Re: Hitting The Global Warming Button

Or a huge steam turbine power plant.

On Thursday, May 29, 2014 6:21:11 PM UTC+2, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrot e:

ay to reduce a lot of CO2 from being released. But there is no money to be made doing that..."

ir and you got a BIG problem. It's actually smoldering.

about opening doors ? Well apply that in spades. The local fire department surely has a paper on that, even in third world countries. You give it ox ygen, you will be burnt.

ygen diffusing in will get pushed back out before it can get to the coal.

extinguishers - might work even better, but enough to make any significant difference would probably be much too expensive to be practical.

impractical. The thing is, that these smouldering coal deposits have an enormous product of temperature times thermal mass and a (compared to that) a tiny thermal dissipation to ambient (earth in the absence of aquifers i s not all that thermally conductive). Even if it was technically feasible to pump a mine full of Halon at enough pressure to keep any oxygen from diffusing in (which would be a considerable feat in itself), one would need to maintain this state by pumping in more Halon until all that thermal mass cools down below the self-ignition point of carbon in air, before any air could be let back in.

most big fissures accessible from outside being plugged to conserve Halon gas and therefore gas flow being kept to a minimum) the process of that co oling down could literally take years. If CO2 is used, the process would s till not be significantly different. Although CO2 is much cheaper, one woul d still need to limit the gas flow (otherwise the quantities of CO2 getting out would a ccumulate and make a large area uninhabitable for anything except plants), and that would still need to continue for years until the temperature has dropped sufficiently. In any case, pumping the burning mine full of gas ( of any type) is hardly a practical way to get it extinguished if it has accumulated enough thermal energy by burning for years.

ely needs a lot of water but water has the highest available specific heat of vaporization and its boiling point is conveniently lower than the igni tion temperature of carbon in air. Flooding the mine would likely drop the time needed for the coal masses to cool down sufficiently from the "years " timescale to the "weeks" (or at the most "months") timescale. That woul d make the extinguishing attempt at least somewhat practical in principle . Even then, short of diverting a river (provided a nearby one even exi sts), the firefighting is still a formidable task. Safely handling large a mounts of a carbon monoxide and hydrogen (that would be produced at the in itial stage when the temperatures in the mine are still very high), let al one having to pump all that water out of there again when the firefighting is over, would hardly be considered "easy" (probably still more realistic than using a gas).

Not unless there was plenty of oxygen available as well

The reaction of water with hot carbon to produce hydrogen and carbon-monoxi de is endothermic, so you have to alternate steam and air to keep the carbo n hot enough to drive the reaction.

Pump in enough water and the steam will push out any oxygen. I doubt if it would take a river's worth of water to do it, but you'd certainly need to f ill up the mine. Mostly you've got to pump water out of coal mines, rather than pumping it in, but an impervious layer of rock or clay under the coal seam could keep it dry enough to let it burn.

ts),

unts

al

is

h steam injection?

Not exactly. The formation of hydrogen and carbon monoxide is endothermic, so you won't get much of either before the coal is too cold to drive the re action, and any hydrogen and carbon monoxide formed would probably get clea ned up by adjacent lumps of smouldering coal before the water got to them.

Sea level rise is 3mm/year. Since Bill said "But not before we've flooded all our coastal cities," one infers Bill doesn't think solar will be feasible in the next hundred years. Yet that's his solution.

Cheers, James Arthur

All our coastal cities? Even the ones that start with cliffs?

Apparently Bill thinks 1ft / century will swamp them all before solar power's feasible. Even the ones with cliffs. Tsumani, maybe?

Run, run! The phlogiston's coming!

Cheers, James Arthur

surely

heat of

ignition

time

would

principle.

exists),

amounts

initial

alone

firefighting is

realistic than

with

Would it have all the necessary reactants and catalysts? Seems easy to prevent.

Awfully low pressures, but the small energy recovery could reduce expenses.

?-)

At the moment. From 1950 to 2009 the average was 1.7mm/year.

The evidence from the end of the last ice age is that the ice sheets didn't sedately melt in place, but slid off into the ocean in large chunks (a Hei nrich event).

We wouldn't be due for another one for a couple of thousand years, but we a re raising the surface temperature of the earth at an unprecedented rate, w hich may speed things up.

