Impact of solar panels on global climate

[Stargate525]

Major ones? Not particularly. I mean, seriously, only 400? Wow, that's quite literally only 20 people per volcano.

Because we all know a disaster's impact on the climate is only measured in human life. 9/11 was CLEARLY more dangerous to the atmosphere than all of these eruptions combined... There are few deaths because people have largely learned that a) living next to an active volcano is really stupid, running when said volcano starts rumbling is generally a good idea, and c) a lot of these are in remote areas where no one lives (because, you know, VOLCANO).

And again, how many?

Twenty eruptions in the past fifteen years rating a 4 or higher on the VEI (you know, the thing that the US Geological Survey uses to measure these things).

TWENTY. IN FIFTEEN YEARS. I'm not sure how much clearer I can make it. Unless you're only capable of measuring numbers in batches of 150 years, then... about 100, although our record-keeping on worldwide volcanic phenomenon sort of breaks down around the 1880s.

How large?

4 or higher on the VEI. The description of these eruptions is 'cataclysmic,' involves an ejecta plume around 10km in height, and has ejected .... into the upper atmosphere. The one that shut down all of Europe's air travel back in 2010? The one that ejected 250 million cubic meters of ash and junk? That's an average 4.0.

I'm sorry that I can't get you exact measurements of all 100 of these guys' outputs; they just refuse to fill out their carbon footprint paperwork whenever we send them. How inconsiderate.

And, source?

US Geological Survey, historical reports, and searching of free academic articles on the internet begun via wikipedia. I'm not writing a dissertation, I don't really feel I need to be more in-depth than that.

[KerikBalm]

making the idea of 'turning these thousands of square miles into solar panels' about at ecologically sound as doing it to a forest or grassland.

Again, if we take the total area of the surface that is currently covered in roads, and use that for Solar... that would be plenty of power generation.

I don't like the idea of a massive solar farm in one area... its ecologically harmful, vulnerable to bad weather conditions, and transmission of the power is problematic.

A more distributed solar generation capacity would be better, we could have covered roads, we could have solar parallel to roads (not really an option in cities and suburbs - although especially in suburbs, solar on rooftops is an obvious solution), and some people have even developed solar panels that can be driven on.

There is no need to cover additional land with solar. We can make use of the land we've already covered over.

[GeneralVeers]

I'm a bit confused. Did you suggest undereducated nation peoples should learn to stop breathing? XD

Strike the word "breathing" and replace it with anything else--i.e. stop building factories, stop driving cars, or whichever other method of reducing CO2 emissions--and the inhabitants of whichever undereducated nation you happen to be addressing would start yelling rude words at you and throwing things at you, while at the same time explaining self-righteously to you that they have as much right to be rich and greedy and capitalist as everybody else, and that they refuse to be the ones to take the short stick and live in eternal poverty to save the planet.

In a world of seven billion people, the real problem is that you've got 6,999,999,999 instances of Keeping Up With The Joneses. Everybody wants what they perceive to be their fair share (which, unsurprisingly, is a lot MORE than their fair share--I did the math for that too!), so the reality of it is that nobody in the underdeveloped nations of the world is willing to do their part. The problem has no solution.

Oh, and that number I spouted about how eight to ten percent of human CO2 emissions comes from humans breathing? That number isn't very important by itself. Of much more interest (and probably concern) to everybody here, should be the fact that humans are only one to ten percent of the Earth's CO2-exhaling biomass.....if that much. Which leaves you wondering......how much CO2 is being exhaled by all those other life forms that aren't human....?

The carbon humans exhale with the CO2 actually comes from the carbohydrates you eat, in case you would only eat what you can grow you'd be CO2 neutral.

Which doesn't change the fact that the amount of CO2 in the system still goes up as more humans are in the system.

Random side note: the part of the Earth's environment that we humans inhabit isn't actually carbon neutral. The geological processes that produced the coal and oil we're using today? Those processes never stopped. Dead plants and animals are being converted into new deposits of coal and oil right now--at an unknown rate. Thereby monkey-wrenching the equation pretty thoroughly, because the rate at which CO2 is being removed from the system now contains an unknown variable.

[ZetaX]

No it's my response for a subject that quite frankly annoys me.

