France is paving the way.

France to Pave 1,000 Km of Solar Road, Providing 5 Million With Power
http://thescienceexplorer.com/techno...-million-power


… "The French government has unveiled plans to pave 1,000 Kilometres (621 Miles) of the country’s roads with solar panels over the next five years, which will ultimately supply power to millions of people.
According to France’s Agency of Environment and Energy Management, a 4-meter stretch of solarized road is enough to supply one household with electricity, and one kilometre of road would be enough to supply lighting to a settlement of 5000 people. The French minister of ecology and energy has said that the government intends to proceed with the idea, which could deliver electricity to as many as 5 million people — roughly 8 percent of the French population.”…

Recent research on solar power.

Toward a solar-powered laser


… " Solar irradiation can average several hundred watts per square meter at Earth's surface, yet early prototypes never produced even 0.1 watt per square meter of sunlight-collecting mirror. One path toward higher efficiencies lies in appropriating a wider swath of the solar spectrum”…


… “In their simulation the researchers found up to 32% of the incident sunlight going into the laser light. The pair notes that even higher outputs should be possible by separately optimizing the regions' operating temperatures. (S. Payziyev, K. Makhmudov, J. Renew. Sust. Ener. 8, 015902, 2016.)”…

Need to do a systems analysis.

Combating climate change could make modern, safer stoves unaffordable for many


http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip...E1PA8Z,EKY3E,1


… "Climate mitigation efforts in developing nations will conflict with efforts to increase the use of clean-burning stoves for cooking in the home, a new study warns. That is because climate policies will raise the cost of the propane and other petroleum products that fuel the stoves. Such stoves are necessary, however, to reduce or eliminate those that burn solid fuels, such as wood, coal, dung, and crop residues. In addition to their higher CO2 emissions, solid-fuel stoves emit considerable pollution, which causes millions of premature deaths each year—1.7 million deaths in South Asia alone.”…


… “The cost of providing universal access to clean-fuel stoves could be included in the financial aid that developed nations have pledged to provide to the developing world to offset the costs of climate mitigation and adaptation, ...

A solution in the future.

Space solar: The global race to tap the sun’s energy from orbit




https://www.newscientist.com/article...16-GLOBAL-hoot


… "PG&E, one of the world’s biggest utilities, has an unusual deal on its books. It has pledged to buy all the solar power produced by a tiny, secretive California start-up. But you won’t find these panels laid out in orderly rows across a baking desert – they will be in orbit 36,000 kilometres above Earth. There, they will collect the sun’s limitless energy and beam it down to power grids.
This isn’t just California dreaming. A surprising number of space solar projects are under way around the world, with some heavyweight backers. China is in on the act, and aims to have prototypes in orbit in the 2020s. Russia has already built a prototype, and Japan is so committed to the idea that it has launched a national space solar programme and plans to have operational satellites by the 2030s. The US Navy and several aerospace firms are interested too. So are we seeing the start of a second space race?”…

A interesting concept for cars of the future.

Test-driving the hydrogen car that makes a little go a long way


https://www.newscientist.com/article...GLOBAL-twitter


… "a new kind of vehicle: its motors are in its wheels, it brakes without friction and it can drive 480 kilometres on one tank of the lightest element in the universe.
Spowers is taking me for a spin in the Rasa, a prototype hydrogen car that emits only water vapour. Trying to power a normal car with hydrogen usually requires a bulky fuel cell capable of delivering the same output as a combustion engine – typically around 100 kilowatts. But the Rasa, built by start-up Riversimple in Llandrindod Wells, UK, does things differently.
Rather than making a fuel cell that can power a normal car, Spowers has designed a car around the fuel cell. This means it requires 10 times less power than an ordinary car. But even with the lightweight design, this power is only enough to keep the vehicle cruising. So the Rasa has another trick to generate the bursts of energy needed for acceleration.
The Rasa uses a sort of high-tech electricity trap called a super capacitor.”…

Differing accounts on the fortune of the oxygen creators.

http://www.prbo.org/sciencenews/?p=7903
https://aeon.co/essays/can-tiny-plan...climate-change


How long does carbon stay up there? Long term dangers:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...MxeXo.facebook

Originally Posted by radind

France is paving the way.

