only way to approach reasoning about this issue is with single examples. Its too easy for somebody to gish gallop about the huge scale of industry involved, and quickly lose the fact that CO2 has to be the target. NMOG and Methane and nitrogen oxides as well, but mainly CO2.
Nobody will clear the table with a single "we can just X" or "we can't because we'll lose X". Its definitely much more involved, just as you say. One thing I strongly agree with you about is that nuclear energy is likely a critical help to this endeavor.
The largest global sources are, unsurprisingly, electricity/energy, transportation, and manufacturing, but also consider the global hegemony that for the most part turns on controlling and using this strategic resource, ever since WWI. That is all about burning it in large part.
Maybe we need a "Breton Woods" for carbon, as triggering and possibly unpopular as that may be. I'm certainly not betting on that turn of events, but we may just end up resorting to a different type of nuclear power if we just keep the blinders on ...