Transmat World: Earth

Showing posts with label Earth. Show all posts

Monday, December 6, 2021

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Climate change experts say global emissions of CO2 must be reduced to 45% from 2010 levels by 2030. It must reach a “net” zero” level by 2050 in order to limit warming to 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees centigrade). The goal was originally set at 2 degrees centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but the Paris negotiations changed it to 1.5 degrees C. to appeal to a broader base of nations. This half degree means 10 million fewer people are displaced by the ocean’s rising, a 50% reduction of people experiencing water shortages around the globe, 50% reduction in species losing half their habitat, and a 80–90% destruction of coral reefs instead of 100%. The level of atmospheric CO2, however, has risen from 387 ppm in 2010 to 413 ppm in 2019, a 6.7% increase.

For the first time, Saudi Aramco revealed its finances publicly. Although it was April 1, this was no April Fool’s prank. The company made $111 billion last year, twice as much as Apple, the most profitable public company in the world. ExxonMobil made $20.8 billion. Royal Dutch Shell made $23.4 billion. The financial inertia of the fossil fuel industry is making a mockery of world climate goals. It is not just the fossil fuel industry but the industries it fuels as well. Trucking, shipping, airlines, auto, steel and concrete industries must all switch to electric or hydrogen by 2050 for “net zero” to happen. That’s 31 years away. Can you see all of these industries making the staggering commitments necessary to switch over without laws in place to make them? Can you see all 195 countries on Earth passing laws to force them to do this? It is not going to happen.

If CO2 levels rose 6.7% from 2010 to early 2019, it’s safe to say that by sometime in 2020 it will be an even 7% for the decade and the CO2 level in Jan. 2020 will be 420 ppm, 449.4 ppm in 2030, 480.9 in 2040 and 514.6 ppm by 2050. This does not take into consideration the positive feedback loops evaporating mass quantities of natural gas (methane) into the atmosphere from melting permafrost. Methane is 21 times better at warming the atmosphere than CO2. The hotter it gets, the more methane injected into the atmosphere and so on.

So what would more than 2 degrees centigrade do in terms of damage to the world? It could kill 50–80% of the fish in the oceans. Ice melting could raise sea levels by more than three feet by the end of the century. If Greenland and Antarctic ice eventually melts, it could raise oceans 230 feet. While it is doubtful this could happen on Earth, positive feedback loops and runaway greenhouse gasses created the hellish conditions seen on Venus.

That is not going to happen on Earth. As soon as the general population realizes fossil fuel companies have been gas lighting (no pun intended) them for decades, it will become possible to overcome their propaganda efforts and the legalized bribery our congressmen and senators disingenuously call lobbying. By 2050, strict environmental laws will force the fossil fuel industry to change or die. Don’t feel sorry for them. They will build a lot of renewable energy plants and CO2 sequestration plants and still be making money. Taxes will have to go up to pay for research on how to do this. The U.S. saw marginal rates of around 70% to 92% from 1950 to 1981. When you hear rich people complaining nowadays about taxes, take it with a grain of salt. They will be bitching until it’s zero.

The political process will be too slow to mediate the effects of climate change. We must develop a slew of technologies and social standards to counter this lack of social progress.

1. Carbon dioxide sequestration and other technologies actively removing CO2 must be developed and implemented. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies are already being developed, but more work must be done to make it economically viable.

2. Reforestation must take place on a grand scale. This will assist in carbon capture and restore habitats to insects and animals.

3. Cheap water technology will need to be implemented to offset the increasing scarcity of potable water.

4. We must find a way to capture energy from low temperature heat from industrial processes and server farms. This is a huge inefficiency in our global society.

5. Grants and prizes must be increased for the development of new technologies to mediate and reverse greenhouse gas levels.

6. Products will have to be designed to be recycled with the least amount of energy possible.

Our social evolution must strive to keep up with technology. Stringent laws concerning carbon output must be enacted on industry and society. One half of the population acting as if nothing is wrong and living a huge carbon footprint is not going to work.

It is a sad commentary on humanity that the captains of the industries that have taken us so far so fast would play chicken with a world threatening event. It is our responsibility as citizens of this world to reign them in and redirect their efforts to the common good. The only way to do this is to change our leadership by any means, preferably democratic, to people that are clear-headed, logical, moral, and responsible enough to lead us successfully through this age of salvation and into a brave new society of technological marvels in balance with the natural world.

For more articles by Glen Hendrix, browse them on Medium.

