Questions regarding Global Warming

a reply to: D8Tee

Give maa a chance... not sure if Google will pull that one up or not, at least directly. But yeah, I'll answer it for you afterwards. I'm pretty close to one of the leading solar power researchers at UAH. He's actually doing some amazing work.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

The person that thinks that ice core data is exactly the same as direct atmospheric measurement? ha, you might as well just answer now.

a reply to: D8Tee

How can you justify that statement?

Because ice cores record the exact condition of the atmosphere when that ice was formed.

Ice core data does not have single year resolution,

You are quite wrong about that. Ice core resolution is actually approximately half year: Winter/Summer.

let alone single day resolution.

What do you need single day resolution for? That makes no sense what-so-ever. No one is interested in the exact condition of the atmosphere on the date 13 March 33,476 BCE. When we say "10,000 years ago" we don't mean exactly 3,652,500 days ago (including leap days). We mean "about" 10,000 years ago.

Agreed, temperature determination from ice cores is a little less direct than the state of the atmosphere, but not much. Its basically find the ratio of the isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen that are present and look up the temperature that corresponds to that ratio. But you didn't specify temperature, you said atmosphere, and that is what I responded to.

You can read about it in this non-technical popsci article here: Scientific American: How are past temperatures determined from an ice core?

Also, please refer to Ice Core Basics for more information. The link includes a photo of the seasonal layers found in typical ice cores.

Why does the Greenland Ice core data differ from the Antarctic record?

Because Greenland is subject to melting more often than the Antarctic. Melt water affects the CO2 readings.

From the "Ice Core Basics" link above:

The most important property of ice cores is that they are a direct archive of past atmospheric gasses. Air is trapped at the base of the firn layer, and when the compacted snow turns to ice, the air is trapped in bubbles. This transition normally occurs 50-100 m below the surface[6]. The offset between the age of the air and the age of the ice is accounted for with well-understood models of firn densification and gas trapping. The air bubbles are extracted by melting, crushing or grating the ice in a vacuum.

This method provides detailed records of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide going back over 650,000 years. Ice core records globally agree on these levels, and they match instrumented measurements from the 1950s onwards, confirming their reliability. Carbon dioxide measurements from older ice in Greenland is less reliable, as meltwater layers have elevated carbon dioxide (CO2 is highly soluble in water). Older records of carbon dioxide are therefore best taken from Antarctic ice cores.

a reply to: TheRedneck

Let's see how you do for facts:....

Here are my answers to your strawman attempt to shift the discussion:

1) Not one of those questions or their answers have any relevance to the discussion at hand.
2) You have not presented any of those questions or their answers in the previous stages of the discussion at hand.
3) You have not attempted to counter any assertion I have made except to say make unsupported assertions that building dirty coal fired plants is faster than building coal fired plants with carbon scrubbers.
4) Since nobody, anywhere, is building, or wants to build a coal fired plant with out carbon scrubbers at some level of efficiency, your assertion is pointless and adds nothing to the discussion at hand.
5) The discussion is more about macro-economics than it is about 'doping' and its relation to solar cells.
6) Your questions all assume photovoltaic solar cells. Do you know what CSP is?
7) Do you even have any idea about what this discussion is about?

a reply to: rnaa

You are quite wrong about that. Ice core resolution is actually approximately half year: Winter/Summer.

Check your sources, ice core data does not provide six month resolution.

That means that at sites with the highest snowfall rates (e.g. Law Dome, Antarctica), there is a natural resolution of order 10 years, while at sites with very low snowfall (e.g. Dome C), the natural resolution is several hundred years

www.climatescience.cam.ac.uk...

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: TheRedneck

What is the greatest physical problem with increasing solar cell efficiency at present?

Interested in the answer to this one.

Its kinda a 'gotcha' question, because there are lots of physical problems with solar cell efficiency and efficiency can mean lots of things - are we talking $/watt or watts per light power.

Assuming $/watt we are mostly talking raw materials, manufacturing, and logistic issues. I don't think that is you meant.

