Outboards are incredibly polluting - WOW

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Adelie

1. I would concur that this would be a very good way to reduce various forms of pollution. While I am not going to become a vegan I have significantly reduced my meat consumption.

Total veganism is not required to do a huge amount of good Giving up even only half of meat and dairy will offset more than half of your whole footprint from transportation, if you are an average transportation user.

Originally Posted by Adelie

2. Additional nuclear is just kicking the can down the road in terms of dealing with ecological problems. Keeping the existing plants for baseload capacity would be reasonable.

We won't have nearly enough baseload if we shut down hydrocarbon power generation, especially if we do this at the very same time we are converting ground transportation to electric. To transition away from hydrocarbon sourced electrical power will require huge restructuring of the whole system, and baseload will be the hardest problem. Hydro pumped storage will help, but we won't really be able to pull it off without a lot more nuclear.

Originally Posted by Adelie

3. Doubling, tripling or even quadrupling the required insulation on new homes and requiring retrofits to existing building would do as much or more than item 1. above.

Have you done the numbers? I think you will see that this is off by about 1 order of magnitude. Meat and dairy production have a larger footprint than the entire transportation sector. And it's not just direct carbon emissions -- these are the main drivers of deforestation, which is a key factor in climate change, also non-climate change issues like land use and fresh water. Giving up meat and dairy is the single best thing anyone can do for the environment (not to speak of your health), and giving up even half of meat and dairy is already huge, and might still be the single best thing you can do.

Global conversion to a vegan diet would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 28% (!!!), and a targeted 50% reduction in consumption of animal products would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20%. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaw9908

Would adding a bunch of insulation to existing buildings reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by even 2.8%? I doubt it. Retrofitting existing buildings is costly and is of limited effectiveness. Remember the Green New Deal wanted us to knock them all down and build new ones -- and the authors were right that this is the only way to get total energy use for heating and cooling buildings down significantly. They were wrong, however, about the idea that we can pay for doing this by printing unlimited amounts of money (as we now know painfully). Changing diet, on the other hand, is cost free.

Insulation alone is not the answer in any case. We have to stop burning hydrocarbons to heat buildings and switch to heat pumps, and co-generation. This will require more and more power generation -- specifically, base load power (coming back to that issue).

Small Modular Reactors can be built close enough to population centers to put the waste heat into district heating systems -- a hugely synergistic effect. What are "district heating systems"? An American may be forgiven for not even knowing what that is, but many European cities are heated with waste heat from power plants, distributed through centralized networks.

Even normal nuclear power plants are connected to district heating systems in a number of cities; see: https://www.powermag.com/district-he...-power-plants/ My apartment in Helsinki, like 98% of the housing units in the capital, is heated with waste heat from a biomass CHP plant. The Finnish power grid is already 90% carbon-free, and the Finns are actively building out wind and nuclear. They are planning Small Modular Reactors in the three major cities specifically designed as CHP plants to provide heat to the existing district heating systems.

[Tupaia]

Originally Posted by GordMay

[1] “Climate change communicators’ carbon footprints affect their audience’s policy support” ~ by Shahzeen Z. Attari [2019]
➥ https://link.springer.com/article/10...84-019-02463-0

[2] “Statements about climate researchers’ carbon footprints affect their credibility and the impact of their advice” ~ by Shahzeen Z. Attari et al [2016]
➥ https://link.springer.com/article/10...584-016-1713-2

What you are actually saying is that there is an awful lot of "confirmation bias" going on in this debate and no less so on this thread.

[Reefmagnet]

Originally Posted by Adelie

If the gallon of gas is to be used in an outboard then I would say 1500W or less.

A gas inboard will produce about 10hp for an hour using 1 gal of gas. That’s 7.46kWhr.

Solar panels mounted flat will produce about 4hr equivalent max output per day. That is for a nameplate capacity of 100W you can expect to generate about 400Whr per day.

So 7460Whr / 4 hr = 1,865W of panels.
But LFP had about 90-93% RoI and FLAs have about 87-90%. Let’s assume 90%.

1865W / 0.90 = 2,072W. Let’s assume 95% motor efficiency which means you’d need about 2181W of panels.

But small to moderate sized outboards are significantly less efficient than inboards. .
4-stroke: 5-7hp-hr/gal. Assume 7: 1527W of panels
2-stroke: 3-5hp-hr/gal. Assume 5: 1090W of panels.

Theres an engine repair place that has the numbers for outboard efficiency. I’ll try to find and post the link

If you had tracking panels rather than flat mounted output would be radically higher, double or better. Will investigate and get back later.

Hmm, you got me thinking working backwards from the energy content of fuel.


Going metric for convenience....


One litre of fuel contains about 30 MJ of energy.


Assume a 3.5 hp two stroke running at near WOT at, say 3 hp. 3 hp is approximately 2250 watts (2.2 kJ/s).



