NNadir
NNadir's JournalIt is useful, in considering IEA/WEO soothsaying, the 2000 edition of the WEO. It's in my files.
For convenience, I'll repost the data and soothsaying from the 2022 edition:
Here is the equivalent file for the 2000 edition, which used the unfortunate unit, MTOE (million tons oil equivalent):
I built a spreadsheet to convert MTOE into SI units, Exajoules (EJ).
So called "modern biomass" appears in the 2022 edition, "modern solid biomass" consists of clear cutting/strip mining forests, as is practiced by, among other places, the horrible DRAX coal plant in the UK which is now considered "renewable" and "green" because it burns North American forests in lieu of coal. It is obvious that the so called "renewable energy" listed in the 2022 edition is dominated by strip mining forests, dumping phosphates and nitrates on the soil, and destroying rivers. In the "percent talk" utilized by anti-nuke "renewables will save us" types, 75.7% of so called "renewable energy" depends on phosphate mining, the Haber-Bosch fossil fuel driven production of nitrogen, and strip mining forests.
In the 2000 edition, biomass was not discussed in the main tables, but was separately discussed in other tables. This was called "CRW" "Combustible Renewables and Waste," where "waste" referred to burning garbage.
Here is the table referring to it.
It is of some historical interest, that "CRW" was then considered as mostly relevant to the so called "third world," which at that time still included China, apparently. The people relying on "CRW" were all living in a "renewable energy" nirvana of the type that the first world abandoned in the 19th century, albeit at the Faustian bargain (that in their defense they were incapable of understanding, with the exception of Arrhenius) of burning dangerous fossil fuels and dumping the waste into the atmosphere. In 2000, these people living in the "renewable energy" nirvana to which all our anti-nukes would like us to return, were considered "impoverished."
For simplicity, let me put the "pie chart" in the 2000 WEO up showing predicted decreasing reliance in "percent talk" on "CRW" which them included both "traditional biomass" (mostly involving horribly impoverished people and a few westerners with wood stoves and "commercial" CRW, shit like burning garbage and (now) strip mining forests for the three card monte marketing campaign like that at DRAX:
In 1997 - the year to which the 2000 edition referred since accounting was slower - 461 MTOE translates into 19.3 EJ. The soothsaying back then predicted 939 EJ, lower in "percent talk" but larger in real numbers, which translates into 38.6 EJ. The DRAX type schemes, coupled slash and burn approaches to converting rain forest wilderness into palm oil plantations and destroying the Mississippi River Delta ecosystem with run off from Iowa ethanol feedstock, combined with hydro to reach 50 EJ by 2022, with the caveat that this may be the result of the widespread internet driven and marketing driven distribution of popular ignorance. Ignorance is on the rise and becoming ascendent. In 2020 hydro produced 16 EJ, as opposed to the 12 EJ predicted, probably driven by dubious "successes" like the possibly very dangerous and environmentally questionable Three Gorges Dam.
The 2000 WEO predicted nuclear energy to decline because of the announcements by Putin employee - then German Chancellor - Gerhardt Schroeder that Germany would "phase out" nuclear energy, which it did, killing people in the process.
Happily, nuclear energy is showing a slight growth, driven again, largely by China, where they know how to build nuclear reactors quickly and regularly, something that we used to know about, having built more than 100 nuclear reactors between 1960 and 1985, but suffered, because of popular fear and ignorance driven by the selective attention of anti-nukes, the destruction of our nuclear construction infrastructure. The "lesson" of Vogtle that we should take is that we need to reconstruct this infrastructure, and do so quickly, ignoring the fucking idiots who carry on about "cost" of nuclear energy, and have zero interest in the cost of climate change, and the enormous death toll from air pollution that they tacitly endorse.
Note that "traditional biomass" - generally a reflection of poverty, which our antinukes tacitly applaud - has risen; this delineates how little we have done to address poverty, how little we care about it.
I personally believe that it is possible to do both, to address poverty as well as to save what is left to be saved, and perhaps even restore what might be restored, but that is only possible with the worldwide embrace of nuclear energy.
If, as the 2022 edition of the WEO predicts in its soothsaying, nuclear energy is producing only 46 exajoules of energy, not much of the planet will be left to save.
