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Didn't understand the point of the plant in Norway making synthetic fuels using water power for cars. When the cars burn the fuel, the CO2 in it will still be

by nn3 7y ago

Didn't understand the point of the plant in Norway making synthetic fuels using water power for cars. When the cars burn the fuel, the CO2 in it will still be part of the atmosphere and increase the temperature. So what's the advantage over using fossil fuel? I can see it making sense to just move away from fossil fuel, as when you worry it running out or being too expensive or funds crazies. But it doesn't seem to be useful for helping the climate.

dredmorbius 7y ago
Fossil fuel reintroduces sequestered carbon into the atmosphere and biosphere. This results in a net addition of carbon to the biosphere. Synthesized fuels from atmospheric or oceanic carbon take currently resident carbon from the biosphere, convert it to fuel, and reintroduce it to the biosphere. There is no net addition of carbon to the system. Keep in mind that this only works if you're sourcing carbon from the biosphere. As a contrast, earlier suggestions to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels from sources such as limestone, made in the 1960s, would also increase total biospheric carbon, and would not be carbon neutral. The problem with fossil fuels is the scale of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere, about 32 gigatons per year (http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2015/march/global-energy-related-emissions-of-carbon-dioxide-stalled-in-2014.html http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2015/march/global-...). Reducing that, or turning the net negative, is what we have to do. Jeffrey S. Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine" (2003) is an excellent reference to the rates of fossil fuel formation and utilisation (https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1....). We're burning oil at roughly 5 million times the rate at which it first accumulated. Before humans relied on fossil fuels, virtually all energy we used came from plant energy, via either human or animal muscles, or in some instances, fire. Small additional amounts were contributed by wind and water power, a minuscule amount by geothermal energy. A phenomenal exploration of human history through the lens of energy is Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization (2017), or Manfred Weissenbacher's Sources of Power (2009) which divides all of history into five eras: hunter-gatherer, agriculture, coal, oil & gas, and the post-oil world. As Gregory Clark notes in A Farewell to Alms, there are effectively two periods to human history: Before and after 1800, typically given as the start of the Industrial Revolution. Back to synfuels: the principle advantage of these is that liquid hydrocarbon fuels are phenomenally useful They're long-term stable, extraordinarily energy dense, largely safe, can be utilised across and extreme range of scales, in engines ranging from a few watts to 100 MW output, and across all modes of transport: road, rail, canal, sea, air, and rockets. If sourced from non-fossil carbon, they could remain useful, though attempts to do so have not proved economical or scalable to date.

by nn3 7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago

Fossil fuel reintroduces sequestered carbon into the atmosphere and biosphere. This results in a net addition of carbon to the biosphere. Synthesized fuels from atmospheric or oceanic carbon take currently resident carbon from the biosphere, convert it to fuel, and reintroduce it to the biosphere. There is no net addition of carbon to the system. Keep in mind that this only works if you're sourcing carbon from the biosphere. As a contrast, earlier suggestions to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels from sources such as limestone, made in the 1960s, would also increase total biospheric carbon, and would not be carbon neutral. The problem with fossil fuels is the scale of carbon dioxide being added to the atmosphere, about 32 gigatons per year (http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2015/march/global-energy-related-emissions-of-carbon-dioxide-stalled-in-2014.html http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2015/march/global-...). Reducing that, or turning the net negative, is what we have to do. Jeffrey S. Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine" (2003) is an excellent reference to the rates of fossil fuel formation and utilisation (https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1....). We're burning oil at roughly 5 million times the rate at which it first accumulated. Before humans relied on fossil fuels, virtually all energy we used came from plant energy, via either human or animal muscles, or in some instances, fire. Small additional amounts were contributed by wind and water power, a minuscule amount by geothermal energy. A phenomenal exploration of human history through the lens of energy is Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization (2017), or Manfred Weissenbacher's Sources of Power (2009) which divides all of history into five eras: hunter-gatherer, agriculture, coal, oil & gas, and the post-oil world. As Gregory Clark notes in A Farewell to Alms, there are effectively two periods to human history: Before and after 1800, typically given as the start of the Industrial Revolution. Back to synfuels: the principle advantage of these is that liquid hydrocarbon fuels are phenomenally useful They're long-term stable, extraordinarily energy dense, largely safe, can be utilised across and extreme range of scales, in engines ranging from a few watts to 100 MW output, and across all modes of transport: road, rail, canal, sea, air, and rockets. If sourced from non-fossil carbon, they could remain useful, though attempts to do so have not proved economical or scalable to date.