Climate Change

[TigerMasochist]

So unless you choose to live off grid and produce no carbon then you don’t really care about climate change? That’s a pretty lame excuse to do nothing about the problem and is a common climate-change denying trope. The reality is that individual action on climate change doesn’t change anything since most of the carbon produced isn’t attributable to consumers, rather several large corporations. We need government intervention to change our energy needs to 100% renewable which will cost a lot upfront to transition but will be far cheaper in the long run and allow us to maintain a high standard of living currently while minimising the harm done to the environment.

But none of those nasty n evil large corporations would exist if it wasn't for all those billions of individuals demanding all sorts of stuff as cheaply as they can get it.
As for all of this fancy renewable technology much of which doesn't function very reliably or costs triple the price of what we already have. There's gunna be a whole bunch of new problems associated with the minerals and chemicals used to create to make all these new energy systems. Then there's all the extra materials needed to create a supply and distribution network for the new stuff, while still retaining a viable back up system and then what happens to all the millions of tonnes of old junk left lying around that no-one wants and is way to expensive to try n do anything with.

 

[AngryAnt]

But none of those nasty n evil large corporations would exist if it wasn't for all those billions of individuals demanding all sorts of stuff as cheaply as they can get it.
As for all of this fancy renewable technology much of which doesn't function very reliably or costs triple the price of what we already have. There's gunna be a whole bunch of new problems associated with the minerals and chemicals used to create to make all these new energy systems. Then there's all the extra materials needed to create a supply and distribution network for the new stuff, while still retaining a viable back up system and then what happens to all the millions of tonnes of old junk left lying around that no-one wants and is way to expensive to try n do anything with.

got any solutions apart from waiting for the human race to die out?

 

[RoarEmotion]

So unless you choose to live off grid and produce no carbon then you don’t really care about climate change? That’s a pretty lame excuse to do nothing about the problem and is a common climate-change denying trope. The reality is that individual action on climate change doesn’t change anything since most of the carbon produced isn’t attributable to consumers, rather several large corporations. We need government intervention to change our energy needs to 100% renewable which will cost a lot upfront to transition but will be far cheaper in the long run and allow us to maintain a high standard of living currently while minimising the harm done to the environment.

No way it will be cheaper - this is a complete dream/hogwash being sold to us. We are extracting millions of years of solar energy in a few hundred years with the fossil fuel industry and way of life. Nothing else competes with that outside some specific cases.

This is the reality that climate change action has yet to confront but it will become clear in Victoria in the next few years when the lack of investment in supply of gas leads to blackouts and massive electricity / gas price spikes in the coming years. (My best guess 2027)

Jet fuel from renewables will cost 5 times as much as jet fuel.
Renewable diesel from plants costs 3 times as much as diesel.
Renewable methanol to power the shipping industry will cost 3 to 4 times as much.

Plastic is embedded into everything/

You conveniently ignore the cost of capital which will be massive and is the reason so many wind projects are getting cancelled. Free money doesn't exist right now so the economic reality of what is required is starting to hit home.

The fact we will need to put a price on carbon to transition away from it by its very nature tells you its the cheapest way (ignoring the global impact) A $200-$300/Tonne on the price of carbon should incentivize a lot.

The energy that is needed to run AI and streaming etc is yet to be even comprehended.

Some of it will be cheaper yes - it is cheaper to insulate and electrify a home, and load switch to when the sun is shining and run it off solar. It is cheaper to reverse cycle A/C as heating. It is cheaper to use induction cooking. This capital will pay itself off. Especially if you design it that way vs retrofit it. But what we do in the home is only a fraction of energy.

We absolutely will need to compromise our standard of living if we are serious about climate change. A lot of these things though I think are easy give ups but what political party will stay in power to drive this change by deliberately impaction QOL?

 

[mrposhman]

No way it will be cheaper - this is a complete dream/hogwash being sold to us. We are extracting millions of years of solar energy in a few hundred years with the fossil fuel industry and way of life. Nothing else competes with that outside some specific cases.

This is the reality that climate change action has yet to confront but it will become clear in Victoria in the next few years when the lack of investment in supply of gas leads to blackouts and massive electricity / gas price spikes in the coming years. (My best guess 2027)

Jet fuel from renewables will cost 5 times as much as jet fuel.
Renewable diesel from plants costs 3 times as much as diesel.
Renewable methanol to power the shipping industry will cost 3 to 4 times as much.

Plastic is embedded into everything/

You conveniently ignore the cost of capital which will be massive and is the reason so many wind projects are getting cancelled. Free money doesn't exist right now so the economic reality of what is required is starting to hit home.

The fact we will need to put a price on carbon to transition away from it by its very nature tells you its the cheapest way (ignoring the global impact) A $200-$300/Tonne on the price of carbon should incentivize a lot.

The energy that is needed to run AI and streaming etc is yet to be even comprehended.

Some of it will be cheaper yes - it is cheaper to insulate and electrify a home, and load switch to when the sun is shining and run it off solar. It is cheaper to reverse cycle A/C as heating. It is cheaper to use induction cooking. This capital will pay itself off. Especially if you design it that way vs retrofit it. But what we do in the home is only a fraction of energy.