As for the predictions of hydro, to which you kindly referred, that's clearly nonsense. All of the world's major river systems, many dependent on glaciers - including Three Gorges - showed dramatic signs of collapse in 2022, driven by the failure of the so called "renewable energy" fantasy to address climate change. The age of hydroelectricity will come to an end in this century, largely because of climate change.
Thanks for your comment.
Anti-nuke newspaper announces the climate catastrophe is now over; it's history.
The "don't worry, be happy" article can be found here:
Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View David Wallace-Wells, New York Times October 26, 2022.
David Wallace-Wells is a journalist who has a degree in history. For me he proves my oft stated impression that one cannot work as a journalist if one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better.
Predictably the article has lots of pictures of wind turbines, which according to the 2022 World Energy Outlook, produced 7 Exajoules of energy in 2021, out of 624 Exajoules consumed in 2021.
The 2022 World Energy Outlook: World demand is now 624 EJ/yr. up by 32 EJ, with solar growing...
Wallace-Wells article includes this "gem:"
He must know something. He interviewed some scientists.
The tally isn't in yet, and may not be for several years, but I expect the worldwide death toll from extreme temperatures and other forms of extreme weather this year will be prodigious.
By the way, every wind turbine on this planet will be landfill in 25 years, with a few minor exceptions.
Don't worry. Be happy. The anti-nuke paper of record, has spoken. One can spend hours just going through the titles of articles written in this newspaper about Fukushima, where 20,000 people died instantly from seawater, and maybe someone somewhere had their life shortened by radiation exposure, but trust me, if one goes through the articles the New York Times has published on the topic, deaths from seawater will not be the main topic, if it's a topic at all. It will all be about (gasp) radiation.
Again, don't worry, be happy. We'll just "adapt." The news is all good.
We live in the age of primitive ignorance reborn.
A nice discussion of the 50th anniversary of Stevie Wonder's "Talking Book."
I remember I loved the album, and even though this article is in the New York Times, I enjoyed the appreciation of that seminal album discussed by musicians:
50 Years Ago, Stevie Wonder Heard the Future
Until reading this, I never actually realized how innovative that album was in its time, and although I was something of a fan, I didn't appreciate the genius.
Bullshit from a criminal, lying, hateful bigoted thug...
https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1586049678751277060Lindsey Graham
@LindseyGrahamSC
Very upset to hear about the attack against Paul Pelosi. This is despicable and we are all grateful that Paul is expected to fully recover.
In America violence is never the answer for any grievance and every American should always be safe in their own home.
1:38 PM · Oct 28, 2022
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The 2022 World Energy Outlook: World demand is now 624 EJ/yr. up by 32 EJ, with solar growing...
...in the "percent" talk" advocates of so called "renewable energy" use to excuse it's grotesque failure to address climate change, 0% as fast as coal, the use of which grew by 8 Exajoules (EJ).
After the expenditure of trillions of dollars on it in this century, the solar industry produced 5 EJ of energy, the same as it produced in 2021. The wind industry grew by by an astounding 16%, from 6 EJ to 7 EJ, in more "percent talk," 12.5% as fast as coal.
Combined, solar and wind, after half a century of wild cheering, the expenditures of trillions of dollars in this century, and inclusion in all the "stated policies" soothsaying by Governments around the world, are producing 11 EJ of energy, in "percent talk," 1.7% of world energy. (The soothsaying continues, as will be clear in the following table, a new world State Religion, the "Renewable Energy Will Save Us" faith.)
The use of dangerous petroleum grew by 11 EJ, that of dangerous natural gas by 7 EJ. In other words, the increase in the use of dangerous natural gas was equal to the total energy produced by solar and wind after half a century of cheering and the expenditure of trillions of dollars.
The table of data, found on page 435, of the 2022 IEA World Energy Outlook
Source: 2022 IEA World Energy Outlook
I had an English professor in college who stated that what one reads depends on what one brings to the text.
If one reads through this table this without weeping, one isn't really reading it.
You belong to me.
Wiping off the lipstick: Germany to dismantle a wind farm to mine the coal beneath it.
