It's getting hot in here!

[101]

1 hour ago, The Moonster said:

We need to change everything IMO, not just the way we power cars. Making all cars electric obviously helps with petrol/diesel pollution but you're still charging them from a grid that isn't powered by clean energy. If everyone stopped using petrol and started charging tomorrow that'd be a huge increase in electrical usage that the grid would need to cope with. I watched a documentary called "Planet of the Humans" which opened my eyes a bit to just how many problems we've got changing the energy we use. I don't know how we fix it.

90% of Scotlands electricity is created using renewable sources but agree the personal transport systems will be unlocked by Hydrogen. Mining nickel for batteries is very bad for the environment and you're right if everyone switched to electrical power then the extra power creation would likely come from fossil fuels or nuclear power.

[vikingTON]

2 hours ago, The Moonster said:

We need to change everything IMO, not just the way we power cars. Making all cars electric obviously helps with petrol/diesel pollution but you're still charging them from a grid that isn't powered by clean energy. If everyone stopped using petrol and started charging tomorrow that'd be a huge increase in electrical usage that the grid would need to cope with. I watched a documentary called "Planet of the Humans" which opened my eyes a bit to just how many problems we've got changing the energy we use. I don't know how we fix it.

They currently turn the hydroelectric generators off and on like a tap whenever there's enough market demand to satisfy putting them on grid. The issue isn't the availability of clean energy supply (for Scotland's needs) but rather a useless capitalist marketplace that slaps too low penalties for carbon fuels/lets shyster companies transfer those costs to the consumer.

Edited December 16, 2020 by vikingTON

[Funky Nosejob]

2 hours ago, The Moonster said:

If everyone stopped using petrol and started charging tomorrow that'd be a huge increase in electrical usage that the grid would need to cope with.

There are power stations that run permanently to provide “background” electricity supply. The expensive, both financial and environmental, impact comes from booting up additional generators to meet peak demand. 

If they can incentivise people to charge EVs overnight the demand can then be met by the background generators and the impact will be greatly reduced. 
My wife bought an electric car earlier this year and it gets charged overnight on the Octopus Go tariff (5p per KWh). 

[Bairnardo]

There are power stations that run permanently to provide “background” electricity supply. The expensive, both financial and environmental, impact comes from booting up additional generators to meet peak demand. 

If they can incentivise people to charge EVs overnight the demand can then be met by the background generators and the impact will be greatly reduced. 
My wife bought an electric car earlier this year and it gets charged overnight on the Octopus Go tariff (5p per KWh). 

There arent enough base load power stations in the UK as it is though, apparently.

[DiegoDiego]

The national grid went from 40% coal powered to 2% in only eight years. If the will and the technology is there we can continue to make good progress.

[dorlomin]

Hydrogen is a terrible fuel source for cars. It takes a lot of energy to create it compared with the energy you get from using it. (Only getting 25% efficiency vs about 77% for a lithium ion cell). 

If you hook an electric car (lithium ion) up to a grid that runs on pure lignite coal it would still produce less CO2 per mile than a similar class of ICU (internal combustion engine car). Grids like the UK that now produces more than half of its electricity from low carbon sources far far better. Even when taking into account the full life time CO2 costs there are few to no scenarios were petrol vehicles come out better than electric. (other than extreme cold)

https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change

This is down to the nature of the engines. ICU's struggle to get more than 35% efficiency, that is they lost about 65% of the heat they generate without it doing work. Electric engines can get 90% efficiency and batteries can get up to 77% efficiency. Simply put far more of the energy is turned into motion. 

Globally the US and UK have been the world leaders in cutting CO2 per Kwh. 

For the UK this has been down to in part our phasing out of coal. Some people a couple of posts up have had some grumbles about capitalism and not charging for the costs of CO2. The UK carbon tax and emissions trading scheme sets a floor price of 24 euro per tonnes. This has been a large of part of the drive by privatised utilities companies to end their coal generating fleets.

But a large part of the UK reduction in carbon intensity has been the huge surge in offshore wind. We now have many of the worlds largest windfarms of our shores and those even bigger record breaking farms under construction or in final approval. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_the_United_Kingdom#Operational_offshore_wind_farms

(The US has been largely down to fracking gas but an important shift has been from the rapid expansion of renewables.)

Globally the huge surge in Asian coal power has been where most of the worlds new CO2 sources have come from. 

https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/20/files/GCP_CarbonBudget_2020.pdf

Obviously, per capita is important but China produces more CO2 per capita than the EU average or UK . 

In terms of hydroelectric, the UK and Scotland specifically does not have much capacity to exploit it. You need a river flowing from high to low. Due to its narrow island nature the UK and Scotland does not have large rivers. We do have some capacity of what is called pumped storage, that is where you have a dam at a higher level than a fresh water source. But this is not all that energy efficient and can be costly to build for the energy you get out. 

