Suppose a Hard Carbon Crackdown

When I was in highschool, the so called scientists were scaring us with global freezing and starvation from all crops failing. Then came the global warming scam. Now it is climate change, which means that whatever happens they can use it to justify their claims.

 

It isn't quite fair that you and I have lived through the grotesque errors of claims about global change. The facts are simple. Carbon is increasing in the atmosphere. The effects are not truly fully known. But I agree; scientists had no business naming the disease by its outcome(s).

 

It is important to be wise. China is basically exiting the gas powered car market because they cannot breathe the pollution. And it will happen soon. The effects on boats will follow; at least in China.

 

Alleged disease. Not proven.

 

Carbon pollution is real. Birds are not.

 

Actually, your example shows some of the issues when the terms and technology of "renewable" and "carbon neutral" are not understood.
Atomic carbon is "stored" in our environment in several great "reservoirs": soil, sea, air, and biologics. The proportion of total carbon in the each of these reservoirs varies, without any human interaction, through the carbon cycle.
Before humans even appeared, the planet had cycled through being significantly hotter and cooler than it is now. This is because carbon in the atmosphere has two effects: 1) it increases the albedo, leading to less solar heating (such as the volcanic induced super-winters), and 2) it insulates the ground from radiating heat into space, so the earth heats up from the internal heat of our core (which manifests as vulcanism). There are also two effects beyond our control, solar cycles and cyclic vulcanism. So depending on state and direction of change in the three cycles (carbon, solar, and vulcanism), the earth is always heating up or cooling down (i.e. having climate change) in an irregular cycle many thousands of years long.
Given enough time, and within the limits of entropy (i.e. the "thermal death of the universe") all energy is "renewable". How do you think the fossil fuels got there in the first place? However "renewable" has come to mean either "readily available" or "easily replaced" energy sources, neither of which is "carbon neutral" and, possibly due to the poor heating value of the carbon source, could actually be worse by transferring more carbon to the atmosphere. I sometimes refer to this as "the all-electric fallacy", where the method used to make the electricity (including transmission losses) is worse that just making the power at the point it is needed. But what about hydroelectric or wind power you ask? Yes, it is readily available, but it (i.e. wind and rain patterns) is actually an indicator of normal climate change. Those rivers and winds will change, have changed, as they are due to small changes in the overall global temperature pattern, and like the observer effect, in using that available energy we are changing the weather patterns and climate as well. (When I used to give operational briefings my slide that just said "Climate is what you expect; But weather is what you get" always got the most chuckles.)
To be "carbon neutral", the complete power cycle must take carbon from a "reservoir" and when you are done with it, but it back in that same "reservoir". This can be accomplished having a plant that burns coal collect all the exhaust gasses that contain carbon, solidify them (you don't what them leaking out later), and return them to the ground. However, even this has long term implications if more and more carbon becomes static in the cycle.
So in getting back to the herring fat (or contemporary wood gas, or modern waste bio-diesel), realistically it was "renewable" only in that it could be replaced in the carbon cycle in less than geologic time, but it could never be considered "carbon neutral". There is only one off-the-shelf technology that is anywhere near "carbon neutral" ready to fully support the energy needs of this planet, and until politics or technology free it, it will just be a niche power source.

 

Birds are real. I've even owned a few. CO2 is a natural part of the atmosphere without which we would starve.

 

Carbon cycle - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle

 

Just to reinforce jehardiman's point, I'll give you a real example. In Island they use geothermal to produce energy. Now you would think this is a carbon neutral energy source, but far from it. Part of the produced energy is used to capture and store CO2, because the hot water from the ground is actually carbonated (natural sparkling water). The recovered CO2 and H2S is injected into the basalt rockbed, where it is stored. Last time I looked they managed to cut CO2 and H2S emissions by a third, and were working to expand capacity to become fully "carbon neutral".
We also have the technology to convert CO2 to synthetic fuel, using CO2 from industrial emissions or directly from the ambient air. But, all this processes require energy, and at the moment we do not produce enough energy to have a cheap excess for large scale conversion. Fossil fuel is still the cheapest portable form of energy, and it will remain so for a while. But just to preface the future, once we have enough cheap energy from another source, we will be able to convert carbon to synthetic fuel at will, and "carbon pollution" will be a thing of the past.