Stop researching what you think is the effect of random crap on the environment, and focus on making things more efficient

And how should we figure out what exactly causes the problem, and what consequences things have, without doing exactly that research? Do you expect that "being more efficient" is totally unrelated or what? Anyway, we know pretty well how to solve the problems already (with there surely being possible improvements). It's more a matter of getting it done, especially politically.

Planet existed for several million years just fine and according to them some form of humans have always lived on it.

This statement is just ridiculous. Apart from the already mentioned falsehoods, we did not spend those million years causing CO2 in amounts never seen before. That's more like a hundred years only.

[peadar1987]

Well then they're morons who should be focusing on more useful sciences.

Forest fires release more greenhouse gases than cars, and I think it's safe to say have been happening for allot longer than cars have existed.

Forest fires release CO2, leave a fertile space, in which a new forest grows, fixing carbon back out of the atmosphere. The ecosystem as a whole is carbon neutral over a large enough area and long enough timescales.

Same as people breathing. Every bit of CO2 you breathe out is accounted for by a plant. So long as you don't increase the number of people, or decrease the biomass, you have an equilibrium situation.

Burning fossil fuels is not the same, as you are destroying carbon sinks at a rate far greater than they can replenish themselves. You are disturbing the equilibrium.

[micr0wave]

...

can't leave that uncommented ..

So, you say people in, e.g some poor african country should stop to drive a car ? In a country where just a tiny fraction of the population has one ?

What about the rich countries where almost everyone has a car or two ? They are allowed to pollute the world with millions and millions of cars but the handful automobiles from the poor are the ones which should be removed to reduce pollution ? Makes sense.

The mechanism for the carbon/CO2 circle is the same for humans or animals, so i can't really understand how that will have a major impact.

[PB666]

And how should we figure out what exactly causes the problem, and what consequences things have, without doing exactly that research? Do you expect that "being more efficient" is totally unrelated or what? Anyway, we know pretty well how to solve the problems already (with there surely being possible improvements). It's more a matter of getting it done, especially politically.

This statement is just ridiculous. Apart from the already mentioned falsehoods, we did not spend those million years causing CO2 in amounts never seen before. That's more like a hundred years only.

Well, if humans were to completely vanish the environment would do remarkably well, of course extinct soecies would not bounce back, and a few more would probably go extinct because of momentum effects and xenobiotic wildlife (invasive species and the like). There would also be legacy issues like waterways, canals, dams, jetties, highways, and of course there would be waste piles that would create issues.

The problem is that CO2 levels are so high now, that when they begin to falll, they will drop so quckly that the earth would slam right into a glacial maximum of unseen proportion. We don't need to get rid of all CO2, just enough to bring the earth to 1980 levels.

Having said that the earth is in deep doo-doo and coal burning is the primary cause. We can point the finger at china, but if we consider cummulative usage the west has the lions share.

#1 problem is overpopulation - india, indonesia, pakistan, ...........deforestation, conflict zones

#2 unmodulated industrialization - china, india

#3 overconsumption - west

The biggest victims of climate change will be in the top ranks, and these groups are least equipped to understand why. Developed countries have a certain immunity as a whole (california might be exceptional), because they typically do not live on the margin, and climate changes effects will be seen in highly irradic food prices, followed by highly disruptive weather patterns. Superstorms and superdroughts will become the norm. Solar panels raising changing weather patterns in the desert is not so harmful. Lower pan evaporation rates due to coal in the indian and northern pacific oceans is devastating.

So yeah, massive government intervention in the biggest increased emitters, those who don't want to change is were alot of work needs to be done. I think the best solution is some hefty lawsuits in the international court for some of the concurrent violators, like indonesia.

Just to tag this on: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34763036

Edited November 9, 2015 by PB666

[rtxoff]

Silly apes, why didn't they stay in their trees? There is only one way to live in and with the nature. Of course nobody likes that but also nobody likes the alternative.

Silly apes....

[Ralathon]

Well then they're morons who should be focusing on more useful sciences.

Forest fires release more greenhouse gases than cars, and I think it's safe to say have been happening for allot longer than cars have existed.

Scroll through this site.

If you can disprove those graphs with actual arguments as opposed to "These guys are morons" you'll likely win a nobel prize and a boatload of money.

[Brethern]

And how should we figure out what exactly causes the problem, and what consequences things have, without doing exactly that research? Do you expect that "being more efficient" is totally unrelated or what? Anyway, we know pretty well how to solve the problems already (with there surely being possible improvements). It's more a matter of getting it done, especially politically.