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Would-Be Asteroid Miners Should Consider What’s in Orbit Around the Earth First

Courtesy NASA

Five thousand satellites pass over your head every day. Only about two thousand are working. The rest are “junk” … inoperative … kaput. They represent approximately $20 billion worth of material floating around in space. The average weight of the currently active 2,064 satellites is 3,212 pounds. If defunct satellites follow that average it means there is 9,936,000 pounds of inoperable satellite in orbit worth $2,075 per pound. Since getting something into orbit costs about $10,000 per pound the actual value of that unused material in space is worth 120 billion dollars. That is more than is expected to be made from mining many asteroids. This is material that it is known exactly what it is, where it is, it’s already manufactured into useful components specifically for use in space, and it's already in space. Plus, it is much more accessible than even the closest near Earth asteroid. One of the asteroids we have actually been to is Ryugu. It’s estimated mineral value is just 83 billion dollars, and that is before costs to extract it are factored in.

The satellite situation has not gone unnoticed by some. Tom Markusic, founder of Firefly Space Systems, wants to tow these objects to an orbit around Mars where the salvaged components can help out with missions to Mars and the outer planets. Keith Volkert, CEO of Satellite Consulting, Inc., wants to use space tugs to tow these objects to an orbit around the Moon where they can be salvaged at leisure from a small space station orbiting there. The parts would then be catalogued and warehoused for future projects on the Moon or heading outward to Mars or beyond. NASA’s proposed Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway might fill the bill for this purpose, providing an attachment for a combination disassembly dock, warehouse, and habitat.

Besides making money, the removal of dead satellites from Earth orbit is a very good thing. There are too many of them, and the problem is getting worse. See this great time lapse video to see how big the problem is and how fast it is getting worse. There is the very real possibility of the Kessler Syndrome occurring. A cinematic portrayal of this event was well done in the movie Gravity. This is where a collision between objects in Earth orbit creates more objects in a cascading effect that eventually ruins the possibility of getting anything into orbit without being struck. Mankind could be stuck on Earth for a while.

Use those plastic grocery bags again. Save money. Save the world. Here’s how.

New technology in thrusters may enable these salvage plans to take shape. Accion Systems has developed an ion thruster on a chip. It does away with a lot of complicated plumbing, bringing the concept down to a chip that accelerates ions and a reservoir of fluid for ion creation. The thruster chip is called TILE — Tiled Ionic Liquid Electrospray. The size of a deck of cards, a TILE has been operated continuously for 42 days straight. The goal is 417 days. That is a lot of time thrusting and one of the things making this technology so promising.

As far as satellite removal goes, think of a selfie stick with some TILEs and electronics on one end and an attachment mechanism on the other. A swivel to allow directional changes gives us the first space tug chugging its way to the Moon and back, gradually whittling away at all those space debris objects representing orbital Armageddon.

Phase Four is another company making tiny, efficient thrusters applicable for this situation. Large, high voltage electronics typically produce and accelerate ions in Hall thrusters to move things around in space. Phase Four has reduced these components down to a size you might expect in a cellphone. These components generate radio waves accelerating plasma produced from xenon gas. These efficient little engines could be used to nudge old satellites outward to the Moon, maybe Mars.

Going beyond the simple salvage, many of these satellites have simply run out of fuel. If they were to be refueled, they would be perfectly good satellites again. A salvage operation could also become a service operation, boosting the value of this material many times over its salvage value. But there is a legal hurdle that must be jumped before salvaging or servicing occurs. By Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty countries are recognized to have jurisdiction and control over their space objects. Can this be valid after the origin country deliberately abandons the satellite in space? It can’t be a forever situation.

Once some company goes after an abandoned satellite and the country of origin protests, the U.N. must decide how to handle it. The U.N. should tell that nation that if they still want responsibility for their satellite, they will have to pay for it to stay in orbit. A yearly orbital fee based on the weight of the satellite should be levied by the U.N. on the country in question. I believe a nascent satellite salvage company should press the issue to get things done. The world’s governments and the U.N. are unlikely to spontaneously get around to solving this problem.

I think we will be hearing more about companies with schemes to remove dead satellites and simultaneously mine them for their valuable components. It is certainly a better plan than destroying these valuable objects and may even eclipse news and plans for asteroid mining for the near future.

