The Environmentalism and Global Warming Thread

[Anthrax]

Yes, but it snowed this year so we can't be having Climate Change

[G David Bock]

Yes, but it snowed this year so we can't be having Climate Change

Natural?

Or anthropogenic?

[Half Pint John]

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2018...s-solar-energy

[G David Bock]

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2018...s-solar-energy

Too difficult to include a copy-paste of title or a comment on content for this click bait I see. Typical.
BTW, did you read this all the way through and understand it?

Never-the-less, let's examine and consider a few excerpts;
TITLE: How China's Giant Solar Farms are Transforming World Energy
...
Fly over “Datong County”, a region in northern China, and you’ll see two giant pandas. One is waving at you. They are made of thousands of solar panels.

Together, and with the other adjacent panels included, they form a 100-megawatt farm covering 248 acres. It’s actually a relatively small solar park by China’s standards – but it is certainly patriotic.

“It is designed and built as the image of the Chinese national treasure – the giant panda,” explains a document from Panda Green Energy, the company that constructed the farm.

China has more solar energy capacity than any other country in the world, at a gargantuan 130 gigawatts. If it were all generating electricity at once, it could power the whole of the UK several times over. China is home to many sizeable solar farms – including the huge 850-megawatt Longyangxia Dam facility on the Tibetan Plateau, with its four million panels. And the largest solar plant in the world at the moment is in China’s Tengger Desert – its capacity exceeds 1,500 megawatts.

These projects have cost many millions of dollars to build – but have they been worth it? And will enough of these sprawling farms ever be constructed to meet its green energy targets?

China is the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panel technology, points out Yvonne Liu at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a market research firm. “The market is really big,” she says. “It is like industrial policy for the government.” According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) more than 60% of the world’s solar panels are made in China. The government has a clear economic interest, then, in ensuring that there is high demand for solar panels.

Plus, by increasing the renewable energy resource, authorities can allow themselves a pat on the back. Cleaning up the Chinese energy mix is a key policy objective. Roughly two thirds of the country’s electricity still comes from burning coal.

It’s no wonder that the vast, sun-drenched plains of north and north-western China have become home to huge solar farms. There’s lots of space there to build them and the solar resource is reasonably reliable. Their construction has also been moving at a blistering pace. The IEA notes that China met its own 2020 target for solar energy capacity additions three years early.
....

So far so good, it might seem ....

....
But building gigantic solar farms in the middle of nowhere has its downsides. To understand why, we need to look at China from above once more. In 1935 geographer Hu Huanyong famously drew what is known as the “Hu Line” from north-east to south-central China. It divides the country into two roughly equal portions. Less equal is the population distribution. The vast majority of China’s people, 94%, live in the eastern portion. The remaining 6% live to the west.

“The distribution of China’s wind and solar energy resources [is] entirely the opposite,” says Yuan Xu at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Many of the country’s solar panels are therefore located as far as can be from the large towns and cities that need them. The result of this is a staggeringly low capacity factor – the percentage of electricity actually taken from any given resource.

Citing data from the China Electricity Council, in the first six months of 2018, the capacity factor of Chinese solar equipment was just 14.7%, says Xu. So while a Chinese solar farm may be billed as having a capacity of, say, 200 megawatts, less than a sixth of that on average actually gets used.

The reasons for a low capacity factor can include things over which we have no control, such as the weather. But China’s capacity factors are unusually low. Part of the problem, says Xu, is that power is lost along the huge transmission lines, many kilometres long, that connect distant solar farms to places that need electricity. It’s a situation that Xu terms a “serious mismatch”.
....

One of the unseen or unconsidered complications of "Green Energy" - That much of the power generated cannot be efficiently used. Another is the geographically large footprint of solar panels versus their energy output(potential).

....
And there’s another complication currently looming large for the Chinese solar industry. In May, the government dropped crucial subsidies for large scale solar projects, meaning they are now much more expensive to build.

The cut in public finance has come about because the state-run renewable energy fund is in debt to the tune of more than $15bn. “They can’t pay the subsidy anymore,” says Liu. The knock-on effect is drastic. Last year, 53 gigawatts of solar capacity were installed in China. This year, Liu expects installations to total no more than 35 gigawatts – a drop of more than 30%.
....

Another challenge(problem) is the subsidies to date, taking money from one part of the population/economy to give to another (Wealth Redistribution), which is not Sustainable.

....
But should giant solar parks continue to be built, one oft-ignored complication will have to be dealt with in future decades: solar panel waste. The panels last just 30 years or so, after which they must be broken up. It is hard to recycle them because they contain harmful chemicals like sulphuric acid. China is expected to experience a sudden boom in solar panel waste from around 2040 onwards and there is currently no clear plan for what to do with all that material.

Not quite as problematic as nuclear waste, perhaps, but it is one more hurdle to overcome when ensuring that large-scale solar energy really is a ‘green’ technology.

