Climate change challenge thread - you fix it

[glenn1]

I'm tired of all the threads where climate change gets argued endlessly and the argument gets reduced to "scientific concensus" and "deniers." I'd rather talk the real instead of theoretical so this thread will do exactly that.

Our premise is that manmade climate change/global warming is stipulated. Again, if you want to argue about whether it's real or not this is not your thread, please do not post.. Further, you as someone who believes in MMGW has been elected President/dictator for life of the USA, now it's now your job to "fix" the problem. Since there seems to be disagreement on what the proper fix is, we'll go with a matching the recent EU pledge of reducing carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. Bonus points for anything higher, and if you can figure out how to do 80% by 2050 which is the EU stretch goal then you win all the internets. How you go about fixing the problem is up to you, subject to some simple rules.

1. Premises and solutions need to reflect scientific reality; e.g. you can't simply imagine that the sun's output will increase over time making solar more productive. Or cherry pick conditions to say everywhere in the U.S. can enjoy ideal conditions in every aspect - the geothermal capability of Iceland, the solar power of Spain, etc. all at the same time.

2. No deus ex machina solutions - no simply decreeing that a new energy source will be discovered. Even if you wanted to dump money into a "Manhattan Project" style project for a new energy source that doesn't guarantee you'll develop anything.

3. Solutions have to be moral and not completely trash the Constitution. For example, saying you'll simply kill 75% of the world's population to reduce CO emissions isn't acceptable, nor would simply having the feds impound all automobiles in the nation.

4. Solutions costs need to be recognized and/or either accepted or mitigated. For example, if you want to raise automobile mileage standards by X percent, you would acknowledge it will raise car prices by Y percent, thus making car ownership unaffordable to Z percent of the population.

5. Solutions need to be realistically scalable and robust. For example, if you want to increase solar production you should also account for how baseline power production will be maintained when it's not sunny outside. Or if you're going to focus on mass transit, how you'll expand ridership.

Other than that, have fun. Let's see what solutions are out there.

 

[HumblePie]

1) First off, gasoline for a car has never really been a great energy source. It really is a low energy threshold for the mass it takes as well as the pollution it puts out. The reason it was chosen was because it made for an easy delivery system. There are for energy dense compounds that are easy to create, cheap to produce anywhere, and have a lot less pollution side effects. Gun powder would be an example as such, but there are others. The point of the car engine was to create a contained and controlled explosion. The result of which would turn a crank.

2) Lockheed martin and others are working to miniaturize fission reactors and have stated to have a working prototype by years end. If so, that would go a long way to removing the world's dependency upon oil and coal as well.

Those two things would change much.

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

1) ween ourselves from petroleum based engines for public transport, and commuter vehicles, perhaps electric cars or natural gas, both of which are currently being utilized in major metropolitan areas.

2) create a solar powered/wind/water powered grid, each geographical area can utilize what best suits them with minimal/negligible environmental impact (harness surf on the coasts, wind/solar in the midwest/west, etc. Germany and Italy could be a good measurement of what to do and what not to do.

3) Encourage educational paths in renewable energy sciences. We need to adapt the mindset that renewable energies are ultimately a wiser choice than being so widely dependent on petroleum.

That's my very unscientific take on it.

 

[fskimospy]

1) First off, gasoline for a car has never really been a great energy source. It really is a low energy threshold for the mass it takes as well as the pollution it puts out. The reason it was chosen was because it made for an easy delivery system. There are for energy dense compounds that are easy to create, cheap to produce anywhere, and have a lot less pollution side effects. Gun powder would be an example as such, but there are others. The point of the car engine was to create a contained and controlled explosion. The result of which would turn a crank.

The energy density of gunpowder is VASTLY lower than gasoline. Gunpowder is approximately 3MJ/kg while gasoline is 47MG/kg. Gasoline is ~1,500% better from an energy density standpoint. It also doesn't contain its own oxidizer like gunpowder so the explosive potential is lower.

