A very good post featuring one of the substack authors I follow, who (I didn't know) shares a liking for Lois McMaster Bujold stories. He seems to share my view that the principle action should be building a sufficient abundance of clean energy, that relying on concerned people to change their lifestyles just won't do it. (We wouldn't tell people invaders rolling down their streets aren't real because they are calling for nationwide, professionally led responses rather than engaging in ineffective personal sacrifices.)
When all our primary energy is zero emissions then everything we do with it will have very low emissions - even extravagant wastefulness by people who don't care.
re Hydrogen, water vapor and greenhouse implications - seems clear that humans adding water vapor isn't causing global warming or else burning fossil fuels would have to be counted as a major source, from water content in coal, water as a combustion product of gas and oil (a regular car makes as much water vapor as an equivalent Hydrogen one), from power plant cooling towers and ponds and from the use of irrigation. But leaked Hydrogen significantly affects the breakdown of atmospheric methane, making it persist longer, so there is some global warming from Hydrogen use. Boiling off some to keep storage temperatures down for transport therefore doesn't sound wise.
I do think Hydrogen best suits on-site industrial uses rather than as a transportable and/or transport fuel. On-site production and lower pressure storage seems to sidestep the difficulties that extreme pressure storage for transport impose. Not convinced it will work as a long term energy storage option for power plants - which may start as converted gas burners but, longer term, will work better with fuel cells - but would be pleased to be wrong. More district heating schemes, using borehole geothermal, seems a very efficient seasonal energy store and reduces a significant source of demand in cold Winter situations. My understanding is large buildings using borehole geothermal actually end up overheating the ground mass across multiple years if cooling isn't included.
Australian, not American here, but I don't know that treating China as some kind of implacable enemy with which compromise isn't possible is the best approach and may be inclined to become a self fulfilling prophecy. Actual warfare seems to be a negative sum game for everyone, bystanders too. One thing to take military action against 3rd world nations for whom the USA is beyond reach but China? I am not really well informed enough to have insights or answers. But has anyone? I don't think China's growing economic and military power is something that outsiders can prevent - it isn't like it lacks economic demand of it's own to sustain it and it's contributions to science and R&D are becoming impressive. Preventing and suppressing that doesn't look like a step forward when global cooperation is so clearly essential.
The end of Doubt, Deny, Delay politics - which has no redeeming features - seems essential to achieving the most we are capable of. As long as it persists as a populist alternative to facing up to difficult reality head on we will struggle.
Key stat: the average residence time of a water molecule in Earth’s atmosphere is nine days (it generally falls back down as precipitation). For methane, it’s 12.4 years. For carbon dioxide, it can’t be summed up in one value that easily because some CO2 molecules are absorbed by the ocean very quickly while some stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, but it averages out, broadly speaking, into impacts lasting for hundreds of years.
I strongly agree with you that "the principle action should be building a sufficient abundance of clean energy, that relying on concerned people to change their lifestyles just won't do it." That's a good way of putting it. People are busy and it's unreasonable and unworkable to devolve the response to a global threat like climate change down to the individual level. It is eminently reasonable to expect governments to invest in economy-scale transformations towards decarbonization-as the US is at last starting to do with the Inflation Reduction Act.
Thanks. We get called alarmist and doomist but I think it is the deniers that are overwhelmed by their alarmist fears. And if economies and societies are so fragile and vulnerable that commitment to clean energy is deemed ruinous, how much more vulnerable with the impacts of unmitigated global warming?
Commitment to addressing the problem greatly eases my fears - it is ongoing failure to commit to it that is terrifying.
A very good post featuring one of the substack authors I follow, who (I didn't know) shares a liking for Lois McMaster Bujold stories. He seems to share my view that the principle action should be building a sufficient abundance of clean energy, that relying on concerned people to change their lifestyles just won't do it. (We wouldn't tell people invaders rolling down their streets aren't real because they are calling for nationwide, professionally led responses rather than engaging in ineffective personal sacrifices.)
When all our primary energy is zero emissions then everything we do with it will have very low emissions - even extravagant wastefulness by people who don't care.
re Hydrogen, water vapor and greenhouse implications - seems clear that humans adding water vapor isn't causing global warming or else burning fossil fuels would have to be counted as a major source, from water content in coal, water as a combustion product of gas and oil (a regular car makes as much water vapor as an equivalent Hydrogen one), from power plant cooling towers and ponds and from the use of irrigation. But leaked Hydrogen significantly affects the breakdown of atmospheric methane, making it persist longer, so there is some global warming from Hydrogen use. Boiling off some to keep storage temperatures down for transport therefore doesn't sound wise.
I do think Hydrogen best suits on-site industrial uses rather than as a transportable and/or transport fuel. On-site production and lower pressure storage seems to sidestep the difficulties that extreme pressure storage for transport impose. Not convinced it will work as a long term energy storage option for power plants - which may start as converted gas burners but, longer term, will work better with fuel cells - but would be pleased to be wrong. More district heating schemes, using borehole geothermal, seems a very efficient seasonal energy store and reduces a significant source of demand in cold Winter situations. My understanding is large buildings using borehole geothermal actually end up overheating the ground mass across multiple years if cooling isn't included.
Australian, not American here, but I don't know that treating China as some kind of implacable enemy with which compromise isn't possible is the best approach and may be inclined to become a self fulfilling prophecy. Actual warfare seems to be a negative sum game for everyone, bystanders too. One thing to take military action against 3rd world nations for whom the USA is beyond reach but China? I am not really well informed enough to have insights or answers. But has anyone? I don't think China's growing economic and military power is something that outsiders can prevent - it isn't like it lacks economic demand of it's own to sustain it and it's contributions to science and R&D are becoming impressive. Preventing and suppressing that doesn't look like a step forward when global cooperation is so clearly essential.
The end of Doubt, Deny, Delay politics - which has no redeeming features - seems essential to achieving the most we are capable of. As long as it persists as a populist alternative to facing up to difficult reality head on we will struggle.
Great point on water vapor as well. This NASA explainer nicely summarizes why water vapor isn't a major contributor to global warming even though there's so much of it (https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3143/steamy-relationships-how-atmospheric-water-vapor-amplifies-earths-greenhouse-effect/).
Key stat: the average residence time of a water molecule in Earth’s atmosphere is nine days (it generally falls back down as precipitation). For methane, it’s 12.4 years. For carbon dioxide, it can’t be summed up in one value that easily because some CO2 molecules are absorbed by the ocean very quickly while some stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, but it averages out, broadly speaking, into impacts lasting for hundreds of years.
I strongly agree with you that "the principle action should be building a sufficient abundance of clean energy, that relying on concerned people to change their lifestyles just won't do it." That's a good way of putting it. People are busy and it's unreasonable and unworkable to devolve the response to a global threat like climate change down to the individual level. It is eminently reasonable to expect governments to invest in economy-scale transformations towards decarbonization-as the US is at last starting to do with the Inflation Reduction Act.
Really excellent comment! Thank you for your thoughtful contribution
Thanks. We get called alarmist and doomist but I think it is the deniers that are overwhelmed by their alarmist fears. And if economies and societies are so fragile and vulnerable that commitment to clean energy is deemed ruinous, how much more vulnerable with the impacts of unmitigated global warming?
Commitment to addressing the problem greatly eases my fears - it is ongoing failure to commit to it that is terrifying.
I absolutely agree.