This statement is just ridiculous. Apart from the already mentioned falsehoods, we did not spend those million years causing CO2 in amounts never seen before. That's more like a hundred years only.

So here's what's happening, people are whining about coal power plants producing whatever harmful chemical of the week. So they want them shut down.

So they start trying to use wind turbines, people then start whining about how they kill birds or change climate or some foolishness.

Then comes solar panels, people start whining about heating or cooling or whatever.

Then there's nuclear power, People whine because Chernobyl.

No matter what power source you're going to come up with people are going to whine about it doing something to the earth. Instead of trying to prove that it's hurting the planet work on creating a more efficient power source, as in less is more or whatever.

The planet is fine and is going to be fine, humans just have to learn to adapt.

[PB666]

So here's what's happening, people are whining about coal power plants producing whatever harmful chemical of the week. So they want them shut down.

So they start trying to use wind turbines, people then start whining about how they kill birds or change climate or some foolishness.

Then comes solar panels, people start whining about heating or cooling or whatever.

Then there's nuclear power, People whine because Chernobyl.

No matter what power source you're going to come up with people are going to whine about it doing something to the earth. Instead of trying to prove that it's hurting the planet work on creating a more efficient power source, as in less is more or whatever.

The planet is fine and is going to be fine, humans just have to learn to adapt.

I don't know anyone who has died from radioactivity, solar panels or windmills. I do know someone who died from earing fish that had too much mercury, and i do know people who died as a result of working in the oil and gas industry. I don't know of any dead bats or birds, but i do know that the local parks and wildlife folks confiscate billfish that they suspect carry dangerous levels of mercury. Since i eat alot of fish and very well aware of local mercury levels in fish, i have a certain opinion about coal that just about any self-respecting fisheries biologist would have.

Coal is bad stuff, but lignite coal is the bad of bad stuff. You can put all the PR day and night and tell me how great coal is and how its not as bad as people say. The only thing i would think is the four letter title of a three dog night song.

[Stargate525]

I don't know anyone who has died from radioactivity, solar panels or windmills. I do know someone who died from earing fish that had too much mercury, and i do know people who died as a result of working in the oil and gas industry.

http://earthdesk.blogs.pace.edu/files/2013/07/collision_2011_US_electricity_generation_by_source.png

That's really not surprising.

The plural of anecdote isn't data, by the by.

[GeneralVeers]

Forest fires release CO2, leave a fertile space, in which a new forest grows

What if a new forest doesn't grow there? And if it does, what happens in the twenty-odd years it takes to grow a new forest there?

Same as people breathing. Every bit of CO2 you breathe out is accounted for by a plant. So long as you don't increase the number of people

Yeah.....about that last part? The population is increasing.

or decrease the biomass, you have an equilibrium situation.

That's the thing. The amount of animal biomass and plant biomass on Earth are always changing, largely independently of each other, and this was the case long before human beings even existed. Earth never had a perfect equilibrium situation.

Burning fossil fuels is not the same

Yes it is. Just as every bit of CO2 you breathe out is accounted for by a plant, every bit of CO2 you obtain by burning coal is accounted for by a plant. And every bit of CO2 you obtain by burning oil is accounted by a dead animal (which is accounted by plants that it ate). And, as I already mentioned in a previous post, the process of dead plants and animals being turned into new deposits is still going on today. Constantly removing CO2 from the environment......at an unknown rate.

can't leave that uncommented ..

So, you say

Stop right there.

Answer me this, very simply: what did I actually say?

Did I ever say "I think poor people in Africa should stop driving cars"? All I want is a yes or a no, micr0wave. Look my in my eyes.....look me in my big, pretty eyes.....and tell me.....yes? ........ or no?

See, that's the thing. I didn't tell you what my opinion is. Read my post again; the snippets about not driving cars and such were hypotheticals. My point was, that if somebody did (note the boldface, that part is really important here!) go up to someone in India and tell them they need to go without a car for the good of the planet, that person from India would be really mad.

What about the rich countries where almost everyone has a car or two ? They are allowed to pollute the world with millions and millions of cars but the handful automobiles from the poor are the ones which should be removed to reduce pollution ? Makes sense.