I could easily see land developers start to do this in the US once France has proven the technology. Side streets and parking lots will handle this a lot easier than busy streets that take a bigger beating from trucks. It will also mean a lot less reflected or absorbed heat and cooler cities and towns. Could be done in inner cities too in concert with replacing water mains and sewers and rebuilding streets.

Originally Posted by radind

A solution in the future.

ution in the future.

Space solar: The global race to tap the sun’s energy from orbit




https://www.newscientist.com/article...16-GLOBAL-hoot


… "PG&E, one of the world’s biggest utilities, has an unusual deal on its books. It has pledged to buy all the solar power produced by a tiny, secretive California start-up. But you won’t find these panels laid out in orderly rows across a baking desert – they will be in orbit 36,000 kilometres above Earth. There, they will collect the sun’s limitless energy and beam it down to power grids.
This isn’t just California dreaming. A surprising number of space solar projects are under way around the world, with some heavyweight backers. China is in on the act, and aims to have prototypes in orbit in the 2020s. Russia has already built a prototype, and Japan is so committed to the idea that it has launched a national space solar programme and plans to have operational satellites by the 2030s. The US Navy and several aerospace firms are interested too. So are we seeing the start of a second space race?”…

It's a great idea. If one likes power grids. It will be necessary to find an orbit that isn't full of space junk. And the biggest political problem will be environmental fears of how the power is beamed down to Earth. It dosen't matter how much damage such a beam would do. Just whether a moral panic could be generated against it by an astroturfed environmental group backed by existing or competing technological interests.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Differing accounts on the fortune of the oxygen creators.

http://www.prbo.org/sciencenews/?p=7903
https://aeon.co/essays/can-tiny-plan...climate-change


How long does carbon stay up there? Long term dangers:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...MxeXo.facebook

Life survived and thrived in much higher temperatures and CO2 levels than 6C, both in the Mesozoic and in the Eocene and even the Miocene. As fast as climate change is occurring in geological terms, it is slow enough in human economic terms for human society to adapt to it. A century is an eternity in human events.

Originally Posted by radind

Interesting article. I would like the US to push much harder on energy research and would prefer to transfer funds from other programs such as NASA( after over 50 years of US investment).

Interesting article. I would like the US to push much harder on energy research and would prefer to transfer funds from other programs such as NASA( after over 50 years of US investment).

Billionaires join governments to fight climate change


http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip...1063/PT.3.3078


"As representatives from 195 nations descended on Paris in December and concluded a landmark agreement to curb climate change, government leaders and billionaires from around the world announced separate initiatives to accelerate the development and deployment of new clean energy technologies. The heads of 20 nations pledged to double their countries’ funding for energy R&D over five years, and 27 billionaires, including Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, Alibaba chairman Jack Ma, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, joined forces to form the Breakthrough Energy Coalition and promised to invest their resources to commercialize fledgling energy technologies”…
… "The priority, says Bunn, is for cleaner, cheaper technologies to be deployed at the scale needed to really “bend the curve on greenhouse gas emissions. That scale is huge,” says Bunn. He points to a highly cited 2004 estimate by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala at Princeton University, who calculated that keeping the global temperature rise since preindustrial times at or below 2 °C in 2050 would require curtailing carbon emissions by 7 billion tons annually. Today the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that amount to be 18 billion tons. Emissions have grown faster than had been expected, and inaction over the past 11 years has shortened the time available to achieve stabilization. Earth’s atmosphere currently contains about 800 billion tons of carbon as carbon dioxide.”…

Of course they all want global warming fought on their own neo-liberal technocratic, collectively imperialistic terms.

Originally Posted by radind

My view is that the US has funded NASA for over 50 years and the tasks can be taken over by private industry and the military. Given our budget constraints, I would prefer to prioritize the funding and give much more weight to energy research.