The Environmental Advantage of a Space Elevator

The U.S. Must Recycle Recycling

Climate Change Will Herald the Age of Island Cities

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS): The Existential Technology We Are Ignoring

Nations at Risk of Becoming Psychological Echo Chambers: China Sets Worrisome Precedent

Climate Change Will Alter The Way We Think About Energy

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Are You Susceptible to Digitally Induced Cognitive Karma

Why the Oceans Will Be Humanity’s Life Raft

There May Be a Quadrillion Dollars Lying About on the Moon

Mining That First Asteroid - Manned Mission or AI?

A Convergence of Technologies Will Create a New Age of Space Exploration

Steampunk Meets Star Wars: A Harrowing Micro-Tale of Future Spacefarers

The Space Habitat Revisited and Revised

Are Seeds of Conflict Brewing Over the Moon?

Just What Are NASA’s Plans Under Trump

Thruster On a Chip: An Alternative Rocket Science That Could Revolutionize Space Travel

Oumuamua: Alien Probe or Asteroid? It Could Be Both

Cryptocurrency Is Going Into Space

Going Back To the Moon Is Not Just for Governments Anymore

Why It Is a Certainty We Will Become a Space-Based Civilization

Asteroid Mining - How to Pick the Right Asteroid

Recycling Asteroids For Fun and Profit

Taking the 06-03-25 Asteroid Shuttle to Mars - An Alternative to Planned Mars Missions

A Heavy Metal, Cannibalistic Asteroid Propulsion System

Sticking the Landing On Your Billion Dollar Asteroid

Artificial Intelligence and Asteroid Mining Will Be a (Necessary) Match Made In the Heavens

The Weapon of Mass Destruction Nobody Is Talking About

How We Can Diminish the Possibility of Water Wars

There's An Asteroid Out There With All of Our Names On It

What Will Be the Most Common Currency In a Future Space-Based Society?

Workers In Space Will Live In Igloos

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Energy and Space; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

China’s Strategy for the Future Is Scary Smart

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

America’s Choices on Climate Change

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

On the one hand you have the climate deniers, mainly in the United States, and mostly fossil fuel adherents saying it’s hard to determine the extent of humanity’s involvement, and that to combat climate change will simply cost too much money. It won’t be that bad. It’s God’s will. Basically, they will say anything to protect the interests of fossil fuel. And they have spent a lot of money convincing other people to buy into climate change being fake news. This article does not address those duped into a false assurance by propaganda.

On the other hand you have 97% of the world’s climate scientists in agreement that climate change is real and it is caused by mankind. The rest of the world, every other country, is in agreement with the climate scientists and have shown that agreement by supporting the Paris Agreement. With the current administration vocally opposed to the agreement and swearing to withdraw at first opportunity, the U.S. is now the only holdout.

The last time CO2 was this high, nearly 416 ppm, was 10-15 million years ago during the Miocene. Seas were a hundred feet higher and average surface temps were 11 degrees F. hotter. If climate is so CO2 dependent, why don’t we see that now? Because normally the Earth sees a change from 280 ppm to 413 ppm CO2 over the course of millions of years, not two centuries. There is going to be some lag time. Right now, however, glaciers and polar ice are melting. The sea is rising. Extreme weather events are common. An extinction event is happening before our eyes, and there is a cult of American deniers hindering the ability of the world to do anything about it.

There are many directions it can go, but boiled down to a binary format of the extremes the government’s choices are these:

1. Pay lip service to the climate change believers, fund a few programs, make it look like something is being done while energy companies go about their business as usual.

2. Go to war against climate change. Go solar, wind, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, afforestation and reforestation, soil carbon sequestration. Put major restrictions on carbon and institute a carbon tax.

Here is the best and worst of what would happen.

Pick #1 and the best scenario is that it turns out not to be as bad as they say: only centuries of hardship, famine, pestilence, and floods compared to near extinction as some scientists have predicted.

Pick #1 and the worst scenario happens: The world becomes a hothouse only survivable at the poles, the oceans become acidic vats of dead and dying fish and mammals. Billion of people die from drought, starvation, hyperthermia, and disease. The remnants of the human race are facing hundreds of thousands of years before the climate begins to cool down. Oops.

Pick #2 and the best scenario happens: After a century or two the climate stabilizes, CO2 starts to drop, and the Earth starts to cool again. Some companies’ bottom lines suffered, some treasure was spent, but other companies come into being and all is well.

Pick #2 and the worst scenario happens: Despite best efforts global warming has begun a runaway thawing of all the methane trapped as methane hydrate in the tundra and oceans and releases it to the atmosphere. Civilization is doomed. At least we tried.

