The Green New Deal

Belz... said:
How much distance would an electric-powered 777 even be able to do? I doubt I could do Toronto-Tokyo.
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No idea really, but as I have previously stated, I'm more of a fan of using Ethanol/Electric hybrids for long haul.

Current jet engines can run on Ethanol, though it's only 60% as efficient as A1, but by adding two E-Fan engines, which are powered by the ethanol engines, that loss in efficiency can be not only made up for, but you'd likely have a more efficient aircraft, leading to greater ranges. All that with the benefit of only reintroducing the carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere to make the ethanol in the first place.
 
PhantomWolf said:
No idea really, but as I have previously stated, I'm more of a fan of using Ethanol/Electric hybrids for long haul.

Current jet engines can run on Ethanol, though it's only 60% as efficient as A1, but by adding two E-Fan engines, which are powered by the ethanol engines, that loss in efficiency can be not only made up for, but you'd likely have a more efficient aircraft, leading to greater ranges. All that with the benefit of only reintroducing the carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere to make the ethanol in the first place.
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Follow up questions: how much of global warming are planes responsible for, compared to power plants and road vehicles, and is it worth looking into that now?
 
dudalb said:
The total dismissal of Nuclear Power is pure pandering to all the ex hippies out there.

I think the enviormental movment made a huge mistake in it's rejection of nuclear power. Totally based on "Nuclear is BAD" rather then any real reasoning.
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It's not just the environmental movement. There will be overwhelming opposition from the local population wherever you want to put one. You can lay the blame for that squarely on a power industry that under invested in a new technology with the potential for catastrophic effects when not managed properly.
 
Delvo said:
Lift is drag. It's pushing the air that comes at your face downward instead of letting it slide by.
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This is just plain wrong. I know this isn't the place for a physics/flying lesson, but it needs to be said.

Lift is not drag. Lift is created because of Bernoulli's Principle. This is that if a fluid is forced to move faster, then its pressure drops. With an airfoil (such as an aircraft's wing,) we use the angle of attack and the shape of the foil to force the air passing over the top of the airfoil (relatively speaking) to move faster than the air passing under the airfoil thus creating a low pressure zone above the airfoil and a high pressure zone under the wing. This pushes the wing upwards, creating lift.

Drag is a combination of the the friction between the body of the aircraft as it passes through the air, and the force applied back onto the aircraft as it pushes the air in front of it to the sides.

These are two totally different forces on the plane. To achieve stable and level flight, the plane has to make sure that it has four forces acting on it, Thrust, Drag, Lift, and Gravity. Thrust has to oppose and equal Drag, and Lift has to oppose and equal Gravity. With those forces balanced then Newton's 1st Law applies and the plane will remain in constant motion. By changing the amount of Lift, Drag, or Thrust, you can control the plane's altitude and velocity.

But there's also a second reason why the low-energy-density issue is worse for aircraft than ground vehicles: on the ground, if you don't have enough range, you refuel/recharge/replace on the way. With flight, if you don't have enough range, you just can't go.
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There is no difference with air travel today. One of the important jobs of the pilot is to make sure that (s)he has the right amount of fuel in the tanks to get the plane to its destination and have a specific amount in reserve.

I didn't even realize that that plane in the picture had a range estimate already. At 300 miles, I'd take a train anyway.
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Well as previously noted in my other posts, I'm more towards using hybrid Ethanol/Electric planes myself.
 
Belz... said:
Follow up questions: how much of global warming are planes responsible for, compared to power plants and road vehicles, and is it worth looking into that now?
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https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html

The global aviation industry produces around 2% of all human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Aviation is responsible for 12% of CO2 emissions from all transports sources, compared to 74% from road transport.

Jet aircraft in service today are well over 80% more fuel efficient per seat kilometre than the first jets in the 1960s.

Globally, the average occupancy of aircraft is 81%, greater than other forms of transport.

Alternative fuels, particularly sustainable biofuels, have been identified as excellent candidates for helping achieve the industry targets. Biofuels derived sources such as algae, jatropha, or waste by-products have been shown to reduce the carbon footprint of aviation fuel by up to 80% over their full lifecycle.

Around 80% of aviation CO2 emissions are emitted from flights of over 1,500 kilometres, for which there is no practical alternative mode of transport.