Prizes for private advances in space such as first unmanned orbital mission to Uranus, Neptune, Titan, balloon probes of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, ect.--and larger prizes for manned missions and cutting edge tech like a 1G of thrust VASIMIR space drive might be one way to go. Protection of private claims to space resources (within reason--nobody should be able to claim the whole Moon by building the first base on the Moon) would also be helpful. The Americas were originally explored and settled from Europe by private joint stock companies, after all. They just have to sunset at a reasonable time so that they don't become as parasitic in space as the 1% is on Earth now.

Originally Posted by radind

France is paving the way.

France to Pave 1,000 Km of Solar Road, Providing 5 Million With Power
http://thescienceexplorer.com/techno...-million-power


… "The French government has unveiled plans to pave 1,000 Kilometres (621 Miles) of the country’s roads with solar panels over the next five years, which will ultimately supply power to millions of people.
According to France’s Agency of Environment and Energy Management, a 4-meter stretch of solarized road is enough to supply one household with electricity, and one kilometre of road would be enough to supply lighting to a settlement of 5000 people. The French minister of ecology and energy has said that the government intends to proceed with the idea, which could deliver electricity to as many as 5 million people — roughly 8 percent of the French population.”…

It might be one way to force environmentalists to shut up about new land developments increasing greenhouse gasses.

From the article:
"But you won’t find these panels laid out in orderly rows across a baking desert – they will be in orbit 36,000 kilometres above Earth. There, they will collect the sun’s limitless energy and beam it down to power grids."

Might want to give this a think ...

Consider that this orbital energy collection system is gathering energy (Kcalories, watts, etc.) outside the Earth's system. Then we zap it down to ground level and turn it loose somehow. And furthermore, the scale needs to be gargantuan simply because of the energy needs of all the folks.

Energy added to a system pretty much has to go somewhere. Either sent back out into space, or turned into some other kind of energy here on the surface.

My question ... how does this "solution" help us with global warming?

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

Life survived and thrived in much higher temperatures and CO2 levels than 6C, both in the Mesozoic and in the Eocene and even the Miocene. As fast as climate change is occurring in geological terms, it is slow enough in human economic terms for human society to adapt to it. A century is an eternity in human events.

Climate change is already happening too fast for many species. We have no right to kill them off just to protect a few fossil fuel barons.

Originally Posted by TnT

From the article:
"But you won’t find these panels laid out in orderly rows across a baking desert – they will be in orbit 36,000 kilometres above Earth. There, they will collect the sun’s limitless energy and beam it down to power grids."

Might want to give this a think ...

Consider that this orbital energy collection system is gathering energy (Kcalories, watts, etc.) outside the Earth's system. Then we zap it down to ground level and turn it loose somehow. And furthermore, the scale needs to be gargantuan simply because of the energy needs of all the folks.

Energy added to a system pretty much has to go somewhere. Either sent back out into space, or turned into some other kind of energy here on the surface.

My question ... how does this "solution" help us with global warming?

The thing to note about burning fossil fuel is that the heat caused by the greenhouse gas release is over the long term greater than the heat produced in heating your home or moving your car. It's just spread out so much that you aren't aware of it.

As I understand it, the energy will be sent down from the orbital solar farms as microwave radiation, as photons, closely akin to what cooks your frozen dinner, the same particles/waves but not the same frequency as light or radio.

I don't know the numbers, but I'm sure the orbit to ground microwave transmission isn't 100% efficient. Some of the radiation will miss the receiver and the receiver won't be perfect, so some of the microwaves from orbit are going to heat the equipment and the ground near the equipment. Then, assuming the rest of the energy is pushed into the grid, any use of grid energy won't be 100% efficient either. The laws of thermodynamics say there will be waste heat.

But intuitively it won't be as bad as the greenhouse effect. Again, in burning fossil fuel, there is more heat caused by greenhouse than can be used to heat a house or generate electricity. I haven't even begun to crunch numbers, but the concept seems believable.