One of the more stupid things one hears about the wind industry is that it can displace coal. Coal is the most dirty form of energy there is - and Germany burns the dirtiest coal, its only domestic source, lignite - but coal is something the wind industry isn't, reliable.
I have always said that the wind and solar industry are lipstick on the dangerous fossil fuel pig, and now that Germany no longer wishes to fund Putin, or likes to pretend it doesn't want to do so, they are burning coal.
Well, they're wiping the lipstick off and acknowledging that they were never interested in climate change, but rather were interested in inflated fear and ignorance about nuclear energy:
Wind farm in Germany is being dismantled to expand coal mine
Wind turbines near the Garzweiler open pit mine in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, run by German energy giant RWE, is being removed to make way for more lignite exploitation.
The turbines were in operation since 2001, and government subsidies have expired. Energiekontor and wpd, which is also active in the Balkans, operate the wind farm.
It is unknown how long the deconstruction would take. So far, one wind turbine has been removed.
Lignite for electricity production will be extracted where the wind turbines are now located
Garzweiler’s annual production is 25 million tonnes, according to RWE. It estimated that lignite reserves in the area could last until 2045. The fuel is mostly supplied to the nearby Neurat thermal power plant.
The excavation was initially limited to an area of 66 square kilometers in the Garzweiler 1 area. The complex was extended in 2006 to the Garzweiler 2 sector over an area of 48 square kilometers.
Displacement due to coal mine expansion
The population from several municipalities in the area west of Cologne had to be relocated due to the Grazweiler mine expansion. In addition to the location of the wind farm, RWE is taking an area in and around the small town of Lützerath. It will be completely evicted and demolished.
The town has become a symbolic battlefield for climate activists in Germany.
The decision to demolish Lützerath was made in accordance with the country’s new coal policy to temporarily increase the use of lignite for electricity production during the energy crisis, Clean Energy Wire reported...
"Temporarily" my ass. In a time where people all over the world died from extreme heat, where great rivers disappeared, where vast glaciers that have served for centuries as the source of water for billions of people, etc., etc., ad nauseum, Germany shut nuclear plants to burn coal.
A picture of the situation is included with the article:
https://cdn.shortpixel.ai/spai/w_840+q_glossy+ret_img+to_webp/
Congrats to all the world's anti-nukes on their big wind win. They may be great marketeers, but there is nothing about such people that qualifies them as "environmentalists," who call themselves "greens," in the same way that Republicans announce they'll make America "great."
No matter how many times the NY Times refers to Greenpeace members as "Environmentalists" or the Union of Concerned "Scientists" as scientists, these people are reactionary fools, who have worked to bring the 21st century back to the 17th century dependence on the weather, this when all of their activities have been directed at grotesquely destabilized the weather.
'Undruggable' cancer-causing protein meets its match
This showed up in my Nature Briefing this morning:
‘Undruggable’ cancer-causing protein meets its match
Subtitle:
The article is brief:
About one-quarter of all cancers carry mutations in a protein called KRAS, which helps to regulate cell growth. Researchers have struggled for decades to design therapies that inhibit the protein. One drug that targets a mutant form of KRAS has recently reached the market, but this therapy does not work against KRAS with a mutation named G12D (KRASG12D). This version of the protein, the most common KRAS mutant, is found in many pancreatic and colorectal tumours.
Jill Hallin at Mirati Therapeutics in San Diego, California, and her colleagues studied a molecule called MRTX1133 that can block the activity of KRASG12D. They found that MRTX1133 binds to the mutant 700 times more readily than to normal KRAS, and that the compound kills laboratory-grown cells that make KRASG12D...
The original article is here:
Hallin, J., Bowcut, V., Calinisan, A. et al. Anti-tumor efficacy of a potent and selective non-covalent KRASG12D inhibitor. Nat Med 28, 2171–2182 (2022).
This is not the KRAS mutation with which I've heard about, a mutant at the same residue, G12C where glycine is substituted by cysteine at the 12th residue of the protein. A drug for this target is marketed, and it has some efficacy in some cancers. G12D is substituted by aspartic acid at the 12th residue of the protein.