Gasoline is actually an incredibly dense energy source when you take into account other factors such as safety, etc. There's a reason it's been so hard to replace.

2) Lockheed martin and others are working to miniaturize fission reactors and have stated to have a working prototype by years end. If so, that would go a long way to removing the world's dependency upon oil and coal as well.

Those two things would change much.

Did you mean their recent statement about a breakthrough fusion reactor?

 

[HumblePie]

The gun powder engine, which is actually black powder, was something I saw watching Myth Busters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_engine

They described the energy density as being higher in that episode so I was going off memory of that.

And yes I was mentioning Lockheed martin's recent breakthough news into miniaturization.

 

[Moonbeam]

There is no spoon.

http://www.businessinsider.com/kurzweil-says-free-solar-energy-20-years-2014-9

 

[HumblePie]

Of course, hydrogen and other energy dense enough agents could be used instead and have been used in various engines successfully to do something simple enough like turn a crank to a vehicle.

 

[K1052]

Of course, hydrogen and other energy dense enough agents could be used instead and have been used in various engines successfully to do something simple enough like turn a crank to a vehicle.

You have to generate that hydrogen though, most of which is presently made by steam reforming natural gas. A hydrogen economy is predicated on access to either cheap abundant electricity or high temperature energy sources like a high temp fission reactor. Long term I think hydrogen could be a good fit for fleet users like NG is today if it can be cheaply produced without fossil resources.

 

[norseamd]

Pressure the automobile manufacturers to start switching over to plug-in ICE-Electric EREV possibly with hydraulic assistance.

From what I have read a long time ago it seems a lot of the pollution from cars is due to the gasoline and not the car. Pressure the oil refineries to do much more complete and clean refinement of the gasoline.

Start to implement full environmental regulation of power plants and factories in America. From what I understand they are the biggest polluter in America.

Federal incentives for adoption of solar panels for businesses, homeowners, and other organizations.

Develop a national smart grid network with ease of energy transfer and energy storage.

Develop a national supercomputer program to study climate with as much technology as possible.

Start building next generation nuclear power plants like generation 3+ and generation 4. Looks like the Russians are way ahead of us. Make me think about if that plant is successful and the Russians go on a national nuclear power plant building program if they could start to compete with us or even outcompete us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor

Start full scale research into nuclear fusion power

Start full scale research and production of wind, tidal, and wave power

Start research and production of solar electric supertankers and superfreighters

Start full scale research into biofuel and hydrogen technologies

Start full scale production of nationwide vertical farming

Full scale research and utilization of 21st century urban technologies and planning

Start full scale research and exploration of the deep sea by the NOAA

National high speed rail program over all of America

Consider funding resource prospecting and exploitation for space and the deep sea. The deep sea has lots of resources but you have to be careful about how you interact with the environment.

 

[Moonbeam]

Pressure the automobile manufacturers to start switching over to plug-in ICE-Electric EREV possibly with hydraulic assistance.

From what I have read a long time ago it seems a lot of the pollution from cars is due to the gasoline and not the car. Pressure the oil refineries to do much more complete and clean refinement of the gasoline.

Start to implement full environmental regulation of power plants and factories in America. From what I understand they are the biggest polluter in America.

Federal incentives for adoption of solar panels for businesses, homeowners, and other organizations.

Develop a national smart grid network with ease of energy transfer and energy storage.

Develop a national supercomputer program to study climate with as much technology as possible.

Start building next generation nuclear power plants like generation 3+ and generation 4. Looks like the Russians are way ahead of us. Make me think about if that plant is successful and the Russians go on a national nuclear power plant building program if they could start to compete with us or even outcompete us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor

Start full scale research into nuclear fusion power

Start full scale research and production of wind, tidal, and wave power

Start research and production of solar electric supertankers and superfreighters

Start full scale research into biofuel and hydrogen technologies

Start full scale production of nationwide vertical farming

Full scale research and utilization of 21st century urban technologies and planning

Start full scale research and exploration of the deep sea by the NOAA

National high speed rail program over all of America

Consider funding resource prospecting and exploitation for space and the deep sea. The deep sea has lots of resources but you have to be careful about how you interact with the environment.