What is happening globally is the huge drop in various forms of batteries such as lithium ion now mean batteries are more competitive than fossil fuels for short term energy supply needs. This is usually met by what are called "peaker" power plants. These are plants that can switch on and spin up at short notice and run for a few hours. This makes them very expensive as they are used infrequently and are by design energy inefficient. Batteries now out perform them in these roles. 

 

 

 

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/

Increasingly decarbonisation in the west is being driven by market forces, carbon taxes plus falling costs of new renewables are pushing coal out of the market. In the coming decade the problems will  be how to manage sustained periods of limited to no renewables due to weeks of low wind etc. Here batteries are far more expansive as they are used to much less frequently to recoup capital costs. The hope is a new set of technologies called "flow batteries", these use liquids to charge and discharge and are made from far more common material than lithium so likely to be much cheaper (but very heavy). 

Globally the crazy low costs of solar energy are going to be huge in the coming decade. Simply put it will get to be cheaper to have heavy industry where there is a lot of solar energy. 

On the plus side, most humans tend to live where there is a lot of sunlight. The down side is certain countries are investing massively into coal in the developing world.

The UK (and thus Scotland) is on track to meet it Kyoto Protocol commitments. In fact we should be able to easily exceed our treat commitments to CO2 reduction. We have a legally binding commitment in UK law to decarbonise down to 20% our our 1990 CO2 emissions. This is mostly down to EU initiatives such as the EU ETS and Ed Milliband's Climate Change Act of 2008. Going forward, storage will be the biggest bottleneck for us as our off shore wind resource is outright ludicrous. (Lots of shallow waters in the North Sea). Globally we need the US to up it game and then some, they have stumbled into decarbonising through fracking and have some great state level initiatives (oddly enough Texas is a leader here). We need emerging economies to pick solar over coal where ever possible. But that will take loans and aid. We also need China and other Asian countries to seriously map out a rapid decarbonisation strategy. A global carbon tax would be great but I cannot see any real chance of it due to the rapid collapse in global trade cooperation. 

This is a pretty high level look at things. As always your mileage may vary. 

[Manifesto]

 

 

My work occasionally gets hire vehicles, and now have an electric small van on hire.

Full charge and you'd be bricking it on a return trip to Inverness.

 

What's worse is they were asking my opinions on electric outboards for the boats

 

WOT is 20 minutes, they can get tae fuckity.

 

* Get in the Sea is not the correct response in this instance.

[welshbairn]

I for one welcome our new crab overlords.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/20/crab-22-how-norways-fisheries-got-rich-but-on-an-invasive-species

[Stellaboz]

I call the big one Bitey

[beefybake]

51 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

I for one welcome our new crab overlords.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/20/crab-22-how-norways-fisheries-got-rich-but-on-an-invasive-species

****st.., imagine having those things down your trousers.  

Edited December 22, 2020 by beefybake

[101]

https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/stratosphere-major-winter-warming-watch-january-2021-fa/

 

This looks like fun, just as well we are stuck in the house anyway.

[dorlomin]

9 hours ago, 101 said:

https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/stratosphere-major-winter-warming-watch-january-2021-fa/

 

This looks like fun, just as well we are stuck in the house anyway.

It happens every year or so, it tends to cause us to get easterly winds from the continent rather than our usual prevailing westerlies from the Atlantic. Its one of those weather phenomena that has been known about for decades but recently the press have caught onto the term and now use it to jazz up "couple of weeks of cold weather". 

Expect the Telegraph, Mail and Express to announce the end of global warming or the beginning of a new ice age. 

The Guardian and Independent to announce this is all caused by the global climate emergency. 

Meteorologists to say, "a bit of a cold spell may be in the off". 

Edited January 2, 2021 by dorlomin

[Jacksgranda]

11 hours ago, 101 said:

https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/stratosphere-major-winter-warming-watch-january-2021-fa/

 

 

"Possibility of snow" type article.

[101]

2 hours ago, MixuFruit said:

tl;dr?

Extremely hot weather caused by the atmosphere or something in space will condensed the cold weather around the north of the planet with temperatures reaching -80 I think and if looks as if the winds will be NNE/NE/E which always causes a disaster.

[101]

16 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:

and the ski centres all shut to the likes of me, sakes.

By the looks of the article you'll be able to ski where ever you like 

[101]

England seem intent on becoming some kind of waste land by the looks of it.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bees-kill-pesticide-insect-sugar-neonic-b1784693.html

 

[coprolite]

On 18/12/2020 at 15:15, dorlomin said:

Hydrogen is a terrible fuel source for cars. It takes a lot of energy to create it compared with the energy you get from using it. (Only getting 25% efficiency vs about 77% for a lithium ion cell). 

