Originally Posted by radind

I don't see Trump winning but if he does win, I would not expect him to stop progress on new energy development.

As a climate science denier, yes he would. I would expect him to repeal the coal regulations, thus nullifying the Paris agreement, and slowing the regulation of car mileage, thus continuing our reliance on gasoline. I would expect approval of more X-L pipelines, thus reviving the production of polluting tar sands oil. As far as I know, he has no environmental consciousness at all.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

As a climate science denier, yes he would.

There are economic benefits in shifting to solar, so I expect Trump to look at this aspect. I actually don't know what Trump really believes on any issue. He seems to say whatever gets him the most attention.
-His views on anything except 'winning' are a mystery to me.

Originally Posted by radind

There are economic benefits in shifting to solar, so I expect Trump to look at this aspect. I actually don't know what Trump really believes on any issue. He seems to say whatever gets him the most attention.
-His views on anything except 'winning' are a mystery to me.

That's possible indeed. I just wouldn't want to take that chance since I (unlike yourself) have definitely heard him deny climate science. However, like you say, his real issue is himself, and his own ability to "make America great again," so who knows for sure.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

As a climate science denier, yes he would. I would expect him to repeal the coal regulations, thus nullifying the Paris agreement, and slowing the regulation of car mileage, thus continuing our reliance on gasoline. I would expect approval of more X-L pipelines, thus reviving the production of polluting tar sands oil. As far as I know, he has no environmental consciousness at all.

With commodity prices in the toilet and still falling (and given the fact that at least some of the faux recovery was due to the US oil and natural gas boom), and with talk of negative interest rates, promoting oil / coal / natural gas development is national economic suicide. There was talk on another thread that we should take advantage of these low prices to tack on taxes to fossil fuels and that may not be a bad idea.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

That's possible indeed. I just wouldn't want to take that chance since I (unlike yourself) have definitely heard him deny climate science. However, like you say, his real issue is himself, and his own ability to "make America great again," so who knows for sure.

Make AmeriKKKa great again fur der volk! / sarc

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

Make AmeriKKKa great again fur der volk! / sarc

White identity politics. Classic Xer and Flat58 like him.

(no accusation intended )

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

As a climate science denier, yes he would. I would expect him to repeal the coal regulations, thus nullifying the Paris agreement, and slowing the regulation of car mileage, thus continuing our reliance on gasoline. I would expect approval of more X-L pipelines, thus reviving the production of polluting tar sands oil. As far as I know, he has no environmental consciousness at all.

I wouldn't be surprised if a Trump DOJ treats blockading as racketeering under RICO, subjecting particpants, organisers and funders alike to criminal prosecution.

Batteries are advancing.

http://www.fastcoexist.com/3051217/t...newable-energy

Global sea levels rising faster due to global warming
Man-made climate change responsible for fastest rise in sea levels in the past 2,800 years.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/0...201945865.html

Sea levels are rising several times faster than in the past 2,800 years and are accelerating because of man-made global warming, according to new studies.

An international team of scientists dug into two dozen locations across the globe to chart gently rising and falling seas over centuries and millennia. Until the 1880s and the world's industrialisation, the fastest rise in sea levels was about 3cm to 4cm a century, plus or minus a bit.

During that time the global sea level really did not get much higher or lower than 7.62cm above or below the 2,000-year average. But in the 20th century the world's seas rose 14cm.

Since 1993 the rate has soared to 30cm and two different studies, published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that by 2100 the world's oceans would rise between 28 and 131cm, depending on how much heat-trapping gas Earth's industries and vehicles expel.

"There's no question that the 20th century is the fastest," said Bob Kopp, Rutgers earth and planetary sciences professor and the lead author of the study that looked back at sea levels over the past three millennia.

"It's because of the temperature increase in the 20th century, which has been driven by fossil fuel use."

If seas continue to rise as projected, another 45cm of sea-level rise will cause lots of problems and expense, especially with surge during storms, said study co-author Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

The link to temperature is basic science, the study's authors say. Warm water expands. Cold water contracts. The scientists pointed to specific past eras when temperatures and sea rose and fell together.