The structure of MRTX1133 is given in the full paper:
It is said to bind only to G12D mutants, and not the normal KRAS protein. The binding site is shown as well in the full paper:
The cancers it may treat, should it pass through clinical trials and show few dangerous AE (Adverse Events) include some very intractable cancers, notably pancreatic cancer.
Cool.
Heat, Electricity, and Fuel Gas Produced by Supercritical Water Gasification of Waste Plastic.
This is an idea that's been floating around in my head for quite some time, albeit not for an Island, except for some musings about the tragic mined out Island nation of Nauru, but mostly for California, and it's covered in this paper by Chinese scientists: Heat, Electricity, and Fuel Gas Ploy-Generation System on an Island based on Plastic Waste Gasification in Supercritical Water Weizuo Wang, Cui Wang, Yong Huang, Huaiyu Lu, Jia Chen, Jinwen Shi, and Hui Jin ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 2022 10 (41), 13786-13791.
The heat source of primary energy in this scheme is just silly; no one is going to maintain supercritical water flows with a solar thermal system that might provide sufficient heat for a few hours a day, and the land on an Island (and the ecosystem of an Island) are too precious to trash with fantasy junk, but the solar thermal source can be seen as a surrogate for a small compact high temperature nuclear reactor.
I don't have a lot of time to cover the paper in detail but here's the key excerpt from the introductory text:
Traditional methods to deal with plastics used to be divided into three types, (8,9) sanitary landfill, burning, and recycling. Sanitary landfill and burning also caused a lot of pollution. Therefore, recycling was regarded as the best way to deal with plastics in the future.
Different from thermoplastics, glass, and metals, thermoset plastics were thought to be difficult to recycle or reuse because of their excellent physical and mechanical properties. (10) However, this view changed as methods such as hydrolysis and glycolysis were proven to successfully recycle thermoset plastics. (11) It has also been difficult to dry microplastics from the ocean. As a result, technology that can recycle or reuse plastics without dewatering or drying has been considered. Microplastics floating on the ocean could be gasified by supercritical water on an island. In this way, elements that easily form acids could be converted into harmless inorganic salts and the emission of pollutants such as NOx and SOx could be avoided. The special flow and heat transfer characteristics of supercritical water played a positive role in the promotion of gasification reaction. In addition, the process of dewatering and drying for feedstocks was avoided in this way. (12) Great cost savings could be achieved using this technology.
As an island energy system, many challenges, such as the weak connection to the mainland, congestion, and stability problems need to be resolved, and hydrogen technologies could be the key to these problems. (13) Hydrogen-rich syngas, as the main products of supercritical water gasification could fit the island energy system well and become the main type of energy generation in this system. In addition to these challenges of output, the limit of input energy was also considered. Solar energy was a viable energy alternative. (14,15) In the system of supercritical water gasification, external heat supply in the processes of heating water to supercritical and maintaining constant temperature in the reactor could be obtained by concentrated solar energy...
More practically, more reliably, and far less environmentally intrusive the temperature "could" be provided by a small nuclear reactor.
Gasification of ocean borne plastic would, over time, help clean the ocean. (This would also be the case for supercritical water/gasification/desalination, as I discussed previously in this space: The Energy Required to Supply California's Water with Zero Discharge Supercritical Desalination. In this case the plastic might be gasified before it gets into the ocean, by the expedient of gasifying municipal waste with supercritical water derived as part of the desalination process.)
A schematic of the proposed system, a process intensification system - all hope for an environmentally sustainable world will rely on continuous (not solar) intensified processes - is here:
Obviously a system also designed to recover desalinated water would look different, and again, the solar thermal fantasy is useless, but otherwise the basic idea has lots of merit.
This is how we should think.
Recovering oxygen from simulated lunar regoliths collected by the Chinese Chang-e'5 moon mission.
I came across this cool paper this evening about the recovery of oxygen from lunar samples recently returned by the recent Chinese space mission: Extracting Oxygen from Chang’e-5 Lunar Regolith Simulants Hao Shi, Peng Li, Zhengshan Yang, Kaiyuan Zheng, Kaifa Du, Lei Guo, Rui Yu, Peilin Wang, Huayi Yin, and Dihua Wang ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 2022 10 (41), 13661-13668.
