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David Attenborough: 'Climate Change 2007 predictions for 2020

Discussion in 'General Chit Chat' started by KeithAngel, Aug 15, 2019.

  1. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Bells Bridge.

    It's all changed round there now, since the Garden Festival, the BBC are close to that Bridge and STV a bit further up the river, nice part of city now and of course the Science Centre is part of the legacy of the Festival.

    Last time I was close to it was a long time ago now, 2005 I took this, the BBC building on the left in the distance, took this from the Squinty Bridge.
    [​IMG]
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  2. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    That looks like Sydney Opera House in the middle ground…
  3. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    The Armadillo, I've never been in it and I've not seen the new SSE Hydro next door, all that is new since the last time I was in Glasgow.

    The COP event is being held in the SEC not sure if that now encompasses all the buildings on the site, I would suspect the Armadillo will be the venue as the SEC itself is just a huge warehouse like hall.

    [​IMG]
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  4. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Indeed a chance for Glasgow to show off to the world.

    3BD30D92-3BDD-4B7D-B790-E367B6EFEEE6.jpeg
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  5. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Oh there's still plenty of Rabs in Glasgow :)
  6. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    he should be first minister--not his wife.
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  7. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    I just loved that character…..
  8. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Mary doll, she had her moments of madness but was by far the more grounded and sensible long suffering character :D
  9. Druk1
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    Druk1 Well-Known Member

  10. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

  11. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    So what’s this E10 petrol all about then? :D
  12. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member



    “Britain has reached a “tipping point” in the electric car revolution with almost half of all buyers in the UK now seeking to purchase a fully battery-powered vehicle, research has found.

    A total 49pc of drivers looking to buy a car said they would choose an electric vehicle, a significant leap on 21pc just two years ago. Drivers are increasingly interested in owning electric models owing to a combination of environmental concerns and rising penalties on petrol and diesel cars, a survey by EY revealed.

    The accountancy firm said the speed of the shift was “eye-opening” with manufacturers now needing to make sure they are catching up with demand.

    Maria Bengtsson of EY said: “These findings truly mark a tipping point in the UK car-buying market.

    “Nearly 50pc of consumers across the UK indicating that they want an electric vehicle is a significant milestone in the transition from internal combustion engines.

    “Consumers are becoming increasingly socially and environmentally conscious, and they’re willing to pay a premium to meet their environmental standards.””
  13. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    New car sales in the UK were about 2 million in 2021, so 49% would represent a million electric vehicles per year around now, that's against a backdrop of 31 million vehicles on the road in the UK.

    The change is welcome but remember that most of the energy for this will be generated by non renewables and also remember that we don't currently have the power generation capacity to fully replace vehicle fossil fuels at this time, right now the power generation profile of the UK is geared towards domestic and industrial consumption, transport is an almost completely separate world of fossil fuels.

    The increase in electric vehicles (EV) will improve the efficiency of existing renewables as it increases the total battery storage of the entire country and allows better use of sporadic generation via wind and solar so yeah all good stuff but the reality is we need a lot more generation capacity to accommodate transport and personally given the gas situation I would like to see that come from nuclear.

    We also need to see improvements in battery technology and a move away from Lithium simply due to it's scarcity.

    I don't believe that the reasons people want to move to electric is social or environmental, I think that a lot of this will be the sudden shock of the increase in energy costs, reactive and not proactive, but still welcome. And also it's not that they are willing to pay a premium we are all being forced to pay more for all kinds of fuel that is inescapable and we are only at the beginning of the increase in energy costs.

    Some estimates place electric fuel costs at 1/4 of the price of petrol or diesel and from memory around the world transport represents in the range of about 1/3 of total energy usage, that represents about 1 CMO (cubic mile of oil) that's out of the 3 CMO we use to power the world every year, turning 1 CMO into 1/4 of a CMO would be a huge advance but even better would be replacing the oil with renewables or nuclear, remember that a CMO is a unit representing total energy not literally oil it's an equivalence unit.
  14. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Last edited: Jun 8, 2022
  15. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Zero chance of scaling regards the Lithium.

    Brent Crude was way higher in 2008 at more than 140 USD per barrel, I don't remember the price of petrol back then but I looked it up £1.03 per litre (I vaguely remember it higher ) but the inflation scale factor according to the Bank of England is 1.31 which suggests that current fuel prices are way inflated compared to 2008, but the Ukraine war is a reasonable explanation for this.
  16. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    They are inflated because of the Ukraine war. Yes. And they were higher in 2008. I remember it well.

