Trying
Elliot Kirschner on Lassen National Park, which he knows well from childhood summer vacations:
For those who have never been to Lassen, or maybe haven’t even heard of it, it is one of the true gems of the National Park system, although far less famous than its cousins like Yellowstone and Yosemite. It’s a place shaped by an active volcano, Lassen Peak, which last erupted a little over a century ago, and all the geothermal activity that goes with it. Its streams, lakes, meadows, and forests teem with wildlife and vistas both epic and intimate. As much as the sights, I remember the smells. Around the bubbling mud baths came the pungent odor of rotten eggs from the hydrogen sulphide rising from the bowels of the earth. But in the forests, the smell was sweet and full of life, a blend of the numerous species of trees.
But not any more. Now it smells like smoke and destruction. Word is that more than half of it was eaten by the Dixie Fire.
Out West the climate crisis means increased droughts which turn even high-altitude forests into torch fuel. In other parts of the country, the effects are of course quite different. While we are praying for rain, swaths of the eastern half of the country are getting far too much of it. The scenes out of Louisiana, then up through the interior, and out to New Jersey and New York and the rest of the Northeast are heartbreaking. If only we could take some of that water out here. If only we could restore more of a sense of balance. If only we had done a better job of preparing. If only we were doing more now.
As I read the piece I can see a giant cruise ship heading out of Elliott Bay into Puget Sound and up to Alaska, burning through 80,000 thousand gallons of fuel a day. We could just skip that you know. I realize it’s a big industry that makes a lot of $$$ but cruises are not a necessity of life. We could make some effort to do something about the problem, but we’re not. I keep finding myself thinking about little energy-saving moves and then remembering those 80,000 gallons a day – for just one ship. We’re not even trying.
The constant fires are part of a feedback loop. More fires, fewer trees to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, over and over. Lassen, Yosemite, Glacier, Banff, all of Siberia, is all toast. I’m so disheartened. No wonder people are going nuts at an accelerating pace.
For some data on what works to cut CO2 emissions see:
https://www.electricitymap.org/map
It shows how much CO2 is emitted per kWh of electricity generated for regions where they get data.
Color coded from green for very low to black for very high.
You can click on a region to get how much electricity from came from what source over the last hour or day.
Spoiler alert:
The regions that are consistently green use a mix of hydro, geothermal & nuclear for most of their electricity.
The regions that try to use a lot of solar or wind vary from fairly green to quite brown, because when the wind isn’t blowing & the sun isn’t shining they burn natural gas to provide the electricity they need.
I’ve long thought that wind/solar should *always* be supplemented with nuclear power or similar.
NZ generates most of its electricity from hydro, geothermal and wind. Coal, gas and diesel come next and solar is still essentially hobby level (but growing). It’s not just as simple as deciding we should use a certain type of generation or mix of types though. Ideally we should be getting rid of our last coal burners and then gas. That’s kind of the ‘plan’. In reality what we’ve seen is a few years of lower than normal inflows into our storage lakes. The generating companies that use hydro only have to run the lakes to their lowest permissible level. Stopping generation before then isn’t an option. The result is that we’ve been delaying decommissioning our last big coal fired stations and have been running gas fired peakers. We’ve even bee running an emergency station that relies on diesel (very expensive). Wind is great, and we have built a lot of wind farms. Problem with those is that when it blows it blows pretty much everywhere, so the market price of power plummets and generators (especially small ones) don’t want to build more wind farms.
The issue isn’t just a technical one. All our easy hydro has been developed. What’s left is either technically difficult, a long way from markets, or will have a very adverse effect on the environment. On top of that, when the Electricity market was largely privatised and made to operate as a true supply/demand system the incentive to have excess capacity lying around diminished. Ideally you would have sufficient excess of hydro that you can run a base load of thermal, geothermal and hydro, then ramp the remaining hydro up and down as wind or solar go up and down. In reality the system runs right on the edge of shortage of supply all the time, taking advantage of the times like now when the hydro lakes are near bottom. The solution is political and regulatory. For example, our government looks to be reentering the market by creating a number of huge ‘batteries’. The South Island one will be a massive expansion of a man made reservoir in the hills. This will be filled with pumped hydro at times when there is excess electricity (night-time and excess wind/hydro especially). That reservoir will be reserved for dry years when normal lakes are low. There is also talk of using legislation to change the shape of the electricity market. Not an easy task and one that is sure to have unintended consequences.