We absolutely will need to compromise our standard of living if we are serious about climate change. A lot of these things though I think are easy give ups but what political party will stay in power to drive this change by deliberately impaction QOL?

I think in some ways you are right, and we need the public to put pressure on governments to do several things. Whilst I admire the ethics of those that protest, just saying "no more carbon" etc is not really helping. We need targeted change, ie. what the people want will lead through into policy change. If the pollies think this is what the people want, then change can and will be pushed through.

The problem a lot of climate activists come across is they protest about the wrong things, which tells me that they don't really understand the issue at hand.

For example, transportation is a sector that will be difficult and time consuming to change, but there are other sectors that can be changed much much quicker with the right push, whether that be through regulation, subsidies or whatever.

Most climate activists focus on the obvious things that you see, cars, planes etc. Transportation accounts for somewhere between 20-25% of global emissions so makes sense to focus on, but replacing cars with electric cars will take decades as global production capacity even if completely changed to green vehicles will take a huge amount of time to build those cars. Sure we can tax the *smile* out of petrol cars if we want, but that would be pushed towards reduction rather than replacement. Its still worthy to consider, but there are other things that could potentially work. What about extending the amount of bus lanes we have, ie if buses could get end to end much quicker than cars, then that will push more people to public transport, whether thats buses or trains whereby both are significantly lower carbob emitters than cars. Where you have electric buses then its even more obvious. Planes are brought up so much by activists but there really aren't something to focus on in the short term, there are things going on (I know of companies testing hydrogen fuel cells to power planes and whilst this is a possibility is still in its infancy and may require a change to airplanes design just purely because its going to be very difficult to store hydrogen in the wings, but for me this is a longer term dream and we should be targeting other things).

I think I've mentioned agriculture on here before. Single crop farms are horrendous to the environment. The biggest thing agriculture can do for us is lead us forward by increasing the carbon sink that soil should be, rather than destroy the sink. Chances of net zero in my life time IMO are very small unless net zero includes increasing our carbon sinks and then restricting the amount of carbon that even reaches the environment and the agriculture community plays a big part here. It may lead to increased food prices, but they are going up regardless but its worth doing. I think we should also be pushing to reduce consumption of meat (I'm a bit meat eater), but its also smart meat eating. Whilst I enjoy beef (particularly steaks), the amount of food cows consume, the amount of methane they give off and the amount of land use required to feed cows, suggests to me that we should be targeting a significant reduction in meat consumed from cows. I wouldn't want to ban it, but a significant tariff on beef would suffice, increase the price to push people to other meats, or meat substitutes and free the land up that is used to feed cows, in order to grow more multi use crops. This could occur very very quickly, if passed. The other thing from the agriculture sector is also fairly easy IMO. We do not cultivate crops from the sea enough IMO. This change in food production (either for humans or for feed for pigs etc) would be through creating seafarms for growing kelp. I really don't understand why this doesn't already occur. It seems like a no brainer from a climate perspective (have you ever heard a climate activist mention kelp farms before? I haven't), but they benefit in 2 ways, they take away crop production from the land, allowing for reforestation to occur, and significantly reduce the level of deforestation occurring worldwide, so growing more crop production in the sea will INCREASE CARBON SINK CAPACITIES on land, but the real twist to this, the kelp also consumes carbon from the sea (which we have heard about a lot, ie. dead spots in the sea from too much carbon) and release oxygen back into the sea. This will reoxygenate our oceans, potentially increasing sea populations of fish etc, but the real quicker, lower carbon / higher oxygen seas will decrease sea temperatures which will start to reverse the erosion of coral reefs and potentially also slow the melting of sea ice too. IMO the biggest gain for the world currently in terms of carbon reduction is through agriculture and this can be done very very quickly, not slowly like transportation, and also with a relatively small impact on QOL, but do we ever hear activists talk about it? Nope. Guess why? IMO - most activists have a very low level of understanding of the topic, they just want something to be done, but have no desire to find out what, thats someone elses job.

Just back on transportation, again the biggest impact on the climate of changes in emissions from the sector comes from conversion and not replacement, which is why I'm a big believer in hydrogen, whether thats using hydrogen fuel cells (longer term) or the shorter benefit which would be in creating green ammonia. Ammonia is currently produced in a fairly big scale worldwide, but converting and expanding those production facilities from relatively dirty processes at the moment, to green ones is a huge benefit, and would immediately impact the shipping industry. There are alrteady trials underway (Fortescue is one) where engines have been converted to run off ammonia instead of bunker fuels (bear in mind bunker fuels are some of the dirtiest fuels we create). Conversion of large scale engines to take green ammonia are much closer than full conversion to electric vehicles / hydrogen planes or whatever else we have, its feasible that with the right level of production growth in this area that within 5-10 years you could practically remove all carbon emissions from the seafreight industry. I know Fortescure are working on something similar in the US for the trucking industry there. These things are possible in the near term, not the long term, but I'll ask again, how many activists have you heard raise this? Very few IMO.