If you hook an electric car (lithium ion) up to a grid that runs on pure lignite coal it would still produce less CO2 per mile than a similar class of ICU (internal combustion engine car). Grids like the UK that now produces more than half of its electricity from low carbon sources far far better. Even when taking into account the full life time CO2 costs there are few to no scenarios were petrol vehicles come out better than electric. (other than extreme cold)

https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change

This is down to the nature of the engines. ICU's struggle to get more than 35% efficiency, that is they lost about 65% of the heat they generate without it doing work. Electric engines can get 90% efficiency and batteries can get up to 77% efficiency. Simply put far more of the energy is turned into motion. 

Globally the US and UK have been the world leaders in cutting CO2 per Kwh. 

For the UK this has been down to in part our phasing out of coal. Some people a couple of posts up have had some grumbles about capitalism and not charging for the costs of CO2. The UK carbon tax and emissions trading scheme sets a floor price of 24 euro per tonnes. This has been a large of part of the drive by privatised utilities companies to end their coal generating fleets.

But a large part of the UK reduction in carbon intensity has been the huge surge in offshore wind. We now have many of the worlds largest windfarms of our shores and those even bigger record breaking farms under construction or in final approval. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_the_United_Kingdom#Operational_offshore_wind_farms

(The US has been largely down to fracking gas but an important shift has been from the rapid expansion of renewables.)

Globally the huge surge in Asian coal power has been where most of the worlds new CO2 sources have come from. 

https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/20/files/GCP_CarbonBudget_2020.pdf

Obviously, per capita is important but China produces more CO2 per capita than the EU average or UK . 

In terms of hydroelectric, the UK and Scotland specifically does not have much capacity to exploit it. You need a river flowing from high to low. Due to its narrow island nature the UK and Scotland does not have large rivers. We do have some capacity of what is called pumped storage, that is where you have a dam at a higher level than a fresh water source. But this is not all that energy efficient and can be costly to build for the energy you get out. 

What is happening globally is the huge drop in various forms of batteries such as lithium ion now mean batteries are more competitive than fossil fuels for short term energy supply needs. This is usually met by what are called "peaker" power plants. These are plants that can switch on and spin up at short notice and run for a few hours. This makes them very expensive as they are used infrequently and are by design energy inefficient. Batteries now out perform them in these roles. 

 

 

 

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2020/

Increasingly decarbonisation in the west is being driven by market forces, carbon taxes plus falling costs of new renewables are pushing coal out of the market. In the coming decade the problems will  be how to manage sustained periods of limited to no renewables due to weeks of low wind etc. Here batteries are far more expansive as they are used to much less frequently to recoup capital costs. The hope is a new set of technologies called "flow batteries", these use liquids to charge and discharge and are made from far more common material than lithium so likely to be much cheaper (but very heavy). 

Globally the crazy low costs of solar energy are going to be huge in the coming decade. Simply put it will get to be cheaper to have heavy industry where there is a lot of solar energy. 

On the plus side, most humans tend to live where there is a lot of sunlight. The down side is certain countries are investing massively into coal in the developing world.

The UK (and thus Scotland) is on track to meet it Kyoto Protocol commitments. In fact we should be able to easily exceed our treat commitments to CO2 reduction. We have a legally binding commitment in UK law to decarbonise down to 20% our our 1990 CO2 emissions. This is mostly down to EU initiatives such as the EU ETS and Ed Milliband's Climate Change Act of 2008. Going forward, storage will be the biggest bottleneck for us as our off shore wind resource is outright ludicrous. (Lots of shallow waters in the North Sea). Globally we need the US to up it game and then some, they have stumbled into decarbonising through fracking and have some great state level initiatives (oddly enough Texas is a leader here). We need emerging economies to pick solar over coal where ever possible. But that will take loans and aid. We also need China and other Asian countries to seriously map out a rapid decarbonisation strategy. A global carbon tax would be great but I cannot see any real chance of it due to the rapid collapse in global trade cooperation. 

This is a pretty high level look at things. As always your mileage may vary. 

In slight defence of China, at least some of their increase and the West's decrease is due to them taking on manufacturing that was previously done here. I don't have figures to hand nor do I know how significant the impact of that is on the figures quoted (at "Global fossil etc...."). 

I think though that showing the CO2 consumption per capita rather than production would give a more accurate picture of whose lifestyles need to change. 

[101]

Has anyone ever bought their carbon back? I know there are a few fairly big companies that do this but thought I would look for someone in Scotland. I came across these guys anyone heard of them before?

https://www.cndoscotland.com/carbon-conservation/about-us.php

[101]

Bad news for those of us with little currency to work with.

 

 

[bennett]

 

 

 

LARGE swathes of Scotland could be submerged underwater in less than 30 years, according to a climate change study.

Glasgow Airport, the Old Course at St Andrews and the Kelpies in Falkirk are among the key sites that could be flooded, if research by Climate Central is correct.

The organisation is made up of leading scientists and journalists who research climate change and its impact on the public.

It has created an interactive map, using current projections to show which areas of the country could be lost to rising sea levels by 2050