Carbon dioxide (Energy)
Posted
January 24, 2008 
Comments(17)
Comments(17)
About this GapCastAll humans emit carbon dioxide (CO2) and contribute to the climate crisis. But some humans emits much more than others. Although the total CO2 emissions from China are almost as big as those from United States, the emissions from a single American are more than 6 times larger than those from a person in China. In China today, almost 80% of the electricity is produced from coal, and that proportion is increasing. What China needs is an environmental-friendly way of producing electricity that is cheaper than coal. |
Data in GapCast |
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[...] more relevant to this blog, however, is his visualizations of Carbon Dioxide Emissions. Check it [...]
[...] Carbon Dioxide Emissions: US vs. China [...]
You mean like nuclear? The only solution that can work right now.
Or if you capture and store the CO2 from teh power plants you can reduce emissions. This seems unrealistic however. The best plan is solar energy. The technology is there, we just need to reduce costs and ramp up production.
Kate…I’m sorry but you’re wrong. The net energy gain from nuclear is the same as wind energy…this has been documented in many, many places.
Nuclear is limited in scope and thinking.
[...] this Video Carbon dioxide (Energy) Posted January 24, 2008 CO2 emissions in USA and China compared.How to produce electricity [...]
Null, I completely have to disagree.
You indeed CAN catch CO2 in the power plants and pump it down into the earth. Google it, the technology is not so far away. But of course doing that doesnt come for free. You have to pay for it.
Still it is the most realistic option.
Unfortunately I have to tell you your proposition is unrealistic:
Solar energy is no option.
People need energy the whole day. But when do you have energy from solar plants? Only by day. Building one solar plant for day production and relying on (probly mostly coal/gas/oil plants) at night is unrealistic because expensive. Why expensive? Because you need 2 power plants for the same amount of energy, one used at day and one used at night.
Felix:
The wind blows day and night, the earth is warm inside day and night, the waves hit the shores day and night and the water runs in the rivers day and night.
There is no need to make yourself dependant on fossil fuels. (see http://www.mtbest.net)
Besides, capacitors can store excess energy during the day, releasing it at night.
If you built a solar field spanning 100×100mi in the arizona desert with TODAYS TECHNOLOGY, you would cover the energy needs of the entire USA, INCLUDING TRANSPORT (given conversion to electric). The only thing (and this is true) keeping this from happening, is the death rattle of the petroleum industry. They make too much money to let this happen.
CO2 storage is a non-viable solution. It is too costly to do it safe.
The solution is not one single solution. It is :
* Reduction in usage (Europe uses a lot less today, and started only now to really focus on reduction)
* Distributed local production of energy from :
– solar
– wind
– thermal
– small power stations with heat recuperation
– wave generators
– and more (in transition only existing nuclear, no new plants!)
* Storage of excess energy in Hydrogen and other means, such as EVs.
Sorry to say, there is no one solution, and Nuclear will not be part of any viable solution in the long run. Nuclear is by the way too expensive for the next generations.
Felix, that’s not the case. There are existing solar plants that use a variety of technologies for storing energy for non-daylight hours, including batteries, compressed gas used to drive turbines, and others. More are in development.
Besides, there will never be a single source of electricity any more than we have a single source now. In my region, we have electricity from wind, dams, nuclear, and coal. Even if it were true that solar could only work in the daylight, it would still be a very viable part of the solution.
Solar energy doesn’t work like that, like Hydropower, the energy collected can be stored to use even when the energy source is not available; solar panels work like that, in fact calculators have been working like that for ages! The surplus energy not needed during the day can be stored in a battery for use at night.
[...] Hans Rosling CO2 presentation [...]
Nice presentation, but while Mr. Rosling presents an interesting point, I see it as almost pure propoganda.
Yes, Mr. Rosling, I too have read Tufte, and I recognize that your wealth scale is skewed – CO2 emissions is LINEAR while wealth is what, geometric? That alone explains the distracting concavity in the resulting trendlines (otherwise an interesting point of analysis).
