Climate change challenge thread - you fix it

[Moonbeam]

First thing I'd do is what we should have been doing 30+ years ago if not for mass hysteria caused by the enviro-wackos: full steam ahead on nuclear energy.

We now actually have an advantage of sorts in that we've got 5 or 6 generations newer nuclear tech that's been going strong in countries that didn't succumb to the enviro-wacktardedness, so we can leapfrog several generations ahead and rebuild our infrastructure with the latest/greatest.

Next-gen nuke plants are practically self-contained- and they can run off the waste produced by the older generation plants, so many of the "what do we dooooo with all the waste?!" arguments are based on outdated FUD that's still spread by the enviro-wackos.

Wind power is crap- if its located near enough to people, it's a hazard, and if it's located remotely, it becomes just as big of a hazard to wildlife and for potential fire hazards, as well as requiring a shitload of traditional energy spent maintaining it. (If you locate it out in the wilderness thinking you've solved the problems, you need ROADS and infrastructure and fuel use getting maintenance out to the 'wilderness' which it really won't be anymore.)

Wind has limited uses, but to pretend we can rely on it in greater and greater scales is stupid, especially in place of nuclear which it can't hold a candle to.

Solar should also be used much more, and a huge emphasis put on energy storage technology. A big problem with solar as I understand it, has always been that it generates energy during the times when it actually isn't as badly needed (during the day, when there's sunlight) when what's really needed is the power at peak times (in the evening and at night when there's no sun). So we should work on ways of generating tons of solar power during the day that's stored more effectively for when it's needed most until it can actually become a much more reliable part of the grid. As I understand it currently- you can't just shut traditional power plants on and off a whim just because you're generating solar- the power plants must run all the time, solar or not. Until solar can actually 'pull its own weight' and take more traditional energy plants off the grid (which involves much better storage technology that's truly reliable) it's true potential will be severely limited.

I'm all for research into any other forms of alternative next-generation energy, but first and foremost, we need to kick the enviro-nuts to the curb and get nuclear up and running, pronto.

You must be nuts. You can't deal with the fears caused by your CBD and you expect mothers to get over their fear their kids will be born defective. You are pretty naïve. But you will never know it. Nuclear power is less likely than a cure for the CBD.

 

[Matt1970]

You must be nuts. You can't deal with the fears caused by your CBD and you expect mothers to get over their fear their kids will be born defective. You are pretty naïve. But you will never know it. Nuclear power is less likely than a cure for the CBD.

You need help. You are seriously fucked up.

 

[chucky2]

You need help. You are seriously fucked up.

You keep taking his posts as serious. Take them for what they are, comedy, and you'll have a much better time reading them. :thumbsup:

 

[Moonbeam]

You keep taking his posts as serious. Take them for what they are, comedy, and you'll have a much better time reading them. :thumbsup:

He's not as sick and cut off from his feelings as you are. He can feel what truth does to him. He doesn't have to pretend to be indifferent to what I say because he's more real than you. You have a farther journey to make to see anything than he does. What you call a better time is just more emotionally dead.

 

[glenn1]

Was my plan too detailed? Lol not even some criticism?

Your wish is my command.

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. good idea even on its own merits

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.again, fine so long as you can get past the NIMBY and "environmentalists opposing anything, anywhere, anytime" factors

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.I don't think that having NASA put nuclear waste onto a rocket for disposal in space is going to fly politically.

Subsidize education related to alternative or more fuel efficient energy sources.Please elaborate on what education you're referring to

Create a national high speed charging station/renewable fuel system.Might be a limited user base who can realistically own electric cars, but OK

Mandate all cars going forward by a certain date must be powered by renewable energy.Think we need to figure out the physics of how to make this work otherwise a mandate is kinda pointless since we won't be able to reach it

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.OK in concept but long distances and the costs to acquire right-of-way to lay down tracks might not make it economically viable compared to other options

Update power grid to handle the flow of power better (ie from consumer solar installs).Good idea on it's own merits

Get fiber to 70-90% to all Americans.).Good idea on it's own merits, don't know how much it helps climate change unless you're going to mandate telework afterwards. Making it easier for 79-90% of Americans to download cat videos faster in itself does nothing to solve the problem.

