Author Topic: the dark side of cobalt  (Read 15701 times)

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Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #75 on: July 12, 2023, 05:01:03 pm »
The neat thing about bidirectional inverters is the capability usually comes for free once you replace the input diode bridge with a synchronous rectifier.  The power stage is usually a full bridge topology, with a synchronous output rectifier, and the PFC will often have a synchronous switch too.  All of these devices are used to improve efficiency and reduce cooling requirements.  At 7kW it makes a real difference.

This is what the MG4 charger does: it's a fully synchronous design, so it can charge the car at 7kW and discharge at 7kW too.

Yeah. There is extra work from anti-islanding and safety considerations, but those can be borrowed from PV inverter designs. PV inverters took a lot of time to become truly affordable, but that happened eventually.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #76 on: July 12, 2023, 05:23:33 pm »
Secondly using a car's battery as storage means using a battery in a way that it hasn't been designed for and you'll be wearing the most expensive part of the car without getting the monetary value for that wear. The idea is similary stupid as using solar roadways to heat roads in the winter. The power companies love it though because it means a free lunch. No, it is making money with a lunch on top for them.
That has been debunked by trials in the UK - the charge rates and levels were shown to have no negative impact on battery lifetime, and in some cases actually improved things by keeping the battery in its most healthy SoC range for more of the time.
That is not possible. Just check the warranty specs on any Li-ion battery. It will tell you a maximum amount of stored energy that is guaranteed not to degrade the battery to a certain percentage. Ofcourse you can get lucky and have a battery that performs better than advertised but you can also be unlucky. With ever improving manufacturing technologies, battery manufacturers will become better and better at making their battery as worse as they can and still meet the specifications. And if you think about it logically, it makes perfect sense. Otherwise the ever lasting Li-ion cell would have been invented a long time ago. IOW: the trial data is anecdotal evidence at best but not something to rely on.
« Last Edit: July 12, 2023, 05:26:23 pm by nctnico »
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Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #77 on: July 12, 2023, 05:43:10 pm »
Car manufacturers work with li-ion cell manufacturers and get their own warranties, as manufacturers know their products better than the simple public datasheet says. Rest assured, we understand what we are doing even if you don't.
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #78 on: July 12, 2023, 05:49:27 pm »
Secondly using a car's battery as storage means using a battery in a way that it hasn't been designed for and you'll be wearing the most expensive part of the car without getting the monetary value for that wear. The idea is similary stupid as using solar roadways to heat roads in the winter. The power companies love it though because it means a free lunch. No, it is making money with a lunch on top for them.
That has been debunked by trials in the UK - the charge rates and levels were shown to have no negative impact on battery lifetime, and in some cases actually improved things by keeping the battery in its most healthy SoC range for more of the time.
That is not possible. Just check the warranty specs on any Li-ion battery. It will tell you a maximum amount of stored energy that is guaranteed not to degrade the battery to a certain percentage. Ofcourse you can get lucky and have a battery that performs better than advertised but you can also be unlucky. With ever improving manufacturing technologies, battery manufacturers will become better and better at making their battery as worse as they can and still meet the specifications. And if you think about it logically, it makes perfect sense. Otherwise the ever lasting Li-ion cell would have been invented a long time ago. IOW: the trial data is anecdotal evidence at best but not something to rely on.
It has to be way more complex than simply Wh charge/discharge, e.g. rates, tempeartures and avarage SoC

https://www.current-news.co.uk/v2g-found-to-improve-the-lifetime-of-electric-vehicle-batteries/
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Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #79 on: July 12, 2023, 06:14:36 pm »
Car manufacturers work with li-ion cell manufacturers and get their own warranties, as manufacturers know their products better than the simple public datasheet says. Rest assured, we understand what we are doing even if you don't.
Ofcourse, and every car manufacturer will try to make a product that just lasts long enough for the customer to be happy under normal usage circumstances. V2G is like having your ICE car run stationary to power your home from the alternator. It will cause wear on the engine. Maybe less because the engine runs at a sort of constant, low load but nevertheless you'll be reducing the remaining distance you can travel with the car without having the do repairs on the engine and surrounding systems. And it could be benificial in some cases to run the engine really warm when a car is used mostly for short trips but in the end wear is wear. Or maybe I should compare it with licking a lolly. A single lick doesn't seem to reduce the size but after enough licks, the lolly will be gone. Again, the ever lasting Li-ion has not been invented yet (AFAIK) so don't pretend it exists. You know better!
« Last Edit: July 12, 2023, 06:49:10 pm by nctnico »
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Offline PlainName