I also heard a Darwin Award story about a security guard hired to guard a new remote telephone microwave tower, recently built, still being tested and brought up. The phone companies have for decades used point to point microwave links to move data. As microwaves travel line of sight, the transmitters and receivers are placed on tall towers located on the horizon from one another. Anyway, it got cold at night in this story, so the guard settled into a chair in front of the microwave transmitter dish to keep warm. The engineers were at first puzzled that the transmitter wasn't as efficient as it ought to have been, found the cause, and warned him in no uncertain terms not to do that. Microwaves can be hazardous to one's health. That's why microwave ovens shut off when one opens the door. Stern warnings delivered, the engineers went back to their control room to begin the full power tests.

As I said, it's a Darwin Award story. Don't know how true it is. Microwaves aren't harmless though. Hopefully the downlinks from the orbital solar farms will be well focused, and the ground stations isolated. Also, hopefully, James Bond's arch enemies such as SCEPTER won't hack into the satellites and use them as orbital death ray doomsday devices. With the space shuttles grounded, it might not be possible to get enough shapely secret agents up there to recover control of the birds.

Originally Posted by B Butler

... I also heard a Darwin Award story about a security guard hired to guard a new remote telephone microwave tower, recently built, still being tested and brought up. The phone companies have for decades used point to point microwave links to move data. As microwaves travel line of sight, the transmitters and receivers are placed on tall towers located on the horizon from one another. Anyway, it got cold at night in this story, so the guard settled into a chair in front of the microwave transmitter dish to keep warm. The engineers were at first puzzled that the transmitter wasn't as efficient as it ought to have been, found the cause, and warned him in no uncertain terms not to do that. Microwaves can be hazardous to one's health. That's why microwave ovens shut off when one opens the door. Stern warnings delivered, the engineers went back to their control room to begin the full power tests.

As I said, it's a Darwin Award story. Don't know how true it is. Microwaves aren't harmless though. Hopefully the downlinks from the orbital solar farms will be well focused, and the ground stations isolated. Also, hopefully, James Bond's arch enemies such as SCEPTER won't hack into the satellites and use them as orbital death ray doomsday devices. With the space shuttles grounded, it might not be possible to get enough shapely secret agents up there to recover control of the birds.

I was stationed in southern Japan in the late '60s, and we used some high power microwave systems to link our site with the large troposcatter facility at Camp Zama outside Tokyo. Because of the radiation risk, when someone needed to work on the antenna, the system would be shutdown and tagged. One day, some idiot clerk, to impatient to wait for the system to be restarted, decided that a big red tag with WARNING in bold letters didn't apply to him. He removed the tag and turned the microwave back on, while the technician had his arm inside the waveguide. The tech noticed his arm getting warm, then it started to get hot and he lost all strength in the arm. Once the cause was know, he was airlifted to a hospital somewhere and he never returned. The clerk was reassigned too.

So this does happen.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I was stationed in southern Japan in the late '60s, and we used some high power microwave systems to link our site with the large troposcatter facility at Camp Zama outside Tokyo. Because of the radiation risk, when someone needed to work on the antenna, the system would be shutdown and tagged. One day, some idiot clerk, too impatient to wait for the system to be restarted, decided that a big red tag with WARNING in bold letters didn't apply to him. He removed the tag and turned the microwave back on, while the technician had his arm inside the waveguide. The tech noticed his arm getting warm, then it started to get hot and he lost all strength in the arm. Once the cause was know, he was airlifted to a hospital somewhere and he never returned. The clerk was reassigned too.

So this does happen.

Alas, I don't know of any award given when you remove someone else's genes from the pool.

As the orbital solar farm microwave transmitters will be designed to transmit power rather than carry data, I'm assuming they will be a lot more potent than the current tower to tower communications systems. This ought to require some pretty strict safety and security protocols. A sign next to the on/off switch seems inadequate.