It is interesting to note that in the last two years, 80 new electric aircraft programmes have started up; all-electric for the smaller two-thirds and hybrid for larger aircraft, with forecast commercial service dates in the early 2030s on short-haul routes like London to Paris, with all-electric aircraft not expected before 2045. With the growth in air travel expected over the next 30 years, global strategy consulting firm Roland Berger predicts a 24% CO2 share for aviation by 2050 if fuel efficiency improves by 1% per year and if there are no electric or hybrid aircraft, dropping to 3-6% if 10-year-old aircraft are replaced by electric or hybrid aircraft due to regulatory constraints, starting in 2030, to reach 70% of the 2050 fleet.
 
The Shrike said:
Uh, maybe it's my agricultural background talking, but folks realize that "killing the cows" is what we raise them for in the first place, right?
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Well, No, this is just a totally false statement. A lot of our cattle herds are used to produce Dairy, not for slaughter, so your agricultural background is lacking.

If we (or markets) decided that reducing the density of ruminant livestock was a desirable societal endeavor, not one more cow would be killed in the effort than is brought to life now to be killed anyway. In fact, that process would begin with simply breeding fewer and fewer each year until today's breeds exist only in living museum collections of what would become heritage animals to illustrate how farming was done back in the olden days. If you really care about animal welfare – and you had a clue what you were talking about – you would be very much in favor of the GND.
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The thing is that we don't need to eradicate cattle, we just have to work out how to reduce or eliminate their emissions. We already know that certain grasses produce way more methane than others, this is why we have eradicated some grasses known to cause Bloat from the pastures, and try and keep cattle from feeding on other types of grasses when the danger is high.

Here in New Zealand, because we have such a huge dairy industry, and because our agricultural gases are higher then our industrial gases, we take this as a serious problem, and we have scientists working on solutions.

For those that don't really understand this, to process grass, a cow has to pass it through a number of "stomachs" that each break it down further. Part of that processing is in fermenting the grass, and in this step the bacterium that help in that fermenting produce methane. Generally this gas is burped out (though in some cases where it is being over produced it can get trapped inside a foam so it can't be released and this causes Bloat.) This is why the two major forms of research here are looking into developing a grass that when it ferments makes less methane, and also engineering the bacteria in the gut so that when they ferment the grasses they produce less methane. If we succeed with either, we drop our methane production without having to sacrifice our cattle herds.
 
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The Big Dog said:
why are you talking about planes? The sponsor's political advisors are claiming the FAQ written by her staff and posted on her website is fake news.
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Because I like planes, and it's cool looking into and discussing how aerospace engineers are working to make them less damaging to our environment, if you're not interested, you don't have to be involved in the conservation.
 
Re: nuclear, there's this argument:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a26255413/green-new-deal-nuclear-power/
On the other side of Tennessee, the same utility responsible for Watts Bar is building a solar farm in Millington. That farm will produce about 53 megawatts of electricity for the region at a cost of $100 million. If the Tennessee Valley Authority wanted to, it could build 21 more solar farms just like it for less than the initial cost of Watts Bar 2—and produce more power at peak times.

Now, solar farms don’t always operate at peak output, of course. But that doesn't mean the answer is nuclear. Instead, it’s diversification: The state can build a mix of solar, wind, and battery storage to supply their customers’ needs without the absurd overhead or complications
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And...


https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032118303307?via=ihub
Nuclear power, which the authors have evaluated positively elsewhere, faces other, genuine feasibility problems, such as the finiteness of uranium resources and a reliance on unproven technologies in the medium- to long-term. Energy systems based on renewables, on the other hand, are not only feasible, but already economically viable and decreasing in cost every year.
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As a result, we conclude that the 100% renewable energy scenarios proposed in the literature are not just feasible, but also viable. As we demonstrated in Section 4.4, 100% renewable systems that meet the energy needs of all citizens at all times are cost-competitive with fossil-fuel-based systems, even before externalities such as global warming, water usage and environmental pollution are taken into account.
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Here's some background on Ed Markey, co-author of the GND.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/423308/fukushimas-spreading-impact/
Meanwhile, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) has been critical of the NRC’s decision-making on the Westinghouse AP1000—the reactor design for half of the 28 reactors proposed in the U.S., including Southern’s. Markey sent a letter to the NRC last week criticizing its plan to approve the AP1000 this spring or summer despite a dissenting opinion from one of its senior engineers, who has raised doubts about the earthquake hardiness of the AP1000’s concrete-steel hybrid containment building.
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He apparently thinks we have a problem of unsafe plants getting approved in spite of known safety issues.
 
