Liquid coal touted as good fuel bet if ethanol fails

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1258

Starvid, I'm glad to find you in a shiny, happy mood today.

I am curious to know what you think an ice free summer Arctic Ocean (now predicted by NASA to occur by 2013) absorbing solar energy 24 hours, 7 days a week will mean for the surrounding Siberian and North American tundras.

Do you expect that all that added warmth will slow the already-underway thawing down? Do think it likely that all that melted tundra won't produce any CO2 or methane as it starts to rot?

Or are you of the school that believes that more clouds will form of just the right kind to block out sun but not hold in heat?

Please do lighten my day with more of your sunshiny disposition. I could use it today.

Temperedoil

The Coal to Liquids idea is another example of people seeking any way they can, or we can, to continue our high energy, high resource lifestyles, economies, societies. Those of us who check into these message boards may fret about such things as the limitations imposed by availability of energy and other resources once the supply of oil can no longer meet demand, but most people have enough to worry about with getting the kids to school, paying the bills, trying to put some money aside for a rainy day, paying off debt, buying new shoes, and keeping up with the shifting trends in technology, toys, fashion, and holiday destinations.

Even where people are aware of such issues as Peak Oil, Global Warming, shortages of water and food, and so on, these will be considered problems that are not as important or as immediate as putting food on the table at the end of the current day.

The already mentioned issues, and others, have not suddenly appeared in the public consciousness overnight. For example, we had warnings of just how dangerous our very heavy dependence upon a growing supply of oil can be back in the 1970's. That awareness, however, will not lead to a dramatic shift in how we live until either we are forced to adapt to and by the changing circumstances (as is looking likely to happen soon) or our leaders (political, corporate, technology, etc) rapidly implement solutions that will allow us to change as we wish to.

Coal to Oil is an attempt at the latter. Unfortunately, it might at best offer a temporary stop-gap measure before either the supply of coal fails to keep up with demand, or global warming or other crises lead to our being unable to continue with our lifefstyles anyway.

As I see it, the bottom line is that there are no technological solutions, because we are not looking at a technological problem. The solutions lie in lifestyle changes, in greatly reducing our resource (particularly energy) consumption, in radically altering our economies and reorganising our societies. Do we want to do this? Most people in the affluent industrialised nations would say "Only if it means greater affluence", or, in other words, no.

Before we can adapt by choice, we need to make that choice to adapt. Right now, that choice, or will, is not there to a sufficient degree to make it happen.

Will Coal to Liquids make a difference? Will solar power make a difference? Will wave, tidal, wind, nuclear power make a difference? Will intensive exploration of arctic and other frontier prospects make a difference? In my view, only if we collectively have the will to adapt in such a way as to make it possible for them to make a difference. In other words, based upon observation of real people living real lives, the answer is no.

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1258

Temperedoil wrote

"In my view, only if we collectively have the will to adapt in such a way as to make it possible for them to make a difference. In other words, based upon observation of real people living real lives, the answer is no."

Exactly right, but it is not just "your view." It is the clear truth, a truth that is obvious to anyone brave enough and honest enough to look at the situation for what it is. We have to start stating real truths without hedges. This is not a case of everyone having an equally valid point of view.

The only choices are radically and immediately changing our way of life to one which requires much less energy and far fewer resources, or watch as the world spins ever further into climate chaos (which it may be starting to do anyway, in spite of Starvid's cheery, unsubstantiated claims to the contrary, bless his happy, nuke-infatuated soul!)

Starvid

Temperedoil

Professor Aleklett may well be correct that we will never release enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels to lead to the changes that have been proposed as likely by various other scientists. However, we do not need to in order to impact the climate and Earth's ecology to a sufficient degree to potentially lead to such changes.

We do not need to push the climate all the way to complete melting of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice caps ourselves. We do not need to cause the increased storm activity or severity ourselves. We only need to push the system far enough for feedback loops to develop.

Earth has had many shifts in climate in the past, as you have noted yourself. These natural shifts have eventually led to opposing shifts as the planet's systems constantly push toward a balance. Although the Greenhouse Effect is itself essential in order for the abundance of life to exist as is presently the case on Earth, there is a limit to how pronounced that effect can be before a state of imbalance (one detrimental to life on Earth) enters the system.

Humanity is not responsible for the Greenhouse Effect itself, but the evidence suggests that the world is warming. When looking at the possible reasons for this, a growing number of scientists have come to determine that humanity's burning of fossil fuels (representing vast stores of carbon locked away for millions of years) are at least partially responsible for the increasing Greenhouse Effect.

Other possible explanations, such as solar activity, have been ruled out as not being enough on their own to lead to the observed changes (though some of them may still play their own roles, perhaps they would have helped bring balance to the system in the absence of the human impact, or they may have eventually led to the observed warming themselves following an additional natural shift).

From what I understand of Professor Aleklett's statements regarding fossil fuel burning and the greenhouse effect, it seems that his main argument is that we will not be reaching the levels of greenhouse gases through the burning of fossil fuels due to the impact of Peak Oil. Where the fossil fuels become too difficult and expensive to extract, and at declining rates, so that we stop burning the quantities required well before reaching the levels suggested by the IPCC. Although this makes a lot of sense in the Peak Oil context, it would at first glance appear to ignore the impact of feedback loops and tipping points. At what point do we start to see the release of gases trapped in the frozen soils of Siberia? At what point do we start to see the Arctic absorbing rather than reflecting heat and light from the sun? Would we have had reason to be concerned about such matters if we had never started burning fossil fuels?

Starvid

I agree with pretty much everything you say. Except these feedback loops. They are not well understood, at all.

If they do exist, why didn't they kick in during the medieval warm period? Why not during the warm times a few thousand years ago?
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Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

Starvid

By the way, this is the warmest winter in 280 years in Uppsala. It might be an even longer time since we had such a warm winter, because we don't have records for more than 280 years, and it has never been this warm.

Anyway, according to the meteorologists this has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with the fact that the high pressure systems are at unusual places this winter. The warmth around here is due to the same reason that has deep frozen everything from the Berings strait to Riyadh.

The climate fluctuates on its own.
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Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.