Eclipse

So Leonardo Di Caprio and Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk) both raved about this Jacobson study, but the NAS identified it was flawed and overestimated the potential for hydro storage by 100. If that's the case, no wonder I have plenty of questions about the Baldwin, Blakers and Stocks Sept 2018 which recommends pretty much the same thing: wind, water, and solar for Australia. Until recently, I used to be concerned that the energy costs of building all those pumped hydro batteries were too high based on the Weissbach EROEI study. But friends here spent some time showing me how that study is based on some really old data and the EROEI of solar PV has improved remarkably since that data was collated. OK, I am taking all that in and learning to accept it — it's a big step for me. However, if the EROEI isn't a concern, what about the cost? Even the pro-renewables authors like Ken Caldeira have stated that for renewables to get to 100%, the cost of electricity storage would have to drop 100 fold! Why does off-river pumped hydro in Australia cost so much less than in America? Baldwin, Blakers and Stocks Sept 2018claim the cost of the hourly balancing the NEM (grid for the Eastern States of Australia, including South Australia) is $5/MWh to 50% renewable penetration, up to $25/MWh for 100%. (Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro can do most of the backup for 50% renewables.) Just find two basins a good height apart (300 to 600 meters) in a non-national parks or bio-sensitive area, build hydro dam infrastructure, and then a pipe from a nearby river. Pipe in the water and there's your battery. Done. Why doesn't America have enough potential off-river pumped hydro resources to do the same thing?

Hi all, some have proposed that we give up trying to terraform Venus because of its terrible atmosphere, and instead try chucking tens of thousands of giant asteroids and Kuiper belt objects at it not to speed it up to an Earth day, but to tidally lock it. The hope is that the bright side would be a great place for solar power, the twilight zone in the middle would be a great place to build domes and habitats to mine all the Venusian mineral wealth, and the dark side would be where all that horrible CO2 and sulfur rained down. The problem is, we don't seem to have agreement on whether or not it would get cold enough back there to freeze CO2. I'm no physicist but it appears to me that if the atmosphere on Venus *already* shoots through the dark side in 2 days without freezing in the existing 116 day long rotation, then it's not going to cool even if one spot becomes permanently dark. For purposes of atmospheric circulation, a 90bar CO2 acid atmosphere shooting around the whole planet in 4 days seems to laugh at 116 day rotation. Isn't the atmosphere just going to continue doing that even if one place became permanently dark? Does anyone have the physics to answer this? The papers I was trying to read in google scholar were way above my head.

Great point! If it's more energy efficient to just pump the nutrients up from the ocean floor, maybe giant solar or nuclear powered oil platforms could do this out in the deep and get the world's CO2 down that way! But which would be more economical: the traditional iron-ore fertilisation, or the deep pump? I think we're on the same page then. I love all tree farms, especially the longer term vision required for hardwood tree farms. Some of the before and after photos are truly inspiring. The potential of more traditional kelp farming from the nutrient rich areas of the ocean is amazing. The world’s oceans are 361.9 million km2. 2% of them are nutrient rich enough to grow kelp in. https://goo.gl/n6iFdG That’s 7.2 million km2 of potential kelp farms. But the area to feed the world only requires 180,000 km2. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/the-coming-green-wave-ocean-farming-to-fight-climate-change/248750/ So we have about 40 times the nutrient rich area to farm kelp than we need to feed the world. Not only that, I'm currently investigating whether kelp farming could also act as a biomass feedstock for the vat-grown meats that are starting to come down in price and will soon be competitive with normal meat from animals.http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/02/lab-grown-meat-prices-have-dropped.html Kelp could also be biocharred to help improve soil quality, which would reduce the water and nutrients required to grow our crops. The bottom line? Could kelp be the silver bullet that will fertilise all our cereal crop agricultural needs and replace all our grazing needs? Could kelp give us all the seafood and wheat and rice and lamb and chicken and beef and turkey that the world could ever want, while also returning all the grazing land back to nature? (Which is a third of the non-ice surface of the earth back!) Could kelp be the silver bullet to feed the world exactly what we're enjoying now, only scaled up to 10 or 12 or 20 billion?