From the options above, the obvious choice is to tackle climate change as though we were going to war and hope it is enough to facilitate the best scenario outcome. What the U.S. government has done under Trump is worse than option one. It is completely denying or ignoring human causes of climate change and actively aiding and abetting the fossil fuel industries.

Climate change is like the mafia. It is making us an offer we can’t refuse. It is unconscionable that we ignore it. They won’t admit it, but many of those people waging misinformation campaigns about climate scientists and climate change have this one evil thought at the center of their brains that they won’t even admit to themselves, “I don’t care because I won’t be here.” At best, these people are like children on a raft of chocolate on the ocean, willing to eat the very thing that keeps them alive--little psychopaths taking what they want. At worst, these are traitors to humanity. They have sold out every man, woman, and child of future generations. May there be a special place…. There should be a plaque with their names and what they have done, a permanent record of their treasonous deeds for all of history to look at and revile. If there are any historians left to keep track of it.

America was the savior of the world during WWII, fighting the Nazis to end Hitler’s despicable regime and the slaughter of millions of Jews. How times have changed. As a nation, the U.S. has contributed more to the climate problem than most. Now we are the only nation in the world whose government is saying “no” to the future. These few climate denying Americans will not be responsible for just a few million lives. They may very well be responsible for the deaths of billions of people of every nationality, race, and creed. They should think about that, and it should keep them up at night. I doubt that it does. Very sad.

Other articles you may enjoy:

The Environmental Advantage of a Space Elevator

The U.S. Must Recycle Recycling

Climate Change Will Herald the Age of Island Cities

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS): The Existential Technology We Are Ignoring

Nations at Risk of Becoming Psychological Echo Chambers: China Sets Worrisome Precedent

Climate Change Will Alter The Way We Think About Energy

What Do We Do Now That We Know Climate Change is Inevitable?

Are You Susceptible to Digitally Induced Cognitive Karma

Why the Oceans Will Be Humanity’s Life Raft

There May Be a Quadrillion Dollars Lying About on the Moon

Mining That First Asteroid - Manned Mission or AI?

A Convergence of Technologies Will Create a New Age of Space Exploration

Steampunk Meets Star Wars: A Harrowing Micro-Tale of Future Spacefarers

The Space Habitat Revisited and Revised

Are Seeds of Conflict Brewing Over the Moon?

Just What Are NASA’s Plans Under Trump

Thruster On a Chip: An Alternative Rocket Science That Could Revolutionize Space Travel

Oumuamua: Alien Probe or Asteroid? It Could Be Both

Cryptocurrency Is Going Into Space

Going Back To the Moon Is Not Just for Governments Anymore

Why It Is a Certainty We Will Become a Space-Based Civilization

Asteroid Mining - How to Pick the Right Asteroid

Recycling Asteroids For Fun and Profit

Taking the 06-03-25 Asteroid Shuttle to Mars - An Alternative to Planned Mars Missions

A Heavy Metal, Cannibalistic Asteroid Propulsion System

Sticking the Landing On Your Billion Dollar Asteroid

Artificial Intelligence and Asteroid Mining Will Be a (Necessary) Match Made In the Heavens

The Weapon of Mass Destruction Nobody Is Talking About

How We Can Diminish the Possibility of Water Wars

There's An Asteroid Out There With All of Our Names On It

What Will Be the Most Common Currency In a Future Space-Based Society?

Workers In Space Will Live In Igloos

How We Will Get Asteroid Material Back To Earth

The Military Values High Ground - Space Is the Highest

Very Large Scale 3D Printing In Space

Energy and Space; Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

China’s Strategy for the Future Is Scary Smart

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS): The Existential Technology We Are Ignoring

Photo by Cata on Unsplash

Our modern lives insulate us from and make us forget a knowledge that came simply and unforgettably to our hunter-gatherer forebears. That is the discrimination between needs and desires. We don’t need smartphones, automobiles, TV, indoor plumbing, granite countertops, Nikes, non-fat lattes with caramel drizzles, YouTube, scented candles, or video games. We do need food, air, water, a modicum of shelter, and a proper temperature range in which our species can exist. The last was a given until recently. That’s why there’s no life on Mars or Venus—too cold, too hot. The fact that temperatures go up in lockstep with CO2 levels now makes CO2 capture and sequestration mandatory to provide us with one of our necessities, a livable temperature range.

If you want to make a lot of money, figure out a cheap way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and stash it somewhere for several hundred years or forever. Everyone will thank you and shower you with cash. Ahahaha! That’s not true, but it should be true. Unfortunately, Trump is gutting U.S. funding for research in this area. That leaves the Chinese as the world leader for this technology. At the rate CO2 levels are increasing, we may end up renting the technology from them. Ironic, since they probably stole the idea from us to begin with.