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #80 on: July 12, 2023, 07:29:14 pm »
Car manufacturers work with li-ion cell manufacturers and get their own warranties, as manufacturers know their products better than the simple public datasheet says. Rest assured, we understand what we are doing even if you don't.

Suppose you're manufacturing, for the sake of illustration, a garden hose. Hoses wear out (just go with it) and most available hoses state that they will pass 10,000 gallons before requiring replacement. Your hose is nothing special, but you advertise it as going at least 50,000 gallons. Not only that, you guarantee - via lifetime free replacement - that it will. Naturally, any discerning gardener will buy your hose in preference to the competition that clearly sells an inferior product. But... your hose is exactly the same; the only difference is your warranty. You figure that most gardeners sprinkle at most a couple of gallons a day when they water the plants on the patio, and they will never come close to 10,000 gallons. The very few that use the hose to fill a swimming pool twice a year will just ask for a warranty replacement and you'll send them two, to keep them providing 5-star reviews for service and validation of your (known but you to be rubbish) guarantee.

Why wouldn't car manufacturers play that game too?
 

Offline langwadt

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #81 on: July 12, 2023, 08:14:35 pm »
Car manufacturers work with li-ion cell manufacturers and get their own warranties, as manufacturers know their products better than the simple public datasheet says. Rest assured, we understand what we are doing even if you don't.
Ofcourse, and every car manufacturer will try to make a product that just lasts long enough for the customer to be happy under normal usage circumstances. V2G is like having your ICE car run stationary to power your home from the alternator. It will cause wear on the engine.

and for most people running the engine (or using the battery) just an hour or two each day it going easily double the usage
 

Offline vad

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #82 on: July 12, 2023, 09:34:43 pm »
Totally agree.
0.03% is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and we contribute 3% of that ,Apparently.
A poofteenth of a poofteenth.
That is not correct. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has doubled from around 200ppm to over 400ppm (and rising). It is pretty easy to attribute that to the burning of fossil fuels by humans. And you have to keep in mind the oceans and seas have absorbed a large amount of CO2 as well to to point that the acidity of the water has risen to levels that are harmfull to sea life (like coral). CO2 emission is a real problem for all of us.

While rising CO2 levels in recent history (over the past 70 years) is a well-documented fact, it is doubtful that there were reliable measurements of this gas concentration at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, observation #1 suggests that followers of Greta Thunberg tend to exaggerate and extrapolate.

The potential harm of such minuscule atmospheric CO2 concentration levels to marine life is debatable. The oldest known coral fossils are 500 million years old, and throughout the past half billion years, the Earth has experienced much higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Somehow corals survived that. The current CO2 concentration level is harmless to humans, and higher CO2 levels are beneficial to the Plantae Kingdom. Thus, observation #2 indicates that Greta Thunberg's followers don’t know what they are talking about.

Lastly, as the third and final observation, it should be noted that life expectancy in Europe was approximately 35 years just prior to the Industrial Revolution. Today, it has increased to 80 years. Fossil fuels have played a significant role in this remarkable progress.
 