More solar technology developing, good for our future.


http://www.photonics.com/Article.asp...wsletter&PID=6

Heliatek OPV Cell Sets New World Record
DRESDEN, Germany, Feb. 12, 2016 — The R&D teams from organic flexible solar film manufacturer Heliatek GmbH said they have reached conversion efficiency of 13.2 percent for an organic photovoltaic (OPV) multi-injection cell, setting a new world record for the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity using OPV cells.

Originally Posted by B Butler

... I don't know the numbers, but I'm sure the orbit to ground microwave transmission isn't 100% efficient. Some of the radiation will miss the receiver and the receiver won't be perfect, so some of the microwaves from orbit are going to heat the equipment and the ground near the equipment. Then, assuming the rest of the energy is pushed into the grid, any use of grid energy won't be 100% efficient either. The laws of thermodynamics say there will be waste heat.

But intuitively it won't be as bad as the greenhouse effect. Again, in burning fossil fuel, there is more heat caused by greenhouse than can be used to heat a house or generate electricity. I haven't even begun to crunch numbers, but the concept seems believable.
...

Burning fossil fuels has the impact of doing something WITHIN the system - the fossil fuels came from the system, were captured, and are now being recaptured and turned loose. One might speculate that global warming shouldn't get any worse than it has ever been, based on that. Not that that is a very attractive prospect.

But now, consider that we release a large fraction of this trapped carbon, in the form of greenhouse gas CO2, and then all the CH4 that's been trapped in the permafrost, and THEN add in some more energy from outer space ...

I don't think it has to be inefficient use of energy in order to contribute. Energy is energy ... it's going to become heat eventually unless it is sequestered in some fashion.

Originally Posted by TnT

Burning fossil fuels has the impact of doing something WITHIN the system - the fossil fuels came from the system, were captured, and are now being recaptured and turned loose. One might speculate that global warming shouldn't get any worse than it has ever been, based on that. Not that that is a very attractive prospect.

But now, consider that we release a large fraction of this trapped carbon, in the form of greenhouse gas CO2, and then all the CH4 that's been trapped in the permafrost, and THEN add in some more energy from outer space ...

I don't think it has to be inefficient use of energy in order to contribute. Energy is energy ... it's going to become heat eventually unless it is sequestered in some fashion.

We already receive a lot of energy from the sun. The basic concept is capturing solar energy and convert it to electrical energy to avoid the use of fossil fuels.
-Burning these fuels releases heat and CO2 into the environment.
Even if the energy were redirected from mirrors in space, I don’t see a significant increase compared to the energy already being received directly from the sun.
The net effect , in my opinion, would be to reduce the net heat introduced into the environment.


Following is one reference( I will check for better source).

Solar Radiation and the Earth's Energy Balance.


http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees...res/radiation/


… "Solar radiation on Earth: As the Sun's energy spreads through space its spectral characteristics do not change because space contains almost no interfering matter. However the energy flux drops monotonically as the square of the distance from the Sun. Thus, when the radiation reaches the outer limit of the Earth’s atmosphere, several hundred kilometers over the Earth’s surface, the radiative flux is approximately 1360 W/m^2”…

Originally Posted by radind

We already receive a lot of energy from the sun. The basic concept is capturing solar energy and convert it to electrical energy to avoid the use of fossil fuels.
-Burning these fuels releases heat and CO2 into the environment.
Even if the energy were redirected from mirrors in space, I don’t see a significant increase compared to the energy already being received directly from the sun.
The net effect , in my opinion, would be to reduce the net heat introduced into the environment.


Following is one reference( I will check for better source).

The following is an interesting article on concept from Japan.