Assuming watts/light power there are many physical problems starting with the base materials used, limits of the p-n junction gaps to make better use of the light spectrum, scattering the incident light so more photons do their work, lots of stuff like that.

But my answer would be cooling. Efficiency of any cell type drops as the cell heats up and since the whole point is to keep it in the sun, they are going to get hot.

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: rnaa

You are quite wrong about that. Ice core resolution is actually approximately half year: Winter/Summer.

Check your sources, ice core data does not provide six month resolution.

That means that at sites with the highest snowfall rates (e.g. Law Dome, Antarctica), there is a natural resolution of order 10 years, while at sites with very low snowfall (e.g. Dome C), the natural resolution is several hundred years

www.climatescience.cam.ac.uk...

I think we are a little bit at cross-purposes here. I agree that data extracted from Ice Cores is generally not resolved to the half-year or even year by researchers. Then again I'm not sitting in their labs trying to figure out what questions to ask about the cores, so maybe they are.

However, Ice Cores absolutely do exhibit seasonal layers just like tree rings. The link I provided above "Ice Core Basics" has a photo of exactly this seasonal variation.

I think this link will show it: Ice Core (EDIT: good the link works) This is the discriptive text accompanying the photo:

This 19 cm long of GISP2 ice core from 1855 m depth shows annual layers in the ice. This section contains 11 annual layers with summer layers (arrowed) sandwiched between darker winter layers. From the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Wikimedia Commons.

I strongly suspect that researchers don't usually care about single years in the record however (and especially not days like you are discussing). Single years are weather, not climate, on the scale that (I assume) they are studying.

That said, it would not surprise me if some researchers are comparing the differences between winter and summer across many years. In that case they would most certainly have to resolve the data to a half yearly seasons.

And just as a by-the-by, this is a statement from the link you provided:

It is worth mentioning that when the bubbles are broken open to analyse the air, one is actually measuring the concentration of CO 2 in the air sample just as if it was from a flask collected from air today.

a reply to: rnaa

That said, it would not surprise me if some researchers are comparing the differences between winter and summer across many years.

No they are not. Ice core data does not offer single year resolution. Ten years at best, hundreds of years in areas of low accumulation. Read the paper that I have linked. Perhaps the topmost layers will offer single year data, but certainly not the entire record. What we are seeing is an average c02 concentration.

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: rnaa

That said, it would not surprise me if some researchers are comparing the differences between winter and summer across many years.

No they are not. Ice core data does not offer single year resolution. Ten years at best, hundreds of years in areas of low accumulation.

Did you look at the photo I linked? I did add it in an edit, so probably not.

Seasonal layers are absolutely in evidence. Whether anyone is interested in that level of detail is another matter. And whether every site exhibits the same level of detail is another matter. And whether every collection methodology used by every research project allows that level of detail is another matter.

The fact is that this photo shows quite clearly that seasonal layers exist in ice cores exactly and as precisely measurable do tree rings.

a reply to: [post=21912708]rnaa[/post

Resorting to a quote from wikipedia, does this help? We are seeing an average C02 content. The year by year record disappears with depth.

The time resolution (i.e. the shortest time period which can be accurately distinguished) depends on the amount of annual snowfall, and reduces with depth as the ice compacts under the weight of layers accumulating on top of it. Upper layers of ice in a core correspond to a single year or sometimes a single season. Deeper into the ice the layers thin and annual layers become indistinguishable.

This is a long read but will give a good idea of the resolution from various studies.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Responding to the original question, I once highly doubted that man's activities were causing global warming and climate change. I tend to be a bit of a skeptic and want to see evidence. I realize the planet has warmed and that in most places the volume of ice is shrinking. Surface area of ice can change a lot from year to year. I also believe there could be some agenda with global warming elite supporters trying to charge taxes on populations for their own benefit or reasons of which curbing global warming may not be the primary reason for all the extra taxes and costs. I also believe solar radiation output from the sun has increased and caused global warming on other planets in our solar system.

