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Thermal Storage Hopium

April 16, 2024

Thermal Storage Hopium

Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

After realizing that there is not enough mining capacity to “produce” the necessary amount of metals to build enough batteries (not only lithium, but copper, nickel and much more), a mad scramble to find an alternative electricity storage solution began. Last time I revisited the problem, the hype was all about using aluminum waste to convert its embedded chemical energy into hydrogen and heat. Now its time for thermal batteries to receive their fare share of criticism.

Thermal storage is touted as a “clean and sustainable alternative” to Lithium-Ion Batteries. According to media reports: “The thermal batteries industry is in the nascent stage of development, but it is gaining increasing attention, as governments and companies worldwide look for alternative green solutions. These batteries work by heating a substance to store thermal energy, which can be converted into heat or electricity. Energy from renewable sources, such as solar and wind farms, can be stored to use when energy is not being produced on-site, to ensure a stable flow of electricity to the grid.”

Well, where to start? It is one thing to store excess electricity generated by wind and solar as heat, it is quite another to convert that heat back into electricity… A “problem” grossly overlooked by the technutopists pushing this idea. You see, the efficiency of such an energy storage system is still ruled by physics, and thinking that this is just another “problem” to be solved, well, is magical thinking at best. As discovered by Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot in 1824, not even an ideal, frictionless engine can convert 100% of its input heat into work: that nasty second law of thermodynamics puts a fundamental limit on the thermal efficiency of all heat engines…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why are “Solutions” Really Just Bargaining?

November 14, 2023

Why are “Solutions” Really Just Bargaining?

Flag Rock Recreation Area, Norton, Virginia

I have tried to point out the reality throughout this entire blog that what we face moving forward is a set of predicaments with outcomes, not problems with solutions. Therefore, prescribing different ideas (whether they are actually labeled “solutions” or not is more or less irrelevant) focusing on ways to mitigate or “fix” these predicaments is a fool’s game because no solutions are available. Reflecting on a recent article where I pointed out that the chief cause of problems is solutions brings a certain level of discovery to many people. Pointing out that enlightenment eradicates false beliefs and that who and what we are as a species isn’t going to change no matter what ideas are brought forth, human ingenuity needs to be seen for what it actually is – precisely what brought us to this point in the first place!

I have also pointed out my support for the degrowth movement but that doing so changes nothing with regards to the predicaments we face. Sadly, I am still frequently accused of NOT supporting the degrowth movement despite my efforts (which frequently are far superior to those busy denigrating those efforts). I am also often accused of “giving up” or being a doomer or spreading doomism or being a nihilist or even “Malthusian” of all things. I choose to laugh at this criticism because none of those criticisms hold up under scrutiny and their hypocrisy is noted as what is known as special pleading. This is a logical fallacy, in other words. Each one of these people who criticize me for being skeptical, critical, or otherwise pointing out the reality is suffering from denial of that reality and often at the same time suffering from optimism bias as well, which often leads into toxic positivity. Basically, these folks are suffering from a huge dose of hopium…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Feedback Loops and Unsustainable Systems

June 1, 2023

Feedback Loops and Unsustainable Systems

Mountains as seen from Tennessee Welcome Center

I have brought up feedback loops (both positive and negative) many times in this space. I’ve also brought up unsustainable systems in one way or another in practically every article, since they are endemic in human society and at the root of every predicament. It would be very simple for me to tell you that if we just eliminated every unsustainable system and replaced them with sustainable ones that most all our troubles would be resolved. Aaahhh, if only it were that simple. While there is much truth to that statement, the physical realities of replacing these systems would be a massive transformation that is prevented by the Limits to Growth – not enough energy and resources to accomplish the job due to self-reinforcing positive feedback loops which would only add fuel to the fire of the existing ecological overshoot that we are already in. Understanding how we got to this point is key in comprehending why
options on dealing with overshoot are so limited. Several different ideas revolve around the same concept of creating a “new civilization” that humans could embark on to reduce overshoot and live happily ever after. I’ve pointed out one concept known as The Venus Project which is really nothing more than pure hopium. I’ve spent the last several articles detailing the Degrowth Movement and why degrowth in and of itself isn’t enough to actually accomplish much, mainly due to a lack of acceptance from corporations and governments, which would suffer greatly as a result. Of course, we’re all going to suffer from the implications of overshoot anyway, which makes that fact more or less irrelevant in the first place. I’ve pointed out why the MEER concept is unrealistic and more fantasy than reality…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Hydrogen hopium: Storage

October 29, 2022

Hydrogen hopium: Storage

Source: Russel Rhodes (2011) Explosive Lessons in Hydrogen Safety. https://appel.nasa.gov/2011/02/02/explosive-lessons-in-hydrogen-safety/

Preface.

Preface.  What is hopium? Irrational or unwarranted optimism. An addiction to false hopes. A metaphorical substance that causes people to believe in a false hope (H + opium). And Hopium makes fuel cell hydrogen cars!  What could be more suitable for today’s post.

No container can contain hydrogen for long. Use it or lose it. Hydrogen is the Houdini of elements, the smallest of them all, and will boil off and escape no matter how many gaskets and valves there are on a container and at every pipeline junction.