Create/fund desalinization plants around the coasts.OK

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.Where are all these jobs going to come from? New technologies create jobs when they create economic efficiencies, going away from fossil fuels is actually moving away from the most economic solution in order to achieve a non-economic goal (less CO emissions). Believing that sustainable energy will create jobs in its own right is belief and hope based thinking along the lines of "tax cuts always pay for themselves" and isn't supported by logic or experience

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.I'll leave the points about higher taxes on the rich leading to more spending to another thread, needless to say I disagree. It might get spent on different things (e.g. it would increase consumption of consumer staples) but saying it would generate MORE spending is impossible on its face.

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

 

[soccerballtux]

get us onto nuclear power, kill the coal plants.

get China to do the same thing.

don't worry about cars too much.

 

[chucky2]

He's not as sick and cut off from his feelings as you are. He can feel what truth does to him. He doesn't have to pretend to be indifferent to what I say because he's more real than you. You have a farther journey to make to see anything than he does. What you call a better time is just more emotionally dead.

That was OK but not really that great. It just seems you've been slipping lately into bland posts like the quoted above, no emo rage like you had EOY and/or no new material. As someone who reads your posts solely for the entertainment value, this is disheartening... :'(

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

Nuke China replant it with super mutant forests. The massive reduction in carbon production will make up for the massive radiation.

 

[OverVolt]

Nuke China replant it with super mutant forests. The massive reduction in carbon production will make up for the massive radiation.

This is brilliant. It would take alot of effort to plant them through the thick layer of glass that formed where China used to be tho.

 

[shortylickens]

remove all the govt. protections from energy. Let prices rise incredibly. Consumers forced to find alternative means whether they like it or not.

I promise you wind, solar, and nuclear power will look a lot more attractive. As will electric trains, buses, and super efficient consumer goods.

 

[glenn1]

remove all the govt. protections from energy. Let prices rise incredibly. Consumers forced to find alternative means whether they like it or not.

I promise you wind, solar, and nuclear power will look a lot more attractive. As will electric trains, buses, and super efficient consumer goods.

Can you elaborate on these "protections" and define the term as you've applied it?

 

[OverVolt]

You keep taking his posts as serious. Take them for what they are, comedy, and you'll have a much better time reading them. :thumbsup:

Nah you tell yourself something enough times and you begin to believe it. Moonbeam is more like a curiosity than humor. Ripley's Believe it or not type stuff.

 

[chucky2]

Nah you tell yourself something enough times and you begin to believe it. Moonbeam is more like a curiosity than humor. Ripley's Believe it or not type stuff.

True, but I don't think he tells himself things multiple times before he believes it - he thinks, therefore it is. This to me is why he's so humorous. To each their own...

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

The fact is we've dug ourselves into a very deep hole... we're in for a lot of pain in the coming future and the fixes just to hopefully keep things less catastrophic are going to be painful as well... It's so depressing I don't even want to dig into what needs to be done.

 

[moonbogg]

1. Invest real, actual money in brain research, nation wide.

2. Invest real, actual money in science education, nation wide.

3. Invest real, actual money in solar energy, nation wide.

The first part is the most important and most neglected. Our brains suck. We need to figure out how they work so we can make better ones.

The second part is to create a society that can manage the nation in which it lives. Too much bullshit. We need people who can actually do things that matter.

The third part is because solar energy makes sense and can be used while we research new energy technologies. Having all our eggs in one energy basket might not be very wise.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

1) Go talk to China & India about their pollution issues. There is absolutely no sense in destroying our economy through taxes on emissions and give tax breaks to clean energy providers so long as we have China & India polluting the way they do.
Heavy toxic metal pollution is floating across the pacific from China and polluting our water in California. It is found on top of the Sierras in heavy quantities.

2) Semi-Trucks should be more regulated, way more regulated. 1st would be to move them on to Natural Gas through huge Govt rebates or loans and no new truck should be sold using Diesel.
I'd also prevent big-rigs from operating in densely populated areas during commute hours, sorry - but them sitting there idling in stop and go traffic is pointless. I'd advocate building specific roads/bypasses/thoroughfares for big-rigs to bypass the traffic and get the hell out of town. This is especially true around port cities.

3) More infrastructure to reduce commute times. This would include larger parking lots/garage for mass transit like trains, if no parking why take the train? Need to fast track this building so telling the EPA to take a flying fuck with their "feasibility" and years of bureaucracy. Build some damn roads, more bridges.

4) Tackle the fuel oil problem with container ships - they are the grossest polluters on the planet - something should be able to be done to clean up their emissions. Not sure if any one is working on this problem

5) I do not believe in climate change being caused by humans, sure we might be a small factor but do not believe we are the main contributor. We know the earth goes through changes. Lets focus our efforts on just being cleaner and trying to steer India, China & Africa into being cleaner.