Said with sarcasm, I assume? You think the above is wrong, correct? It's unfair, correct?

Thank you. You just proved my point without even realizing it. The above is exactly what poor people are going to say. The poor are not going to put any significant effort into greenhouse gas reduction if it means any sacrifice at all on their part. Their reaction will be the same as yours.

And that's the reason efforts at greenhouse gas reduction are foredoomed. Unless poor countries participate extensively in a worldwide effort to reduce CO2 emissions, there will be no significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Because, where the United States is around 300 million people, China and India are each MORE THAN A BILLION. If you think the United States is bad, imagine the emissions by eight. Eight United Stateses. Because that's what we're going to have if China and India catch up to where the U.S. is now. Eight times as much greenhouse gas emissions as the United States.

I apologize to everyone else in this thread if micr0wave's screams of abject horror are loud enough to actually reach your ears through the ethernet cable......

The mechanism for the carbon/CO2 circle is the same for humans or animals, so i can't really understand how that will have a major impact.

Simple: there's a lot more biomass of animals on Earth than humans. As in at least ten times more. Probably around a hundred times more. We're talking about a source of CO2 that rivals the economic and industrial base of the entire human race. If that amount of biomass changes significantly, the rate of CO2 emission will change significantly--without humans even being involved in the equation.

[peadar1987]

So here's what's happening, people are whining about coal power plants producing whatever harmful chemical of the week. So they want them shut down.

So they start trying to use wind turbines, people then start whining about how they kill birds or change climate or some foolishness.

Then comes solar panels, people start whining about heating or cooling or whatever.

Then there's nuclear power, People whine because Chernobyl.

No matter what power source you're going to come up with people are going to whine about it doing something to the earth. Instead of trying to prove that it's hurting the planet work on creating a more efficient power source, as in less is more or whatever.

The planet is fine and is going to be fine, humans just have to learn to adapt.

I don't really understand what your problem is. Every technology comes with risks and benefits. Are you saying it's a bad idea that we try and understand them? That we shouldn't point out the flaws? You do understand that probably the most important part of developing a power source that is vaguely "better" is understanding what, exactly, was wrong with what we were previously using, right?

What if a new forest doesn't grow there? And if it does, what happens in the twenty-odd years it takes to grow a new forest there?

Read my post again. Large enough area, long enough timescale. Over a long period of time, and with a large enough forest, you will have a more or less constant biomass. A part of the forest will burn down, then it will grow back, while it is growing back, another part of the forest will burn down. That will grow back. The entire global or continental system doesn't just burn to the ground, then all grow back at once, forests just don't work that way unless something absolutely catastrophic happens.

Yeah.....about that last part? The population is increasing.

And we keep cutting down rainforests to make room for grazing livestock. Which is a bad thing. Unfortunately, there is room for more than one bad thing in the world.

That's the thing. The amount of animal biomass and plant biomass on Earth are always changing, largely independently of each other, and this was the case long before human beings even existed. Earth never had a perfect equilibrium situation.

Not over the timescale of millenia, or even tens of millenia. Climate changes, it does that naturally. Plant and animal biomass vary, but as far as we can tell, the current changes that humans are causing to the environment are unprecedented in the history of the planet in both magnitude and rate, barring supervolcanic eruptions or giant impact events.

Yes it is. Just as every bit of CO2 you breathe out is accounted for by a plant, every bit of CO2 you obtain by burning coal is accounted for by a plant. And every bit of CO2 you obtain by burning oil is accounted by a dead animal (which is accounted by plants that it ate). And, as I already mentioned in a previous post, the process of dead plants and animals being turned into new deposits is still going on today. Constantly removing CO2 from the environment......at an unknown rate.

At a rate which is utterly insignificant over a timescale of centuries to millenia. If it wasn't insignificant, we wouldn't be seeing a massive rise in CO2 levels. If you can find another source for the rise that doesn't involve humans burning fossil fuels, congratulations on your achievement, you really deserve that Nobel Prize.

[PB666]

http://earthdesk.blogs.pace.edu/files/2013/07/collision_2011_US_electricity_generation_by_source.png

That's really not surprising.

The plural of anecdote isn't data, by the by.

You expect there to be fatalities in the industry but not in the consumers. In china they estimate now that coal and cigarettes combined will kill half the male population. Coal is beyond anecdote, its simply bad.