Offline tom66

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #83 on: July 12, 2023, 09:48:20 pm »
Secondly using a car's battery as storage means using a battery in a way that it hasn't been designed for and you'll be wearing the most expensive part of the car without getting the monetary value for that wear. The idea is similary stupid as using solar roadways to heat roads in the winter. The power companies love it though because it means a free lunch. No, it is making money with a lunch on top for them.
That has been debunked by trials in the UK - the charge rates and levels were shown to have no negative impact on battery lifetime, and in some cases actually improved things by keeping the battery in its most healthy SoC range for more of the time.
That is not possible. Just check the warranty specs on any Li-ion battery. It will tell you a maximum amount of stored energy that is guaranteed not to degrade the battery to a certain percentage. Ofcourse you can get lucky and have a battery that performs better than advertised but you can also be unlucky. With ever improving manufacturing technologies, battery manufacturers will become better and better at making their battery as worse as they can and still meet the specifications. And if you think about it logically, it makes perfect sense. Otherwise the ever lasting Li-ion cell would have been invented a long time ago. IOW: the trial data is anecdotal evidence at best but not something to rely on.

But, an EV battery is typically ~60kWh and charged/discharged at say 7kW.  Whereas a home battery is typically 10kWh and charged/discharged at up to 5kW.  The 'C' rate and therefore cell heating is much higher, and this is a daily thing with these batteries. 

Also, for some car manufacturers, there is no specified total MWh discharge on the pack, for instance, MG warranty theirs at 7yr/80k miles regardless of any V2H function.  VW do apply a discharge limit, but it's some 10MWh on top of the normal 8yr/100k mile warranty, 70% capacity guarantee.  (100k miles at 3.5 miles per kWh implies an additional 28MWh of total discharge throughput.)  Kia/Hyundai also don't specify any limit.
 

Offline tom66

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #84 on: July 12, 2023, 10:41:35 pm »
While rising CO2 levels in recent history (over the past 70 years) is a well-documented fact, it is doubtful that there were reliable measurements of this gas concentration at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, observation #1 suggests that followers of Greta Thunberg tend to exaggerate and extrapolate.

The potential harm of such minuscule atmospheric CO2 concentration levels to marine life is debatable. The oldest known coral fossils are 500 million years old, and throughout the past half billion years, the Earth has experienced much higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Somehow corals survived that. The current CO2 concentration level is harmless to humans, and higher CO2 levels are beneficial to the Plantae Kingdom. Thus, observation #2 indicates that Greta Thunberg's followers don’t know what they are talking about.

Lastly, as the third and final observation, it should be noted that life expectancy in Europe was approximately 35 years just prior to the Industrial Revolution. Today, it has increased to 80 years. Fossil fuels have played a significant role in this remarkable progress.

The problem with CO2 isn't the absolute figure - it's that life has adapted to ~300ppm CO2 and oceans with a pH of about 8.2.  We can already see the impact of coral bleaching due to acidification and rising temperatures. 

As this shifts, life becomes less able to adapt.  Will it adapt over time?  I have very little doubt, but we could still see ecosystems collapse, food chains failing, crop failure etc. in "human timescales".    This is so very problematic when we are so dependent on these ecosystems.   There is also the lesser, but still significant concern of rising sea levels and changes in weather patterns.  If the +3C predictions come true - they are definitely "worst case" - we are looking at +/-15deg around the equator essentially being uninhabitable for most of the summer months, due to drought, famine and extreme temperatures.  This will push people out of this area, seeking safety and food.  Something close to 1 billion could be displaced.  War could be triggered due to local resource exhaustion.

As for reliable CO2 measures: there are direct methods to measure back at least 100k years by looking at ice bubbles in Greenland and Antarctica.  The results between these two sets of measurements correlate very well, and they align with shorter term measurements (~500 years in trees for instance, as well as air bubbles trapped underground.)

There is absolutely no doubt that fossil fuels have improved our lives (though I would argue modern medicine is more significant -- surgeons didn't wash their hands before surgery until the early 1900s!)  Any future shift has to account for the benefits of fossil fuels whilst reducing the harm caused.  I think we can do it but it will require how we use energy to change.
 
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Offline vad

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #85 on: July 12, 2023, 11:54:49 pm »
It is scaremongering based on unreliable climate models. Are we all meant to be frightened by this climate change scare?

Weather and climate have always undergone changes, and one thing life has mastered is adaptation to these changes.