There are heaps of examples, like this that don't really effect our QOL that much, but that can have a profound effect on reducing carbon emissions but its some of those "unsexy" things that can have the biggest impact. Its one of the reasons why I've been so critical of the governments environment policy, sure its better than the Libs but is that really something to crow about, doing anything was better than the Libs, but the whole $20bn for "Rewiring the Nation" is a joke. A fancy title for something that isn't anything about Rewiring the Nation but more giving big business control over our power network yet again when we don't need them. The renewables being connected up to the grid through Rewiring the Nation are not required for those purposes, but could be used to create power for green hydrogen / green ammonia and the like, instead of connecting these up and restricting supply from rooftop solar like we are doing already in this country. Its so disappointing that we've had a big push towards solar (and businesses and households have jumped on this, we have 1 of the largest %'s of households in the world now with rooftop solar) but these facilities are now being restricted as we haven't focused on the best way to store and distribute the power generated.

Australia should be leading the world on all of the above, we have significantly damaged soils all around the country, we have a massive agriculture sector that could be upgraded, we have huge access to the sea and we have huge access to the sun / wind / thermal and tidal power options, yet we significantly lag the world. I'm a Fortescue investor, but its very disappointing that their initial facilities from their green energy arms will all be overseas (including in the US) because those governments incentivise more than ours does. We have the opportunity to be a massive green energy exporter but even our left leaning pollies don't seem to really want to get involved in this.

 

[TigerMasochist]

got any solutions apart from waiting for the human race to die out?

Well we could always help them to hurry up n get out of the way. Leave whatever's left of nature to clean up as best as possible over the long term.

Base logic strongly suggests to me that humans not only don't actually have any solutions beyond mass pontificating. But they're not smart enough to find a functioning solution that won't have massive negative repercussions some few years further down the track anyway. Something to do with travelling in ever decreasing circles until such time as the inevitable occurs.

 

[RoarEmotion]

I think in some ways you are right, and we need the public to put pressure on governments to do several things. Whilst I admire the ethics of those that protest, just saying "no more carbon" etc is not really helping. We need targeted change, ie. what the people want will lead through into policy change. If the pollies think this is what the people want, then change can and will be pushed through.

The problem a lot of climate activists come across is they protest about the wrong things, which tells me that they don't really understand the issue at hand.

For example, transportation is a sector that will be difficult and time consuming to change, but there are other sectors that can be changed much much quicker with the right push, whether that be through regulation, subsidies or whatever.

Most climate activists focus on the obvious things that you see, cars, planes etc. Transportation accounts for somewhere between 20-25% of global emissions so makes sense to focus on, but replacing cars with electric cars will take decades as global production capacity even if completely changed to green vehicles will take a huge amount of time to build those cars. Sure we can tax the *smile* out of petrol cars if we want, but that would be pushed towards reduction rather than replacement. Its still worthy to consider, but there are other things that could potentially work. What about extending the amount of bus lanes we have, ie if buses could get end to end much quicker than cars, then that will push more people to public transport, whether thats buses or trains whereby both are significantly lower carbob emitters than cars. Where you have electric buses then its even more obvious. Planes are brought up so much by activists but there really aren't something to focus on in the short term, there are things going on (I know of companies testing hydrogen fuel cells to power planes and whilst this is a possibility is still in its infancy and may require a change to airplanes design just purely because its going to be very difficult to store hydrogen in the wings, but for me this is a longer term dream and we should be targeting other things).

I think I've mentioned agriculture on here before. Single crop farms are horrendous to the environment. The biggest thing agriculture can do for us is lead us forward by increasing the carbon sink that soil should be, rather than destroy the sink. Chances of net zero in my life time IMO are very small unless net zero includes increasing our carbon sinks and then restricting the amount of carbon that even reaches the environment and the agriculture community plays a big part here. It may lead to increased food prices, but they are going up regardless but its worth doing. I think we should also be pushing to reduce consumption of meat (I'm a bit meat eater), but its also smart meat eating. Whilst I enjoy beef (particularly steaks), the amount of food cows consume, the amount of methane they give off and the amount of land use required to feed cows, suggests to me that we should be targeting a significant reduction in meat consumed from cows. I wouldn't want to ban it, but a significant tariff on beef would suffice, increase the price to push people to other meats, or meat substitutes and free the land up that is used to feed cows, in order to grow more multi use crops. This could occur very very quickly, if passed. The other thing from the agriculture sector is also fairly easy IMO. We do not cultivate crops from the sea enough IMO. This change in food production (either for humans or for feed for pigs etc) would be through creating seafarms for growing kelp. I really don't understand why this doesn't already occur. It seems like a no brainer from a climate perspective (have you ever heard a climate activist mention kelp farms before? I haven't), but they benefit in 2 ways, they take away crop production from the land, allowing for reforestation to occur, and significantly reduce the level of deforestation occurring worldwide, so growing more crop production in the sea will INCREASE CARBON SINK CAPACITIES on land, but the real twist to this, the kelp also consumes carbon from the sea (which we have heard about a lot, ie. dead spots in the sea from too much carbon) and release oxygen back into the sea. This will reoxygenate our oceans, potentially increasing sea populations of fish etc, but the real quicker, lower carbon / higher oxygen seas will decrease sea temperatures which will start to reverse the erosion of coral reefs and potentially also slow the melting of sea ice too. IMO the biggest gain for the world currently in terms of carbon reduction is through agriculture and this can be done very very quickly, not slowly like transportation, and also with a relatively small impact on QOL, but do we ever hear activists talk about it? Nope. Guess why? IMO - most activists have a very low level of understanding of the topic, they just want something to be done, but have no desire to find out what, thats someone elses job.

