Days

These are some of the main reasons why the AGW debate is endless: 1. CO2 is indispensable for life. We'll all die of starvation and cold without a sufficient amount of it in the atmosphere. I don't think there is a single reasonable person that questions this. So far, so good. 2. Yes, it is indispensable but, how much is too much? Here the arguments begin. Some want to return to the "primeval" 280 ppm CO2 concentration. Others arbitrarily state that the target should be 350. At the other extreme, we have people comfortable with 1,500 ppm. Since we have already exceeded 400 ppm and our global emissions are not being curtailed, the 350 ppm seems like an impossible objective. Should a more achievable objective such as 550 ppm be established and focus on trying to adapt to that world (that is almost certainly coming)? Would a 550 ppm world be worse in every sense or would it also have positive consequences? The latter is probably the right answer....

We are launching an alternate organization to 350.org because we believe that just wishing for something to happen (in other words for the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to go back to 350 ppm) is absurd in the light that we break a new CO2 emissions record every year. So, it makes no sense to invest time, effort and money in pursuing an impossible objective.  Let's state here in what we firmly believe: nobody alive today will ever see again 350 ppm. So, if not 350, where are we headed?  We are "easily" headed for 550 ppm, thus the name of our non-profit. Before we proceed further, let us state why we believe our non-profit will be more attractive than 350.org: We will not, ever, under any circumstances ask for donations. Hell, we won't even accept them even if somebody volunteers some money. We won't be dogmatic. We won't believe blindly in models, organizations (e.g. IPCC) or the Pope. We will strive to actually list...

Today, in the energy discourse it is very difficult to find relatively unbiased opinions. Most people seem to be lobbying for one cause, or the opposite one, or for an ideology. When somebody tells you that something is all good, or all bad, immediately distrust them. They are not being truthful.  Thus, this book by Robert. W. Kolb is like a breath of fresh air because it treats fracking as what it really is: a way of extracting natural gas that creates all sorts of benefits but also causes environmental problems. However, and at least for me, the most important insight from this book is that the "easy" success of shale gas in the USA will not be massively replicated soon elsewhere. The USA has several key characteristics that have allowed this fracking revolution. Other countries lack some or even most of them. For example, apparently the shale gas reserves of China are even greater than those of the USA, however as of today their shale production is...

Several weeks ago we wrote an article underlining what would be required to install a one GWe solar baseload power plant using storage batteries to achieve a reliable output (from an unreliable solar input). http://daysgt.blogspot.mx/2015/05/baseload-solar.html The conclusion was that the approach was too expensive and not environmentally friendly. Today, we'll analyze another option: make solar PV output reliable by pairing it with a natural gas power plant. Again, there will be some simplifications here, but bear with us. The objective is to deliver 1 GWe of reliable electricity, thus we'll install a 1 GWe natural gas power plant plus 1 GWe of solar PV. Let's consider the annual solar capacity factor at the selected location is 20%. The natural gas plant will be dispatchable to be able to produce 100% of the required power at any particular moment, zero when solar PV is at peak production and all the intermediate values throughout ot...