A 3-degree Celsius increase may sound significant, but the majority of the change would occur at high latitudes, such as an 8-degree Celsius rise in the Russian and Canadian tundra, Arctic, and Southern oceans. Temperature increases at the equator and tropics would be more modest compared to the average.

For instance, I lived on the equator in the remarkable concrete jungle of Singapore for about a decade. The weather there can shift within minutes - clear skies transform into torrential rain and back to sunshine all in an hour. While it might have been challenging for British colonists to survive there 200 years ago, modern infrastructure, including air conditioning powered predominantly by electricity generated from fossil fuels, allowed not only Russian expats like me but also a Polar Bear to live there comfortably. If people can adapt to rapid and extreme weather changes, they can certainly adapt to gradual climate change, unless Greta's followers destroy our economy and return us to a pre-Industrial Revolution reality.
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #86 on: July 13, 2023, 05:33:56 am »
Car manufacturers work with li-ion cell manufacturers and get their own warranties, as manufacturers know their products better than the simple public datasheet says. Rest assured, we understand what we are doing even if you don't.

Suppose you're manufacturing, for the sake of illustration, a garden hose. Hoses wear out (just go with it) and most available hoses state that they will pass 10,000 gallons before requiring replacement. Your hose is nothing special, but you advertise it as going at least 50,000 gallons. Not only that, you guarantee - via lifetime free replacement - that it will. Naturally, any discerning gardener will buy your hose in preference to the competition that clearly sells an inferior product. But... your hose is exactly the same; the only difference is your warranty. You figure that most gardeners sprinkle at most a couple of gallons a day when they water the plants on the patio, and they will never come close to 10,000 gallons. The very few that use the hose to fill a swimming pool twice a year will just ask for a warranty replacement and you'll send them two, to keep them providing 5-star reviews for service and validation of your (known but you to be rubbish) guarantee.

Why wouldn't car manufacturers play that game too?

Your analogy is absolutely perfect because
A) hoses do not wear out based on the gallons of water that ran through them, but completely different factors - aging damage, UV exposure, kinking, freezing damage, etc.
B) hoses do not come with "gallons through the hose" ratings.

Exact same thing with li-ion. Manufacturers do not rate them for "this many kWh stored until warranty goes out", because the actual wear patterns are more complex than that.

The problem is people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about, trying to discuss a subject, and come up with poor analogies. Battery science is weird and complex for laymen. For example, it is entirely possible certain type of microcycling to/from grid actually increases battery life. When regenerative braking was an interesting study subject, it was speculated it would wear out the battery prematurely (many small microcycles), but it was studied and found out it increases battery life.

As for the question, why would car/battery/cell manufacturers take extra work (all this analysis, and complicated battery management) and risk (that they still did something wrong and ended up shortening battery life) - they won't unless there is some kind of incentive. It can be legal requirement to do so, monetary compensation, or a monetary saving for the customer which is large enough so that people want that feature and will pay for it.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2023, 05:38:28 am by Siwastaja »
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #87 on: July 13, 2023, 07:01:23 am »
Quote
Your analogy is absolutely perfect because
A) hoses do not wear out based on the gallons of water that ran through them, but completely different factors - aging damage, UV exposure, kinking, freezing damage, etc.
B) hoses do not come with "gallons through the hose" ratings

I asked you to pretend they did for the sake of illustrating the argument that would then become apparent. Perhaps that was too deep for you.
 

Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #88 on: July 13, 2023, 07:32:39 am »
Oh, we can pretend that battery manufacturer comes with such condition. In this premise, I would of course agree. But because such condition does not exist I don't see the point. In the end, how hoses or batteries actually work in real world, matters for the manufacturers, not how they work in an imaginary scenario "for the sake of illustration". And cell/battery manufacturers really know their products so they don't need to play such games. This is just normal business.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2023, 08:14:54 am by Siwastaja »
 

Offline tom66

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #89 on: July 13, 2023, 08:01:50 am »
It is scaremongering based on unreliable climate models. Are we all meant to be frightened by this climate change scare?

