climate change / unpredictable weather/wind

[Havre]

The good old days when the climate was just like slide likes it - stable without any human influence on things.

[Herman]

About 50 years ago I tried to write an essay for a schoolboy science project, in which I proposed that, the world needed to move to a hydrogen based economy and the power for this would have to come from the development of fast breeder reactors, or the development of fusion reactors, or the development of super efficient use of solar energy. I remember, stating that real dynamic change would probably only happen through crisis and difficult decisions had to be made. Common sense, finite resources, sustainability, and pollution were seen as the main drivers back then, but global warming is just a type of pollution. The decision whether to pursue nuclear or not, being critical to future strategy.


This is not me claiming to be a far sighted genius, the essay was just a reflection of one of the more talked about discussions of the time. Maybe not enough science in government or indeed in the education system? Ideally engineers need to start running things as if the earth is a space ship, but that will not happen because of the nature of mankind imho.

Still can’t write for toffee!!

[Matteo V]

About 50 years ago I tried to write an essay for a schoolboy science project, in which I proposed that, the world needed to move to a hydrogen based economy.......

Hydrogen has some serious issues. Specifically, the math doesn't work out. 50 years ago, it was hoped that hydrogen generation technology would advance to the point where it was feasibly efficient. But regardless of the money thrown at this problem, it has not been solved to any measurable degree. It's very much similar to corn based ethanol in this respect.

.........and the power for this would have to come from the development of fast breeder reactors, or the development of fusion reactors,

There was an accident at the local landfill yesterday. A truck turned over and spilled its load of garbage onto the ground. This was quickly moved away and put in its proper place. It took 3hrs to clean up.

There was an accident at a coal generation plant yesterday where a nozzle was stuck open, running the plant at higher than normal temps which wasted 14 tonnes of fuel. The nozzle is expected to be replaced by 2 day shutdown.

There was an accident at a nuclear waste storage facility yesterday. The ground water around the facility, and the surface water downstream will be contaminated for thousands of years. The cost to stop the out flow of waste will cost 1.5times the value of the electricity the fuel produced.

Then you have Fukishima.......... no time frame, no dollar amount, can even be calculated for that.

This is not me claiming to be a far sighted genius, the essay was just a reflection of one of the more talked about discussions of the time. Maybe not enough science in government or indeed in the education system? Ideally engineers need to start running things as if the earth is a space ship, but that will not happen because of the nature of mankind imho.

Yes, the marriage of science and government seems to have some archaic "gender roles" where one is subservient to the other. And don't forget the mistress - the mediacorporateindustrial complex. All the while they treat the earth and humanity as pawns to get back at each other. Personally, I'm hoping for a divorce and full custody by the "old-school" science that didn't use politics and its henchmen to enforce scientificly demonstrable false narratives.

[Havre]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/11/as-gas- ... utiny.html

Uncle Biden to the rescue. Greta not happy.

[B-Roc]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/11/as-gas- ... utiny.html

Uncle Biden to the rescue. Greta not happy.

How sad to think that last year at this time the US was energy independent and even had surplus supplies and now we have to rely on and ask OPEC to step up their production.

[Havre]

Oslo is ran by a coalition of parties, where one of them is "The Green Party". This means that there is some strict regulations on suppliers delivering services to the city. As an example, excavators used should be electric. This is how this is solved in reality. Notice the excavator is electric (the diesel generator charging it - is not)

And that is not me being against electric excavators. On the contrary, I would love to live in a city with far less cars (regardless of which fuel they burn) and where construction equipment etc. is for example electric. I also understand that when new regulations are put in place there is often a transition period before it works as intended, but now it seems like any sort of stupidity is acceptable as long as the intention is good (this being a small "real life" silly example of course).

I would imagine in this case both the local pollution and Co2-emissions are quite significantly higher than they would have been if the excavator had been operating on diesel (that I don't know, but you got some loss converting the energy and I doubt the diesel generator is that much more efficient than a diesel excavator that it would make up for it - not to mention that you would have to produce 2 pieces of equipment instead of 1 which also has costs on the environment and extra Co2-emissions).

[jumptheshark]

Not necessarily. A diesel generator runs at a constant rpm, and are generally set to run at their most efficient and cleanest combustion. No billowing black exhaust when stomping on the throttle to increase torque in the excavator.

Most train locomotives are electric with diesel generators and it is a much less polluting use of diesel compared to when we had diesel powered locomotives.

The whole VW dieselgate issue revolved around testing emissions in cars that would emulate that optimal diesel burn efficiency for testing purposes only which does not reflect the pollution you get from real world variable throttle driving.

[Havre]

In any case - no worries. The incident will be investigated - so that it never happens again.

I can't comment on trains and VW (for VW I think there was more at play than just fixed rpm - why trains wouldn't also operate on a fairly fixed rpm I don't know). I have however been part of designing quite a few ships and for some applications a so-called diesel-electic system (which is basically what you see there) does make sense. In others it doesn't. I would have no clue for an excavator, but you could easily imagine that a hybrid excavator would be a much better solution than what we here saw in Oslo (it wasn't meant to be a permanent solution - and my post obviously was a bit tongue in cheek).

[jumptheshark]

Babies and bath water.

High torque needs such as train locomotives are far better with electric engines providing the grunt to break static frictions and deal with heavy load on a grade. Diesel electric is not perfect, but if our roads were clogged with diesel electric transport trucks we would be a lot cleaner than the current situation with simply diesel engines. Not hard to see when a big truck gears down to get up that hill that the emissions go through the roof. Not to mention the mechanical simplicity it would offer the trucking industry in general.

Here in Canada we live with real winter and a massive geographic spread. Definitely some real world challenge for electric vehicles. What will work just fine in urban centers will simply not cut it in rural Canada. Diesel electric is a way to bridge the gap, until we have worked out better cleaner sources such as hydrogen, or micro nuclear, or enough diversification of wind, solar, hydro and tide coupled to appropriate storage. I certainly don't have the answers, but can see the writing on the wall as much as anyone and can tell you that simply shitting on the concepts of change like MM was so good at is not the way forward.

Simply nit picking at the very notion of environmentalism like Mateo V cant stop doing is so reductionist. Funny for a guy who puts himself out there as such an authority on pretty much everything, insisting on drowning us all in the detailed minutia of his thoughts.

I applaud your countries move to electric excavators or any heavy machinery. It's a step in the right direction. Another step will follow to provide the electricity from things like gravity batteries that can store slow drip production from a variety of clean sources.

[Havre]

I don't see how Matteo V is "nit picking" anymore than many on here that agree with you - on the contrary. Then again, criticizing someone that agrees with you is difficult - even if their agreement is based on something fairly random.

No need to applaud. Really, nothing to suggest that Norway is spending their money wisely in terms of reducing global Co2 (we do love to subsidize Tesla with tax payer money - it's our indulgence). However, we got more money than most other countries to spend on things that makes us feel good (sharing out hydropower we really don't want to - as an example - which very much is the same as what Biden is doing in the US - when push comes to shove it Co2 emissions don't seem to matter much).