Hehe, you talk as if people with CBDs didn't exist. We still have issues with illegals voting and women having abortions. And all that stuff would mean taxes. And who needs high speed rail. I'm staying right here in the fifties with Beaver.

 

[IGBT]

it's a hoax.
www.climatedepot.com/2014/09/23/pol...president-obama-delusional-on-global-warming/

Progressive using global warming issue to ‘dismember the carbon-driven capitalism’

Rossiter says the political Left in the U.S. is using climate fears to achieve a “welcome license to dismember the carbon-driven capitalism.”

“They want to use the concern about the climate catastrophe in what they called Archimedes giant lever, to move away from industrialization, toward this postindustrial non-fossil fuel, non-corporate world,” he said.

Rossiter dismisses CO2 as the climate control knob.

“We always, as humans, are looking for cause-and-effect, but it’s extremely difficult to find it in a complex system like the Earth’s climate over thousands of years,” he explained.

“It boggles the mind that I could be certain that I know what caused a half degree (C) in the last hundred fifty years. It’s simply not large enough to find a physical cause,” he said. (Note: Other scientists agree. See: Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all&#8217

This is just a warning, but the OP set out specific parameters for this thread, and you were the most egregious subsequent thread crapper. Please take more care next time.

Perknose
Forum Director

 

[norseamd]

Hehe, you talk as if people with CBDs didn't exist. We still have issues with illegals voting and women having abortions. And all that stuff would mean taxes. And who needs high speed rail. I'm staying right here in the fifties with Beaver.

Most high speed rail runs on electricity? Less pollution from cars and airplanes for the transportation that high speed rail makes the most sense for. Usually moderate distances. Like from the Twin Cities to Chicago for example.

 

[lozina]

There are a lot of self-hating humans.

There are also a lot of humans who think they should be the only ones allowed to live on the planet.

These two groups form the foundation of global warming and the mass culling of human population movements

 

[norseamd]

it's a hoax.
www.climatedepot.com/2014/09/23/politically-left-scientist-dissents-calls-president-obama-delusional-on-global-warming/

Progressive using global warming issue to ‘dismember the carbon-driven capitalism’

Rossiter says the political Left in the U.S. is using climate fears to achieve a “welcome license to dismember the carbon-driven capitalism.”

“They want to use the concern about the climate catastrophe in what they called Archimedes giant lever, to move away from industrialization, toward this postindustrial non-fossil fuel, non-corporate world,” he said.

Rossiter dismisses CO2 as the climate control knob.

“We always, as humans, are looking for cause-and-effect, but it’s extremely difficult to find it in a complex system like the Earth’s climate over thousands of years,” he explained.

“It boggles the mind that I could be certain that I know what caused a half degree (C) in the last hundred fifty years. It’s simply not large enough to find a physical cause,” he said. (Note: Other scientists agree. See: Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all&#8217

Someone who I think is republican or conservative has already said this thread is for ideas on how to deal with climate change only. Not discussion on whether or not climate change does exist or is exaggerated.

You can go here for that type of discussion.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2400780

 

[OverVolt]

1) First off, gasoline for a car has never really been a great energy source. It really is a low energy threshold for the mass it takes as well as the pollution it puts out. The reason it was chosen was because it made for an easy delivery system. There are for energy dense compounds that are easy to create, cheap to produce anywhere, and have a lot less pollution side effects. Gun powder would be an example as such, but there are others. The point of the car engine was to create a contained and controlled explosion. The result of which would turn a crank.

2) Lockheed martin and others are working to miniaturize fission reactors and have stated to have a working prototype by years end. If so, that would go a long way to removing the world's dependency upon oil and coal as well.

Those two things would change much.

So with the average car doing 11 years on the road how do you get CO2 down by 2030.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/08/23/car-population_n_934291.html

There are 1 billion cars on the road right now world wide, so how do you replace them all? For free to the owner? Ha. Okay we can start funding it with you first.