What if it is not scaremongering?  You can model the climate fairly accurately.  You know the thermal forcing of CO2 (this can be tested in a lab.)  You know what insolation is and how much it varies by.  We have a good idea of how much CO2 has been absorbed by the oceans by both measuring dissolved CO2 and also by proxy as atmospheric CO2 should have risen by x but instead has risen by some fraction less.  Sampling of atmospheric gases is easy.  So once that's all done you can build up a model of how insulated the atmosphere is, the change in that and the equivalent temperature rise.  This is almost something you could do "at home", but it's certainly something that could be checked by most.

As for whether to be scared about it - well I dunno.  It's kinda inevitable at this point so fear is probably the wrong response.  I'm pretty alarmed that people are still debating that it is happening when basically everyone in the field and in tangentially related fields is in agreement.  There's disagreement over the magnitude of the effect or how bad it will be, but no one is saying the outcome will be good.

Weather and climate have always undergone changes, and one thing life has mastered is adaptation to these changes.

Yes, over tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.  Seriously, the rate of temperature change is a massive anomaly, it's comparable with an asteroid impact on a small scale.  There is no evidence for an anomaly on this scale in the last 1mil+ years.  I like this graph/comic: https://xkcd.com/1732/

A 3-degree Celsius increase may sound significant, but the majority of the change would occur at high latitudes, such as an 8-degree Celsius rise in the Russian and Canadian tundra, Arctic, and Southern oceans. Temperature increases at the equator and tropics would be more modest compared to the average.

A significant increase in arctic tundra temperatures risks the release of methane from permafrost which would further trigger warming.  Given methane has a 100yr GWP of about 20, it doesn't take much methane released to cause further warming, which could cause further warming and so on.  Positive feedback loops like that are extremely concerning.

As for temperature increases in the equatorial region being modest:  if you have a look at models for the world in Koppen classification, the equatorial regions are likely to become much more arid and peak temperatures of 60C are regularly anticipated.  Peak temperatures in those regions have already been climbing and this is well correlated to human CO2 emissions.

For instance, I lived on the equator in the remarkable concrete jungle of Singapore for about a decade. The weather there can shift within minutes - clear skies transform into torrential rain and back to sunshine all in an hour. While it might have been challenging for British colonists to survive there 200 years ago, modern infrastructure, including air conditioning powered predominantly by electricity generated from fossil fuels, allowed not only Russian expats like me but also a Polar Bear to live there comfortably. If people can adapt to rapid and extreme weather changes, they can certainly adapt to gradual climate change, unless Greta's followers destroy our economy and return us to a pre-Industrial Revolution reality.

Weather is not climate - but I'm sure you know that. 

No one sensible is saying humans can't adapt to climate change, it's just whether that adaptation is going to lead to a significant degradation in quality of life compared to making changes now to reduce the impact.  There are ways to adapt the economy and way of life without destroying what we know, the big problem with the green movement is it is full of nutters, but that doesn't mean they aren't acting for a good reason.
 
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Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #90 on: July 13, 2023, 08:17:23 am »
There is a lot of unnecessary scaremongering going on, but that does not mean the whole climate change thing is just scaremongering. Reducing CO2 plays in everyone's (except the fossil fuel sellers) favor. It just makes no sense to artificially keep burning so much fossil fuels when there are still rather easy ways to significantly reduce it.
 

Offline AVGresponding

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #91 on: July 13, 2023, 08:26:53 am »
While rising CO2 levels in recent history (over the past 70 years) is a well-documented fact, it is doubtful that there were reliable measurements of this gas concentration at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, observation #1 suggests that followers of Greta Thunberg tend to exaggerate and extrapolate.

There are very reliable measurements, through ice cores, and tree rings, to give but two examples. Therefore this observation suggests that you know less about the subject than you think you do, and perhaps Greta and her followers have a point.
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Offline Siwastaja

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #92 on: July 13, 2023, 09:18:41 am »
While rising CO2 levels in recent history (over the past 70 years) is a well-documented fact, it is doubtful that there were reliable measurements of this gas concentration at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, observation #1 suggests that followers of Greta Thunberg tend to exaggerate and extrapolate.