Hydrogen can’t be distributed with existing natural gas pipelines or service stations because hydrogen leaks as well as corrodes metal. According to former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu (2020), hydrogen seeps into metal and embrittles it, a material problem that has not been solved for decades and may never be solved. Meanwhile, hydrogen is stored in expensive austenitic stainless-steel containers and pipelines that delay corrosion, which must be carefully maintained and monitored, since embrittlement can result in catastrophic explosions with loss of property and life.

Yes indeed, hydrogen is explosive which makes it difficult to use (Heinberg and Fridley 2016, Friedmann et al. 2019). If hydrogen escapes it can explode or catch fire ten times more easily than gasoline, set off with just a spark of static electricity. For example, due to a faulty valve, a Norwegian hydrogen station explosion was so strong that two nearby people inside their cars went to the hospital after their airbags were triggered. Around the same time, a chemical explosion in a hydrogen facility in Santa Clara, California resulted in a cautionary shutdown of all hydrogen stations in the San Francisco Bay Area (Siddiqui 2020)…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Hydrogen hopium: green hydrogen from water

October 19, 2022

Hydrogen hopium: green hydrogen from water

Additional steps not shown in above figure: getting water to the electrolyzer, compress or liquefy to -423 F before storage, the trucks to deliver H to stations costing $75 million each, since pipelines are super expensive and may leak, corrode, and explode (Zhao 2018)

Preface. For all the reasons why hydrogen is not going to replace fossil fuels, see the other posts in they hydrogen category, especially Hydrogen: The dumbest & most impossible renewable.

As the Russian war with Ukraine is making clearer, we are far from being able to abandon fossil fuels, so perhaps why there’s ever more hopium articles in the news so that people don’t panic and behave badly, one last desperate attempt to keep people hopeful that we can and must move to renewables saving the world from climate change.

Hydrogen is the dumbest, most ridiculous energy alternative. It is insanely far from being renewable with the highest negative energy return of any alternative, because far more energy is used than you ever get back to split the hydrogen from natural gas or electrolyze it from water, compress or liquefy it, construct incredibly expensive and short-lived steel containers and pipelines, and deliver the hydrogen to non-existent hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks, locomotives, and ships. Fuel cell technology is far from commercial from the transportation that keeps all of us alive.

Hydrogen from water using electrolysis is 12 times more costly than natural gas, so no wonder “renewable” hydrogen from water is only made when an especially pure hydrogen is required, mainly by NASA for rocket fuel.

From Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy:

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Hopium Detox and Recovery – Accepting & Trusting Unstoppable Collapse

May 7, 2022

Hopium Detox and Recovery – Accepting & Trusting Unstoppable Collapse 

The Demise of Hopium

January 30, 2022

The Demise of Hopium

Hopium (n)

  1. Irrational or unwarranted optimism. [YourDictionary.Com]
  2. That deranged condition in which a person is deluded into thinking humanity will survive omnicide. [DoomforDummies.blogspot.com]

I am not here to re-litigate the inevitability of the near-term collapse of global industrial civilization and the obvious consequence that billions of humans will suffer terribly as a result. Collapse is the endpoint of overshoot and overpopulation and it has already begun. While the speed of this collapse may be altered by various projects, plans and efforts, the end result will not change. Exponential growth on a finite planet is unsustainable, period. (If you need a reminder of what’s coming, review this article.)

Hopium pervades the climate change and environmental movements. It festers in every green industry, boils in the rhetorical language of world bodies like the UN and IPCC, is demanded in academic journal articles and grants, and lands like a heavy-handed thud as a tool of suppression by the media and popular authors. Hopium is a psychoactive medication, an addiction, a coping mechanism and a group therapy session. Hopium offers escape from the nightmarish reality the planet is plummeting towards. Hopium is a delusional distraction, fostered by mass media, politicians and academics. And hopium is harming us by creating more suffering and restricting free choice.

The rhetorical catalog for hopium includes the use of a phrase like “we need to …” or “we must …”  or “if we don’t …”. These phrases divide humanity into “we” (good) and “others” (bad).  The point is to identify a goal or policy that if achieved will mitigate collapse, a group who are willing to pursue the goal and a group who are obstructing the goal. Implicit in all such rhetoric is the belief that mitigating collapse is possible…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy?

April 23, 2015

Hopium: How Far Can Irrational Optimism Take The U.S. Economy?

If enough people truly believe that things will get better, will that actually cause them to get better?  There is certainly something to be said for being positive and thinking that anything is possible.  And as Americans, optimism seems to come naturally for us.  However, no amount of positive thinking is ever going to turn the sun into a block of wood or turn the moon into a block of cheese.  Any good counselor will tell you that one of the first steps toward recovery is to stop being delusional and to come to grips with how bad things really are.  When we deny reality and engage in irrational wishful thinking, we are engaging in something called “hopium”.  This is a difficult term to define, but the favorite definition of hopium that I have come across so far goes like this: “The irrational belief that, despite all evidence to the contrary, things will turn out for the best.”  In hundreds of articles, I have documented how the U.S. economy is mired in a long-term decline which is about to get a lot worse.  But most Americans see things very differently.  In fact, according to a brand new CNN/ORC poll, 52 percent of Americans describe the U.S. economy as “very” or “somewhat good”, and more than two-thirds of all Americans believe that the U.S. economy will be in “good shape” a year from right now.  But if you asked most of those people why they are so optimistic, they would probably mumble something about “Obama” or about how “we’re Americans and we always bounce back” or some other such gibberish.  Well, it’s wonderful that so many people are feeling good and looking forward to the future, but are those beliefs rational?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

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