How Japan Plans to Build an Orbital Solar Farm


http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/...tal-solar-farm


… "would be safe to send a powerful beam of microwaves down to Earth. Wouldn’t it cook whatever’s in its path, like food in a microwave oven? Some people have a grisly mental image of roasted seagulls dropping from the sky. In fact, the beam wouldn’t even be intense enough to heat your coffee. In the center of the beam in a commercial SPS system, the power density would be 1 kilowatt per square meter, which is about equal to the intensity of sunlight. As the regulatory limit for sustained human exposure to microwaves is typically set at 10 watts per square meter, however, the rectenna site would have to be a restricted area, and maintenance workers who enter that zone would have to take simple precautions, such as donning protective clothing. But the land outside the rectenna site would be perfectly safe. At a distance of 2 km from its center, the beam’s power density will have already dropped below the regulatory threshold.”…

I'm having trouble making myself clear.

We currently live on a planet that is relatively a closed system, except that sunlight comes to us, filtered through the atmosphere. Before we started burning fossil fuel like crazy, there existed a heterogenous equilibrium of sorts. And even that was significantly unstable, resulting in climate changes that happen now and again. The big difference is that we have introduced a variable that is moving climate very rapidly. Left to its own devices, the planet would likely continue to cycle in and out of big climate changes, but likely over many millenia instead of a century or two. Except of course something really big like Yellowstone blowing up or something.

Now, you propose introducing from outer space enough energy to completely replace all the electricity in the grids around the world. That is a shitload of energy. Now we're NOT talking about running a microwave oven. This energy is presumably unfiltered by the atmosphere due to some technological wizardry. There are ways to sequester energy, by turning it into higher energy chemical bonds and the like, but that's presumably not what is intended.

So ... we've got all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. I suppose it could go away over time, given some hypothesis. And now we dump in a whole bunch more energy from outside the system. But my question is a thermodynamic one ... where does all this energy needed to run the whole world, that is captured outside our relatively closed system, go? It doesn't simply evaporate like a mist on a hot summer day.

The introduction of solar energy via mirrors in space would replace the energy currently being generated by burning fossil fuels. Since this burning is less than 100% efficient, there is already extra heat going into the system. It seems to me that the new solar energy would not introduce more heat than that from fossil fuels( probably less).
So, I don’t see this as a problem.

How does the Earth system generate and maintain thermodynamic disequilibrium and what does it imply for the future of the planet?


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3261436/


… "When we deal with the Earth system, a good choice for the boundary is the top of the atmosphere. There, the dominant exchange is radiative, with low entropy solar radiation—in terms of its photon composition as well as its confinement to a narrow solid angle—entering the Earth system and terrestrial radiation with some scattered solar radiation being returned to space. With this choice of boundary, the Earth is almost a closed system (ignoring the relatively small exchange owing to gravity and mass, such as hydrogen escape to space that could have played an important role in the Earth’s past).”…


… "To understand the drivers for present-day disequilibrium, we need to estimate the generation rates of free energy within the Earth system. These can be estimated by considering the primary drivers that supply free energy from external sources and that feed the hierarchy of transfer shown in figure 2. Using these drivers, a global free energy budget is derived and shown in figure 4. In contrast to the well-established global energy balance, the free energy balance emphasizes the importance of the biota in the planetary free energy generation (in particular, in the form of chemical free energy) and highlights the magnitude of human activity in dissipating free energy. The estimates are based on Kleidon [17] and are described in the following sections.”…


… "Solar photochemical engines. Incident solar radiation contains wavelengths that can be used to generate chemical free energy when visible or ultraviolet radiation is absorbed by electronic absorption or photodissociation. Photodissociation can, in principle, generate radicals that are associated with free energy, but it is omitted here because those compounds have very short residence times and therefore unlikely to result in sustained free energy generation of significant magnitude. Photosynthesis is able to generate longer lasting free energy using complex photochemistry that prevents rapid dissipation. Using typical values for global gross primary productivity and typical free energy content of carbohydrates yields a generation rate of chemical free energy of about 215 TW [6].”…


