The environment thread

[Balta1701]

Sigh.

Transocean Ltd. had its "best year in safety performance" despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the world's largest offshore-rig company said in a securities filing Friday.

 

Accordingly, Transocean's executives received two-thirds of their target safety bonus. Safety accounts for 25% of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses, along with financial factors including new rig contracts.

 

The payout contrasts with that for 2009, when the company withheld all executive bonuses after incurring four fatalities that year "to underscore the company's commitment to safety."

 

In a filing on executive pay, Transocean said, "Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record." Based on the total rate of incidents and their severity, "we recorded the best year in safety performance in our company's history."

[StrangeSox]

Thanks balta, that ties in well with my rantings on corporatism lately.

[Balta1701]

Can we officially designate April to be "Junk shot" month?

Water with high amounts of radioactive iodine has been spewing directly into the Pacific Ocean from a large crack discovered Saturday in a six-foot-deep pit at the coastal plant north of Tokyo. The pit is next to the seawater intake pipes at the No. 2 reactor.

 

After an unsuccessful attempt to flood the pit with concrete to stop the leak, workers on Sunday turned to trying to plug the apparent source of the water — an underground shaft thought to lead to the damaged reactor building — with more than 120 pounds of sawdust, three garbage bags full of shredded newspaper and about nine pounds of a polymeric powder that officials said absorbed 50 times its volume of water.

 

Although the stopgap measure did not appear to be succeeding, workers would keep trying to stem the leak, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

[NorthSideSox72]

Sigh.

I saw that too.

 

I think its interesting, a lot of people seem to focus on government overspending/undertaxing/debt in some form as the biggest political issue currently putting the country at risk. And that's certainly a big one. But I honestly am starting to think something scares me more - the rising strength of corporatism and particularly high executives, combined with the assinine SCOTUS ruling that says a corporation is a person for political contribution purposes. Add to that the bizarro lobbying rules and laws and a populace that is mostly ignorant of even the simplest political knowledge, and you really have an enormous risk of the US becoming the corporate-ruled malverse we see in future-looking science fiction.

 

Scares the bejeezus out of me.

 

[StrangeSox]

Can we officially designate April to be "Junk shot" month?

 

The lack of site record-keeping from the 60's and 70's is pretty shocking.

[StrangeSox]

I saw that too.

 

I think its interesting, a lot of people seem to focus on government overspending/undertaxing/debt in some form as the biggest political issue currently putting the country at risk. And that's certainly a big one. But I honestly am starting to think something scares me more - the rising strength of corporatism and particularly high executives, combined with the assinine SCOTUS ruling that says a corporation is a person for political contribution purposes. Add to that the bizarro lobbying rules and laws and a populace that is mostly ignorant of even the simplest political knowledge, and you really have an enormous risk of the US becoming the corporate-ruled malverse we see in future-looking science fiction.

 

Scares the bejeezus out of me.

 

They deserve the bonuses. Gotta retain the top talent, and all that. For some reason, this does not apply to government.

[Balta1701]

Yet another study backing me up.

"Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. "It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."

 

(Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson) and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, have written a two-part paper in Energy Policy in which they assess the costs, technology and material requirements of converting the planet, using a plan they developed.

 

The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy.

 

Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power.

 

Vehicles, ships and trains would be powered by electricity and hydrogen fuel cells. Aircraft would run on liquid hydrogen. Homes would be cooled and warmed with electric heaters – no more natural gas or coal – and water would be preheated by the sun.

 

Commercial processes would be powered by electricity and hydrogen. In all cases, the hydrogen would be produced from electricity. Thus, wind, water and sun would power the world.

 

The researchers approached the conversion with the goal that by 2030, all new energy generation would come from wind, water and solar, and by 2050, all pre-existing energy production would be converted as well.

[StrangeSox]

Link to the actual study?

[NorthSideSox72]

Yet another study backing me up.

That should be... societal, political and FINANCIAL will, and ability.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that it can be done. The problem is, it takes a significant up front investment to get those long term rewards, and no one has the money right now. What money there is (this is the political part), people would rather spend on other things, which in my opinion is often stupid... but that's the situation we are in.

 

[Balta1701]

Link to the actual study?

