Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[SeaKingTacco]

You already live a life where someone else decides what is acceptable. The cost of goods, safety standards, taxes, how companies do business is all decided by someone else. Getting frustrated that something else may be put into motion that could inconvenience you is futile, 5% of any demographic is irrelevant when it comes to deciding what is most appropriate to see put into place, if you're part of that 5% too bad.

Not in the way you mean. ICE infrastructure has been developed over the past 100 years, largely by market forces- ie ordinary people risk their own money and buy products which further drive development.

Electric cars (and their supporting public charging infrastructure) are heavily publically subsidized. And there still at best, a 1-2% market penetration? In jurisdictions where that subsidy does not exist, electric cars are almost non existent. Ever wonder why?

I will stipulate that the technology is neat. It has a niche role (probably) in short distance, city driving- for now. But for widespead adoption to occur in a big  cold country like Canada, a few things need to happen:

Battery technology must get better. Current Li batteries are at least an order of magnitude worse in energy density than an equivalent weight in gasoline. That matters because it speaks to ranges. I know several electric car owners. They all like the relatively low daily ownership costs, but all have noted that the ranges they get are nothing like what is advertised and that only gets worse in the winter. They also note that battery packs degrade over time, losing about 3-5% storage per year- depending how careful you are with your charge/discharge cycles. Finally, when the battery pack has to be replaced, it is a $5-6000 hit. Assuming you do that every 5-8 years, you are edging back up towards ICE cars in terms of ownership costs.

Recharge times have to get down to around what a current gas tank fill takes.

Costs must come down. An average compact ICE car can be had for under $20k new. Not so for an electric car, unless it is highly subsidized.

It should also be noted that currently, electric cars owners get a complete free pass on paying to maintain roads, as they do not pay tax on fuel (currently taxes on gasoline make up more than 50% of the price in Canada). This unfairly tilts that table in favour of electric cars. If Electric cars ever get a significant presence on the road, how long do you figure it will be before governments at all levels figure out how to tax electric car usage to regain the lost revenue?

 

[Good2Golf]

...hundreds of millions eh? got a citation for that?

That's rich.  You're the one who doesn't cite your references. ICE thermodynamic efficiency only 10% in city? 25% on highway? Completely inaccurate numbers for power generation plant efficiencies.

Until you yourself provide some citations and reasoned argumentation you will only be yet another of the "EVs  are mankind's transportation saviour" army.  Citations for your figures, please.

As an aside, when are they going to make an EV that can tow my 6,000lb boat to the cottage?  :waiting: :waiting: :waiting:

G2G

 

[GAP]

6,000 lbs ??  Damn that's big!

 

[Loachman]

We were promised hover cars by the 1990s back in the 1960s, and colonies on the moon and Mars. My car still runs on rubber tires.

Technology is nice 'n' all, but seldom lives up to promises and expectations.

We are not born sceptical. We learn to be sceptical over time, due to experience.

 

[YZT580]

We were promised hover cars by the 1990s back in the 1960s, and colonies on the moon and Mars. My car still runs on rubber tires.

Technology is nice 'n' all, but seldom lives up to promises and expectations.

We are not born sceptical. We learn to be sceptical over time, due to experience.

Its part of the training we receive as civil servants

 

[Brad Sallows]

>It should also be noted that currently, electric cars owners get a complete free pass on paying to maintain roads, as they do not pay tax on fuel (currently taxes on gasoline make up more than 50% of the price in Canada).

That touches on some of the "unseen" (unintended) consequences.  Governments have already noted the squeeze on their revenues caused by reduced fuel consumption per distance traveled.  So what happens when EVs dominate, and EVs can be charged from regular household outlets?  Increased taxes on all household electricity consumption?  Legislation mandating unique couplings, so that special metered home charging outlets can be forced on users?  Who pays for the meters?  Etc.

Note that I don't claim these are problems that can't be solved.  But the solutions might leave us "less free".