A 3.5hp two stroke is burning about 1.75 litres per hour (as an educated guess), or 52.5 MJ of fuel energy The output power of the engine in one hour is about 8.1 MJ which represents an efficiency of about 15%.


1 gallon (~4 litres of fuel) therefore equates to about 18.5 MJ of actual energy at the prop spread over 2.25 hours.

A decent variable speed DC motor should produce about 90% efficiency, and the charging system for LFP about the same. This means that 23MJ of electrical energy is required to replace that gallon of gas.



Using your estimation of 400w/hrs per day per 100W panel the final tally falls in about the same as your estimations - 1500 W.


That's a pretty big array. Not sure if suitable for all styles of vessel!

[mako]

Originally Posted by Baby tug

I’ve been saying this for years as far as I’m concerned it’s not even debatable , do you wanna reduce pollution oil consumption or should I say fossil fuels reduce the number of people on the planet , that’s kind of like the gun debate the gun isn’t the problem the people are the problem , fossil fuels are not the problem people consuming them are , I’ll get a bunch of haters nobody wants to look in the mirror and take responsibility it’s not the oil companies it’s you having babies let the haters begin

Awkwardly worded, tug, but basically the same conclusion Sir Richard Attenborough expressed in one of his final exposés

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

... We won't have nearly enough baseload if we shut down hydrocarbon power generation, especially if we do this at the very same time we are converting ground transportation to electric. To transition away from hydrocarbon sourced electrical power will require huge restructuring of the whole system, and baseload will be the hardest problem. Hydro pumped storage will help, but we won't really be able to pull it off without a lot more nuclear...

... We have to stop burning hydrocarbons to heat buildings and switch to heat pumps, and co-generation. This will require more and more power generation -- specifically, base load power (coming back to that issue).

Small Modular Reactors [SMRs] can be built close enough to population centers to put the waste heat into district heating systems -- a hugely synergistic effect. What are "district heating systems"? An American may be forgiven for not even knowing what that is, but many European cities are heated with waste heat from power plants, distributed through centralized networks...

Not to discount the potential of nuclear power, especially SMRs [particulary for smaller, remote communities], but:

Geothermal energy systems have the potential to power the world and become the leading technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions if we can drill down far enough into the Earth to access the conditions necessary for economic viability and release the heat beneath our feet. Quaise Inc. is developing a potentially disruptive and completely unique drilling technology to make that happen.
Fusion tech is set to unlock this near-limitless, ultra-deep, geothermal energy.

MIT spin-off, Quaise Energy*, says it's going to use fusion technology [gyrotrons] to drill the deepest holes in history [10 - 20 km], unlocking clean, virtually limitless, supercritical geothermal energy, that can re-power [existing] fossil-fueled power plants all over the world.
If we dig deep enough, we can harness the geothermal energy, with power densities consistent with fossil fuels, and we could put geothermal power stations just about anywhere we wanted them, and/or re-power existing fossil-fueled power plants.

More ➥ https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/882255

And ➥ https://www.engine.xyz/founders/quaise/

Previously posted:
➥ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ml#post3591958
➥ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ml#post3615475

[CaptTom]

Originally Posted by GordMay

...MIT spin-off, Quaise Energy, says it's going to use fusion technology [gyrotrons] to drill the deepest holes in history [10 - 20 km], unlocking clean, virtually limitless, supercritical geothermal energy, that can re-power [existing] fossil-fueled power plants all over the world...

That was one of the better techno-babble BS mission statements I've seen. I give them high marks for creative writing.

True* geothermal is a great idea. Like so many great ideas, it's a long journey between theory and full-scale production.

The problem is not only drilling deep holes (with or without "fusion technology," whatever that means) but the materials needed to bring the heat to the surface where it can be used. If we tap underwater water deposits, the brine is very caustic. If we use a closed loop our piping needs to withstand not only the pressures and temperatures, but also the same corrosive environment.

We've made good progress on these in locations (like Iceland) where the geothermal energy is already close to the surface. In other places these problems have yet to be solved in an economically feasible, scalable way.

* I suppose I have to distinguish between true geothermal, and what the heat pump salesmen are pushing. What your land-based homeowner friends are bragging about is a ground-source heat pump. The same thing we use for heating and air conditioning on boats, although ours use sea water as the source. No new technology there, and I really don't think it's helpful for them to misappropriate the label "geothermal" just to make it sound greener.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by CaptTom

That was one of the better techno-babble BS mission statements I've seen. I give them high marks for creative writing.
True* geothermal is a great idea. Like so many great ideas, it's a long journey between theory and full-scale production...

Quaise Energy’s Timeline:
2024: First full-scale hybrid drilling rig combining conventional rotary drilling and millimeter wave drilling capabilities.
2026: First Super Hot Enhanced Geothermal System rated to 100 MW of thermal energy from a handful of wells.
2028: First fossil-fired power plant repowered with clean geothermal steam.
And then go on to refine and replicate the process all over the world, since the heat should be available absolutely anywhere on Earth with this drilling technology.
There are somewhere upwards of 8,500 coal-fired power plants around the world, totaling over 2,000 gigawatts of capacity, and they'll all have to find something else to do by 2050, so the opportunity is clearly mammoth.
Of course, Quaise may not be able to meet their timeline, or even accomplish their goal.
But, if they can ...