    Why do you think scaling is unlikely with Lithium production? Scaling is already happening in geothermal drilling. Do you believe lithium is a finite resource too?
  17. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Almost all the Lithium in the Universe was created in the Big bang, it's not generally manufactured in nucleosynthesis in stars because it's pretty fragile and it breaks down easily, in planetary formation because it is light it tends to be found in the crust and most of the accessible reserves are found through ore mining and salt flats separating it is messy and requires a lot of water, recycling it from used batteries is also pretty hard and energy intensive.

    There is not enough accessible lithium to power a world where transport has been completely converted to Lithium ion battery technology, yes there is an awful lot of it in the oceans but it's hard to extract and energy intensive.

    It's also going to be important in nuclear fusion so using it all for batteries might not be a good idea.

    There is a lot of interest in graphene battery tech but that still involves lithium as well.

    The main problem is that the largest reserves exist as spread out atoms in water, you will know better than me how the ore deposits get formed but I guess it is something like through the burying of salt flats that concentrated the lithium out of large volumes of lithium dissolved in water, I don't know I've not looked up how it gets concentrated, there are trillions of tons of it in the crust but we don't have access to the entire crust of the planet to get at it.

    So yeah it's a limited resource and probably another reason Elon Musk has his Space company as he needs to get out there to get easier access to rare materials.

    Don't forget the scarcity of Helium as well a gas that we squander with gay abandon and which will be crucial in future power generation technologies.
  18. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    Lithium is to be found in granite. And granite is what this planet has in abundance. I did post on this some months back. The traditional methods of sourcing lithium are indeed expensive and counter productive from an environmental stance. However………. Lithium is also a bi product of geothermal heat sources. That means it enables the cost of geothermal energy to be offset by the co production of lithium and without the environmental burden. They are already there. Drill into a granite pluton and hey bingo, you have it. This is a recent development that slips under the radar of some. Google Cornish Lithium and Salton Sea USA to get you started. They are but a few examples. There is more than enough info on this form of lithium extraction to satisfy a curious mind. Geothermal drilling is in itself developing and expanding rapidly so no worries there.

    “But amid this environmental disaster, the California Energy Commission estimates that there’s enough lithium here to meet all of the United States’ projected future demand and 40% of the world’s demand. That’s big news for the booming electric-vehicle industry, as lithium is the common denominator across all types of EV batteries.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/the-salton-sea-could-produce-the-worlds-greenest-lithium.html
  19. Anon220806
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    Anon220806 Well-Known Member

    I have just had a look at historical oil prices and that one in 2008 was very short lived. It had no impact on my work at the time. It was followed by a massive dip in prices. I cannot recall the cause though I could look it up. Often it has been some global issue that has caused the price volatility. In terms of myself I am on borrowed time with the oil industry and expect these prices to fizzle out soon enough. If only we had a crystal ball though.

    In the meantime it’s costing over 100 quid to fill a family car (quoting from the media).
  20. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    I'm speaking about accessible Lithium, there are about 1.5 billion operational cars in the world approx, an EV uses about 10kg of Lithium per car, replacing all of those cars with EVs would need about 15 million tonnes of Lithium, current world reserves are estimated at about 90 million tonnes. Then you have all the storage systems Musk amongst others is planning on building for solar and wind storage and you have all the commercial vehicles trucks and so on to replace.

    Current world Lithium production is around 80,000 tonnes per year, that's satisfying current demands for EVs and other Lithium uses, so it needs to scale up pretty dramatically in order to replace all cars with EVs and it needs to do it quickly.

    Yeah as I mentioned there are trillions of tonnes of Lithium in the oceans and you've pointed out the Salton sea, they estimate 600,000 tonnes per year of Lithium Carbonate from the Salton Sea, the issue is going to be achieving the required scale quickly enough and bearing in mind that it will be needed for other uses as well and that vehicle numbers are likely to grow not shrink then that 90 million tons buffer does not seem so big, the batteries will have to be recycled to extract the rare earths and the lithium which is going to drive up the overall energy cost of EVs.

    These batteries don't last forever and global lithium supplies will have to meet requirements for new replacement batteries as well.

    Personally I thought hydrogen fuel cells tech would have been a better bet for EVs, simply produced from renewables, needs new infrastructure hydrogen network but that could be achieved, can power multiple modes of transport and replace gas as fuel in homes, doesn't suffer from the recharge times needed for lithium ion batteries, and can act as long term storage for renewable energy via electrolysis, but outside of a few countries it does not seem likely that hydrogen will gain much traction.

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