We’re going to have to deal with that problem at some stage. As Ball explains, the huge interest in cheap solar power, subsidies or not, will likely lead to enormous farms in coming years. “However big these projects are that seem so huge now, there are going to have to be many more of them and they’re going to have to be even bigger,” he says.
....

So once again, a short-term, nearsighted "solution" contains some serious long term environment hazards and dangers, either not foreseen &/or planned for adequately. We've seen this in the recent past with regards to whales/whaling and then it's replacement with petroleum, etc.

We have a similar issue developing with the move towards more use of batteries to power electric vehicles and store that "renewable energy"; those batteries also having dangerous and hazardous material components that will have to be disposed of when they wear out.

Human hubris often has prices not considered or appreciated;
There Ain't No such Thing As A Free Lunch

As we should be learning here, History repeats itself when humans fail to learn the lessons it can teach.

[T. A. Gardner]

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2018...s-solar-energy

China will eventually figure it out. Solar doesn't work.

Citing

data from the China Electricity Council

, in the first six months of 2018, the capacity factor of Chinese solar equipment was just 14.7%, says Xu. So while a Chinese solar farm may be billed as having a capacity of, say, 200 megawatts, less than a sixth of that on average actually gets used.

This is the fundamental problem with solar, the capacity factor. In Arizona-- widely considered the best place in the US for solar-- the capacity factor is 20 to 25%. That means to get 1 MW for a day you need 5 to 7 MW of installed solar panels. Then you need anywhere from 12 to 16 hours of storage capacity to use it.

All of that makes solar power economically uncompetitive even when you reduce the cost of the panels to half or less of what they cost now. It just can't compete for base load. That in turn, means you start having issues with power production when solar rises above about 10 to 15% of total installed capacity.
Germany has this problem. Italy has this problem. Spain has this problem, and so does Australia-- Those are the leaders in solar usage.

Thus, the "promise" of solar is really a curse on the nations that rely heavily on it for power production.

[G David Bock]

^ The "BEST" way Solar Power could work is via Solar Power Array Satellites(SPAS) in Geo-synchronous Earth Orbit(GEO). But there are a few challenges/problems of course.

One would be that certain parts of the GEO band, which is over the planets equator, would be more desirable than others. Looking along a North-South axis at where Earth's landmass has high density population and development provides a clue as to where this "hot real estate" in GEO would be.

Next Problem is the technology for stepping the photo-voltaic electricity into something like microwaves of the EM spectrum to beam down to Earth, and then reconvert back into electricity. Of course placement of the receiving arrays on Earth and hazards of flying through the beams are another problem.

Along with technological challenges/problems would be the costs. Such would be a rather intense capital project which would require heavy investment in launch and recovery transport systems, orbital habitats and manufacturing facilities and training and equipping the workers for a near zero gravity, vacuum work environment. This infrastructure might be cost effective by the time we've built enough SPAS to power most of the world, but that is still to be determined.

Another huge challenge/problem is the longevity of solar panels. If it remains in the 30 (or 40) year usable lifespan, about the time enough have been built the first ones will need to be replaced and their components "recycled".

One spin-off is that such and undertaking with the space transport/habitat infrastructure might help offset other zero-gravity/vacuum material and products production that could be a boon to newer technologies. It might also help offset costs for human crewed planetary exploration and colonization.

[Half Pint John]

'A Tipping Point.' Greenland's Ice Is Melting Much Faster Than Previously Thought, Scientists Say

https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-tipp...045834994.html

[G David Bock]

'A Tipping Point.' Greenland's Ice Is Melting Much Faster Than Previously Thought, Scientists Say

https://www.yahoo.com/news/apos-tipp...045834994.html

Still doesn't prove if we are looking at ...

NATURAL

or ...

ANTHROPOGENIC

....

[T. A. Gardner]

It also covers a period of roughly 15 to 20 years. That's nothing in terms of long term climate effects. For all we know this is a minor blip on things.

[wolfhnd]

The global warming issue needs some transparency.

[Paddybhoy]

It also covers a period of roughly 15 to 20 years. That's nothing in terms of long term climate effects. For all we know this is a minor blip on things.

Do you just make stuff up to get attention?

[panther3485]

Still doesn't prove if we are looking at ...

NATURAL

or ...

ANTHROPOGENIC

....

Could a combination of the two not be possible?
If so, I'm guessing the most difficult part would be accurately measuring how much of each?

[MarkV]

Could a combination of the two not be possible?
If so, I'm guessing the most difficult part would be accurately measuring how much of each?

The more so if one acts as a multiplier of the effects of the other. The perfect storm effect.

[panther3485]

The more so if one acts as a multiplier of the effects of the other. The perfect storm effect.

Indeed.

[Half Pint John]

https://www.facebook.com/YearsOfLivi...70993819/?t=10

Take a look of a vid presentation