BTW: Some of your technical objections might be answered, if you read the links, I provided.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by GordMay

MIT spin-off, Quaise Energy*, says it's going to use fusion technology [gyrotrons] to drill

https://newatlas.com/energy/quaise-d...ing-questions/

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by StuM

https://newatlas.com/energy/quaise-d...ing-questions/

An excellent Q&A, with brief, declaratory answers. THANX, Stu!
I was especially reassured, concerning the lizard people and Kaiju.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by jordanbigel

But I agree with you that reducing the population of Earth would reduce pressure on resources and the environment. So, what's your plan Thanos?

Pet peeve: When I was in grade school, the earth's population was around 4 billion. Currently it's around 8 billion. All over around 40yrs.

So a long lived extremely intelligent (if highly unethical) individual never grasped that the solution would only help for the tiniest blip of time on a cosmic scale.

That's before considering the burst of growth likely to follow (look at forests in the first couple years after a fire...it's an explosion of growth).

Population control is ultimately the only solution to our ecological problems but drastic measures are likely to create more problems than they solve.

[seandepagnier]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Insulation alone is not the answer in any case. We have to stop burning hydrocarbons to heat buildings and switch to heat pumps, and co-generation. This will require more and more power generation -- specifically, base load power (coming back to that issue).

heat generation does not need a base load. it is much cheaper to store than other energy in the form of hot water or molten salt inside and can last for many days during periods of limited power unlike batteries which are far more expensive for the energy they store.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Meat and dairy production have a larger footprint than the entire transportation sector. And it's not just direct carbon emissions -- these are the main drivers of deforestation, which is a key factor in climate change, also non-climate change issues like land use and fresh water. Giving up meat and dairy is the single best thing anyone can do for the environment (not to speak of your health), and giving up even half of meat and dairy is already huge, and might still be the single best thing you can do.

Do you have cites for this? Earlier I posted a chart from the EPA showing that agricultural contribution to greenhouse gas emission was less than a quarter of the total.

[Pegu Club]

Originally Posted by thinwater

Why do we immediately point at "the other guy?" If you are using resources, own it.


Live smaller. Don't keep up with your neighbors, it's immature... and common. Don't spend money on stuff just because you have it.


Yes, my kid will inherit a lot, and hopefully pass it on to her kid, to make life better, not bigger.

This right here is the answer, its all about re-thinking how we think about how we live and do the things we all do. All humans create “pollution” every day, its more about not spending our resources on what in effect becomes land fill with in a matter of days, look at the quantity and environmental cost of the consumer goods that society creates and discards every single day, the waste is staggering, and we are all responsible for it. We as a species are deeply flawed in this way, we are crapping in our own nests…,

Fair winds,

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by seandepagnier

heat generation does not need a base load. it is much cheaper to store than other energy in the form of hot water or molten salt inside and can last for many days during periods of limited power unlike batteries which are far more expensive for the energy they store.

There are situations where "storing" heat can be effective but very limited opportunities to do so for days without it becoming an expensive boondoggle.

Heating the hot water tank late afternoon for use in the early evening...great opportunity to use cheap and plentiful power, even if you lose 10-20% of the heat.

Heating up the hot water tank for use 3 days later...not so much.

Even molten salt solar systems will struggle if you get more than a day or two with minimal sun. But so far, they have all proven to be expensive boondoggles that are not cost effective, so mostly a science project rather than practical application.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by mako

Awkwardly worded, tug, but [population limit is] basically the same conclusion Sir Richard Attenborough expressed in one of his final exposés

Sir DAVID Attenborough has said:

"We can't go on increasing at the rate human beings are increasing forever, because Earth is finite and you can't put infinity into something that is finite"

[bolding mine]

Stated another way, you can't increase the rates of exploitation and consumption forever on a finite planet. Kind of obvious, right?

The linked article continues:

[Attenborough] believes that controlling our population is dependent on investing in sex education globally, giving women more political control over their bodies, and implementing other voluntary means of population control in developing countries.

"The only straw of comfort or of hope, and even that is pretty fragile, is that wherever women are given political control of their bodies, where they have the vote, education, appropriate medical facilities and they can read and have rights and so on, the birth rate falls, there's no exceptions to that," Attenborough says.

Putting more emphasis on women’s reproductive rights and empowerment, as well as providing universal access to birth control and education, will ultimately give people an opportunity to make informed family planning choices. Our only hope of living on this planet for a long time into the future is making sure we start planning for it now.

... in other words, pretty much the exact opposite of what the US just did.

I would respectfully add that if population reduction is to be considered, it would be most effective if we started by eliminating people who consume the most resources per capita.