Can Solar & Wind Fix Everything (e.g., Climate Change) with a battery break-through? (2024)

Thread Recap​

This thread has been a journey. I started off as a skeptic/denier, but bad science is usually debunked after a decade and the whole topic of climate change had been around far too long not to give it a second look with an open mind. So I open Bill Gate’s book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster and saw problems. Bill's book was not the type of book I was looking for, but it did raise questions. Along the way, I looked hard at the science, and saw that Global Warming really was a significant issue.

The biggest issue I had with Bill's book is it seemed reasonable to me that an energy storage solution (e.g., a battery) could be tied with wind and solar to resolve the crisis and the rest of it was noise, so I started this thread to see what others thought. From the OP it seemed ESS could get us all but about 28%.

Mainly I've been a proponent of a low-cost ESS solution (seems very feasible) because it would make wind and solar the lowest LCOE providers, and our natural capitalism steak could have the pro-climate people less concerned and reduce costs for everyone. That is a win-win.
But that lingering 28% was still a lot if climate change was something to worry about.

Planting more trees didn't seem like the answer (#8). So I went looking for other books and not finding anything started doing some research and posting the findings for discussion as I had a lot of questions in terms of the validity of the science. That starts at post #9, based on the half-life of GreenHouse Gases (GHGs), and recognizing the buildup I started changing my tune and seeing the value of net-zero. But I still had a lot of questions and the thread hit many subtopics:

• How we know it is not a hoax or wrong
• #15 talks about Anti-Greenhouse Gases.
• #20 talks about water as a GHG.
• #26 talks about GHG frequency/temperature, see also #50 & #309 for a detailed video.
• #29 talks about how they know the temperature from millions of years ago and the scientific battle over accuracy.
• #32 talks about the accuracy of the IPCC temperature models.
• #40 is a quick synopsis.
• #41 the number of scientists that agree with climate change
• #53 the IPCC models
• #56 why most published papers are wrong
• #57 is the NASA image of the energy balance and why it doesn't make sense to me.
• #64 Noctilucent clouds
• #76 magma swelling from the earth's core.
• #72 and #78 discuss the geological temperature changes and extinction events
• #87 Start of posts that discuss the 6th IPCC report
• #94 looks at oxygen levels needed for fish to survive
• #122 Modern-day temperature measurements.
• #129 The IPCC tipping points
• #136 What big countries think and how American attitudes have been changing
• #229 Why temperatures will increase despite CO2 "saturation"
• #259 Talks about NF3
• #287 Economics of going carbon neutral and comparing it to existing fuel costs.
• #522 Review of energy storage systems including their costs and carbon footprints.
• #524 Nuclear power seems better than ESS, but expensive.
• #525 Would Reducing the population help or not.
• #541 Ocean Currents
• #767 Heatpumps
• #807 Minerals & Mining
• #827 Facts about the opposing view recap
• 200 climate myths With Explanations as to why they're wrong
• Master Plan 3 - Synopsis

Conclusion to Date​

A cost-effective ESS isn't enough, there seems to be a ~10% shortfall. Fortunately, folks are working on new technologies that will help that last 28%:

• Biofuels can replace fuel for long-haul trucks & air travel
• Green Steel
• Concrete Replacements (e.g., Mycelium, ashCrete, ferroRock, glasscrete)
• New Concrete processes (e.g., CarbonCure)
• Beano for Cows, synthetic meats (also allows more agricultural land to shift to food for humans ref)
• Small/safe cost-efficient nuclear reactors (e.g., Terrapower)
• CCPI reports

As pointed out in #5, there are other possible solutions too! More short recaps.

Sea level rise​

I was reading an article on Louisiana being threatened by rising seawater that sounded very much like local problems and came across the left graph from the Royal Society. What grabbed my attention is that it's practically a straight line, but it shouldn't be as temperature didn't change much until after 1980.

Most resources say sea level has been rising ~3.6 mm per year since 1880. It's what Florida uses when planning how to prevent flooding for the next 100 years.

While the slope does uptick around 1990 in the Royal Society chart, I was expecting to see something more dramatic like the cost of weather disasters where it follows the global temperature fairly closely. Something like this:

It looks like sea water rising was well on the way long before GHGs were noticeable enough to make a difference. I don't think that's a surprise to anyone, it just means we were in a warming cycle before the industrial revolution.

Melting sea ice obviously doesn't contribute to sea level rise, the water has to come from ice/snow on land. At the transition out of the last ice-age that dominated the last 20,000 years. It began with ice-caps over parts of Europe and North America and ended not so long ago with much of that ice gone but with sea levels having risen by more than 120 meters. Scientists have estimated there's enough land-ice today that if all melted the oceans might rise by 60 meters.

So, coastal cities like Miami should plan for sea level rise, three feet of water is a lot of water afterall, but it's a slow few millimeters a year problem so there's plenty of time to work out solutions. The Netherlands dike network extends for over 22,000km, so it can be done.

Myths around Sea-Level

• Florida will soon be under water
• Sea level fell in 2010
• Sea level is not rising
• Sea level rise is decelerating