… "The free energy used for human activities are, of course, drawn out of the Earth system and thereby affect its state. At present, much of the free energy needs for industrial use are met by depleting a stock of geological free energy (in the form of fossil fuels) and this results in global climatic change owing to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere. If this depletion is going to be replaced by renewable sources of free energy—as commonly suggested to avoid emissions of carbon dioxide—then this is going to leave an impact on the free energy balance of the planet. Other impacts of human activity, such as the emission of methane, nitrous oxide or soot, also relate, directly or indirectly, to the combustion of fuels or to food production, and should also relate to the Earth's free energy balance. Hence, it would seem appropriate to relate human activity as well as its impacts on the Earth system to its basic driver, the need for free energy. This need for free energy would seem to be the most important metric to measure the impact of humans on the planet and would seem to serve to be a highly useful metric to evaluate potential future impacts.”…


… "I have provided a holistic description of the functioning of the whole Earth system that is grounded in the generation, transfer and dissipation of free energy from external forcings to geochemical cycling and the associated fundamental limits to these rates. Because free energy generation is needed to maintain a disequilibrium state, this description allows us to understand why the Earth system is maintained far from equilibrium without violating the second law of thermodynamics. I showed how biotic activity generates substantial amounts of chemical free energy by exploiting free energy in solar photons that is not accessible to purely physical heat engines. Hence, Lovelock's notion of chemical disequilibrium within the Earth's atmosphere as a sign for widespread life can be substantiated and quantified. This paper can hence be seen as a direct continuation of the work by Lovelock [1,2] on understanding the Earth as a single system that is strongly shaped by life.”…


… "The only sustainable way to meet the increasing needs for free energy by human activity would seem to use human technology in such a way that it would enhance the overall ability of the Earth system to generate free energy. This was illustrated using the two examples of ‘desert greening’ and the direct use of solar energy by photovoltaics or by heat engines using direct solar radiation in deserts. Even though this would require careful analysis and planning of potential, detrimental side effects, it would seem that it is only through the large-scale use of human technology that the Earth system could sustainably generate more free energy, yielding a more prosperous and empowered future of the planet.”…

Originally Posted by TnT

I'm having trouble making myself clear.

We currently live on a planet that is relatively a closed system, except that sunlight comes to us, filtered through the atmosphere. Before we started burning fossil fuel like crazy, there existed a heterogenous equilibrium of sorts. And even that was significantly unstable, resulting in climate changes that happen now and again. The big difference is that we have introduced a variable that is moving climate very rapidly. Left to its own devices, the planet would likely continue to cycle in and out of big climate changes, but likely over many millenia instead of a century or two. Except of course something really big like Yellowstone blowing up or something.

Now, you propose introducing from outer space enough energy to completely replace all the electricity in the grids around the world. That is a shitload of energy. Now we're NOT talking about running a microwave oven. This energy is presumably unfiltered by the atmosphere due to some technological wizardry. There are ways to sequester energy, by turning it into higher energy chemical bonds and the like, but that's presumably not what is intended.

So ... we've got all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. I suppose it could go away over time, given some hypothesis. And now we dump in a whole bunch more energy from outside the system. But my question is a thermodynamic one ... where does all this energy needed to run the whole world, that is captured outside our relatively closed system, go? It doesn't simply evaporate like a mist on a hot summer day.

A major factor in the balance of energy is the frequency of the light. Much of the incoming energy is near the visible frequency range, the frequencies from red to violet inclusive. Excepting where clouds are present, the atmosphere is pretty well transparent at those frequencies. Most of the outgoing energy is in the infra red spectrum, a significantly lower frequency. Greenhouse gasses are not transparent to infra red. Thus, the more greenhouse gasses present, the less energy leaves the atmosphere as infra red electromagnetic waves.

Most people don't have a good feel for how hot objects give off infra red radiation. As an example, I'll mention the phenomena of poop flares. I've had a few relevant conversations with a drone driver. He used to commute from his home in the Boston suburbs to an air force base where he controlled drones flying over Afghanistan and neighboring areas. Now, there are many places in that part of the world where they don't have indoor plumbing, and where the homes are surrounded by walls. In the morning, one would commonly observe using infra red sensors from a drone high above, people coming out of the walls in the morning with the subsequent appearance of easily detected poop flares. Even moderately warm object create fairly large amounts of infra red radiation that can be detected by a drone or, barring greenhouse gasses, escape freely into space. Warm objects cool. Guess where a lot of that energy goes?