Just back on transportation, again the biggest impact on the climate of changes in emissions from the sector comes from conversion and not replacement, which is why I'm a big believer in hydrogen, whether thats using hydrogen fuel cells (longer term) or the shorter benefit which would be in creating green ammonia. Ammonia is currently produced in a fairly big scale worldwide, but converting and expanding those production facilities from relatively dirty processes at the moment, to green ones is a huge benefit, and would immediately impact the shipping industry. There are alrteady trials underway (Fortescue is one) where engines have been converted to run off ammonia instead of bunker fuels (bear in mind bunker fuels are some of the dirtiest fuels we create). Conversion of large scale engines to take green ammonia are much closer than full conversion to electric vehicles / hydrogen planes or whatever else we have, its feasible that with the right level of production growth in this area that within 5-10 years you could practically remove all carbon emissions from the seafreight industry. I know Fortescure are working on something similar in the US for the trucking industry there. These things are possible in the near term, not the long term, but I'll ask again, how many activists have you heard raise this? Very few IMO.

There are heaps of examples, like this that don't really effect our QOL that much, but that can have a profound effect on reducing carbon emissions but its some of those "unsexy" things that can have the biggest impact. Its one of the reasons why I've been so critical of the governments environment policy, sure its better than the Libs but is that really something to crow about, doing anything was better than the Libs, but the whole $20bn for "Rewiring the Nation" is a joke. A fancy title for something that isn't anything about Rewiring the Nation but more giving big business control over our power network yet again when we don't need them. The renewables being connected up to the grid through Rewiring the Nation are not required for those purposes, but could be used to create power for green hydrogen / green ammonia and the like, instead of connecting these up and restricting supply from rooftop solar like we are doing already in this country. Its so disappointing that we've had a big push towards solar (and businesses and households have jumped on this, we have 1 of the largest %'s of households in the world now with rooftop solar) but these facilities are now being restricted as we haven't focused on the best way to store and distribute the power generated.

Australia should be leading the world on all of the above, we have significantly damaged soils all around the country, we have a massive agriculture sector that could be upgraded, we have huge access to the sea and we have huge access to the sun / wind / thermal and tidal power options, yet we significantly lag the world. I'm a Fortescue investor, but its very disappointing that their initial facilities from their green energy arms will all be overseas (including in the US) because those governments incentivise more than ours does. We have the opportunity to be a massive green energy exporter but even our left leaning pollies don't seem to really want to get involved in this.

Great post.

Shipping will be green methanol not green ammonia. No one in their right mind will sail on a ship fuelled by ammonia and any spill does massive damage to marine life (worse than an oil spill). Methanol pretty much harmless if spilled. Methanol needs a carbon source whereas ammonia can just use air splitting to get its nitrogen. The large shipping companies are building dual purpose diesel/methanol ships and won't touch ammonia with a literal barge pole. The BellBay powerfuels should be a good example of green methanol made in australia (waste organic matter for carbon, and green wind for energy for hydrogen)

Hydrogen-based shipping | Ammonia spill at sea would be even more toxic to fish than oil: Environmental Defense Fund

Bunker fuel more ecologically harmful on almost any other measure, but the shipping industry’s plans to use NH3 as a fuel warrants new and robust regulation says campaign group

www.hydrogeninsight.com

Maersk orders six methanol powered vessels

A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) has made an order of six mid-sized container vessels – all having dual-fuel engines able to operate on green1 methanol.

www.maersk.com

Equinor and Maersk partner up to ensure continued green methanol supply for the world’s first methanol-enabled container vessel

Copenhagen, Denmark – A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) and Equinor have signed an agreement securing supply of green methanol for Maersk’s landmark, new methanol-enabled feeder vessel during its initial months of operation from September 2023 and into the first half of 2024.

www.maersk.com

Home

Coming Soon – the next generation of renewable energy production for Tasmania.

bellbaypowerfuels.com.au

Again all this needs mandates or a carbon price to compete with the fossil alternative. In the shipping industry its mandates by IMO that are making this change happen.

Unfortunately Fortescue is a businessman pushing green hydrogen supported massively by tax payer dollars into areas that don't make scientific sense. Some of the hydrogen use cases are ridiculous. Batteries will beat hydrogen in almost every case. There are some niche industrial uses where green hydrogen will make sense.
It will be interesting to see how the ammonia (fertiliser / explosives) market develops.

Currently SMR hydrogen is ~$1.5/kg vs green hydrogen at $6/kg+++ (my guess will be more 10-12 including capital / compression / storage etc)

There are base thermodynamics associated with hydrogen (i.e. it takes a certain amount of energy to pull apart water that you can't 'optimise' - it just a fact) and electrolysers are already ~70% efficient so there isn't going to be a massive cost reduction that the consultants paid by government happily told government to keep getting paid whilst chemical (and other) engineers roll their eyes.