The most efficient thing we can do RIGHT NOW would be to promote more scooter/motorcycle use for personal transportation as oppose to trying to re-engineer a 100+ year old technology we've come to rely on. Its all talk and no game on how to actually be efficient. People keep thinking high tech and its totally the opposite, low tech is more efficient then intersperse it with a wee bit of high tech. Something like an India city street filled with scooters is actually kicking our ass in efficiency and I feel going forward its going to be all about efficiency. We need to immediately kick to the curb the highway system in favor of RAIL/WATER shipping infrastructure pronto. We have the Mississippi, we have rail lines. They need some TLC. Then use more low power computing, the stuff USB charged devices can do on 5-12w is pretty amazing.

Solar and the like are always going to be supplemental power sources. All we can do is more with less fossil fuels through increasing efficiency.

 

[ivwshane]

Easy...start the largest infrastructure project this country has ever seen!

What do we build? Oh boy.....

Subsidize the planting of more trees in cities.

We start with more power plants, specifically, wind in windy areas, tidal in areas that would generate the most electricity per dollar, solar in desert areas, and nuclear in remote areas.

Fund nasa for space projects, specifically with the goal to dispose of nuclear waste and a new battery/power technology as well as more efficient materials from renewable sources.

Subsidize education related to alternative or more fuel efficient energy sources.

Create a national high speed charging station/renewable fuel system.

Mandate all cars going forward by a certain date must be powered by renewable energy.

Create the largest high speed rail system between large cities and create a slower rail system for intercity use and a nationwide standard for public vehicles to run off of a common fuel source.

Update power grid to handle the flow of power better (ie from consumer solar installs).

Get fiber to 70-90% to all Americans.

Create/fund desalinization plants around the coasts.

That's just the start. The goal is to get off of fossil fuel as much as possible and to have an energy system that is powered by renewables and powers devices that use renewables and to create other habits that will lead to cleaner air; ie working from home (hence the requirement for high speed broadband), relying on more, cleaner public transportation, and the greening/cleaning of America by growing more trees. Plus we will be growing future generations of scientist and inventors to progress even further.

This will create a massive amount of jobs, especially for the lower, non educated workers of tomorrow all while setting up a new/growing industry to be ran by the children we are educating now.

How will this all be paid? Through a reduction of spending on military and by raising taxes, mostly on the rich as well as moving towards a socialized health care system (so people's taxes will be raised but their health care costs will go down). Raised taxes on the wealthy will lead to more spending (loopholes and the like would be closed) and investment in companies that will be able to use the technology NASA comes up with as well as investing in companies that are contributing to the largest infrastructure project ever.

There's so much more and I can elaborate on all of it but it's 2am

 

[OverVolt]

There is no way Desal will ever work. Move somewhere it rains. Low tech, remember? You must be from Cali

The above is way too expensive and by it being expensive that really means its burning a ton of oil to get the infrastructure built (our whole economy is based on fossil fuels anyway) and its pretty dubious if big projects like that would ever pay off. Something like the Hoover Dam only pays off because oil was so cheap/abundant back then but even the Hoover Dam won't last forever. It would be using the very last of our oil resources as one big hurrah. A couple generations from now when all that stuff is crumbling they will be super screwed. Haven't seen an electric excavator, just saying. There is nothing energy efficient about giant infrastructure projects especially if nobody uses them.

 

[ivwshane]

There is no way Desal will ever work. Move somewhere it rains. Low tech, remember? You must be from Cali

The above is way too expensive and by it being expensive that really means its burning a ton of oil to get the infrastructure built (our whole economy is based on fossil fuels anyway) and its pretty dubious if big projects like that would ever pay off. Something like the Hoover Dam only pays off because oil was so cheap/abundant back then but even the Hoover Dam won't last forever. It would be using the very last of our oil resources as one big hurrah. A couple generations from now when all that stuff is crumbling they will be super screwed. Haven't seen an electric excavator, just saying. There is nothing energy efficient about giant infrastructure projects especially if nobody uses them.