Both studies project increases of about 57 to 131cm if greenhouse gas pollution continues at the current rate. If countries fulfill the treaty agreed last year in Paris and limit further warming to another two degrees Fahrenheit, the rise in sea levels would be in the 28cm to 56cm range.

Originally Posted by radind

I probably won't be around to see it, but I do expect solar to eventually become the basis for most power and new storage technology should be able to solve the baseload problem.

As Bill Gates noted, no storage is anywhere near as energy dense as liquid fuels. All those nice chemical bonds holding the energy at bay. Now, find a way to efficiently convert solar to chemical, and you have a winner.

Originally Posted by radind

There are economic benefits in shifting to solar, so I expect Trump to look at this aspect. I actually don't know what Trump really believes on any issue. He seems to say whatever gets him the most attention.
-His views on anything except 'winning' are a mystery to me.

Bravo! That's the most accurate and succinct political analysis of the man I've read.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

As Bill Gates noted, no storage is anywhere near as energy dense as liquid fuels. All those nice chemical bonds holding the energy at bay. Now, find a way to efficiently convert solar to chemical, and you have a winner.

You just need way to store the energy( 'high tech battery')

Originally Posted by radind

You just need way to store the energy( 'high tech battery')

I'm not a chemist, but Mike Alexander may be able to assist here. The only battery I've heard about that has a shot of joining liquid fuels in energy density is a sugar battery ... which is really more like a fuel cell than a battery.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I'm not a chemist, but Mike Alexander may be able to assist here. The only battery I've heard about that has a shot of joining liquid fuels in energy density is a sugar battery ... which is really more like a fuel cell than a battery.

This the type of energy storage the I had in mind. I am sure that there are better sites, perhaps Eric could provide some.

http://www.pv-magazine.com/opinion-a...#axzz41IYpcnkJ


… "The final quarter of 2015 saw a significant increase in planned global energy storage projects, up 45% on the previous quarter, to reach nearly 400 MW. The overall pipeline of planned battery and flywheel projects now stands at 1.6 GW. The majority – 45% – are planned for the U.S., although Japan is expected to comprise around 20%.”…

Let's see -- glycerine is a liquid at STP; it is practically non-toxic (the chemical hazard is that it is a desiccant). It would be tougher to tax than alcohol.

Originally Posted by radind

This the type of energy storage the I had in mind. I am sure that there are better sites, perhaps Eric could provide some.

From your link I saw this:

The 75 MW of contracts comprise seven projects, of which four are lithium-ion battery projects (accounting for 42 MW), two are zinc/air battery storage projects (13 MW) and one is a flywheel project (20 MW), which is a first for PG&E.

Read more: http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...#ixzz41Ikptrra

I am not familiar with those. I was not expecting large-scale lithium-ion battery projects. What I had seen before were molten salt batteries installed at some solar energy plants.

http://inhabitat.com/revolutionary-n...and-all-night/

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

As Bill Gates noted, no storage is anywhere near as energy dense as liquid fuels. All those nice chemical bonds holding the energy at bay. Now, find a way to efficiently convert solar to chemical, and you have a winner.

Precisely. The general idea is like this:

1. CO2 + H2O + sunlight --> CH2O + O2
2. Sunight + solar cells --> electricity
3. 2 H2O + electricity -- H2 + O2
4. CH20 + H2 -> CH2 + H20


If you sum up both sides of the reaction and cancel out similar terms on each side you get

2 CO2 + 2 H2O + sunlight --> 2 CH2 + 3 O2

Here CH2 represents liquid hydrocarbon fuels, actually the formula would be closer to CH2.2, but CH2 is close enough for this purpose. The net equation is simply the reverse of the combustion equation. That is all you have to do is "unburn" the fuel were have already burned so as to burn it again without adding CO2 to the atmosphere. If you sequester the CO2 the net effect of this would be to convert sunlight into energy and simulataneous "pump" CO2 out of the atmosphere and into the ground--all powered by sunlight.