Australia’s hydrogen “superpower” dream could be massive waste of money, says Griffith

Rewiring Australia’s Saul Griffith tells government putting hydrogen at the centre of Australia’s energy future makes no economic or thermodynamic sense.

reneweconomy.com.au

At the end of the days if we put a price on CO2 equivalent emission on the end use, then economics will take care of the rest and the best solutions will bubble to the surface. (i.e, cow meat will cost $60/kg and a plant hamburger will cost $5/kg - so make your choice)

More public transport is a no brainer. More insulation / energy efficient homes seems a no brainer too. Putting carbon back in the soil / sea is pretty important too. Less meat will also be way less carbon intensive. We will probably have to push CO2 back into all the holes we dug up as well.

(One of the good things plastic has going for it is that it is a carbon sink - unfortunately it sits in landfill or as rubbish everywhere.)

 

[AngryAnt]

Well we could always help them to hurry up n get out of the way. Leave whatever's left of nature to clean up as best as possible over the long term.

Base logic strongly suggests to me that humans not only don't actually have any solutions beyond mass pontificating. But they're not smart enough to find a functioning solution that won't have massive negative repercussions some few years further down the track anyway. Something to do with travelling in ever decreasing circles until such time as the inevitable occurs.

so that's a no then

 

[DavidSSS]

Mr Poshman, what you say makes a lot of sense, and we do need to go for the low hanging fruit first as we can get a fair amount achieved in a hurry.

But, yes, I have heard climate activists talk about kelp farms so I will pull you up on that one. The more knowledgable climate activists would have little problem with what you say.

Clearly we do need to do something about consumption, not just try and clean our profligate lifestyles, that is going to be the hardest change but it really does need to happen, we consume too much crap which doesn't really make us happy anyway.

As for Australia missing the boat on becoming a renewable superpower - I wouldn't worry about that. We're the Lucky Country (seriously), we will plan nothing and bumble our way into becoming a renewable superpower. We won't deserve it but Australia's history is full of situations where we have ended up benefiting from things we were late to adopt.

DS

 

[Sintiger]

The vast majority of people concerned about climate change have limited knowledge of the science and that’s because we are not scientists. We do however have a responsibility to listen to the scientists and we can all see the effects of climate change.
I liken it to vaccinations for COVID or anything really. I am also not an immunologist but I saw first hand COVID before vaccinations and after. I don’t know how the vaccinations work, but evidence and expert opinion tells me that they do.
In society we have a right to rely on experts to provide us with information and to me (to address a point made earlier) that means we have a right to be concerned and to protest if we believe not enough is being done.

 

[mrposhman]

Great post.

Shipping will be green methanol not green ammonia. No one in their right mind will sail on a ship fuelled by ammonia and any spill does massive damage to marine life (worse than an oil spill). Methanol pretty much harmless if spilled. Methanol needs a carbon source whereas ammonia can just use air splitting to get its nitrogen. The large shipping companies are building dual purpose diesel/methanol ships and won't touch ammonia with a literal barge pole. The BellBay powerfuels should be a good example of green methanol made in australia (waste organic matter for carbon, and green wind for energy for hydrogen)

Hydrogen-based shipping | Ammonia spill at sea would be even more toxic to fish than oil: Environmental Defense Fund

Bunker fuel more ecologically harmful on almost any other measure, but the shipping industry’s plans to use NH3 as a fuel warrants new and robust regulation says campaign group

www.hydrogeninsight.com

Maersk orders six methanol powered vessels

A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) has made an order of six mid-sized container vessels – all having dual-fuel engines able to operate on green1 methanol.

www.maersk.com

Equinor and Maersk partner up to ensure continued green methanol supply for the world’s first methanol-enabled container vessel

Copenhagen, Denmark – A.P. Moller - Maersk (Maersk) and Equinor have signed an agreement securing supply of green methanol for Maersk’s landmark, new methanol-enabled feeder vessel during its initial months of operation from September 2023 and into the first half of 2024.

www.maersk.com

Home

Coming Soon – the next generation of renewable energy production for Tasmania.

bellbaypowerfuels.com.au

Again all this needs mandates or a carbon price to compete with the fossil alternative. In the shipping industry its mandates by IMO that are making this change happen.

Unfortunately Fortescue is a businessman pushing green hydrogen supported massively by tax payer dollars into areas that don't make scientific sense. Some of the hydrogen use cases are ridiculous. Batteries will beat hydrogen in almost every case. There are some niche industrial uses where green hydrogen will make sense.
It will be interesting to see how the ammonia (fertiliser / explosives) market develops.

Currently SMR hydrogen is ~$1.5/kg vs green hydrogen at $6/kg+++ (my guess will be more 10-12 including capital / compression / storage etc)

There are base thermodynamics associated with hydrogen (i.e. it takes a certain amount of energy to pull apart water that you can't 'optimise' - it just a fact) and electrolysers are already ~70% efficient so there isn't going to be a massive cost reduction that the consultants paid by government happily told government to keep getting paid whilst chemical (and other) engineers roll their eyes.