 

[a_majoor]

Just to put this in a little historical perspective, EV's were once the most common cars on the market, far outnumbering ICE and steam powered vehicles. Steam cars had various issues, but what killed EV's at the turn of the last century was the incredible infrastructure cost of building up the grid and supplying enough energy to power these cars. Corner convenience stores could quickly build infrasructue to service ICE cars and trucks simply by getting a 55 gallon drum of petrol/white gas/benzine (or whatever the name used locally at the time) and a hand pump. You might see some in a museum some time, but can make a replica by getting a wheeled dolly, putting the barrel on it and adding the hand pump.....

Today we would have the same issue with trying to massively electrify the transportation net. Batteries are inefficient and low energy density energy storage mediums, but no one who promotes EV's ever talks about the huge upgrades needed for both power generation and distribution. Upgrades will be needed to the homes of every EV car owner, the neighbourhood distribution and all the way back up the chain. Oh and BTW, the same people who fanatically promote EV's are often the same people who fanatically oppose thermal and nuclear power generation, throttling that end of the chain.

I am intrigued by EV's, and can see them as great niche vehicles for carefully defined roles. I can also see the advantages of straight electric propulsion for vehicles like LAVs (mechanical simplicity, high power to wight ratios, the ability to mount multiple motors (one per wheel) to provide mobility even in combat conditions and with battle damage), but the only way to capitalize on that is to couple the huge energy density of hydrocarbon fuels to electric motors. Current ideas like Hybrids or using an engine to power a generator are partial solutions, but are actually more complex and expensive. Hydrocarbon fuel cells which extract the electrochemical energy from a fuel in one step are under development, and with current technology are the only way to give you and i vehicles with the range and convenience of ICE and the efficiency of EV.

 

[Loachman]

Governments have already noted the squeeze on their revenues caused by reduced fuel consumption per distance traveled.  So what happens when EVs dominate, and EVs can be charged from regular household outlets?

A phenomenal opportunity for governments to learn to do what regular people do whenever their income goes down: prioritize spending and cut out the low-priority expenses.

"REBUTTAL: John Oliver’s Nuclear Stupidity! | Louder With Crowder" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2_eD6GxINw

 

[c_canuk]

That's rich.  You're the one who doesn't cite your references. ICE thermodynamic efficiency only 10% in city? 25% on highway? Completely inaccurate numbers for power generation plant efficiencies.

Until you yourself provide some citations and reasoned argumentation you will only be yet another of the "EVs  are mankind's transportation saviour" army.  Citations for your figures, please.

As an aside, when are they going to make an EV that can tow my 6,000lb boat to the cottage?  :waiting: :waiting: :waiting:

G2G

Basic fundamental knowledge generally doesn't require citation.

https://www.google.ca/search?source=hp&q=thermodynamic+efficiency+of+an+internal+combustion+engine&oq=thermodynamic+efficiency%2Bof%2Ban%2Binternal%2Bcombustion%2Bengine&gs_l=psy-ab.3.0.0i30k1.1217.5812.0.7841.3.2.0.0.0.0.105.184.1j1.2.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..1.1.105.0.yeTN0zsViUY

It's common knowledge that the theoretical maximum efficiency of a gas engine is around 37%, but cars usually get between 10-25% based on luxuries like seats and a cabin. The rest gets dumped as waste heat because it's not economical to reclaim it, as the equipment needed to reclaim it would take more energy to move than you'd save or it's prohibitively expensive. A power plant doesn't have that limitation as it's not expected to get up to highway merge speeds within 50 meters.

My numbers on power plants, I've admitted are flawed, however, they're still better than an internal combustion engine. If they weren't, then all of industry would not be using electric motors for anything stationary.

Regardless, my argument is not that EVs will replace all cars in all situations, my argument is that the majority of driving would be satisfied by EVs such that it would make sense for almost all multiple car families to have at least one EV. I already find fueling within the NCR to be a pain in the ass, due to congestion. Being able to let my car charge overnight rather than have to schedule time to get to a gas station seems like a luxury to me. That said, having to stop for 30-45 minutes during a road trip would be a pain in an EV, since I'm usually in go mode on long trips.

Most commuters' daily round trip is within most EVs' range, and recharging at home would be cheaper and easier than filling up with gas. The grid wouldn't need much beefing up since most vehicles would be charging during off peak hours, and homes have already reduced their consumption yearly since 2010.