Worst btu production per carbon atom

highest level of particulate production

highest level of heavy metal contamination

Biggest effector of pan evaporation rates (drought causing) therfore crop reducing.

I should add i also knew someone who died from an explosion caused by a natural gas leak.

The last people to actually die from nuclear power related death was 1963 prompt critical accident in the US.

There is really no comparison, coal is a legacy fuel, the sooner it is abandoned the better off humanity will be.

[micr0wave]

Stop right there.

Answer me this, very simply: what did I actually say?

Did I ever say "I think poor people in Africa should stop driving cars"? All I want is a yes or a no, micr0wave. Look my in my eyes.....look me in my big, pretty eyes.....and tell me.....yes? ........ or no?

Strike the word "breathing" and replace it with anything else--i.e. stop building factories, stop driving cars, or whichever other method of reducing CO2 emissions--and the inhabitants of whichever undereducated nation you happen to be addressing would start yelling rude words at you and throwing things at you, while at the same time explaining self-righteously to you that they have as much right to be rich and greedy and capitalist as everybody else, and that they refuse to be the ones to take the short stick and live in eternal poverty to save the planet.

See, that's the thing. I didn't tell you what my opinion is. Read my post again; the snippets about not driving cars and such were hypotheticals. My point was, that if somebody did (note the boldface, that part is really important here!) go up to someone in India and tell them they need to go without a car for the good of the planet, that person from India would be really mad.

point is ... taking away e.g. 50% of the cars in a country would remove a way higher number in industrial than in poor countries, and i assume the riot would be slightly higher in rich parts of the world. Tell all the citizens in your country that they should go without car, i wonder if they will react friendly to that.

Thank you. You just proved my point without even realizing it. The above is exactly what poor people are going to say. The poor are not going to put any significant effort into greenhouse gas reduction if it means any sacrifice at all on their part. Their reaction will be the same as yours.

This is actually the same in industrial countries, maybe even to a bigger factor, just look around, they 'export' the pollution to the poor ones and import the cheap goods from there (which are the reason for the pollution). Is it really reasonable to ship a shoe (or more exactly the single parts it's made of) 2-3 times around the globe before it lands in the shops ?

And that's the reason efforts at greenhouse gas reduction are foredoomed. Unless poor countries participate extensively in a worldwide effort to reduce CO2 emissions, there will be no significant reduction in CO2 emissions. Because, where the United States is around 300 million people, China and India are each MORE THAN A BILLION. If you think the United States is bad, imagine the emissions by eight. Eight United Stateses. Because that's what we're going to have if China and India catch up to where the U.S. is now. Eight times as much greenhouse gas emissions as the United States.

I apologize to everyone else in this thread if micr0wave's screams of abject horror are loud enough to actually reach your ears through the ethernet cable......

Simple: there's a lot more biomass of animals on Earth than humans. As in at least ten times more. Probably around a hundred times more. We're talking about a source of CO2 that rivals the economic and industrial base of the entire human race. If that amount of biomass changes significantly, the rate of CO2 emission will change significantly--without humans even being involved in the equation.

plant (extracts CO2 from atmosphere and transforms it into carbonhydrates) -> lifeform eats it, burns the carbonhydrates, exhales CO2

i can't really see how that will have a significant influence on CO2 emissions (as long you disregard non-environtmal-friendly industrial food production)

[GeneralVeers]

point is ... taking away e.g. 50% of the cars in a country would remove a way higher number in industrial than in poor countries

You can't use a percentage when you're comparing a nation that has lots of cars to a nation that has very few. Nice try--but I hated statistics in college, with a fury that bordered on homicidal mania, and ironically, that hatred of statistics apparently burned the subject into my mind for all time.

In reality, what's going on is, one nation has lots of cars--and the other is trying to get lots of cars. That's the proper comparison to make: a rich nation with 300 million cars, versus a poor nation that wants 300 million cars. Bottom line: in a poor nation with less advanced technology, their 300 million cars (if and when they get them) are going to be considerably dirtier than 300 million cars in the United States or Europe. If that poor nation happens to be India, it's not going to be 300 million cars--it's going to be a billion.

and i assume the riot would be slightly higher in rich parts of the world. Tell all the citizens in your country that they should go without car, i wonder if they will react friendly to that.

No you don't. You don't wonder. You already know. And that's without even knowing what country I live in.