 

Very nice write up, jehardiman. I couldn't agree more with nearly everything you said.

My one sticking point is,

Of course, the methods of power generation are varied, and until the last few decades, little concern of the consequences of these methods have been paid. You are essentially correct.

The problem I have with statements about the "real" costs of generating electricity, in which it is pointed out that the generator plant is not carbon neutral, is that it ignores the varied and unexplored ways that electricity CAN be generated that are carbon neutral. It treats electricity like it is a secret carbon source and should be shunned.

The great thing about putting an electric motor in a boat is that, unlike a combustion engine, if you run out of stored energy aboard, there are still options for capturing more. We still have great potential for developing electric power generation and storage technology that doesn't require the burning of carbon rich fuels. I doubt the combustion engine has a great deal further to improve. (However, I recognize that statements like this are often proven false over time).

Currently, viable electric powered air travel is being explored, there are pretty decent electric outboard motors that can put a runabout up on a plane. Solar panels are getting cheaper and more efficient. Battery technology is still in its relative infancy and there are other options for large scale electric storage that also don't poison us.

Electricity can be generated in all kinds of ways that have yet to be really developed including temperature change, wave power, geothermal, even people movement. A combustion engine needs a fuel that can not be collected and processed instantaneously or on a small scale.

As for my response to the question of the planing hull, I would like to see a fourth choice to vote for. Planing hulls are much more efficient than displacement hulls. They move more mass at greater speed for less total energy than a displacement hull. It may take a lot of energy to get over that bow wave, but once on top of the water they can get farther with less energy.

I think people will always want their recreation and speed is one of the biggest. I vote for the fourth choice: Alternative high speed power will advance and become more obtainable.

-Will (Dragonfly)

 

"A combustion engine needs a fuel that can not be collected and processed instantaneously or on a small scale."During WWII the British developed several viable gassifier designs using various grown plants (such as wood) to run farm tractors and automobiles. Several European contries also developed gassifier systems to power internal combustion engines via several low-tech methods. Certainly not as convenient as our Gasoline/Fossil Oil technology, but it worked none the less.

 

still have the steamer? Does it run on gas?

 

Now way are birds real. They are just something abstract we pretend we see to make our lives more interesting. Carbon pollution, on the other hand, is something we can see by looking in the air.

 

scrapped, like Cash4Clunkers.

Global Warming is all about appearances. It wont matter that they would be replaced with other boats and that would generate much more CO2, what matters is a 90 second story on CNN showing a bunch of boats being scrapped in some Buy Back Program.

Like when that little weird Swedish girl went across the Atlantic in a big sailboat, but of course that ended up with about 10x the CO2 as her just flying by herself. If CO2 really mattered to anyone, the entire GW thing would look entirely different, and not a single current aspect would remain.

 

Sure they are. Once you look back past the measly 10 million years that GW charts always end at, you see that throughout history CO2 levels have mostly been MUCH higher, as much as 10x higher for much of Life's history.
IIRC some Russian ice samples from Antarctica prove that higher temps always precede higher CO2 levels, not the other way around, again and again, and there are reasons for that.

My question is, since nearly all food crops are very recently created high-yield strains that have been created during post-1900 elevated CO2, and most created even after say 1960 with even more elevated CO2, what would happen if CO2 levels were taken back down to their record lows in 1800s and suddenly all these crops were needing 40% or more extra rain to compensate for lower CO2 and the need to "breath" more dry air? I'm pretty sure it would be world wide crop failure on a level never imagined.