If you're not at an institution with a subscription to the journal "Energy Policy" I can't help you. If you are, I could be a jerk and say "Find it yourself". Here you go.

[Balta1701]

Bloomberg today with a similar business-end take.

Solar panel installations may surge in the next two years as the cost of generating electricity from the sun rivals coal-fueled plants, industry executives and analysts said.

 

Large photovoltaic projects will cost $1.45 a watt to build by 2020, half the current price, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimated today. The London-based research company says solar is viable against fossil fuels on the electric grid in the most sunny regions such as the Middle East.

 

“We are already in this phase change and are very close to grid parity,” Shawn Qu, chief executive officer of Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ), said in an interview. “In many markets, solar is already competitive with peak electricity prices, such as in California and Japan.”

 

Chinese companies such as JA Solar Holdings Ltd., Canadian Solar and Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. are making panels cheaper, fueled by better cell technology and more streamlined manufacturing processes. That’s making solar economical in more places and will put it in competition with coal, without subsidies, in the coming years, New Energy Finance said.

 

“The most powerful driver in our industry is the relentless reduction of cost,” Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of New Energy Finance, said at the company’s annual conference in New York yesterday. “In a decade the cost of solar projects is going to halve again.

 

...

Comparisons often overstate the costs of solar because they may take into account the prices paid by consumers and small businesses who install roof-top power systems, instead of the rates utilities charge each other, said Qu of Canadian Solar.

 

“Solar isn’t expensive,” he said “In many areas of the solar industry you’re competing with retail power, not wholesale power.”

I particularly like the stressing of the different ways the price per watt are counted, where solar tends to be a combined number, some that is competing with wholesale power and some that is competing with retail power prices, which are of course higher.

[StrangeSox]

Yet another study backing me up.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobso...EnPolicyPt1.pdf

 

They're assuming 300MW Solar PV plants, while the largest operating plants are ~80MW. And there's also significant materials limitations that the study points out but hand-waves away that would limit any sort of solar PV or wind build-up on that scale, so I'm not sure how that isn't relying on currently non-existent technology. They also ignore water usage requirements as CSP facilities, which are non-trivial and non-'green'. The US would still need 6,200 of these, which are currently only marginally cheaper than a new nuclear plant:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarnia_Photovoltaic_Power_Plant

 

And, despite the press release's claim, I don't see anywhere in that study that addresses base load power supply issues presented by wind and solar.

Edited April 6, 2011 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Also apparently Jacobsen includes a nuclear exchange every 30 years as part of his carbon output from nuclear plants in other papers, lol.

[Balta1701]

And, despite the press release's claim, I don't see anywhere in that study that addresses base load power supply issues presented by wind and solar.

That's because you didn't read closely enough. There's a whole 2nd paper on that.

Further, althoughthereisenoughfeasiblydevelopablewind

and solarpowertosupplytheworld,otherWWSresourceswillbe

more abundantandmoreeconomicalthanwindandsolarinmany

locations. Finally,windandsolarpowerarevariable,sogeothermal

and tidalpower,whichproviderelativelyconstantpower,and

hydroelectric, whichfillsingaps,willbeimportantforprovidinga

stable electricpowersupply.

 

See adetaileddiscussionofthisinPartIIofthiswork, Delucchi

and Jacobson(thisissue).

[StrangeSox]

That's because you didn't read closely enough. There's a whole 2nd paper on that.

 

I clicked the link and it kicked me to some table in the paper, didn't realize that there was more. The statement you quoted is just laughably unrealistic hand-waving, but I'll read through the second paper..

 

Here's a free version of Part II.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobso...EnPolicyPt2.pdf

[StrangeSox]

Starting off with ridiculous equivocation:

 

A WWS electricity system offers new challenges but also new

opportunities with respect to reliably meeting energy demands. On

the positive side, WWS technologies generally suffer less downtime than do current electric power technologies. For example, the

average coal plant in the US from 2000 to 2004 was down 6.5% of

the year for unscheduled maintenance and 6.0% of the year for

scheduled maintenance (North American Electric Reliability

Corporation, 2009a), but modern wind turbines have a down time

of only 0–2% over land and 0–5% over the ocean (Dong Energy et al.,

 

Nice job glossing over wind and solar still being far, far less reliable producers of power by focusing specifically on plant maintenance.