Australia’s hydrogen “superpower” dream could be massive waste of money, says Griffith

Rewiring Australia’s Saul Griffith tells government putting hydrogen at the centre of Australia’s energy future makes no economic or thermodynamic sense.

reneweconomy.com.au

At the end of the days if we put a price on CO2 equivalent emission on the end use, then economics will take care of the rest and the best solutions will bubble to the surface. (i.e, cow meat will cost $60/kg and a plant hamburger will cost $5/kg - so make your choice)

More public transport is a no brainer. More insulation / energy efficient homes seems a no brainer too. Putting carbon back in the soil / sea is pretty important too. Less meat will also be way less carbon intensive. We will probably have to push CO2 back into all the holes we dug up as well.

(One of the good things plastic has going for it is that it is a carbon sink - unfortunately it sits in landfill or as rubbish everywhere.)

I wouldn't count out ammonia as a fuel for the shipping industry (it can also potentially be used in the trucking industry) but there are heaps of articles of where ammonia could take the shipping industry.

This is by DNV - one of the worlds largest advisors to the shipping industry.

Harnessing ammonia as ship fuel

Ammonia is one of the most promising future fuels in the maritime world, but introducing it to the fuel mix is far from straightforward. What are some of the biggest challenges that need to be overcome? And what are DNV and other companies doing to tackle them?

www.dnv.com

Hydrogen itself could still potentially be used as a fuel in the shipping industry. I was reading an article of a company (I can't remember their name or find the article now or I'd post it here) where they were reviewing hydrogen delivery systems for planes. Hydrogen is much slower at fuelling than current engine fuel so is an issue with the airline industry being as many planes aren't sat on the tarmac for long, so they'd created a cell that is fuelled and can essentially be "dropped" into a plane, ie. think of a petrol tank thats empty being removed and replaced with a new one, the empty one then goes away to be refuelled and so on. It creates issues with planes as its too big for the wings, so would need to be stored in the fuselage which would reduce seating / storage capacity, or this could lead to a change in the design of planes, but I was thinking, that potentially this type of fuel delivery system would be much easier to achieve in a ship than in a plane purely due to the design of where fuel is stored (stored in the wings of planes).

The major thing though that gets me are climate activists that just pour scorn on anything that isn't completely green. There is no magic wand that we can wave, but there are available technologies right now that can have immediate impacts on reducing carbon footprint, but because they aren't a fully green option they get scourned upon. Hybrid vehicles are one of them, they provide range like petrol cars do, they provide the same vehicle availability without requiring any changes to the infrastructure around countries (unlike electric vehicles) and they use around about 50% less petrol than most petrol cars. Sure they still pollute but thats why they are a transition technology and IMO should be being pushed whilst infrastructure catches up to electric vehicle production, yet only about 5% of global capacity is being used for hybrid production. Hybrid trucks are coming in a bit slower and with a bit less savings on fuel (around 25%) but bearing in mind we have no other options right now, why wouldn't they be pushed as a transition technology. Bearing in mind the transport industry makes up about 25% of global carbon emissions and around 2/3rds of this is from road vehicles (cars and trucks) then hybrids seem like an obvious no brainer.

I agree with you on a carbon tax, in that its probably the most efficient way to deal with forcing companies and individuals hands, though a carbon price is a long long way off IMO. You will literally need buy in from almost every country on the planet. A much quicker way is to use the tariff and tax system. Ie. put tariffs on petrol producing cars to lower the cost differential between electric / hybrid vehicles and petrol / diesel. Similarly to the beef industry a tariff could be made to increase the price of beef. Try to push people from things like beef mince, towards lamb / port / turkey mince etc. These things can be implemented much quicker than a global carbon pricing system. As to your comment on plastics, they could easily do something similar, we all know which plastics have end user markets and can be recycled (the coding is on the packaging), so again increase tariffs on the sale of types of plastics that currently do not have an end user circular market.

 

[RoarEmotion]

I wouldn't count out ammonia as a fuel for the shipping industry (it can also potentially be used in the trucking industry) but there are heaps of articles of where ammonia could take the shipping industry.

This is by DNV - one of the worlds largest advisors to the shipping industry.

Harnessing ammonia as ship fuel

Ammonia is one of the most promising future fuels in the maritime world, but introducing it to the fuel mix is far from straightforward. What are some of the biggest challenges that need to be overcome? And what are DNV and other companies doing to tackle them?

www.dnv.com

Hydrogen itself could still potentially be used as a fuel in the shipping industry. I was reading an article of a company (I can't remember their name or find the article now or I'd post it here) where they were reviewing hydrogen delivery systems for planes. Hydrogen is much slower at fuelling than current engine fuel so is an issue with the airline industry being as many planes aren't sat on the tarmac for long, so they'd created a cell that is fuelled and can essentially be "dropped" into a plane, ie. think of a petrol tank thats empty being removed and replaced with a new one, the empty one then goes away to be refuelled and so on. It creates issues with planes as its too big for the wings, so would need to be stored in the fuselage which would reduce seating / storage capacity, or this could lead to a change in the design of planes, but I was thinking, that potentially this type of fuel delivery system would be much easier to achieve in a ship than in a plane purely due to the design of where fuel is stored (stored in the wings of planes).