 

[Thebobo]

1) Go talk to China & India about their pollution issues. There is absolutely no sense in destroying our economy through taxes on emissions and give tax breaks to clean energy providers so long as we have China & India polluting the way they do.
Heavy toxic metal pollution is floating across the pacific from China and polluting our water in California. It is found on top of the Sierras in heavy quantities.

....

Obama Heading to China Seeking Breakthrough on Climate

Lol looking at all the folks posting comments guess they cant stand that the Wall street Journal is reporting this.

 

[Darwin333]

The biggest problem is that it is a global problem requiring a global solution but every country has their own best interests in mind and most aren't that forward thinking...

In the US, which doesn't solve global warming at all it just reduces our cut of it, we need a new grid (irrespective of global warming, we still need to replace our antiquated grid) cost about $1T, a metric fuckload of brand spanking new nuke plants preferably Thorium but depending on the interpretation it may or may not go against the OPs rules, solar and wind on viable but currently unused real estate like most roof tops. Throw in a few nat. gas generators to supplement baseline (combined with the new grid), big push to move fleet vehicles to nat gas or propane while we develop better battery tech or super capacitors or whatever.

Those are all doable right now and will considerably reduce our emissions. We should still fund some sort of Manhattan type project for next gen energy production and storage but that's against the rules set by the op.

Not quite sure what we can do about poor fuckers shitting in a hole that want them some running water and electricity. They are going to seek the cheapest route possible which is almost always the dirtiest and its hard to blame them.

 

[Darwin333]

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.



Those two things would change much.

Gasoline is FAR more energy dense than gunpowder. Matter of fact there aren't many practical fuel sources that are as energy dense as gasoline. We can however make gas out of coal that we should no longer be using to produce electricity.

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.

We've been years away from fusion reactors (I assume that's what you meant but perhaps I'm wrong. Fission is the tried and true nuclear power we have come to love and hate, fusion is what runs the sun and promises limitless clean power)

 

[boomerang]

Obama Heading to China Seeking Breakthrough on Climate

Lol looking at all the folks posting comments guess they cant stand that the Wall street Journal is reporting this.

Have you got that algae virus?

Beijing sees the US president as a weak leader in the autumn of his presidency

 

[Ken g6]

Since this thread was started, a bunch of Republicans have been elected to Congress. So I figure I need to account for the "will of the people".

The first couple of things I'd do might have some environmentalists up in arms! The first thing I'd do is create a carbon tax. Republicans don't want new taxes, but they might be amenable to rolling all federal fossil fuel taxes together into a single, flat, carbon tax that's revenue-neutral with the taxes that came before - the majority probably coming from the gasoline tax. Environmentalists may not like this, but everyone else would, because it would lower the price of gasoline. But I'm not touching cars with this plan. More importantly, it puts coal on the road to extinction.

The second thing I'd do is require electric utilities to pay customers for excess electricity, but only at the wholesale rate. Environmentalists would prefer retail, but everyone needs to realize that electric utilities are going to be electricity distributors instead of generators, and they need to make money somehow.

The main technology I'd invest in is cheaper batteries, e.g. through the Tesla Gigafactory. Why? Because:

Here in America, Tesla thinks the costs of battery storage could fall to $100 per kilowatt-hour by the end of the decade. As John Aziz pointed out at The Week, that would drop the combined cost of a home solar array and a home battery to $17,000 over the system’s 20-year lifespan — well below the $26,000 the average U.S. household currently spends on electricity from the grid.

That means every home could be efficiently powered by solar plus batteries - if they can come up with $17,000 up front. Which leads to my final step: low-interest loans for installing solar (with or without batteries). Without interest, that would lead to an average home electricity bill of $71/month, instead of $108 now, plus reliability in case of storms or terrorists taking out the electric grid. Probably a little higher with interest. And if many homeowners stay connected to the grid, those that don't get solar could borrow from the batteries of those that do, at slightly higher prices of course.

Basically, this makes all non-renewable sources of electricity too expensive. These batteries could also be used in electric cars, but the electric grid is the main place I want to focus on removing carbon.