Since energy companies revealed they are spending 5 trillion dollars over the next decade for fossil fuel exploration, it is a foregone conclusion that CO2 capture and sequestration (CCS) will be a technology of existential necessity. The fossil fuel industry has an enormous cache of wealth acquired at the expense of the Earth’s climate. They are going to use that wealth to continue doing what they do by gaming the legalized bribery system at the heart of many of America’s problems—lobbying. The energy companies plan to sell combustibles until fossil fuels are gone, they are too expensive to extract at a profit, or their client base has plummeted due to “natural causes.”

We are currently at 413 ppm CO2. We are on track to hit 550 ppm by end of century. This will raise average temps 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit. At some point in the next century, if we keep going at our current rate, we could see 700 to 900 ppm CO2, something not seen since the Eocene some 50 million years ago. Temperatures were up to 25 degrees Fahrenheit higher on average. There was no ice at the poles, but probably alligators and palm trees in Antartica.

Looking at past geological records, it appears there is a lag time of one to four centuries for sea levels to catch up to rapid changes in CO2 levels. None have been as rapid as the last 200 years. We know that sea levels were a hundred feet higher during the Miocene, 15 million years ago, when CO2 levels were similar to what we have now. The reason we don’t see that large increase in sea levels or the 11 degrees F. higher temperature yet is because of the buffer provided by our still-cool, deep ocean waters. Ninety percent of the ocean is between 32 and 37.5 degrees Fahrenheit. But over the next couple of centuries we will see increasingly rapid elevations in sea levels and temperature.

If we burn the rest of our fossil fuels scientists estimate atmospheric CO2 levels could rise to 1000–5000 ppm. If it is toward the upper limits of this estimate, it is debatable whether life will continue as we know it on Earth. Before we get there fossil fuel companies will, hopefully, realize they could lose their customers and, therefore, make some changes. These same scientists say just 450 ppm will be disastrous. It is a certainty we will reach that. With uncontrolled fossil fuel use and no capture and sequestration, CO2 levels will easily blow past 500 ppm; and our civilization could collapse under the strain of drought, food chain disruption, defrosted pathogens, resource wars, heat prostration, and tropical diseases.

That is where CCS comes in. Various means of scrubbing CO2 from the air have been developed. It is then used for making lubricating oil and putting the fizz in soda water. Those are pretty small markets for the amount of CO2 we need to eliminate. Plus, who is going to pay for it on the industrial scale that is required. It would be ideal for those responsible for the CO2 in the first place to pay for capture and sequestration by implementing a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme. Otherwise, we are simply paying to clean up the energy companies’ mess which, in the end, may not be out of the realm of possibilities.

In the past it was thought that CO2 capture would have to take place at those industries where it is produced—chemical, power, concrete, steel, and fertilizer plants. Then it would be pumped somewhere to be injected into the ground. This is very expensive and unlikely to be adopted.

A recently developed CCS technology allows carbon to be extracted directly from the air. Not oddly at all, it is called Direct Air Capture (DAC). With current technology it may be possible to get this down to about $100 dollars per ton. It needs to be ten times less expensive ($10 to $20 per ton) not to be a drag on the economy. This is the only technology that can realize a carbon negative offset. In other words, it could remove more carbon than is produced by mankind and nature to reduce overall levels in the atmosphere. The only alternative coming close is massive reforestation and afforestation. These have their own sets of problems and need funding to iron out the bugs.

The problem is money. No one except a few universities and Bill Gates are spending money in the U.S. to develop this technology. It is not enough that we strip carbon out of the atmosphere. It must be put in a stable environment or condition and left there for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Turn it back into limestone? Make CO2-foamed concrete? Make plastic to feed our 3D printers? Plant all available land with trees? I don’t know. That is why we need some smart people working on this right away.

Environmentalists are in a moral tug of war about CO2 capture and sequestration. Some believe it will give the fossil fuel companies an incentive to keep on doing what they are doing. That ship has sailed. We cannot be picky now about how carbon is removed from the atmosphere. It is all good, but CCS offers at least the possibility to reverse the levels of carbon in the atmosphere, staving off the worst of global warning until the climate stabilizes at a reasonable temperature—one of the basic needs that will allow us to keep on drinking non-fat lattes with caramel drizzles.

Other articles you may enjoy:

There May Be a Quadrillion Dollars Lying About on the Moon