My original comment was about ignorant positions that somehow manufacturing huge chunks of metal out of molten alloys, machining and assembling thousands of parts is believed to be more energy intensive than slathering some salts and acids between sheets of stainless and fiberglass, then rolled into cells, or how EVs are no more efficient than ICE because a minority of power plants use fossil fuels.

I'm also sick of hearing about how lithium mines are EV battery mines, like lithium isn't one of the most common elements in the universe and used in thousands of other applications.

I'm not anti oil, I'm anti burning oil for low grade crude heat energy when it's the best raw material feedstocks for almost everything we make, and it's a finite resource.

As for an EV to tow your sail(?) boat... well, that depends. Right now most pickup truck drivers are of the opinion that it can't be done. 1/4 ton pickups have been done for years, they work out well since the truck can already handle the weight of the batteries without extensive suspension and frame upgrades, but due to battery expenses they tend to be lead acid based and thus short ranged. However, once these hit the roads, perhaps that will change.

https://electrek.co/guides/tesla-semi/

In my mind, if the price of batteries come down, EV Trucks would very practical since trucks already have large payload capacities built in.

If I could get LION batteries at a low enough price point, a 250-300 KW/H base model half ton truck looks pretty attractive since you could do real time AWD without a transfer case by mounting a motor to each pumpkin, with the battery pack built into the engine and transmission bay. Max torque throughout the RPM range would be nice for pulling and cruising up and down hills.

That said, something like that might not be practical depending on how far out your cottage is.

 

[Good2Golf]

...As for an EV to tow your sail(?) boat... well, that depends. Right now most pickup truck drivers are of the opinion that it can't be done. 1/4 ton pickups have been done for years, they work out well since the truck can already handle the weight of the batteries without extensive suspension and frame upgrades, but due to battery expenses they tend to be lead acid based and thus short ranged. However, once these hit the roads, perhaps that will change...

:rofl:

I guess I should get a 500lb boat then...

 

[a_majoor]

Regardless, my argument is not that EVs will replace all cars in all situations, my argument is that the majority of driving would be satisfied by EVs such that it would make sense for almost all multiple car families to have at least one EV.

Many families cannot afford more than one car, and having one "short range" car and one "long range" car makes very little sense. Indeed, the most common version of two car families that I see have two vehicles for two different needs like one car and one van or one truck as the secondary vehicle. In this case the owners have the flexibility of being able to move between dealing with different situations without also having to factor in range, availability of charging infrastructure and so on.

The vast majority of people buy vehicles to meet day to day needs, not to virtue signal. When EV's become practical either because they are energized by SOFC fuel cells or because the heavy work of upgrading the entire electrical grid has been done then people will choose their EV's based on their day to day needs. You can always stop and ask yourself why there are huge government subsidies for EV's, and as an experiment, track the sales of EV's over the next year as the US Federal tax subsidy for EV's end. You may be surprised at what you find.

 

[Loachman]

You can always stop and ask yourself why there are huge government subsidies for EV's, and as an experiment, track the sales of EV's over the next year as the US Federal tax subsidy for EV's end. You may be surprised at what you find.

Why be surprised?

This spring, Hong Kong stopped paying citizens subsidies to buy electrics and, suddenly, sales all but stopped.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/chinese-ship-making-first-voyage-through-canadas-northwest-passage/article36142513/

A Chinese research icebreaker is making its first ever voyage through the Northwest Passage in what one expert believes to be a move to lay the foundations for China to sail cargo ships over the top of Canada.

The Xue Long, or Snow Dragon, is currently in the Davis Strait and should be entering Canadian waters in Lancaster Sound on Friday or Saturday as part of a mission to circumnavigate the Arctic, according to University of Calgary professor Rob Huebert, who has been tracking the Chinese government icebreaker via satellite imagery.. rest on link

 

[Fishbone Jones]

:rofl:

 

[Brad Sallows]

That's weather, not climate.  Weather is short-term, hence highly unpredictable.  Climate is long-term, and therefore can be forecast with high precision using only a few simple assumptions and models.