I've read data and seen model evidence indicating a gradual increase in global temperatures corresponding to a larger model error rate. The data and some stats were off which causes some to dismiss the entire model as false. The oceans are becoming acidic and may be reaching a maximum point of carbon absorption. Vast amounts of methane are melting and getting released in colder climates and methane is a lot worse than co2 as far as global warming. Man is pumping out so much co2 every year and keeps increasing the amount. While I once doubted man was altering the climate, I believe in this case causation does equal correlation or the evidence more strongly supports it now.


I would like to hear if some studies of dumping iron ore powder in scattered regions of the oceans could reduce global carbon dioxide levels significantly at a small cost much cheaper than other methods of taxation without killing all the sea life in the areas due to oxygen depletion but I guess no one is interested in such studies or experiments.

The costs for continued warming would be trillions of dollars if coastal cities are flooded around the world and by the time everyone definitely concludes that man was the primary reason, it may be too late to do enough to prevent it. I read iron ore powder dumped in the oceans causes massive growth of plant life absorbing massive amounts of CO2 all at a small cost for the iron ore powder. There are other methods to reduce global temperatures such as blocking out sunlight but that could have a lot of negative impacts. All this is in addition to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. As far as I'm concerned, it's all a matter of economic cost how we can address it. People need to work and eat so I'm not in favor of doing massive tax increases. That hurts people's ability to buy greener cars etc. I'm in favor of developing cleaner cheaper methods of energy use.

a reply to: rnaa

Not one of those questions or their answers have any relevance to the discussion at hand.

Obviously not to you... all that matters are website links. Maybe if I wrote a website you would listen?

There's no 'counter' to your 'arguments' other than to say they are wrong. I have said that. If I told you some farmer in Ecuador had raised flying pigs, what would your 'counter' be? Probably something along the lines of "No, that's wrong." And you would be right.

Every single question I asked has direct impact on the efficiency, effectiveness, and cost of any power generation facility. And they are almost all basic questions that anyone with any depth of knowledge in the field could answer. For example, if you do not know that a solar cell is composed of a lattice-based silicon crystal which is then injected with impurities through ion implantation ('doping'), how are you going to have any idea why the cells are so expensive or what their capabilities are? If you do not understand that power transmission losses are given by the equation W=(I^2)*R, meaning that low currents and therefore high voltages are required to allow power to be transmitted over long distances, how can you even begin to understand the costs associated with producing those high voltages?

Answer: you can't. But you can fake it, just like you can fake knowing why your car doesn't start without ever holding a wrench.

TheRedneck

a reply to: intergalactic fire

QTA; are there members that switched camps during these years, from AGW-skeptic to AGW-believer or the other way round? And what was the reason that made you change your mind?

sat of the fence for years. have decided that i now err on the side that we are causing it. I dont know for sure. What changed my m ind was the precautionary principle, used in environmental science.

If you are not sure and the environmental impact of it is very high.. you do not do do it. you dont take the risk

if we are causing it we can do something about it, lets do something about it just to be safe.

a reply to: D8Tee

The person that thinks that ice core data is exactly the same as direct atmospheric measurement? ha, you might as well just answer now.

Sometimes it's fun to watch someone demonstrate what you already know.

Anyway, I promised you an answer. I would have accepted a rough answer from maa, but I'll try to get a little more detailed since you appear to be genuinely interested.

There are actually two areas that present a physical challenge. As I mentioned in the post above, solar cells are composed of thin slices of silicon crystals, so the individual silicon atoms are arranged in a lattice. This silicon is doped by injecting ions in the lattice to replace silicon atoms, creating a homogenous impurity that causes electrons to be able to flow through the lattice under certain conditions... that is why we call them 'semiconductors.'

In the case of a solar cell, the impurities create a 'quantum well' that normally blocks the minority carriers from moving. Photons upset this state whenever they strike a doping atom, allowing a single charge to flow. Enough of these charges creates a current and voltage we can use. The first difficulty is having enough impurities to capture all of the photons that strike the crystal. Simply adding more impurities changes the energy balance, so there is an upper limit to the amount of impurities. In other words, most photons are wasted because a solar cell can not contain enough impurities to capture them all.

Different impurities create different energy imbalances. Present research is trying to find impurities that can be injected with higher concentrations.