Think about it. Bright sunlight coming down in the sky on a typical blue sky day. Lots and lots of obvious energy. Infra red radiation going up, escaping into space. They are in an approximate balance, what was a very good balance until just after the US Civil War. Roughly as much energy is coming down as going out. There is lots and lots of energy going out as infra red. People just aren't aware of it.

This balance between what comes down and what gets out is the largest factor in man made changes to climate.

Mind you, plants are another factor on a much longer time scale. The Earth was much much warmer in the very much long ago. Volcanos spewed carbon dioxide. The atmosphere had much more carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, than it does today. Thus, lots of energy came in, not so much got out.

Then photosynthesis evolved. Carbon dioxide got turned into oxygen. Animals found this convenient. The planet became more livable... and cooler as more infra red energy could escape. But as Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) was converted to Oxygen (O₂ + Carbon), the left over carbon was stored in the form of coal, oil, peat, etc...

In the school books they often show dinosaurs wandering around in warm jungle climates with abundant plants. This is generally true. For most of Earth's history, the climate over most of the world was significantly warmer. Warmer, but slowly cooling. Over many many millennia, plants were taking CO₂ out of the air and storing it as oil, gas and peat. As the CO₂ was taken out of the air, the planet ever so slowly cooled.

There are other factors. Once in a while both poles iced over. This only happened when a polar region is covered by land (as in modern Antartica) or surrounded by land (as in the modern Arctic.) It is only when ocean currents cannot bring heat to the poles from the equator that the poles freeze. When both polls are isolated by land, you have the potential for ice age conditions. The position of the continents can be as important as the carbon dioxide concentration, but continents move so slowly as to not be anything approaching a factor over the few centuries of human fossil fuel burning.

The poles icing over contribute to the cooling in another way. White ice and snow reflect light back out into space. Thus, if the world starts to get cool enough to form big ice caps, the world starts getting even cooler because of the big ice caps. This is known as a positive feed back loop. The cooler it gets, the cooler it gets, which makes it cooler, which results in more ice, which... Well, you get the idea.

This works in reverse. As things get warmer, as there is less ice, there is less heat reflected into space, things get warmer. This is why the two degrees limit is important. If the Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland ice all melts, this will force the temperature warmer by a factor comparable to all the burning of oil and coal. It is thought that hopefully not too much ice will melt if we hold the temperature shift to two degrees. Unfortunately, it looks like the Arctic and Greenland are already melting. Throughout history, if the northern ice melts, the southern ice follows.

Anyway, man using energy in most ways does not significantly warm or cool the planet. Man using energy in a way that puts CO₂ back into the atmosphere matters very much.

Another factor I haven't seen mentioned is that solar sun farms casting shadows. Big solar panels in orbit turning visible light into microwaves will block energy from getting to Earth. The effect might be similar to solar dimming. It will be another cooling factor.

Of course it would take an awful lot of orbital solar panels for this to become a large factor.

Article describes exemptions from the agreement.

Aircraft and ships must not be exempt from emissions cuts


https://www.newscientist.com/article...missions-cuts/


… "Aiming for a 2 °C limit would have been considered ambitious, but leaders seized the moment and went for 1.5 °C. According to our analysis, this is achievable, but only just (see “The big carbon clean-up: 2 steps to stop global warming at 1.5 °C“). It depends on two very difficult conditions being met. One is to decarbonise the economy very quickly. The other is to find a way to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
The immediate task, though, is to stop emitting carbon. That is not helped by a gaping loophole that has existed in climate negotiations since the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, and still runs right through the Paris agreement. Ships and aircraft are getting a free ride.”…
… "A deal that proposes to limit warming to well below 2 °C but fails to mention ships and aircraft is farcical. They both appeared in early drafts of the agreement but mysteriously disappeared in the final hours.”…