The scale is the problem here. To REALLY sequester our annual CO2 emissions would require the ENTIRE Sahara and ENTIRE Australian outback. The cost of desalinating enough water to even drip irrigate this area is enormous... and this is coming from me, a fan of the idea that has it on his blog! https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/green-deserts/ OK, so vat-grown meat is a thing. http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/02/lab-grown-meat-prices-have-dropped.html But what if the feedstock is unsustainable? Could we use processed kelp as a feedstock for all our meat and chicken and turkey needs, so that we would never have to kill real live animals for protein again? Anyone know any biochemists that might work in this field?

Hi all, I found the answer. Let me summarise! Seaweed farms could revolutionise the world. 2% of the world's oceans are nutrient rich enough for these farms. Nutrients come from coastal erosion or oceanic upwelling. Sometimes there is nutrient pollution which causes algal blooms and dead zones. Seaweed farming can help mop up excess nutrients and restore ocean health. A new vertical column method of farming the oceans grows both kelp and shellfish and oysters and even encourages fisheries to grow in an ocean ecosystem based approach. Watch this 15 minute TED talk about seaweed feeding the world, and even bringing some of that seaweed back up onto our farmlands to help our farmers. Many seaweeds are a rich source of vegetarian super-food in their own right, and help form a whole variety of seaweed ice-creams, salads, sauces, and other food ingredients. Kelp farms also stimulate ocean ecosystems, and there are a variety of oysters and shellfish and even wild fish that will grow in amongst the kelp farms. We could feed the world from a small fraction of the 2% of the world's oceans that have their own nutrients. Not that we would be limited to only seaweed and seafood! Think of all the seaweed fertiliser this industry could grow.We could grow so much seaweed that we bring some onto land, get the salt out, and use it as fertiliser. Seaweed could bring our soils back to life. There is even a special seaweed that cows love and eliminates their methane burps! Methane burps are bad news, and cattle lose 15% of their growth to these energy losing burps. But a special seaweed cuts their burps by 99%, solving cattle's infamous methane climate emissions, *and* helping the cows grow faster! https://theconversation.com/seaweed-could-hold-the-key-to-cutting-methane-emissions-from-cow-burps-66498 Now here's where it gets really bizarre, and potentially planet-saving. Some peer-reviewed work has been done imagining extending kelp farming out into the nutrient-poor open ocean. They start farming the nutrient rich waters. Then a previous season's kelp is biodigested to collect methane gas out the top, leaving the digested kelp nutrients behind. They then recycle those nutrients out in nutrient poor waters. They use slow drip feed hoses and 'tea-bags' that slowly fertilise the kelp, extending the kelp farms out into what was nutrient poor water. This means that nutrients are not a limit to where we can grow kelp! What if we really went crazy and farmed about 9% of the world's oceans this way? It would give:- * a world of 10 billion people half a kilogram of seafood per person per day! * all the biofuels and biogas we could need to backup a renewable grid (and this is coming from someone who is usually pro-nuclear because of the intermittency and unreliability of renewables!) * remove ocean acidity * restore our atmosphere to 350ppm by 2085 In other words, seaweed is a silver bullet to feed the world, save the oceans, and save us from climate change, all in this free PDF. "Negative carbon via Ocean Afforestation". Just register, and download it for free. http://www.psep.ichemejournals.com/article/S0957-5820(12)00120-6/abstract