The recovery depends on the application of the "FFC" process which I expect will ultimately change the world by reducing the cost of titanium (and other) metals. "FFC" refers to Fray, Farthing and Chen, cited thus in the paper: Chen, G. Z.; Fray, D. J.; Farthing, T. W. Direct Electrochemical Reduction of Titanium Dioxide to Titanium in Molten Calcium Chloride. Nature 2000, 407 (6802), 361– 364.
Regrettably I won't have much time to discuss this interesting paper - FFC papers often catch my eye, but using it to process lunar samples strikes me as interesting - but I can share some text, and a graphic.
The introductory text:
From lunar regolith, oxygen is typically obtained in three ways. The first way is chemical reduction, which is used to reduce oxides into metals and secondary oxides through external reagents: for example, using hydrogen (H2) to reduce ilmenite (FeTiO3) to generate Fe, TiO2, and H2O, which can be further electrolyzed to H2 and O2. (8) A carbothermal reduction process has also been extensively studied, and the reducing agents mainly include solid carbon, CO gas, methane, etc. (9?11) Thermodynamically, the efficiency of chemical reduction depends on the limited oxides such as FeTiO3 and Fe2O3 of the lunar regolith. The second way is to decompose lunar regolith by vacuum thermal dissociation. (12?14) High temperatures ( more than 2000 °C) and ultrahigh vacuum (less than 10–14 atm) are needed to drive the spontaneous thermodynamic decomposition of oxides to metals and oxygen. (15) The vacuum thermal decomposition has been well modeled a the practical demonstration has not yet been performed. The third way is an electrochemical process that uses electricity to split oxides into metals and oxygen. In water solutions, oxygen and metal extraction limited by the low electrochemical window of water and may consume the precious water resources of the Moon. Additionally, the reduction of Fe2O3 presents significant technical challenges in water solutions. (16) Room-temperature ionic liquids broaden the electrochemical window so that they can extract oxygen and many metals such as Al, Si, Ti, Cu, Zn, Cr, etc. (17) However, the extraction of metals in an ionic liquid from lunar regolith is different because of its complex composition. (18) Various oxides can be electrolyzed directly using a high-temperature electrolyzer in molten oxides or molten salts. (19?21) The molten oxide electrolysis is always performed at a temperature higher than 1500 °C, which poses significant challenges for finding suitable electrode materials, especially an affordable oxygen-evolution inert anode. (20,22?24) Lunar regolith simulant electrolysis in fluoride melts to produce oxygen has been reported at 950 °C. (25,26) This reduction process also faces the challenges of anode materials and the solubility limitation of lunar regolith. The FFC Cambridge process can electrolyze various oxides at a temperature below 1000 °C. (27?32) However, the chloride salt is so supercorrosive that a low-cost oxygen-evolution anode is still absent. (33,34) As a result, most molten CaCl2 electrolyzers have employed a carbon anode to generate CO2 but not the desired oxygen. (35) Thus, an electrolyzer that can convert lunar regolith to metals and oxygen with a cheap oxygen-evolution inert anode is urgently needed.
Herein, we adopted a molten CaCl2 electrolyzer to electrolyze the lunar regolith using a consumable carbon anode to produce metals and CO2. Then, the generated CO2 was electrochemically transformed to carbon and oxygen using a low-cost nickel alloy inert electrode in molten carbonate...
I'm not a big one for embracing fantasies of moon colonies and mines on the moon, but the chemistry proposed here, the FFC process and molten carbonate reduction of CO2 to elemental carbon are both processes that can go a long way to environmental sustainability, particularly in cases where the production of electricity is a side product designed to capture exergy from high temperature sources.
The electrochemical device for oxygen recovery:
The caption:
The molten carbonate reduction has caught my eye before now. It is a potential way to reverse the combustion of coal, and in fact, produce very high purity carbon for use, carbon far more pure than the carbon in coal. Whether or not we wax romantic about such an idea, I note that future generations who might use this type of technology to clean up our mess, will have to reproduce more energy than we obtained when we burned the coal and dumped the waste directly into our favorite waste dump, the planetary atmosphere.
History will not forgive us, nor should it.
Cool paper though...
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