 

[Kirkhill]

That's weather, not climate.  Weather is short-term, hence highly unpredictable.  Climate is long-term, and therefore can be forecast with high precision using only a few simple assumptions and models.

Same rules apply in the Arctic and the Sahara:  Dress in layers.

 

[YZT580]

If climate can be predicted so accurately why have absolutely 0% of their predictions in the last 30 years come to pass?  They are no different than the folks who have been predicting the end of the world so confidently for the last several millennia.  Neither are believable. 

 

[Loachman]

http://www.nationalpost.com/lawrence+solomon+paris+dead+global+warming+deniers+have/14800783/story.html

Lawrence Solomon: Paris is dead. The global warming deniers have won

Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post · Sept. 22, 2017 | Last Updated: Sept. 22, 2017 9:27 AM ET

Paris came to New York this week, with leaders of countries signing the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement coming to the United Nations to chide, nudge or beseech Donald Trump in hopes he would reverse his decision to scrap the agreement.

The U.K.’s Theresa May, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, among others, could have saved their breath. Since his pullout in June, Trump has repeatedly reaffirmed the wisdom of pulling out of the “bad deal” for the U.S. that was Paris. All the evidence that has since come down only bolsters his case.

Shortly after Trump announced the pullout, stats from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal confirmed that coal is on a tear, with 1600 plants planned or under construction in 62 countries. The champion of this coal-building binge is China, which boasts 11 of the world’s 20 largest coal-plant developers, and which is building 700 of the 1600 new plants, many in foreign countries, including high-population countries such as Egypt and Pakistan that until now have burned little or no coal.

All told, the plants underway represent a phenomenal 43 per cent increase in coal-fired power capacity, making Trump’s case that China and other Third World countries are eating the West’s lunch, using climate change as a club to kneecap us with expensive power while enriching themselves.

At the same time that growth in coal is soaring, that of renewables is sagging. As reported by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, renewables investment fell in 2016 by 18 per cent over the peak year of 2015, and nine per cent over 2014. In the first two quarters of 2017, the trend continued downward, with double-digit year-over-year declines in each of the first two quarters. Even that paints a falsely rosy picture, since the numbers were propped up by vanity projects, such as the showy solar plants built in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. In the U.K., renewable investment declined by 90 per cent.

None of the Bloomberg data represents hard economic data, however, since virtually all renewables facilities are built with funny money — government subsidies of various kinds. As those subsidies come off, a process that has begun, new investment will approach zero per cent, and the renewables industry will collapse. Even with Obama-sized subsidies, the clean-energy industry has seen massive bankruptcies, the largest among them in recent months being Europe’s largest solar panel producer, SolarWorld, in May, and America’s Suniva, in April.

If new data on the economics of renewables wasn’t enough to bolster Trump’s confidence in having made the right decision on Paris, new environmental data would. As reported in July in one of Trump’s favourite conservative news sources, Daily Caller, solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per kilowatt-hour than nuclear reactors — they are laden with lead, chromium, cadmium and other heavy metals damned by environmentalists; employ hazardous materials such as sulfuric acid and phosphine gas in their manufacture; and emit nitrogen trifluoride, a powerful greenhouse gas that is 17,200 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas over a 100-year time period.

A slew of failures by climate scientists also points to the unreliability of doom and gloom predictions. One recent admission comes from Oxford’s Myles Allen, an author of a recent study in Nature Geoscience: “We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models,” he stated, saying that erroneous models produced results that “were on the hot side,” leading to forecasts of warming and inundations of Pacific islands that aren’t happening. Other eye-openers came in the discovery that the Pacific Ocean is cooling, the Arctic ice is expanding, the polar bears are thriving and temperatures did indeed stop climbing over 15 years.

None of these revelations, which came out after Trump’s decision to withdraw from Paris, would have surprised him - Trump knew from the get-go that the global warming scare is all hype. As the Daily Caller and the Wall Street Journal both reported in April, Obama administration officials are admitting they faked scientific evidence to manipulate public opinion. “What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I’d say, misleading, sometimes just wrong,” former Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin told the Journal, in explaining how spin was used, for example, to mislead the public into thinking hurricanes have become more frequent. “Everyone’s got an agenda,” conceded NASA’s Gavin Schmidt when asked how the wild comments of his predecessor could be believed.