The major thing though that gets me are climate activists that just pour scorn on anything that isn't completely green. There is no magic wand that we can wave, but there are available technologies right now that can have immediate impacts on reducing carbon footprint, but because they aren't a fully green option they get scourned upon. Hybrid vehicles are one of them, they provide range like petrol cars do, they provide the same vehicle availability without requiring any changes to the infrastructure around countries (unlike electric vehicles) and they use around about 50% less petrol than most petrol cars. Sure they still pollute but thats why they are a transition technology and IMO should be being pushed whilst infrastructure catches up to electric vehicle production, yet only about 5% of global capacity is being used for hybrid production. Hybrid trucks are coming in a bit slower and with a bit less savings on fuel (around 25%) but bearing in mind we have no other options right now, why wouldn't they be pushed as a transition technology. Bearing in mind the transport industry makes up about 25% of global carbon emissions and around 2/3rds of this is from road vehicles (cars and trucks) then hybrids seem like an obvious no brainer.

I agree with you on a carbon tax, in that its probably the most efficient way to deal with forcing companies and individuals hands, though a carbon price is a long long way off IMO. You will literally need buy in from almost every country on the planet. A much quicker way is to use the tariff and tax system. Ie. put tariffs on petrol producing cars to lower the cost differential between electric / hybrid vehicles and petrol / diesel. Similarly to the beef industry a tariff could be made to increase the price of beef. Try to push people from things like beef mince, towards lamb / port / turkey mince etc. These things can be implemented much quicker than a global carbon pricing system. As to your comment on plastics, they could easily do something similar, we all know which plastics have end user markets and can be recycled (the coding is on the packaging), so again increase tariffs on the sale of types of plastics that currently do not have an end user circular market.

I guess we will see how it plays out.

Personally I see ammonia dying with corporate risk too great plus what I know from contacts who have that same view from the horses mouth.

Hydrogen as a fuel is just dumb. Basically for every 3 units of electricity you make you get 1 unit of fuel. Whereas electrical you get roughly 1.2:1. So we have to build almost 3 times the amount of electricity to make hydrogen as a fuel. It just won’t happen although let’s watch the government(especially Victorian) throw stupid money at it. Biofuels will make much more sense where you can’t electrify. Plus driving around a bomb seems pretty stupid too.

Basically hydrogen makes sense when the marginal energy price is negative effectively as battery AND you can’t do anything better with it. I’d strongly encourage you to look into the thermodynamics if you want a better understanding. It can make sense if you bring the use case to the production point.

Yeah unfortunately a global carbon tax is tough / nigh on impossible. Europe has CBAM so it’s a big shift in that direction.

 

[Panthera Tigris]

No it doesn't.

The Modern World Can't Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels

Four key materials are necessary for modern life. They all require fossil fuels. What that means for the green transition is problematic.

time.com

Unless we find a way to deindustrialise somewhat, shrink demand (astronomically so) and perhaps shrink the global population to pre 1900 levels in quite quick time, the chances of running a society without major fossil fuel usage are near on impossible. To do any or all of those three things entails societal collapse.

Perhaps if there was a major breakthrough in something like nuclear fusion, and in the extremely far fetched scenario it was rolled out commercially in the next 30 years (just not going to happen) that would be wrong.

Renewables theoretically could power the world. But, not only do we need astronomically massive cuts in energy demand to achieve that. There possibly isn't actually the resource reserves in the world to build the capacity and distribution network required to actually meet that objective on an ongoing basis. And this isn't taking into accout all the other usages of fossil fuels outside pure electricity and transport.

That all said, continuing to utilise fossil fuels will also entail societal collapse from catastrophic climate change that it causes and damage the planet severely for several million years beyond our departure. Hence I hope I am wrong, such is the double bind we find ourselves.

 

[Baloo]

Said it plenty of times, as have others, but Australia not being a world leader in renewable technology is a massive travesty. With the amount of open spaces, sun, wind and waves that we have, we had the opportunity to lead the world in renewable power technology. It would be a massive industry that will only continue to grow but instead we kept subsidising our fossil fuel industries.

 

[spook]

The Modern World Can't Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels

Four key materials are necessary for modern life. They all require fossil fuels. What that means for the green transition is problematic.

time.com

Unless we find a way to deindustrialise somewhat, shrink demand (astronomically so) and perhaps shrink the global population to pre 1900 levels in quite quick time, the chances of running a society without major fossil fuel usage are near on impossible. To do any or all of those three things entails societal collapse.

Perhaps if there was a major breakthrough in something like nuclear fusion, and in the extremely far fetched scenario it was rolled out commercially in the next 30 years (just not going to happen) that would be wrong.

Renewables theoretically could power the world. But, not only do we need astronomically massive cuts in energy demand to achieve that. There possibly isn't actually the resource reserves in the world to build the capacity and distribution network required to actually meet that objective on an ongoing basis. And this isn't taking into accout all the other usages of fossil fuels outside pure electricity and transport.

That all said, continuing to utilise fossil fuels will also entail societal collapse from catastrophic climate change that it causes and damage the planet severely for several million years beyond our departure. Hence I hope I am wrong, such is the double bind we find ourselves.