(srsly, why do people keep going "so you say" and "in your country how would you react to X"?? do you hope to provoke a reaction by getting personal or something?)

This is actually the same in industrial countries, maybe even to a bigger factor, just look around, they 'export' the pollution to the poor ones and import the cheap goods from there (which are the reason for the pollution). Is it really reasonable to ship a shoe (or more exactly the single parts it's made of) 2-3 times around the globe before it lands in the shops ?

The world's poor say yes, because they need the jobs a lot more badly than you do. (ha! made it personal. turnabout is fair play)

plant (extracts CO2 from atmosphere and transforms it into carbonhydrates) -> lifeform eats it, burns the carbonhydrates, exhales CO2. i can't really see how that will have a significant influence on CO2 emissions (as long you disregard non-environtmal-friendly industrial food production)

Plant extracts CO2 from atmosphere and transforms it into carbohydrates. Factory eats it, burns the carbohydrates, exhales CO2. The process is identical. It doesn't matter what's burning the carbs.

Read my post again. Large enough area, long enough timescale. Over a long period of time, and with a large enough forest, you will have a more or less constant biomass.

No, you read my post again. On the scale of billions of years, and on the scale of the entire blinking planet, Earth has never had anywhere near constant biomass. Yes, when one forest burns down, some other forest elsewhere is growing back, but there's nothing requiring the growing back to proceed at the same rate as the burning down. The Earth is not a unified mind that thinks "oops, I just lost a forest over there, let me plunk a new one down right here". The Earth is not a Sim City game.

Not over the timescale of millenia, or even tens of millenia. Climate changes, it does that naturally. Plant and animal biomass vary, but as far as we can tell, the current changes that humans are causing to the environment are unprecedented in the history of the planet in both magnitude and rate, barring supervolcanic eruptions or giant impact events.

Not the case. The Earth has had five global extinction events, each of which dwarfs the modern-day shenanigans being committed by humans, and a couple of which were considerably worse than the fabled asteroid that face-punched Earth 65 million years ago. And we don't know what caused the other four. In addition, there have been numerous other events (Ice Ages for example) which also dwarf human shenanigans, and whose causes (except for Ice Ages, of course) are not known.

At a rate which is utterly insignificant over a timescale of centuries to millenia.

Tell me what that rate is, please. With source.

Gotcha. I told you: the rate at which dead plants and animals are being converted into new coal and oil deposits is not known. It's definitely happening, but we don't know how fast, so you can't make the above claim.

If you can find another source for the rise that doesn't involve humans burning fossil fuels, congratulations on your achievement, you really deserve that Nobel Prize.

Will do. Go ahead and polish up that Nobel for me.

As I pointed out earlier on, the sum total animal biomass on Earth is many times larger than human biomass, and CO2 exhaled by animal biomass rivals that of the entire industrial base of the human race. It's also known that animals are less active when it's colder, as your next encounter with a summertime mosquito swarm will remind you.

So, what does that lead to? If the Earth is warming up, as the alarmists claim, then animals (including insects, which are the largest percentage of animal biomass and also the largest emitters of CO2 per unit body weight) are going to be more active, and therefore exhale more CO2. And there you have it. A process by which warming causes rising CO2 levels, rather than the other way around.

What does WedgeAntilles have in common with a church that's missing its steeple? No bell!

[micr0wave]

You can't use a percentage when you're comparing a nation that has lots of cars to a nation that has very few. Nice try--but I hated statistics in college, with a fury that bordered on homicidal mania, and ironically, that hatred of statistics apparently burned the subject into my mind for all time.

In reality, what's going on is, one nation has lots of cars--and the other is trying to get lots of cars. That's the proper comparison to make: a rich nation with 300 million cars, versus a poor nation that wants 300 million cars. Bottom line: in a poor nation with less advanced technology, their 300 million cars (if and when they get them) are going to be considerably dirtier than 300 million cars in the United States or Europe. If that poor nation happens to be India, it's not going to be 300 million cars--it's going to be a billion.

Why can't i use a percentage ? should i try to remove 300 millions of cars from a nation that only has 10 millions ? percentage works better there i think.

The wish to have a car shouldn't be limited to those who were lucky to be born in a rich county and if there weren't things like money involved a good bunch of pollution would be easily gone.