Why? You cannot assert that this is to make the information clearer, so you must have been trying to prove a specific point. So for example, where you stop the display in 2003, China is emitting only 3t per person, for a GDP of 5, or producing 1.7 GDP/ton of emissions. The US is 20t for 40 GDP, yet your comment is not about the relative EFFICIENCY of the US.
Further, to have a per-capita value on an axis, and an absolute value (particularly represented by circles, which are notorious for offering casual misperceptions due to the way humans perceive them – a circle of 2x the area doesn’t LOOK 2x the size) on the graph is also inviting misperception.
Ultimately, the tool is great, but the conclusion is disappointing. Your conclusion: we need a way of producing energy that’s cheaper than coal. Wow, really?
Can energy be produced by electromagnetic fields, like placing magnet facing each other 24 hours a day while stopping them to ever connect. The energy produce by the two magnet (according to the size of the magnet) can be transform into electricity. There would be no pollution at all.
Then there is the idea of bringing censors into every tap water around the globe, the energy produced by running water in private house, would not be much, yet sufficient enough for any particular house, there could be every tap, radiators, toilet flush etc.. fitted with tiny censors which would provide energy. This again is completely pollution free. These censors would produce energy in the same way as the wave energy production, yet on existing materiels everybody uses regularly.
This idea would work even better in businesses where large consumption of water is made.
There are millions of ideas which can be developped in trying to produce energy from the use of something else. In this instance the use of water produce electricity, it is like recycling people’s regular use of water.
It is not so much at looking or focusing on ONE clean source of energy aside from all the others, it is about using them all or some of them simultaneously when solar phases out because it’s dark, the accumulated energy from the water system or the wind takes over etc… Energy can be stored in battery and that includes solar energy.
I am quite sure that scientists could even come up with producing energy from thr gravity pull of the moon on the earth or the gravity on earth if they wanted, it’s there and it has never been tried yet.
Great information, really..
The problem of carbon dioxide emissions is over-stated.
Human industry produces less than 1/10 of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. In fact, carbon dioxide itself is just .038 percent of the atmosphere (methane is not even a trace element).
The largest greenhouse gas by volume is water vapour at 1 percent.
The interplay of water and winds with sunshine is extremely complex, and the ocean currents probably play a major role.
Having said that, other natural cycles come into play — especially the wobble of the earth’s axis over a 26,000 year cycle. Just as the tilt of the axis gives us summer and winter, the wobble (axial rotation) drives climate change. The last ice age was about 18,000 years ago and both the Lake Vostok ice core sample study and the University of Melbourne study indicates that carbon dioxide levels regularily rise for about 21,000 years and then drop again as the earth cools.
Do the math – we can expect another 3,000 years of global warming no matter what human beings do. How we cope with this, and exploit the positive potential of global warming, will determine our future!
After a lot of study of the entire situation, I have concluded that we need MORE CO2.
> moi
CO2 is a nutrient for plant life in the ocean and on land. It is the basis of the food chain and is converted by plants into carbohydrates, fiber and oxygen (from phytoplankton and zooplankton upward to humans). When there is more CO2, plants use more CO2. It is an absolute necessity to keep our planet blue, green and white (seas, plants and clouds).
My calculations show that the CO2 is INSIGNIFICANT as a contributor to global warming and the Sun is the only ultimate driver. Water vapor is 20,000 parts per million and CO2 is 380 ppm of the atmosphere. Greenhouses are warm because they don’t lose heat and the water vapor collects it. CO2 is not a good collector and obeys a logarithmic law in converting infrared from the Sun to higher molecular kinetic energy (thermal energy). It also converts this thermal energy back to infrared radiation in the atmosphere of which almost half radiates out into space, unlike being trapped in a greenhouse thermal collector.
Please generate more CO2, but not pollutants like N2O and please, no chloroflorocarbons.
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If you have a blind belief that CO2 harms the planet, then you are doomed to remain deluded. Please, no political bufoon and no appointed goon (to climate control). If you don’t know the first 2 laws of thermodynamics then you have no business proselytizing against our precious CO2.