Reaction 1 is photosynthesis, a reaction humans have been utilizing for 10000+ years, which is better known as agriculture.
Reaction 2 is solar-generated electricity, the excess of which over need would be converted into fuel for latter use when the sun isn't shining.
Reaction 3 is electrolysis of water, a well-developed industrial technology.
Reaction 4 is a reforming reaction in which carbohydrate is reduced to a hydrocarbon using hydrogen.

Agriculture is well developed and can cheaply produce all the CH2O (carbohydrate) we would need to employ this scheme. The problem is the vast majority of carbohydrates occur as either cellulose (non-woody plant fibers) or worse still lignocellulose (wood). To put these carbs into a useable form it is necessary to break them down into the sugars there are made of (for wood you have the extra step of removing the lignin). This is hard to do. People have worked on this since WW II, and I am not optimistic we can can do this.

Another way to so this is you employ artificial photosynthesis in which catalysts and sunlight are used to reduce carbon dioxide and water into a product that is easy to handle. People are working in this (I suspect this is what has Gates excited). If this is cracked it would be huge (or yuge for you Trump fans).

The reforming reaction is just a place holder. Hydrocarbons are the gold standard of energy storage. The energy stored in them can be converted to electricity at rates approaching 70%. The high energy density of hydrocarbons comes from there hydrogen content. Burning carbon yields about 8 cal per gram compared to 27 cal per gram for hydrogen. Hydrogen is hard to store. A hydrocarbon (CH2) has about 11 cal per gram and is liquid and is easy to store. Algae can do this (i.e. they can produce fat), which can be reformed into hydrocarbons. But they also produce a lot of biomass and so are hard to handle.

The killer ap would be an artificial photosynthesis reaction that produced hydrocarbons (and not much else) from sunlight. It sounds like science fiction but all it takes is the right catalysts. Advances in material science and supercomputer simulations means better inorganic catalysts. And the gene jocks* promise better biocatalysts (enzymes). So there is lots of room for optimism.

*the advances in this field beyond what was possible when I was in grad school are mind-blowing.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

From your link I saw this:

The 75 MW of contracts comprise seven projects, of which four are lithium-ion battery projects (accounting for 42 MW), two are zinc/air battery storage projects (13 MW) and one is a flywheel project (20 MW), which is a first for PG&E.

Read more: http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/deta...#ixzz41Ikptrra

I am not familiar with those. I was not expecting large-scale lithium-ion battery projects. What I had seen before were molten salt batteries installed at some solar energy plants.

http://inhabitat.com/revolutionary-n...and-all-night/

Here is one on the liquid metal battery. I think that you are right that this is a good approach.

http://phys.org/news/2016-01-battery...g-lasting.html
… "The liquid metal battery platform offers an unusual combination of features. In general, batteries are characterized by how much energy and how much power they can provide. (Energy is the total amount of work that can be done; power is how quickly work gets done.) In general, technologies do better on one measure than the other. For example, with capacitors, fast delivery is cheap, but abundant storage is expensive. With pumped hydropower, the opposite is true.
But for grid-scale storage, both capabilities are important—and the liquid metal battery can potentially do both. It can store a lot of energy (say, enough to last through a blackout) and deliver that energy quickly (for example, to meet demand instantly when a cloud passes in front of the sun). Unlike the lithium-ion battery, it should have a long lifetime; and unlike the lead-acid battery, it will not be degraded when being completely discharged. And while it now appears more expensive than pumped hydropower, the battery has no limitation on where it can be used. With pumped hydro, water is pumped uphill to a reservoir and then released through a turbine to generate power when it's needed. Installations therefore require both a hillside and a source of water. The liquid metal battery can be installed essentially anywhere.”…

Originally Posted by radind

Here is one on the liquid metal battery. I think that you are right that this is a good approach.