Back on the seaweed. I initially wondered if nutrients far out to sea would be a limiting factor, but the seaweed ecology wiki only mentions sunlight and a shallow enough anchorage point to grow seaweed. Nutrients may not be the limiting factor I thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaweed#Ecology The seaweed ecology wiki only mentions sunlight and a shallow enough anchorage point to grow seaweed. Nutrients may not be the limiting factor I thought. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaweed#Ecology Tim Flannery again:- If big oil get wind of this, then let them at it! 1. 200kg of seafood per person! That’s over half a kilo per day! 2. Some of our NPK nutrients – normally flushed out to sea via the toilet – recaptured for land farming. 3. And biogas energy backup for a renewable world that the politicians and pundits seem so intent on! \ (If we DON'T have seaweed biogas as backup, and on this kind of scale, I'm not convinced renewables can do it. I'm an EcoModernist, and with James Hansen when he says believing in 100% RENEWABLES is like believing in the Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy. He's aware of all the 'studies' that say we can do 100% renewables, but still thinks storage is ridiculously expensive and cannot do the job. http://goo.gl/8qidgV ) 4. Maybe some biochar left over to help retain that NPK and moisture in our farmlands.

Tim Flannery talks about using 9% of the world's oceans to farm kelp to sequester 40 Gigatons of carbon emissions annually, or roughly 2ppm CO2 per year. goo.gl/n6iFdG Seaweed farming is already an established industry in many countries, but this project would be expanding it by 20,000 times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaweed_farming Thoughts:- * SYNGAS FROM SEAWEED TO BACKUP ALL RENEWABLES WORLDWIDE! A ton of CO2 concentrated into biomass is about a ton of wood. 40 Gigatons would 40 cubic kilometres of woody waste to dispose of each year. We already know how to biochar any dried biomass waste. 40 cubic kilometres into a biochar unit could produce maybe 20 cubic km of biochar and 20 cubic km of synthetic gas to replace petroleum and natural gas? Wow that's a lot. That's vastly more than the 'cubic mile of oil' we use a year (or 1.6 cubic km). That kind of syngas is ... truly unimaginable. An energy baron's dream. Surely that makes backing up renewables possible. Solar & wind during the day, seaweed syngas at night. Done! * CURRENTLY we farm nearly 2.5 million tons of seaweed. http://www.un.org/depts/los/global_reporting/WOA_RPROC/Chapter_14.pdf * COWS: Seaweed can be fed to cows, just to supplement their diet a little, which has been shown to reduce their methane burps close to zero https://goo.gl/J27gw0 * SEQUESTERING LONG TERM: First, once we've switched to a CO2 neutral energy system like renewables + seaweed syngas as backup, we could use just a fraction of the 20 cubic km as biochar for soil remediation. Biochar in the soil is great, but tends to break down in a half life cycle of about 80 years. But there's a lot of soil that needs repair. But we're producing a LOT of biochar ! So once we've thoroughly rehabilitated ALL our farmland soils with biochar, and maybe some pasturelands as well (35% of the non-ice surface of the earth), what do we do with the rest to sequester it? Use industrial presses to crush it into bricks, maybe with a biomimicry agent to cement it, and then start rebuilding those coal-topped mountains with it? We've got to get rid of 20 cubic km's a year! Crush it into bricks and drop in the deep ocean? How does biochar interact with sea microorganisms: would it be better to powder it into the ocean to stimulate other systems?

Can bacteria feed the world soon, and become 10,000 times more abundant than agriculture, enabling vertical farming that GROWS IN THE DARK? TED TALK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQVdJjToMYk June 2016 business article: http://www.launch.org/about/news/kiverdi-is-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-food-for-the-world I've also seen TED Talks that claim algae could end up being 1000 times more land efficient than current agriculture, and that's if we learn to eat it directly ourselves, possibly 3d printing it into artificial meat? Anyone know if there is progress in these areas? But there's also algae to food via fish, which is already happening in Australia: * traditional aquaculture trawls the oceans for by-catch to munch up and feed to captive fish * this system replaces ocean feedstock with microorganisms grown in nearby tanks * Or it can be grown in the prawn farm’s own prawn ponds in the 6 month off season * half the world’s seafood is farmed, so if we eventually replace unsustainble by-catch feedstocks with sustainably grown feedstock pellets, the oceans may get a chance to recover * it increases marginal prawn farms to profitable prawn farms because the prawns grow 40% larger and are healthier * increased health gains mean more prawns can be grown in closer proximity * more prawns in each pond increases production & profits,= * spin off’s not listed on the show but that I am considering are possible increases in our understanding of micro-plankton or algae growth for feedstocks for other industries. http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2014/s3984247.htm