Key words in your post I quoted: "wean" and "collapse". We are weaning. We might collapse, but it's far from an inevitable consequence.

The status quo guarantees collapse.

 

[RoarEmotion]

The Modern World Can't Exist Without These Four Ingredients. They All Require Fossil Fuels

Four key materials are necessary for modern life. They all require fossil fuels. What that means for the green transition is problematic.

time.com

Unless we find a way to deindustrialise somewhat, shrink demand (astronomically so) and perhaps shrink the global population to pre 1900 levels in quite quick time, the chances of running a society without major fossil fuel usage are near on impossible. To do any or all of those three things entails societal collapse.

Perhaps if there was a major breakthrough in something like nuclear fusion, and in the extremely far fetched scenario it was rolled out commercially in the next 30 years (just not going to happen) that would be wrong.

Renewables theoretically could power the world. But, not only do we need astronomically massive cuts in energy demand to achieve that. There possibly isn't actually the resource reserves in the world to build the capacity and distribution network required to actually meet that objective on an ongoing basis. And this isn't taking into accout all the other usages of fossil fuels outside pure electricity and transport.

That all said, continuing to utilise fossil fuels will also entail societal collapse from catastrophic climate change that it causes and damage the planet severely for several million years beyond our departure. Hence I hope I am wrong, such is the double bind we find ourselves.

It would be great if this time article was required reading (and required comprehension).

Most people (IMO) just don’t understand (and why would they) how inextricably linked our way of life is to fossil fuels.

When you see a tomato you don’t think about natural gas getting turned into hydrogen and emitting co2 then getting combined with nitrogen from air (from cryogenic gas/liquid separation) to make ammonia.

When you see a smart phone or carpet you don’t think about fossil fuels getting turned into plastic.

When you see construction going on you don’t think about the intense industrial processes to make the steel and concrete.

This is why I think depopulation is the way - but even that just is a time stretch. (Thanos has a (very Machiavellian) point). Imagine that we wouldn’t need to build new houses and roads etc - just focus on maintaining and enhancing the ones we have.

The end game is everyone consuming (way) less and the focus on eliminating everything that can’t be repaired / reused / repurposed (that kind of war time scarcity approach I’ve heard / read about). But I don’t see any political / religious pathway that achieves that aim. Society isn’t wired for degrowth.

The pragmatic approach says get ready to deal with climate change and minimise the impact.

 

[DavidSSS]

I always remember a mate of mine talking about how you can't build a computer without plastic and yet we waste oil (which plastic is made out of) burning it in cars, making throw away bags etc. Without plastic a computer is the size of a building.

We need to consume less, but let's just start with wasting a lot less, there is scope for huge savings in plastic use, oil use, emissions etc just in wasting less. A quick win you would think.

DS

 

[TigerMasochist]

It would be great if this time article was required reading (and required comprehension).

Most people (IMO) just don’t understand (and why would they) how inextricably linked our way of life is to fossil fuels.

When you see a tomato you don’t think about natural gas getting turned into hydrogen and emitting co2 then getting combined with nitrogen from air (from cryogenic gas/liquid separation) to make ammonia.

When you see a smart phone or carpet you don’t think about fossil fuels getting turned into plastic.

When you see construction going on you don’t think about the intense industrial processes to make the steel and concrete.

This is why I think depopulation is the way - but even that just is a time stretch. (Thanos has a (very Machiavellian) point). Imagine that we wouldn’t need to build new houses and roads etc - just focus on maintaining and enhancing the ones we have.

The end game is everyone consuming (way) less and the focus on eliminating everything that can’t be repaired / reused / repurposed (that kind of war time scarcity approach I’ve heard / read about). But I don’t see any political / religious pathway that achieves that aim. Society isn’t wired for degrowth.

The pragmatic approach says get ready to deal with climate change and minimise the impact.

FMD. This Smil bloke n Roaring Emo got way too much rational logic happening here. Def need to be censored n banned for spouting such heresy.

 

[TigerForce]

I'm just glad LaNina's still hanging around....

 

[Tigers of Old]

Apparently the Gold Coast was hit by a tornado in that massive super cell storm on Christmas night. Seems normal. Something for Queenslanders to look forward to..

 

[Panthera Tigris]

Apparently the Gold Coast was hit by a tornado in that massive super cell storm on Christmas night. Seems normal. Something for Queenslanders to look forward to..

Supercells containing Tornadoes are not unique to the US Midwest. Australia does record a relatively robust number of tornadoes (within such storms) every year. SE QLD and northern NSW being one of the main areas to have conducive geography for such phenomena.

Obviously we don’t get anywhere near the number and average power of the infamously named, tornado ally in North America. But not as unusual as we like to think. And I suspect many possibly occur in less populated rural land across the region too, hence it not really being in our psyche.

That said, one would intuitively expect the number and strength of them may pick up as a result of climate change. Particularly in SE QLD and northern NSW.

I believe the number recorded in North America’s already very active tornado ally is showing evidence of increasing.

Have a friend on the Gold Coast, who has been there 20 years. Said it’s certainly the most intense storm she has witnessed there. Likely to not have power for another 6 days at her house. Said the house survived ok, but every yard around her house is entirely trashed. Probably need to relandscape the lot.