No you don't. You don't wonder. You already know. And that's without even knowing what country I live in.

(srsly, why do people keep going "so you say" and "in your country how would you react to X"?? do you hope to provoke a reaction by getting personal or something?)

Actually, i don't really know but i have a rough idea what might gonna happen and the country you live in is totally irrelevant.

The "so you say" i wrote in a previous post was actually a question. When you look closely there's a question mark to find somewhere.

The world's poor say yes, because they need the jobs a lot more badly than you do. (ha! made it personal. turnabout is fair play)

Plant extracts CO2 from atmosphere and transforms it into carbohydrates. Factory eats it, burns the carbohydrates, exhales CO2. The process is identical. It doesn't matter what's burning the carbs.

Sounds like the hunger for better profits of some countries are the direct cause of pollution in the poor countries then.

You conviniently left out the involved timeframes. Edible plants regrow within a year while oil and coal needed thousands and thousands of years to form but are burnt in a fraction of that timeframe, releasing the concentrated carbon of centuries in a week.

[Brethern]

I don't really understand what your problem is. Every technology comes with risks and benefits. Are you saying it's a bad idea that we try and understand them? That we shouldn't point out the flaws? You do understand that probably the most important part of developing a power source that is vaguely "better" is understanding what, exactly, was wrong with what we were previously using, right?

There's a huge difference between seeing the flaw and going overboard.

Alright coal power plants produce mercury, instead of wasting time studying what effect it's going to have, focus energy on either how to prevent it or how to gain the same amount of power of half the amount of coal.

But honestly this entire thing smells of oil companies.

[ZetaX]

focus energy on either how to prevent it or how to gain the same amount of power of half the amount of coal.

We know how to prevent (most of) it: good filters. Which cost money, and thus it again turns into a political thing. And it is known to be simply impossible to get twice the energy per coal than a modern power plant does. Do you really think that those multi-billion corporations wouldn't spend tons of money to get twice the power for the same cost?

And how should oil companies even be behind coal plants spewing mercury? What would they ever gain from that except bad publicity at no additional income?

There are not many who spend their time on finding out what mercury does to the human body (this is mostly understood anyway), so your argument also is a strawman.

Edited November 11, 2015 by ZetaX

[Stargate525]

We know how to prevent (most of) it: good filters. Which cost money, and thus it again turns into a political thing. And it is known to be simply impossible to get twice the energy per coal than a modern power plant does. Do you really think that those multi-billion corporations wouldn't spend tons of money to get twice the power for the same cost?

Actually... we're still using steam power. It's fancier, but the basic principle hasn't changed in almost two hundred years. There HAS to be a better way than just using coal to make water really hot.

Unfortunately for those multi-billion dollar corporations, it probably won't use any of their existing equipment. Or coal.

[ZetaX]

Actually... we're still using steam power. It's fancier, but the basic principle hasn't changed in almost two hundred years. There HAS to be a better way than just using coal to make water really hot.

"The basic principle hasn't changed" is a very bad argument; it's like saying that cars are still the same after a hundred years (or several millenia, if you call a quadriga a "car"). Here's the scientific reason:

The only two things that remained the same are "burning the coal" (which is inherently what the coal plant is about) and "turning heated fluid/gas into electric energy" (which also is part of the definition); almost everything else changed over time. We also added ways to directly use residual thermal energy, e.g. to heat houses.

In the end, we cannot become much better than that because thermodynamics says so, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot's_theorem_%28thermodynamics%29 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency. The latter also gives numbers: a good modern coal plant peaks at 46% efficiency fr conversion into electrical energy, while the theoretical optimum (in this case of a specific gasoline engine, be invited to get the actual ones for coal) is at 73%. Thus doubling efficiency is already proven to be impossible at that step.

But lets go even further: those 73% are for the conversion into mechanical energy, i.e. turning a shaft via a turbine; the second stage of conversion into electrical energy is not even factored into it. Furthermore, the 46% above do not account for using the residual heat, i.e. the numbers are actually even better if that happens.

And lastly, my previous point still stands: if it were easy (read as: if a trillion dollar are enough to get this done) then we would probably just do it. The coal plants surely have no interest in wasting coal, i.e. money.

[Bill Phil]

Let me say this:

Steam happens to be a good working fluid. It's used today in turbines. The basic principle of pressure control via a device hasn't changed. Earlier it was pistons, now it's turbines. Both have varying pressures depending on the current part of the cycle.