Given the climate emergency we're in, I'm just interested in whether we can use nuclear power to economically replace normal airline jet fuel with anything! I know it is technically possible to crack water and mix it with CO2 derived from the atmosphere, but the links above were describing military applications. Any fuel cooked up in the field has economic and strategic advantages. Fuel convoys are a major point of military expense and are vulnerable to attack. DARPA studies all sorts of energy efficient strategies, like energy efficient solar tents with insulation which cost far more than the average tent, but far less in a military camp. It's the logistics of getting fuel into a hostile situation that costs so much! Running a convoy means crazy prices like $300 a litre and a certain number of lives if in a hostile arena. So jet fuel from seawater + CO2 + aircraft carrier nuclear power = common sense, even if at $200 a litre or $100 a litre or $50 a litre. But could we pay that for our airline ticket? I don't think so.

Hi all, I'm trying to build a list of conservationist strategies and action groups. I think I might list the groups under different strategies. What's your favourite environmental organisations? What do they do, and what strategies do they use? 1. PARKS Do you have a favourite National Park? How can people support it? What groups help create new parks? What's the best way to organise a new park? 2. ARKS What about 'arks', or special zoo's and breeding programs for threatened species? (I'm thinking of the Tasmanian Devil breeding programs, but what animals and support organisations are you passionate about?) 3. BOYCOTTS? What about boycotts? What products do you refuse to buy because they threaten biodiversity or your favourite animals and / or ecosystems? What websites do you follow to learn more? What 'safe buying' sites are there? 4. PROTESTS & TREEHUGGING? Warriors: what groups have treehuggers that chain themselves to trees, lock the gates and throw away the keys to protect ecosystems against new coal mines or pipelines, etc? 5. OTHER What other conservation strategies have I not considered? What groups represent them?

This TED talk (remixed) says that if we get to 4 or 5 degrees, natural feedbacks (like the 'methane bomb') could take us to 12. At that point, this popular Grist writer summarises climate science as predicting half the planet would be uninhabitable. Is this really what climate science is saying? Could the methane feedbacks take us from 4 or 5 degrees to 12 and then dump our great grandchildren with half the planet being uninhabitable? www.youtube.com/watch?v=pznsPkJy2x8 Read more: http://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/499/talk-says-degrees-planet-evacuated#ixzz3GYu0JMIb

Hi all, I was amazed to learn that boron has been considered as a means of storing energy to burn in car engines. Apparently when 'charged' it is really easy to store. It also bypasses the chicken-and-egg problem of local hydrogen garages not having enough customers to sell to, while drivers might be nervous about not having enough hydrogen suppliers. Having just one boron recharger in the USA, it is claimed, would mean people could have a few 'tanks' of boron stored at home, and just mail the stuff to the recharger. It's so inert and easy to store the paper suggested people could store boron in the garage for winter, and then that would run the car and power the house if winter storms knock out the electricity. But, in some circles, hydrogen proponents seem to be making a comeback. What is your preferred means of weaning off oil?

Hi all, James Hansen helped form the SCGI which is a think tank for solving our climate and energy problems. They promote the Tom Blees book, "Prescription for the Planet" which promotes GenIV waste-eating nuclear power like the Integral Fast Reactor to replace coal and gas, and boron to replace oil. It's a good read, especially the chapter on boron replacing oil. What do people think? FREE PDF download of book here. Let me know what you think. link removed