 

[Darwin333]

Solar should also be used much more, and a huge emphasis put on energy storage technology. A big problem with solar as I understand it, has always been that it generates energy during the times when it actually isn't as badly needed (during the day, when there's sunlight) when what's really needed is the power at peak times (in the evening and at night when there's no sun). So we should work on ways of generating tons of solar power during the day that's stored more effectively for when it's needed most until it can actually become a much more reliable part of the grid. As I understand it currently- you can't just shut traditional power plants on and off a whim just because you're generating solar- the power plants must run all the time, solar or not. Until solar can actually 'pull its own weight' and take more traditional energy plants off the grid (which involves much better storage technology that's truly reliable) it's true potential will be severely limited.

I'm all for research into any other forms of alternative next-generation energy, but first and foremost, we need to kick the enviro-nuts to the curb and get nuclear up and running, pronto.

You have your idea about solar completely backwards. Solar generates electricity during typically peak demand hours. Sure you might not be at home using electricity but you are at work in an office or grocery store or plant that use FAR more electricity than you would at your house. Even a small shop with 5 employees generally has an electric bill 10 times that of my typical electric bill and the shop is only open 9-10 hours a day.

 

[Darwin333]

Since this thread was started, a bunch of Republicans have been elected to Congress. So I figure I need to account for the "will of the people".

The first couple of things I'd do might have some environmentalists up in arms! The first thing I'd do is create a carbon tax. Republicans don't want new taxes, but they might be amenable to rolling all federal fossil fuel taxes together into a single, flat, carbon tax that's revenue-neutral with the taxes that came before - the majority probably coming from the gasoline tax. Environmentalists may not like this, but everyone else would, because it would lower the price of gasoline. But I'm not touching cars with this plan. More importantly, it puts coal on the road to extinction.

The second thing I'd do is require electric utilities to pay customers for excess electricity, but only at the wholesale rate. Environmentalists would prefer retail, but everyone needs to realize that electric utilities are going to be electricity distributors instead of generators, and they need to make money somehow.

The main technology I'd invest in is cheaper batteries, e.g. through the Tesla Gigafactory. Why? Because:


That means every home could be efficiently powered by solar plus batteries - if they can come up with $17,000 up front. Which leads to my final step: low-interest loans for installing solar (with or without batteries). Without interest, that would lead to an average home electricity bill of $71/month, instead of $108 now, plus reliability in case of storms or terrorists taking out the electric grid. Probably a little higher with interest. And if many homeowners stay connected to the grid, those that don't get solar could borrow from the batteries of those that do, at slightly higher prices of course.

Basically, this makes all non-renewable sources of electricity too expensive. These batteries could also be used in electric cars, but the electric grid is the main place I want to focus on removing carbon.

I own a company that is involved in the design, installation, and maintenance of solar electric systems and I can assure you that an absurdly small percentage (.0001%?) of consumers need any sort of batteries installed with their solar. Price, while currently absurdly high, isn't really that relevant so long as they currently have access to the grid. I haven't looked into the batteries you are talking about but every last battery system that is feasible today is absurdly expensive (more than the rest of the system combined), high maintenance and relatively (compared to the 25+ year panels, 20+ year inverter, etc) short lifespan.

We have a grid already and while we SHOULD be investing in a new one the existing one is still far more efficient than any existing batteries best possible performance.

Even for power outages, a small gas generator is much more economical and since you only need it on very rare occasions it isn't adding much to total gas consumption. About the only people, at least on the consumer side, that need battery banks are people who want to be off the grid, people whose property is to price prohibitive to bring the grid to them (out in the sticks or down the bayou as the case is down here) and people who are prepping for something or other.

Just slap some panels on the roof, hook up a grid tied inverter and change the meter (if necessary), done. There have actually been some really cool new developments in solar that don't make much news because its the boring B.O.S. (balance of system, everything other than the panels, inverter and battery banks if used) stuff but it has cut installation labor in over half in just a few years. The other really cool development but not nearly as new are micro-inverters, I personally have a huge crush on them. In normal systems if one panel gets shaded, damaged or covered it will cause 8-12 panels to stop producing power because those panels are hooked up in series. With micro inverters you have a really small inverter hooked up to every panel or two, one panels goes down and the rest don't even know it. As a plus it is a bit easier on the electricians who generally don't know much about renewable energy since the power is basically AC from the panel. Being able to easily monitor the exact output of each and ever panel is pretty cool too.

Tl:dr Please leave batteries out of the small scale residential solar discussion, they are completely unnecessary and vastly increase cost and complexity.

 

[chucky2]

Darwin,

How good are these roof mounted solar systems say for a 2000 sq ft home in suburbs of Chicago area? Can they still produce enough power in the winter (reduced solar output plus snow and ice)?