Yep, sometimes you gotta deal with the pain before the healing happens

There is also absolutely no reason why future construction machines couldn't be electric or ran off of some other fuel source.

And the cost is minimal compared to its benefits in the long term in both environmental and economic terms.

The goal is to fix the climate not to simply stop it's destruction.

 

[norseamd]

Well I was going to add planting trees and rebuilding ecosystems but I guess I knew I was forgetting something.

Destruction of the environment is worse than greenhouse gas pollution.

 

[norseamd]

And roll out solar roads and highways over all of America.

 

[norseamd]

Also other countries have no problems building their national high speed rail networks and they have no long term problems because of the construction.

 

[ivwshane]

1) ween ourselves from petroleum based engines for public transport, and commuter vehicles, perhaps electric cars or natural gas, both of which are currently being utilized in major metropolitan areas.

2) create a solar powered/wind/water powered grid, each geographical area can utilize what best suits them with minimal/negligible environmental impact (harness surf on the coasts, wind/solar in the midwest/west, etc. Germany and Italy could be a good measurement of what to do and what not to do.

3) Encourage educational paths in renewable energy sciences. We need to adapt the mindset that renewable energies are ultimately a wiser choice than being so widely dependent on petroleum.

That's my very unscientific take on it.

Pressure the automobile manufacturers to start switching over to plug-in ICE-Electric EREV possibly with hydraulic assistance.

From what I have read a long time ago it seems a lot of the pollution from cars is due to the gasoline and not the car. Pressure the oil refineries to do much more complete and clean refinement of the gasoline.

Start to implement full environmental regulation of power plants and factories in America. From what I understand they are the biggest polluter in America.

Federal incentives for adoption of solar panels for businesses, homeowners, and other organizations.

Develop a national smart grid network with ease of energy transfer and energy storage.

Develop a national supercomputer program to study climate with as much technology as possible.

Start building next generation nuclear power plants like generation 3+ and generation 4. Looks like the Russians are way ahead of us. Make me think about if that plant is successful and the Russians go on a national nuclear power plant building program if they could start to compete with us or even outcompete us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor

Start full scale research into nuclear fusion power

Start full scale research and production of wind, tidal, and wave power

Start research and production of solar electric supertankers and superfreighters

Start full scale research into biofuel and hydrogen technologies

Start full scale production of nationwide vertical farming

Full scale research and utilization of 21st century urban technologies and planning

Start full scale research and exploration of the deep sea by the NOAA

National high speed rail program over all of America

Consider funding resource prospecting and exploitation for space and the deep sea. The deep sea has lots of resources but you have to be careful about how you interact with the environment.

All sounds good. Research is very import for either new products or when looking for solutions.

 

[halik]

Kill all the moo cows.

Jokes aside, pouring a ton of money into energy research (skunkworks' fission reactor etc) is probably the best bang for the buck. If cost of energy is nearly zero, many many other things become viable (think stand alone CO2 capture, electrolytic hydrogen separation that solves the need for batteries etc etc).

 

[norseamd]

Costless energy also makes desalination 100% workable for the water needs of the world population.

 

[fskimospy]

There is no way Desal will ever work. Move somewhere it rains. Low tech, remember? You must be from Cali

The above is way too expensive and by it being expensive that really means its burning a ton of oil to get the infrastructure built (our whole economy is based on fossil fuels anyway) and its pretty dubious if big projects like that would ever pay off. Something like the Hoover Dam only pays off because oil was so cheap/abundant back then but even the Hoover Dam won't last forever. It would be using the very last of our oil resources as one big hurrah. A couple generations from now when all that stuff is crumbling they will be super screwed. Haven't seen an electric excavator, just saying. There is nothing energy efficient about giant infrastructure projects especially if nobody uses them.

Wait, are you trying to say that the construction of those plants would cause more emissions than they would save? That's certainly incorrect.