[peadar1987]

No, you read my post again. On the scale of billions of years, and on the scale of the entire blinking planet, Earth has never had anywhere near constant biomass. Yes, when one forest burns down, some other forest elsewhere is growing back, but there's nothing requiring the growing back to proceed at the same rate as the burning down. The Earth is not a unified mind that thinks "oops, I just lost a forest over there, let me plunk a new one down right here". The Earth is not a Sim City game.

The earth is a system that tends to equilibrium. It doesn't consciously decide to plant a forest when one burns down, but over statistically large areas, the rates of growth and burning will even out. A flipped coin isn't a conscious entity that thinks "I've come up heads a few times in a row now, better land on tails", but if you flip it enough times, it will still land on tails 50% of the time.

Not the case. The Earth has had five global extinction events, each of which dwarfs the modern-day shenanigans being committed by humans, and a couple of which were considerably worse than the fabled asteroid that face-punched Earth 65 million years ago. And we don't know what caused the other four. In addition, there have been numerous other events (Ice Ages for example) which also dwarf human shenanigans, and whose causes (except for Ice Ages, of course) are not known.

You're nitpicking. My point still stands. There has been no catastrophic event, no natural cause that we can see, and yet the temperature and greenhouse gas levels are rising more quickly than at any point we can find in the geological and ice core records.

Tell me what that rate is, please. With source.

Gotcha. I told you: the rate at which dead plants and animals are being converted into new coal and oil deposits is not known. It's definitely happening, but we don't know how fast, so you can't make the above claim.

We don't need to know how fast. If it was happening fast enough to sequester the carbon we are releasing, carbon dioxide levels wouldn't be rising.

The rate of hydrocarbon formation is also not strongly tied to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere (it is loosely coupled, insofar as more CO2 tends to lead to higher plant biomass).

Will do. Go ahead and polish up that Nobel for me.

As I pointed out earlier on, the sum total animal biomass on Earth is many times larger than human biomass, and CO2 exhaled by animal biomass rivals that of the entire industrial base of the human race. It's also known that animals are less active when it's colder, as your next encounter with a summertime mosquito swarm will remind you.

So, what does that lead to? If the Earth is warming up, as the alarmists claim, then animals (including insects, which are the largest percentage of animal biomass and also the largest emitters of CO2 per unit body weight) are going to be more active, and therefore exhale more CO2. And there you have it. A process by which warming causes rising CO2 levels, rather than the other way around.

What does WedgeAntilles have in common with a church that's missing its steeple? No bell!

Em, say what now? What you have just described is a feedback loop, which is a magnifying effect, and is one of the very things that climate scientists are worried will exacerbate the problem. It literally demonstrates the exact opposite of what you were claiming earlier.

[Stargate525]

"The basic principle hasn't changed" is a very bad argument; it's like saying that cars are still the same after a hundred years (or several millenia, if you call a quadriga a "car"). Here's the scientific reason:

The only two things that remained the same are "burning the coal" (which is inherently what the coal plant is about) and "turning heated fluid/gas into electric energy" (which also is part of the definition); almost everything else changed over time. We also added ways to directly use residual thermal energy, e.g. to heat houses.

In the end, we cannot become much better than that because thermodynamics says so, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot's_theorem_%28thermodynamics%29 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_efficiency. The latter also gives numbers: a good modern coal plant peaks at 46% efficiency fr conversion into electrical energy, while the theoretical optimum (in this case of a specific gasoline engine, be invited to get the actual ones for coal) is at 73%. Thus doubling efficiency is already proven to be impossible at that step.

But lets go even further: those 73% are for the conversion into mechanical energy, i.e. turning a shaft via a turbine; the second stage of conversion into electrical energy is not even factored into it. Furthermore, the 46% above do not account for using the residual heat, i.e. the numbers are actually even better if that happens.

And lastly, my previous point still stands: if it were easy (read as: if a trillion dollar are enough to get this done) then we would probably just do it. The coal plants surely have no interest in wasting coal, i.e. money.

I get that. But we're currently creating chemical energy to turn it into thermal energy to transfer that thermal energy into something else to turn it into mechanical energy to turn it into electrical energy, and losing along every step. You're telling me there's not a better way? I don't believe you.