There are very reliable measurements, through ice cores, and tree rings, to give but two examples. Therefore this observation suggests that you know less about the subject than you think you do, and perhaps Greta and her followers have a point.

The problem is twofold:
(1) incoherent scaremongering which does not help because it causes the opposite reaction in people
(2) focus on ineffectively small improvements, or non-improvements, which mentally (and concretely, e.g. money) wear out people, so that they'll be unable to make significant changes

We should simply forget banning plastic drinking straws and accusing people of eating meat, based on old and incorrect calculations of climate effect thereof*, and simply concentrate all of our efforts on minimization of usage of fossil coal, oil and natural gas. And to achieve that, primary targets should be building heating/HVAC and transport, with secondary focus on some highly energy hungry industrial processes like steel manufacturing. Everything else, forget about it, because the disadvantages caused to people outweigh the gains. Even though it would be effective to sit in a dark room eating ze bugs and being happy, we don't need to do that, there are other equally effective ways.

See https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector for ideas in priorization.

*) for example, an independent authority, Natural Resources Institute Finland, published a calculation based on real data on Finnish cattle, showing that the CO2 footprint of milk is roughly equal to that of plant-based substitutes, simply because the CO2-equivalent methane calculations from manufacturers of those products are based on old data, in less developed countries, while during last decades the cattle diet has been optimized to significantly reduce methane and increase milk output.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2023, 09:37:00 am by Siwastaja »
 

Offline Nominal Animal

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #93 on: July 13, 2023, 09:42:45 am »
Reducing CO2 plays in everyone's (except the fossil fuel sellers) favor.
Not exactly.  Even if it makes equatorial regions unhabitable, northern areas like the Cap of the North, Greenland, Northern Canada, and Siberia, would become much more habitable, lush even, if global temperatures were to reach those of the Eocene epoch (+6°C .. +14°C).  There is a lot of basically uninhabited land area there now.

At least in the Arctic regions, even early holocene (as the last ice age ended 12,000 years ago) was somewhat warmer than it is now.  Even the tallest fells in Northern Finland and Norway's Finnmark were covered in large pine trees; they're above the treeline now and completely bald.  As deer fly (lipoptena cervi) spreads northwards, reindeer herding will likely become untenable, though.  So, if we are fully honest, Nordic countries won't suffer much, just the weather extremes will get more extreme.

If we think in global terms, and we do live in a thoroughly connected and interdependent world, you're absolutely right, though.
But, if we humans could actually think in such terms, we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
 

Offline connectTek

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #94 on: July 13, 2023, 09:58:00 am »
Totally agree.
0.03% is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and we contribute 3% of that ,Apparently.
A poofteenth of a poofteenth.
That is not correct. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has doubled from around 200ppm to over 400ppm (and rising). It is pretty easy to attribute that to the burning of fossil fuels by humans. And you have to keep in mind the oceans and seas have absorbed a large amount of CO2 as well to to point that the acidity of the water has risen to levels that are harmfull to sea life (like coral). CO2 emission is a real problem for all of us.

During the Triassic period it was 4000ppm, 10 times higher than today.
The world never ended.
CO2 is plant food, NOT a dangerous gas.
200ppm to 400ppm a %50 increase,  sounds bad.
But the reality is 0.000200 to 0.000400 doesn't seem that bad.
1/3 of people who use public transport will get cancer, Why?
Because 1/3 of people get cancer.
You can make statistics/numbers look as good or bad as you want.
As I've stated  Man made Global warming,  or is it now climate change? Is SCAM.
 

Offline Gyro

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #95 on: July 13, 2023, 11:05:05 am »
During the Triassic period it was 4000ppm, 10 times higher than today.
The world never ended.
CO2 is plant food, NOT a dangerous gas.
200ppm to 400ppm a %50 increase,  sounds bad.
But the reality is 0.000200 to 0.000400 doesn't seem that bad.
1/3 of people who use public transport will get cancer, Why?
Because 1/3 of people get cancer.
You can make statistics/numbers look as good or bad as you want.
As I've stated  Man made Global warming,  or is it now climate change? Is SCAM.