 

However, there are at least seven ways to design and

operate a WWS energy system so that it will reliably satisfy

demand and not have a large amount of capacity that is rarely

used: (A) interconnect geographically dispersed naturally variable

energy sources (e.g., wind, solar, wave, and tidal), (B) use a nonvariable energy source, such as hydroelectric power, to fill temporary gaps between demand and wind or solar generation, © use

‘‘smart’’ demand-response management to shift flexible loads to

better match the availability of WWS power, (D) store electric

power, at the site of generation, for later use, (E) over-size WWS

peak generation capacity to minimize the times when available

WWS power is less than demand and to provide spare power to

produce hydrogen for flexible transportation and heat uses, (F)

store electric power in electric-vehicle batteries, and (G) forecast

the weather to plan for energy supply needs better.

 

These are their solutions? Really? And these don't rely on non-existent technology, even if they did make sense? They're also not projecting these technologies to be economically viable for 20 more years. They're currently not technologically feasible for the same reason I've always stated: the distribution and storage technologies needed for a WWS backbone do not exist right now. "Spot the bad assumption" drinking game could be really dangerous with this paper.

 

I knew this sounded familiar, and some googling revealed that it's more or less an expansion of their 2009 SciAm article, which didn't escape heavy criticism.

 

LOL they made the same terrible "downtime" slight-of-hand argument then, too!

Edited April 6, 2011 by StrangeSox

[NorthSideSox72]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but I thought it was worth noting on multiple fronts... remember how Scott Walker, before this whole Union fiasco, immediately pissed off more than half his state by rejecting nearly a billion dollars in federal rail funding? Well now there is another wave of money out there for high speed rail improvements, and his administration is actually applying for some of it. Apparently he realized his mistake, if a bit late. The funny thing is, a big chunk of the new money comes from the money Florida turned down.

 

So... Walker rejects federal high speed rail money, saying its a waste and won't work... Florida governor does the same thing... Walker asks for some of Florida's money.

 

[Balta1701]

The December-February temperature anomaly in the arctic was so big that NASA had to add another color to its maps to express it.

[StrangeSox]

HIDE THE DECLINE!~!

[Balta1701]

I'm still hopeful on the potential of shale-gas, but here's perhaps the biggest wrench I've seen thrown at it.

Cornell University professors will soon publish research that concludes natural gas produced with a drilling method called “hydraulic fracturing” contributes to global warming as much as coal, or even more.

 

The conclusion is explosive because natural gas enjoys broad political support – including White House backing – due to its domestic abundance and lower carbon dioxide emissions when burned than other fossil fuels.

 

Cornell Prof. Robert Howarth, however, argues that development of gas from shale rock formations produced through hydraulic fracturing – dubbed “fracking” – brings far more methane emissions than conventional gas production.

 

Enough, he argues, to negate the carbon advantage that gas has over coal and oil when they’re burned for energy, because methane is such a potent greenhouse gas.

 

“The [greenhouse gas] footprint for shale gas is greater than that for conventional gas or oil when viewed on any time horizon, but particularly so over 20 years. Compared to coal, the footprint of shale gas is at least 20% greater and perhaps more than twice as great on the 20-year horizon and is comparable when compared over 100 years,” states the upcoming study from Howarth, who is a professor of ecology and environmental biology, and other Cornell researchers.

What really concerns me as a possible gas proponent is that the "industry responses" in this article are at least in part, possibly entirely...BS.

[StrangeSox]

Jesus christ the comments on that article...

[Balta1701]

The budget deal will remove Grey Wolves from the endangered species list, for some reason.

 

Of course, this means that after a few years of "Defending the livestock", the wolves will be back on the endangered species list.

[StrangeSox]

Good illustration of why Democrats can be just as terrible as Republicans!

[NorthSideSox72]

The budget deal will remove Grey Wolves from the endangered species list, for some reason.

 

Of course, this means that after a few years of "Defending the livestock", the wolves will be back on the endangered species list.

I was thinking more about this... the thing that scares me isn't what this means for wolves, or even ecsystems as a whole. What scares me is the precedent this sets - that Congress gets into the business of legislating specific species out of endangered or threatened status. That just can't be a good thing.

 

[StrangeSox]

I'm pretty sure our government is irreparably broken.