Secondly, every time a photon strikes an impurity, that energy in the photon bridges the 'quantum well' by promoting electrons to higher energy levels. These possible energy levels are quantized, i.e., they only exist at predefined levels. Not all photons have the same energy; energy is proportional to frequency. If a photon strikes an impurity with enough energy to promote an electron, it will produce a charge that contributes to the output power, but if it does not have enough energy to promote that electron, the energy in the photon just dissipates as heat. If the photon contains more energy than necessary to promote an electron, the electron is promoted but all the extra energy is dissipated as heat. All heat is wasted energy.

A few researchers are trying using multiple impurities, but the mathematics behind that is not well-developed at this time.

If anything in that sounds confusing, let me know and I'll try to clarify.

TheRedneck

P.S.: maa actually has a couple points about the ice core samples, but again, does not have a depth of knowledge. Ice is not a perfect insulator from outside influences over time, and the composition of the air bubbles are only assumed to be unchanged over time. This assumption is far from certain, and it is completely possible that the compositions have altered over time. There is research into this possibility ongoing as well, although I am not as familiar with it as I am the electrical generation technologies.

originally posted by: purplemer
a reply to: intergalactic fire

QTA; are there members that switched camps during these years, from AGW-skeptic to AGW-believer or the other way round? And what was the reason that made you change your mind?

sat of the fence for years. have decided that i now err on the side that we are causing it. I dont know for sure. What changed my m ind was the precautionary principle, used in environmental science.

That principle is good for deciding on policy, however, the better way to understand why humans are causing it is to understand the reasoning scientists use to know it is so. The reasoning is: global warming comes from physics, and the physical evidence points to an increase in greenhouse effect as the specific cause of global warming we see now, with multiple interlocking sets of evidence and observations which preclude other major potential sources of warming at present. Next, the environmental and chemical evidence and knowing something about society like the fact that coal mines exist, show that humans are responsible for most of the change in the greenhouse effect by changing the chemistry in the atmosphere.

If you are not sure and the environmental impact of it is very high.. you do not do do it. you dont take the risk

if we are causing it we can do something about it, lets do something about it just to be safe.

originally posted by: TheRedneck

It is possible to design plants in phases... it's done all the time.you build the generation facility, a quick low-cost coal burner to drive it, then while that is producing power, you build a natural gas burner, a geothermal generator, or whatever heat source you think is best. Once it is complete, you turn two valves and the plant continues to produce using the new fuel.

Why do you think a natural gas power plant would take significantly longer to complete than a coal plant? Natural gas turbines can be shipped from a factory. A plant could use many of them.

What is the economic rate of return for a large capital investment (coal plant) which would be used only for a year or two? Very low.

It's expensive to build a coal plant, tear down the coal half, and then install the gas burning part. For coal you need to build a railroad line, for gas, a pipeline. These are different, expensive pieces of infrastructure. You don't do both.

Natural gas plants are substantially more throttlable than coal plants and so have greater value to a grid operator for the same nameplate capacity.

Developing nations in question are now wealthy enough that they already are sufficiently industrialized to be suffering from pollution problems from dirty plants now, and hence have a motivation to pursue less polluting energy even if it costs more per kWh. Their citizenry also cares about the air and the plant to some degree.

Generally the currently most economical configuration is solar voltaic plus natural gas turbines which can rapidly adjust to the solar output to compensate. Especially in hotter countries where daytime air-conditioning is a major load and solar is a good match until the evening hours, where you need either storage or nat gas peakers.

Eventually I hope somebody will make much more economical modular, and passively safe nuclear reactors to be able to retire the already existing coal plants for baseline, but that still seems to be far off from commercial reality and scalability.

originally posted by: orionthehunter

I would like to hear if some studies of dumping iron ore powder in scattered regions of the oceans could reduce global carbon dioxide levels significantly at a small cost much cheaper than other methods of taxation without killing all the sea life in the areas due to oxygen depletion but I guess no one is interested in such studies or experiments.