Of course the world never ended! The Earth has shrugged off much more devastating events than Man made Global warming... with massive global extinctions.

The Earth isn't the fragile thing, the Human race, together with our familiar biosphere is! The World will get on just fine without us.
Best Regards, Chris
 
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Offline AVGresponding

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #96 on: July 13, 2023, 11:37:22 am »
While rising CO2 levels in recent history (over the past 70 years) is a well-documented fact, it is doubtful that there were reliable measurements of this gas concentration at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, observation #1 suggests that followers of Greta Thunberg tend to exaggerate and extrapolate.

There are very reliable measurements, through ice cores, and tree rings, to give but two examples. Therefore this observation suggests that you know less about the subject than you think you do, and perhaps Greta and her followers have a point.

The problem is twofold:
(1) incoherent scaremongering which does not help because it causes the opposite reaction in people
(2) focus on ineffectively small improvements, or non-improvements, which mentally (and concretely, e.g. money) wear out people, so that they'll be unable to make significant changes

We should simply forget banning plastic drinking straws and accusing people of eating meat, based on old and incorrect calculations of climate effect thereof*, and simply concentrate all of our efforts on minimization of usage of fossil coal, oil and natural gas. And to achieve that, primary targets should be building heating/HVAC and transport, with secondary focus on some highly energy hungry industrial processes like steel manufacturing. Everything else, forget about it, because the disadvantages caused to people outweigh the gains. Even though it would be effective to sit in a dark room eating ze bugs and being happy, we don't need to do that, there are other equally effective ways.

See https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector for ideas in priorization.

*) for example, an independent authority, Natural Resources Institute Finland, published a calculation based on real data on Finnish cattle, showing that the CO2 footprint of milk is roughly equal to that of plant-based substitutes, simply because the CO2-equivalent methane calculations from manufacturers of those products are based on old data, in less developed countries, while during last decades the cattle diet has been optimized to significantly reduce methane and increase milk output.

Of course there's incoherent scare-mongering; media organisations are in the business of making money, and this kind of thing sells newspapers/subscriptions etc. If people were educated properly, in things like critical thinking, this would be less of a problem, but they aren't, and it is.

This is not to say there isn't a problem, and a serious one.

It's down to governments to take a lead on this, but mostly they won't, because mostly they're ruled by unenlightened self-interest; they like money and power, and pandering to the big corporations gives them this.

History tells us that the necessary actions probably won't be taken until it's too late to mitigate the worst effects. If you live anywhere near a coastline, or outside the northern and southern temperate zones, in the next few decades quite likely it's gonna suck to be you.




During the Triassic period it was 4000ppm, 10 times higher than today.
The world never ended.
CO2 is plant food, NOT a dangerous gas.
200ppm to 400ppm a %50 increase,  sounds bad.
But the reality is 0.000200 to 0.000400 doesn't seem that bad.
1/3 of people who use public transport will get cancer, Why?
Because 1/3 of people get cancer.
You can make statistics/numbers look as good or bad as you want.
As I've stated  Man made Global warming,  or is it now climate change? Is SCAM.

Of course the world never ended! The Earth has shrugged off much more devastating events than Man made Global warming... with massive global extinctions.

The Earth isn't the fragile thing, the Human race, together with our familiar biosphere is! The World will get on just fine without us.

Exactly so.
nuqDaq yuch Dapol?
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Offline nctnico

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #97 on: July 13, 2023, 05:46:34 pm »
Totally agree.
0.03% is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and we contribute 3% of that ,Apparently.
A poofteenth of a poofteenth.
That is not correct. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has doubled from around 200ppm to over 400ppm (and rising). It is pretty easy to attribute that to the burning of fossil fuels by humans. And you have to keep in mind the oceans and seas have absorbed a large amount of CO2 as well to to point that the acidity of the water has risen to levels that are harmfull to sea life (like coral). CO2 emission is a real problem for all of us.