There's six metres of sea level rise sitting on top of Greenland's icy moun tains, and we haven't got a clue when it's going to start sliding off faste r - it's a mechanical question and the mechanism involved is buried under a great deal of ice.

Apparently enough of the West Antarctic Ice sheet has already floated off t he sea bottom to make it mechanically unstable

The modellers think that it could take from 200 to 1000 years before it sta rts moving fast, but we all know that that kind of model isn't to be truste d. That's some 4 metres of sea level rise.

Solar power is perfectly feasible now, just somewhat more expensive than po wer generated by burning fossil carbon. If we started investing in getting a serious amount of our energy from solar plants - say 20% - the economies of scale would mean that it would be cheaper by the time that we'd made tha t initial investment.

"Flooding our coastal cities" is the kind of inarguable evidence that would persuade even the most head-in-the-sand denialists (like James Arthur) tha t this would be worth doing.

It's to be hoped that the population as a whole could understand what's goi ng on - and what needs to be done about it - before anthropogenic global wa rming had progressed quite that far, and the economy hadn't been damaged to the point where building lots of solar power stations would be something t hat we no longer had the spare production capacity to manage.

nd

oded

They've all got port areas, and the road networks do go through those port areas. Bits of New York will be fine after a couple of metres of sea-level rise, but they won't be quite as accessible, or valuable, as they are now. Like the curate's egg, parts of New York will remain excellent.

James Arthur's capacity for misapprehension is famous, and he's thoroughly misunderstood what I was saying, which was that solar power is feasible now , if more expensive than the cheapest energy sources currently available.

A rational society would invest the money in solar power now - and the usua l economies of scale would then make it the cheapest available energy sourc e.

Sadly, our society isn't rational, as James Arthur persistently reminds us, and I was expressing the slightly pessimistic view that we'd have to flood our coastal cities before society would see sense.

It's not difficult to identify James Arthur with Chicken Little. He's a lot cleverer than Chicken Little, but he's been brain-washed into a state wher e he can't process evidence that doesn't fit his bizarre world-view, so tha t cleverness hasn't got a lot of real-world evidence to work on.

urely needs a lot of water but water has the highest available specific hea t of vaporization and its boiling point is conveniently lower than the igni tion temperature of carbon in air. Flooding the mine would likely drop the time needed for the coal masses to cool down sufficiently from the "years " timescale to the "weeks" (or at the most "months") timescale. That would make the extinguishing attempt at least somewhat practical in principle. Even then, short of diverting a river (provided a nearby one even exists), the firefighting is still a formidable task. Safely handling large amount s of a carbon monoxide and hydrogen (that would be produced at the initial stage when the temperatures in the mine are still very high), let alone having to pump all that water out of there again when the firefighting is over, would hardly be considered "easy" (probably still more realistic than using a gas).

th

revent.

The formation of hydrogen and carbon monoxide from water and carbon takes s omething else as well - energy. You normally get that by adding oxygen to t he steam, but if you put enough water into the mine, the steam, hydrogen an d carbon monoxide produced will block the inflow of oxygen.

s.

The formation of hydrogen and carbon monoxide from water and carbon is endo thermic - there wouldn't be any energy to recover, beyond the thermal mass of the coal that had been smouldering before the water was pumped in.

Not really. The amounts involved are tiny compared to the amount mined.

SF6 would be the gas of choice for extinguishing underground fires, but it is a fantastically powerful GHG in its own right 10000x that of CO2.

Unfortunately flooding a mine tends to make it very hard to bring back into production afterwards.

There are plans and projects in hand for underground gasifaction of coal seams too narrow or deep to get economically by conventional means:

e:

ar

er

ound

looded

t areas. Bits of New York will be fine after a couple of metres of sea-leve l rise, but they won't be quite as accessible, or valuable, as they are now .

y misunderstood what I was saying, which was that solar power is feasible n ow, if more expensive than the cheapest energy sources currently available.

ual economies of scale would then make it the cheapest available energy sou rce.

s, and I was expressing the slightly pessimistic view that we'd have to flo od our coastal cities before society would see sense.

ot cleverer than Chicken Little, but he's been brain-washed into a state wh ere he can't process evidence that doesn't fit his bizarre world-view, so t hat cleverness hasn't got a lot of real-world evidence to work on.

None of that word-salad's gonna save you when the phlogiston tsunami comes. Repent!

Cheers, James Arthur

P.S. Phlogiston climbs cliffs.