I understand that the molten salt and liquid metal batteries both have a state stability issue, where they can literally change to a solid without warning and be hard (impossible?) to recover. Just another challenge. If we have no challenges, we are out of work

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I understand that the molten salt and liquid metal batteries both have a state stability issue, where they can literally change to a solid without warning and be hard (impossible?) to recover. Just another challenge. If we have no challenges, we are out of work

We need challenges and we need a national push on energy/power technology development.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Real Climate also has an article on the recent CERN experiments, The CERN/CLOUD results are surprisingly interesting… The meat of the article reflects how the experiments really do suggest lots of stuff about interactions between cosmic rays and the atmosphere. The big theme is that the experiment calls for a need for more experiments. Those seriously following the "cosmic rays cause global warming" claim might want to review it. Those who aren't following the science would have a steep learning curve.

The new experiments don't say what the denialist propagandists would like to say, though.

My understanding of the cosmic ray evidence is that it is indirectly an argument that the solar constant is not so constant. A stronger magnetic field and solar wind generated by a more active (via sunspots) sun means fewer cosmic rays hitting the atmopshere and nucleating clouds. So besides Earth orbital cycles like the Mihailovich cycle, the level of sunspot actiivty does have an impact on overall climate independent of greenhouse gasses--and if it is strong enough, it can precipitate melting of Arctic permafrost and clathrates and increase methane and CO2 levels past a tipping point regardless of human activity.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

As Bill Gates noted, no storage is anywhere near as energy dense as liquid fuels. All those nice chemical bonds holding the energy at bay. Now, find a way to efficiently convert solar to chemical, and you have a winner.

Or have networks of solar power satellites beaming power to receptors on Earth and get around night shadow that way.

Originally Posted by radind

There are economic benefits in shifting to solar, so I expect Trump to look at this aspect. I actually don't know what Trump really believes on any issue. He seems to say whatever gets him the most attention.
-His views on anything except 'winning' are a mystery to me.

Bravo! T

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Bravo! That's the most accurate and succinct political analysis of the man I've read.

Nixon appealed to popular prejudice. And Nixon gave us the EPA and Clean Air Act and tried to give us national health insurance and guaranteed annual income.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

My understanding of the cosmic ray evidence is that it is indirectly an argument that the solar constant is not so constant. A stronger magnetic field and solar wind generated by a more active (via sunspots) sun means fewer cosmic rays hitting the atmopshere and nucleating clouds. So besides Earth orbital cycles like the Mihailovich cycle, the level of sunspot actiivty does have an impact on overall climate independent of greenhouse gasses--and if it is strong enough, it can precipitate melting of Arctic permafrost and clathrates and increase methane and CO2 levels past a tipping point regardless of human activity.

I've heard that spin. It doesn't fly.

The 11 year solar cycles give us all sorts of data on stronger and weaker sunspot periods. If you look at the temperature data with a few months rolling average, you can see the solar cycle plain as day with a casual glance. The more sunspots, the warmer you get. The low point in the solar cycles is very close to zero sunspots. One is not going to get less than zero sunspots, thus we aren't going to see solar energy getting less than what we see every 11 or so years.

And the greenhouse gas forcing factor over the long term is steadily over riding the small and periodic solar cycles.

This is a typical denialist approach. One proposes that some forcing factor will overwhelm the greenhouse gasses. Unfortunately, they seldom learn enough about the other forcing factors to know how absurd most of these claims are. When the satellites start observing a negative number of sunspots, I'll have to re-evaluate.

A whole bunch of volcanoes going off in a major way could buy us a reprieve, but that's not something I'm ready to hope for and have no reason to expect.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

Or have networks of solar power satellites beaming power to receptors on Earth and get around night shadow that way.

As someone who has worked in the RF field all hi life, I vote against this idea. Unless the intent is to reradiate this energy in a very similar RF band (i.e. visible light), beam management will be impossible. Even then, the beam will have to be coherent (i.e. dead carrier RF or laser). Even at that, as good as it will be, lensing will occur and some of the radiation will spill out of the beam and radiate whatever it hits. Power levels will have to be in the Gigawatts, so the spill will still be intense enough to be a huge microwave oven.