During the Triassic period it was 4000ppm, 10 times higher than today.
The world never ended.
CO2 is plant food, NOT a dangerous gas.
200ppm to 400ppm a %50 increase,  sounds bad.
Geez, get your math straight. From 200ppm to 400ppm is a 100% increase.
Secondly, CO2 starts to become problematic (toxic) to humans starting from concentrations of 1000ppm. Above that level things like concentration problems start to occur and ultimately death. CO2 is a toxic gas to most animals.

And plants don't like a lot of CO2 either. Optimum is between 800ppm and 1500ppm
« Last Edit: July 13, 2023, 05:55:34 pm by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 
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Offline tom66

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #98 on: July 14, 2023, 06:50:03 am »
During the Triassic period it was 4000ppm, 10 times higher than today.
The world never ended.
CO2 is plant food, NOT a dangerous gas.
200ppm to 400ppm a %50 increase,  sounds bad.
Geez, get your math straight. From 200ppm to 400ppm is a 100% increase.
Secondly, CO2 starts to become problematic (toxic) to humans starting from concentrations of 1000ppm. Above that level things like concentration problems start to occur and ultimately death. CO2 is a toxic gas to most animals.

And plants don't like a lot of CO2 either. Optimum is between 800ppm and 1500ppm

The idea that CO2 is "fine" and is not really worth worrying about because plants will love it is something that started in the US, I think.  Because it's now undeniable that CO2 is rising, and that humans are causing that rise, but "Plants love CO2! So it is not bad!".  It fails some of the most basic tests, like, ok, even if plants love it, do we, what about atmospheric temperatures, what about the oceans?  Plants may well thrive in 2000ppm CO2, but I think we will be mostly dead!
 
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Offline Infraviolet

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Re: the dark side of cobalt
« Reply #99 on: July 14, 2023, 03:23:55 pm »
"No one sensible is saying humans can't adapt to climate change, it's just whether that adaptation is going to lead to a significant degradation in quality of life compared to making changes now to reduce the impact."

The trouble is that a lot fo the green movement, especially the modern "woke" authoritarian corporate-backed iteration of this movement, is in the habit of planning solutions which would quite possibly be worse than the worst likely scenario that climate change could cause (which is a fairly bad scenario). We need to end our addiction to oil/gas/coal, if for no other reason than that they will run out sooner or later and right now make the world dependent on fuel supplies from all manner of awful regimes in unstable countries, but the "greens" who want to wipe out fossil fuels before we've had a chance to replace them, want to end farming and have us all on diets of ultra-processed bugs, and want things like individual carbon credit surveillance and rationing schemes, are quite likely more dangerous to standards of living than climate change is. There is a right way to fix the climate issue, that is nuclear power, hydrogen road transport, non-CO2 emitting industrial process for steel and concrete production, and investing all spare money in to development of technologies which can provide direct equivalents to current fossil fuels, but many in the curent green movement seem so devoted to an anti-capitalist anti-freedom anti-modernity agenda that it is as if they don't want a simple fix or the climate because then they'd have no way remaining to push their ideology. Climate change is an industrial problem, to be fixed by replacing, a soon as practical, CO2 emitting technologies with non-emitting alternatives of comparable performance, but today's "green" movement dismisses that proper form of solution because it wouldn't require massive disruption to lifestyles, and their corporate backers support them because the corporate backers would rather cause massive societal upheaval than sacrifice profits for a little while whilst swapping out dirty technologies for clean ones, under the present "green" movement's thought patterns mass emissions would stay busienss as usual for the big corporations, its only the little people who would have changes forced on them. Get talking to many of the current generation of "green" activists and you'll find that given the choice between saving the planet with some "magic bullet"* technology or ending capitalism, they openly admit they'd opt for the latter.

*good news, perhaps too good to be true, but it even looks now like there migh be natural hydrogen reserves ("white hydrogen") which can be extracted from the ground, hard to believe given hydrogen's propensity to react with anything it can, but the evidence seems to be there, could help us get used to hydrogen for mobile applications while we get enough nuclear power online to run huge electrolysis plants, infact some suggest the hydrogen is being constantly replenished by geologial processes so could be a long term fuel in itself.
 
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