Sure, you can do that, but the results are imaginary too. The earth isn't static or easily measured, and it's not shrouded by a crystal ball. We're shrouded by an ever-variable mix of gases and clouds, and the surface changes color and reflectance in myriad elusive ways.

If we'd known 100 years ago how horrible building factories, roads, bridges, and cars was going to be for humanity(*), we could have all stayed in our teepees and avoided this whole mess.

(*) Not to mention plastic.

Now our only hope is to catch that globe-trotting, carbonating Bill Sloman and stop him loosing any more phlogiston, before it's too late.

Cheers, James Arthur

As I understand it, solar panels use silicon that is a by prodect of making semiconductors. So if the solar panel energy is increased, the raw material will cost more. So there is no economy of scale.

Dan

So you would like to believe like the good little paranoid dittohead science denier that you are.

Many factories were pretty horrible and the owners greed caused spectacular boiler explosions until the insurers started insisting on regular boiler and pressure vessel inspections or do you airbrush history as well as inconvenient science out of your "reality" too.

be

Not that elusive. We can't predict the exact extent of global warming as fu nction of atmospheric CO2 concentration, but we can predict it accurately e nough to know that it's going on now and already causing real problems, and that "business as usual" is a really bad idea. We may be heading towards a catastrophe or merely a disaster, but either way it would be a good idea t o slow - ideally reverse - our progression along that trajectory.

g it isn't happening though.

s, and cars was going to be for humanity(*), we could have all stayed in ou r teepees and avoided this whole mess.

That would have worked, but it isn't anything like an optimal solution. In fact the roads and bridges are perfectly fine. The factories and cars would be fine too if we chose to power them by any other mechanism than burning fossil carbon and venting the CO2 produced directly to the atmosphere.

Solar power is now perfectly capable of supplying all the power we need - a nd a whole lot more. It is - currently - a more expensive power source than digging up and burning fossil carbon, but we wouldn't have to build many m ore solar power plants for the economies of scale to make it the cheapest p ower source available.

It would delay the climate catastrophe by about 5msec. If that were - in fa ct - our only hope, we would be doomed. It isn't and we aren't, unless half

-wits like you are more influential than you deserve to be.

If it's your only hope, that's because you've blinded yourself to the real (and numerous) possibilities on offer that don't happen to fit your preferr ed view of the world. People with a rather better grasp of physics than you have (or John Larkin has) have made similar kinds of mistakes.

Fred Seitz and Fred Singer were a whole lot brighter than either of you, bu t it didn't stop them from endorsing some very silly ideas for purely polit ical reasons.

usual economies of scale would then make it the cheapest available energy s ource.

ng semiconductors. So if the solar panel energy is increased, the raw mate rial will cost more. So there is no economy of scale.

Your understanding is distinctly imperfect. If you want lots of solar power , thermal solar power stations are the way to go

That doesn't involve any photoelectric generation. If you want photovoltaic panels (which are more expensive per watt) you've got a wide range of choi ces. Right now, single crystal silicon is still seems to make the cheapest cells, but that does reflect a certain over-capacity in the current semi-co nductor business

Solar cells are no longer necessarily a by-product of making semiconductors , but a substantial market in their own right. Polysilicon cells, CdTe and GaAs cells can all be competitive, depending on the precise state of the ma rket and the way they are used. GaAs cells are attractive in solar-concentr ator set-ups.

Martin, that's beneath you.

If you can predict clouds, let's have it. Coverage, altitude, location, time of day (all of that matters enormously). And net reflectance, in-bound and out-bound, too. Please cite empirical confirmation.

Show definitively that mild warming won't create more clouds with more net reflectance, damping any future warming, and that soot doesn't melt snow, decrease albedo, and release more of the dreaded phlogiston.

Since the albedo, ice melt, and snow coverage are so easy, let's have a reference to the models that predicted *any* of those even five years back.

Then worm that back into your notion that the whole thing is no more complicated than computing the energy balance of an imaginary sphere investing an imaginary earth.

Cheers, James Arthur

Don't forget cosmic rays, dust and bacteria and sea salt cloud nucleation, solar radiance, solar wind, ocean currents, earth's magnetic field changes, farming, airplanes, and orbital variations.

The gotcha about AGW is that high-gain feedback mechanisms have to be assumed to make CO2 matter much. But those same amplifications make everything else matter, too.