People are interested in such studies and experiments and do them. To have an effect on a global scale, the change to the ocean ecology would be similarly globally large, and probably pretty damn lousy. We understand correlated cascades of biological processes much less well than physical processes, because the latter are based on laws of physics we know very well, but biology is a quirky and slippery and unpredictable thing.

This seems like the best proposal I've seen: geo-engineering.blogspot.com...

It isn't iron fertilization.

The challenges are immense. By contrast, banning coal and fast-tracking modular nuclear reactors & build-out of PV & Wind independent of price seems like tic tac toe.

a reply to: TheRedneck

Obviously not to you... all that matters are website links. Maybe if I wrote a website you would listen?

No, what matters to me are facts. Not alt-facts. Real Facts. Verifiable Facts. Facts that can provide information that can be turned into knowledge.

Opinions matter, but only opinions that are based on facts, REAL FACTS, are worthy of informing policy makers.

You seem to think that rebuilding a power plant every few years is the cheapest and fastest way to get the southern asia electrified. OK, give us some facts then. Here are some questions for you:

• Where exactly in southern asia do you believe is NOT "electrified".
  
• What exactly is the market for the cheap, fast (and dirty) electricity you are promoting?
  
• Is that market growing demand for electricity?
  
• Does that market have a stabile funding source for the duration of the staged build, shutdown, rebuild, shutdown, rebuild, you suggest?
  
• Does that market care whether the electricity it gets is generated by coal, gas, diesel, wind, solar, wave?
  
• Would the industrial bulk users in that market be happy with the disruptions caused by the cycles of build, shutdown, rebuild that you suggest?
  
• Does that market currently have breathable air, or is it struggling with air quality like China?
  
• Does the market have other more pressing needs that need to be funded before shutting down an operating electricity generator and rebuilding it?
  
• When it comes time to shutdown and rebuild the plant, will the market be focused on the need to upgrade the plant or will it be focused on something else?
  
• After the Koreans have built the coal plant (you don't really think it will be Americans, do you?), will they have any interest in upgrading it to use gas or gassified coal or CSP or whatever?
  
• What exactly is meant by the term 'CLEAN COAL'?
  
• What technologies are generally considered contributory to 'Clean Coal'?
  
• How many 'Clean Coal' projects are in demonstration or commercial operation today?
  
• What is the greatest problem with 'Clean Coal'?
  
• What is the greatest physical problem with IGCS?
  
• What problem does FGD address?
  
• What is the greatest physical problem with increasing FGD efficiency at present?
  
• What is the cost of converting a 'Dirty Coal' plant to 'Clean Coal'? (Make it 'easy'. Just pick one technology, lets say Carbon Capture and Storage).
  
• What is the cost of upgrading an entire market's fleet of 'Dirty Coal' plants?
  

a reply to: mbkennel

Again (for the fourty-eleventh dozenth time), I responded to a hypothetical: a nation with no electrical infrastructure, living in poverty. Think Myanmar.

ETA:

Generally the currently most economical configuration is solar voltaic plus natural gas turbines which can rapidly adjust to the solar output to compensate. Especially in hotter countries where daytime air-conditioning is a major load and solar is a good match until the evening hours, where you need either storage or nat gas peakers.

Solar voltaic has the lowest operating cost. It is tremendously expensive to construct, due to the high cost of solar cells, physical area required to capture sunlight, and DC-AC conversion of industrial amounts of power. It does work well combating cooling power requirements, but at a high initial cost.

Also, solar cell manufacture is far from pollution-free.

Eventually I hope somebody will make much more economical modular, and passively safe nuclear reactors to be able to retire the already existing coal plants for baseline, but that still seems to be far off from commercial reality and scalability.

Nuclear fission has an issue with scalability. The fuel must be sufficient to create a critical mass (similar, but on a different scale than that used for weaponry) in order to provide sufficient heat for power production. At the same time, too large a mass of fuel will result in dangers from over-reaction. At present, the best size seems to be around 500 MW per reactor.

In addition, nuclear reactions produce some very nasty stuff that necessitates special shielding. PWR systems (the safest design) use a dual steam line with a heat-exchange system as opposed to a single steam line for traditional fuels. It would be difficult to make nuclear power modular.