Here is something about a plan to attach a sort of battery to a nuclear reactor, so the reactor can run constantly at full power, but the output from the total plant can ramp up & down to fit demand & other supply.
https://atomicinsights.com/a-path-from-coal-to-nuclear-is-being-blazed-in-wyoming/
“On top of that, when the Electricity market was largely privatised and made to operate as a true supply/demand system the incentive to have excess capacity lying around diminished.”
It sounds like NZ has done what Meredith Angwin denounces in ‘Shorting the Grid’.
https://meredithangwin.com/books/
“hydro lakes are near bottom” #4
Abrahm Lustgarten “40 Million People Rely on the Colorado River. It’s Drying Up Fast” Aug. 27, 2021
In 2000, Lake Mead, not full full since 1983, began a steady decline caused by epochal drought, already declined by nearly 20%, on average, from its flow throughout the 1900s , and if the current rate of warming continues, the loss could well be 50% by the end of this century. At 895 feet, the Lake Mead reservoir would become what’s called a “dead pool”; water would no longer be able to flow downstream.
https://www.propublica.org/article/40-million-people-rely-on-the-colorado-river-its-drying-up-fast?utm_source=pocket-newtab
#5, Kind of. The original industry reform has had bits bolted to it to try and avoid the worst potential aspects. So for example there are requirements for minimum levels of service; there is a mechanism (which doesn’t seem to work as well as you’d hope) to identify ‘adverse market events’ where someone try to cause a shortage to drive up spot market prices or where a shortfall may occur because one major generator has to reduce capacity for a good reason and others refuse to pick up the slack; and the market authority can enforce a price restriction on a market participant or the entire market to prevent long term price gouging. The way our market is structured you have generators (private or mixed public/private), who get power to market over a National Grid (State owned). That power is then distributed locally through regional lines companies (community, private or local government owned) and then sold to us by retailers (private or mixed public/private). The issue comes that a small number of dominant players are gentailers. They generate power and retail power. That gives them outsize sway in the market and prevent it from operating in a true supply/demand manner. Arguably of course power should operate as a social good, not an unregulated capitalism. Having reliable, economically and environmentally sustainable power is to everyones benefit and short term economic drivers are not the best way of achieving that.
#6, when I said ‘at bottom’ I meant the regulatory bottom, not literally lake bottom. While some would argue that is still too low, our lakes and rivers are guaranteed a minimum flow. so while I find the current lake levels through the McKenzie and Waitaki basins low, water still flows in the Waitaki river. Generation is severely curtailed though.
Lassen National Park played a major role in my life, but I won’t say what that role was.
Rob #4, #7
That’s very interesting, thank you. I work for a medium-sized (by Norwegian standards) hydro power company in my country. Our production units are mostly “run-of-the-river” power plants [1], more suitable for providing “base” loads than “peak” loads. In (what used to be) a “normal” year, we let our reservoirs (lakes) sink toward the regulatory bottom during the winter season (when most of the precipitation comes in the shape of snow). This is usually when consumption is at its highest (due to heating etc.) and prices are high. In springtime the snow in the mountains starts melting, allowing us to fill up our reservoirs while driving prices down. Usually around the second half of May we reach a peak when everyone has more water than they can possibly use, the prices are pushed to the bottom and there might be a danger of flooding populated areas. After this peak has passed, the water flow usually shrinks to a minimum and stays low throughout the summer. Quite frequently we reach another peak in autumn due to periods of heavy rain.
But that was the old “normal”, and more recently everything has been increasingly weird. In 2020 (due to ridiculous amounts of snow in the mountains and an extremely wet summer) everyone had more water than they could use for most of the year, driving prices to an unprecedented low. This year is almost the exact opposite with ridiculously high prices (mostly because of increased export capacity) even far into the summer. The average spot price for my area during the last decade was € 35,3, last year it was down to € 9,3 (with many months seeing averages below €2, and single hours even dipping below zero), and so far this year it’s € 51,2 with the month of August (usually a “cheap” month) seeing an all-time high of € 71,8. Ridiculous!