The evidence against Paris continues to mount. Paris remains dead.

Lawrence Solomon manages Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group, and Grounds for Thought, a salon-style discussion series, where he’ll be addressing the Paris climate agreement Tuesday.

 

[Loachman]

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2017/09/20/gunter-coal-burning-responsible-for-hurricanes

GUNTER: Coal burning responsible for hurricanes? Not likely

By Lorne Gunter , Edmonton Sun

First posted: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 07:52 PM MDT | Updated: Thursday, September 21, 2017 10:47 AM MDT

During the past month, as major hurricanes have menaced the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, we have been told there is a connection between burning coal in Alberta and the monster storms.

We have also been informed that our NDP government’s rush to shut our province’s coal plants is part of a global movement away from burning coal.

Really? Because there are as many as 1,600 new coal-fired power plants under construction or in planning in 62 countries worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the German environmental group Urgewald.

Many of these plants are in countries such as Egypt and Pakistan that have few if any coal-fired plants now. That means the coal sphere is expanding, not contracting.

And together these plants will add at least 40 per cent to the world’s coal-fired power capacity over the next 15 years or so.

That doesn’t sound like a global movement away from burning coal.

Now let’s put the Notley government’s $4-billion rush to close Alberta coal-fired power plants into this international perspective.

According to the IEA, the worldwide capacity of coal-fired plants is nearly 9,700 terawatts.

Alberta’s 18 coal plants produce about 5,800 megawatts of power each year and one terawatt is equal to one million megawatts.

That means, Alberta is responsible for a tiny sliver of a glimpse of a fraction of a hint of global emissions from coal power.

Maybe you believe every little bit counts. But Alberta’s bit is so tiny – so infinitesimally small – it’s hard to see how closing our plants is worth the cost to taxpayers and to our economy. It’s equally hard to see how it added more than a breath of wind or drop of rain to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

The NDP are saddling taxpayers and electricity customers with a bill of at least $3.4 billion (and likely closer to $4 billion) to shutter 18 plants generating 5,800 megawatts of power while last year alone, China brought 52,000 megawatts of new coal power online and has another 150,000 megawatts under construction, on top of more than 1 million megawatts of coal power already.
China is also responsible for about 700 – nearly half – of the 1,600 new plants worldwide.

Since the United States withdrew from the Paris climate accord earlier this summer, much has been made by environmentalists and journalists about China closing or cancelling 100 coal-fired power plants. It has been repeated again and again that China is the new global leader on combating climate change.

Not likely.

To the extent China has slowed (not reversed, but slowed) its coal-building program at home, it has been because its economy has slowed.
Internationally, though, the Chinese government has been backing a huge effort to have its companies build $1 trillion in infrastructure worldwide, including hundreds of coal-fired power plants.

Chinese government companies that were once throwing up domestic coal-fired plants at a frantic rate, are now being subsidized to build new ones internationally.

And China’s two largest state-owned development banks have also stepped in to finance coal plants in the developing world after institutions such as the World Bank backed out thanks to policies against global warming-related investments.

To prove just how easily environmentalists and journalists are bought off by cheap rhetoric (rather than substantive action), consider that Chinese state-owned companies are currently working on plants in other countries that will generate as much as 380,000 megawatts of new coal power. Yet just because China says the right things about fighting climate change, it has become the new eco-hero.

Finally, our symbolism-over-substance NDP government also exempts from its coal ban any coal mined in Alberta that is destined for export. I guess if our coal is burned in India or Indonesia it doesn’t pollute.

 

[c_canuk]

:rofl:

I guess I should get a 500lb boat then...

: you know damned well that's the bed weight, not the tow weight, and a 1/4 ton can usually haul 2000+ trailers, just like my half ton was rated to pull 7200 factory, and pulled a 35 foot sailboat on a tri axle trailer over the rockies. The point was that EV trucks are nothing new or special, and they have as much if not more grunt than a diesel if set up right, except for the extremely short range.