TheRedneck

originally posted by: rnaa
a reply to: TheRedneck

No, what matters to me are facts. Not alt-facts. Real Facts. Verifiable Facts. Facts that can provide information that can be turned into knowledge.

Sure. Where did you get your degree from again?

You seem to think that rebuilding a power plant every few years is the cheapest and fastest way to get the southern asia electrified.

Hypothetical :

involving or being based on a suggested idea or theory : being or involving a hypothesis

• Where exactly in southern asia do you believe is NOT "electrified".

See the definition of hypothetical above.

• What exactly is the market for the cheap, fast (and dirty) electricity you are promoting?
  
• Is that market growing demand for electricity?

Based on the hypothetical, I assume the market is poor, but will grow as electricity becomes available.

• Does that market have a stabile funding source for the duration of the staged build, shutdown, rebuild, shutdown, rebuild, you suggest?

I would not assume so, again based on the hypothetical.

• Does that market care whether the electricity it gets is generated by coal, gas, diesel, wind, solar, wave?

I would assume based on the hypothetical that initial response would not care, but as electricity became common, public sentiment would shift to concern over the environment.

• Would the industrial bulk users in that market be happy with the disruptions caused by the cycles of build, shutdown, rebuild that you suggest?

My suggestion would not have any appreciable shutdown time for the switchover. In addition, I would expect the switch to happen before such a market appeared.

• Does that market currently have breathable air, or is it struggling with air quality like China?

Based on the hypothetical, since there is no industrialization at present, yes, the air would be relatively pristine.

• Does the market have other more pressing needs that need to be funded before shutting down an operating electricity generator and rebuilding it?

Not a part of the hypothetical.

• When it comes time to shutdown and rebuild the plant, will the market be focused on the need to upgrade the plant or will it be focused on something else?

Not a part of the hypothetical.

• After the Koreans have built the coal plant (you don't really think it will be Americans, do you?), will they have any interest in upgrading it to use gas or gassified coal or CSP or whatever?

Not a part of the hypothetical. Who mentioned Korea?

• What exactly is meant by the term 'CLEAN COAL'?

Technically, the use of coal as a combustible without the nasty compounds that typically result from impurities inherent in coal. The most promising advances are in the area of coal gasification, which uses high pressure and catalystic reactions to convert the hydrogen-carbon chains into more easily purified form, such as natural gas ('Syngas') or light liquid fuels.

• What technologies are generally considered contributory to 'Clean Coal'?

See above.

• How many 'Clean Coal' projects are in demonstration or commercial operation today?

I do not know, nor care. My interest is in research and commercial viability, not in the commercialization itself.

• What is the greatest problem with 'Clean Coal'?

I know of two: the present cost of converting the fuel, and the political pressure from people who do not understand what they are talking about.

• What is the greatest physical problem with IGCS?

What does the International Gynecological Cancer Society have to do with this topic?

If you mean IGCC (Integrated Gassification Combined Cycle), then: Coal is typically 'dirtier' (contains more impurities) than oil or natural gas, so the filtration process is more complex.

• What problem does FGD address?

Flue Gas Desulfurization is a method used to scrub sulfur oxides from exhaust. It is only needed if the fuel contains appreciable amounts of sulfur, which gassification research is aimed at removing.

What is the greatest physical problem with increasing FGD efficiency at present?

Concentration. Sulfur does not react extremely quickly, so it becomes difficult to remove high concentrations.

• What is the cost of converting a 'Dirty Coal' plant to 'Clean Coal'? (Make it 'easy'. Just pick one technology, lets say Carbon Capture and Storage).
  
• What is the cost of upgrading an entire market's fleet of 'Dirty Coal' plants?

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

Your question is poorly phrased. Gassified coal (aka 'Syngas') is burnt like natural gas, not like traditional coal. Considering your staunch position against designing for multiple fuels/upgrades, that question is unanswerable.

Now, think you can Google some answers to my queries? I will admit to using Google to look up some of your acronyms... the one about cancer threw me. Maybe you should actually try to understand the technologies before asking next time.

TheRedneck