One local newspaper even uncritically repeated a conspiracy theory that one of our power plants was out of commission (as some of them usually are due to maintenance, repairs etc.) to drive the prices even higher, a proposition so high on the Dunning Kruger scale that it’s hard to even know where to begin. Those of us who work on the production side are usually spared the worst crap though, nothing compared to what my colleagues on the grid side of the business have to put up with. The people who are furious and call in to rant and rave about “lack of maintenance” whenever there’s a blackout are typically the same people who call in and are furious whenever the power is down for a few hours due to maintenance (always announced days in advance). In fact, one colleague of mine was told by one of these geniuses that “You know just as well as me that this ‘planned maintenance’ crap is just bullshit!”
[1] For the nerds out there: many Kaplan and Francis turbines, some bulb turbines, and no Pelton turbines.
As others have pointed out, there is no “silver bullet” that’s going to solve this crisis. What is needed is more like a “silver buckshot”. Hydro power is not going to solve the problem, wind power is not going to solve the problem, solar power is not going to solve the problem, nuclear power is not going to solve the problem, more efficient technologies is not going to solve the problem, energy storage is not going to solve the problem, reforestation is not going to solve the problem etc. etc. Whatever “hope” remains is that all of them combined is going to, if not “solve” the problem, then at least limit the damage enough to keep the planet somewhat habitable. A “good” outcome is no longer an option. And of course the elephant in the room is the consumption side of the equation. Any proposed “solution” based on the premise that we’re going to go on living and consuming exactly like before only without the carbon emissions is a false solution.
I strongly suspect Not Bruce is right that the “solution” actually offered when the crisis gets too dire to ignore will be some speculative and untested geoengineering scheme to artificially lower global temperatures, like putting some more crap up there (it worked so well last time, right?) to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the surface. More of the same kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.
There was a discussion in another thread about lefties who say things like “nobody is pro abortion”. I have almost the opposite problem at this point. My heart sinks whenever somebody announces that the’re expecting children, and everybody congratulates them and treats it as good news and something to celebrate, while I can’t help thinking “another contribution to overpopulation and another child with nothing to look forward to other than going down with the ship and paying the ultimate price for our stupidity and evil”.
Well it’s always possible overpopulation gets “solved” by scarcity/hoarding induced genocidal wars.
William Rees puts it all in a nutshell here. A fabulous but distinctly scary presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oVTHKzC7TM
He has several of these talks on YouTube.
Bjarte @# 11:
My wife and I have 6.5 kW worth of solar panels on our roof, and I am also interested in the possibilities of storage of wind and solar generated energy in varieties of pumped hydro in various locations around the world.
The Cook Strait, for example, separating the North and South islands of New Zealand would appear to offer great potential.
Similar sites exist elsewhere in the world. Trouble is, it would all have to be done by public investment, which would scare ‘conservatives’ away. That would be until some magnate worked out a way to privatise the Sun, and the wind, and the ocean, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Strait
I just finished watching the William Reese presentation linked to above by Mike B. Brilliant and succinct and scary. Thank you so much for this link. It sums up and crystalizes much that I’ve been reading and thinking about for the last thirty years or so.
I think the scariest point he makes is that, as an intelligent species, capable of forethought, planning, and moral reasoning, we have the ability and choice to change our direction, but nobody is actually talking about this. It’s a race between business as usual, in which we are all fucked, and the idea that, in Patti Smith’s words, “people have the power to wrestle the world from fools.”
We are in need of a global political/economic revolution greater than any that has come before. We more or less know where we need to go, but can we get there from where we are? Not by following the path we’re on, in the vehicle we’re riding in. The necessary scope and impact of this revolution is huge, in fact unprecedented, but pales into insignificance in comparison to the disruption and destruction ahead if we do nothing, or more of the same.
YNNB? It’s some mind-blowing shit, ain’t it?
The problem is as Ron Patterson at Peak Oil Barrel says: You can’t herd 7.8 billion cats.