GlennB said:
And yet a forum search tells me that's your first mention of 'nuclear' in this thread. Why not enter that possibility into the debate, rather than sneer and snipe at other suggestions ?
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Because this thread is specifically about the Green New Deal, not about climate change in general, because it's not exactly a new suggestion, and because it's already been mentioned before by others. I don't know why you take me not saying something redundant to be meaningful.
 
smartcooky said:
It may have been incomplete, but it wasn't wrong.
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Yes, it was wrong. You said they were halting production within the year. They aren't. In fact, no timeline exists for when they might halt production.

They explicitly ARE phasing them out.
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Not within this year, as you claimed.

PHEVs are not the ultimate solution, but they are a big step in the right direction.
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They're great. But they're also still too expensive for universal adoption. That may change over time, but not nearly fast enough to replace all IC-only cars within the next ten years.
 
kellyb said:
Re: nuclear, there's this argument:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a26255413/green-new-deal-nuclear-power/
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Sorry to see popular mechanics peddling junk science like that. Gee, what a shock that a project that was started and then mothballed for 22 years cost more than was originally projected.

On the other side of Tennessee, the same utility responsible for Watts Bar is building a solar farm in Millington. That farm will produce about 53 megawatts of electricity for the region at a cost of $100 million. If the Tennessee Valley Authority wanted to, it could build 21 more solar farms just like it for less than the initial cost of Watts Bar 2—and produce more power at peak times.
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Note that highlighted part. At peak times. This may be news to PopMech, but peak times for solar probably averages less than 8 hours a day in the summer in Arizona. In Tennessee? And while it's tempting to point out that peak solar times often correspond with peak demand that is missing a key ingredient of the proposals.

One of the planned retrofits for homes clearly is going to be to convert them from natural gas heating to electric heating. And guess what? That is going to require a LOT more power from the electric grid especially in winter and especially during formerly non-peak hours. Only about 37 percent of US homes currently have electric heat. This indicates at the very least a doubling of demand on those cold winter nights, and probably more like a tripling if you consider all those electric vehicles needing recharging.
 
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Brainster said:
Sorry to see popular mechanics peddling junk science like that.
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Do you think this is junk science?

https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/TownsCities.pdf

This study develops roadmaps to transition 53 towns and cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico to 100% wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) in all energy sectors by no later than 2050, with at least 80% by 2030. The roadmaps call for electrifying transportation and industrial heat; using electricity, solar heat, or geothermal heat for water and air heating in buildings; storing electricity, cold, heat, and hydrogen; and providing all electricity and heat with WWS. This full transition in the 53 towns and cities examined may reduce 2050 air pollution premature mortality by up to 7000 (1700-16,000)/yr, reduce global climate costs in 2050 by $393 (221–836) billion/yr (2015 USD), save each person ∼$133/yr in energy costs, and create ∼93,000 more permanent, full-time jobs than lost.
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While social and political barriers exist, converting to 100% WWS using existing technologies appears technically and economically feasible.
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Also:
https://www.researchgate.net/profil...r-instead-of-replacing-it-with-renewables.pdf
This paper compared the cost of maintaining a proposed subsidy for three New York nuclear power plants (Fitzpatrick, Nine Mile Point Unit 1, and Ginna) with the cost of replacing the plants with renewable technologies between 2016 and 2050 (business as usual case). Results indicate that keeping nuclear operating with subsidy until 2050 is the most expensive option, resulting in $32.4 billion (business as usual) in cumulative costs in 2014 USD. If the nuclear plants stay online until 2028 and are then replaced by wind and solar, the overall costs decline to $31.0 billion. The most favorable scenario is to shut down nuclear today and replace it with onshore wind capacities, saving $7.9 billion compared with the business as usual case. Substituting nuclear with a combination of wind and utility-scale photovoltaics saves $6.6 billion between 2016 and 2050. A mix of wind, utility-scale, and rooftop photovoltaics saves $0.8 billion. Substituting nuclear with a combination of wind and utility-scale photovoltaics would save $6.6 billion. A mix of wind, utility-scale, and rooftop photovoltaics saves $0.8 billion
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In other words, electricity from renewables reduces carbon emissions much faster and more efficient than does nuclear power.
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