A long long long time ago in galaxy far far far away .......
There was a time when burning stuff was really great , really useful and embodied in pretty much most of our technology and engineering , it is arguable that the progress of mankind is actually corelated to the increased temperatures we attained by burning fuels , but thats a long story .
The 1990s level (as all countries have agreed to) is interesting , as it doesnt include the massive impact by China on global emissions , because in 1990 it was relatively low energy economy , however since 1990 the use of fossil fuels has risen , despite billions being poured into emissions reductions and in some cases rather wonk thinking , but hey wonk thinking is just a matter of friends agreeing but claiming to have no knowledge of wonkness , only 6 years ago I thought nuclear fission was the only option we had , and the wind turbine would never top 6MW output , and that turned out to be wrong didnt it .
The first lesson is perhaps this ,not everything is a greenhouse gas , water vapour could quite easily tip the whole thing into a self heating cascade ,however beacuse we have the poles this is unlikely , but even then as we are seeing other instabilities ocur which cause weather patterns to start to make all life and complex fauna have lives that are more precarious.
the second lesson is , is combustion still a good idea ??? mmm well there is a bit of battle of the wonks here , personally I dont think combustion is finished as a technology , in part because what is proposed to replace it can have problems , for example pretty much most Li On battery technology doesnt recycle well,,hence the new popular tech of old batteries being used , which isnt such a good idea because old batteries can go wrong/fail and in in quite spectacular ways that your local firebrigade will be unable to put out as its a chemical fire and self sustaining GULP, but aside from that in some examples such as power stations only combustion will give the large sorts of power outputs when its dark and no wind and given it takes a lot of energy to make Hydrogen ,the hydrogen gas turbine isnt really the genius thing it seems to be , but some big engeering companies were all into it a while ago , nor i think is Hydrogen as a transport fuel , to put this into perspective , a diesel powered modern railway engine , when you do all the figures for green Hydrogen and its keeping , will transport more people for less CO2 than Hydrogen.
The third lesson is what if someone had invented a really cool way of doing high energy combustion ???? watch this space !!!!
A long long long time ago in galaxy far far far away .......
There was a time when burning stuff was really great , really useful and embodied in pretty much most of our technology and engineering , it is arguable that the progress of mankind is actually corelated to the increased temperatures we attained by burning fuels , but thats a long story .
The 1990s level (as all countries have agreed to) is interesting , as it doesnt include the massive impact by China on global emissions , because in 1990 it was relatively low energy economy , however since 1990 the use of fossil fuels has risen , despite billions being poured into emissions reductions and in some cases rather wonk thinking , but hey wonk thinking is just a matter of friends agreeing but claiming to have no knowledge of wonkness , only 6 years ago I thought nuclear fission was the only option we had , and the wind turbine would never top 6MW output , and that turned out to be wrong didnt it .
The first lesson is perhaps this ,not everything is a greenhouse gas , water vapour could quite easily tip the whole thing into a self heating cascade ,however beacuse we have the poles this is unlikely , but even then as we are seeing other instabilities ocur which cause weather patterns to start to make all life and complex fauna have lives that are more precarious.
the second lesson is , is combustion still a good idea ??? mmm well there is a bit of battle of the wonks here , personally I dont think combustion is finished as a technology , in part because what is proposed to replace it can have problems , for example pretty much most Li On battery technology doesnt recycle well,,hence the new popular tech of old batteries being used , which isnt such a good idea because old batteries can go wrong/fail and in in quite spectacular ways that your local firebrigade will be unable to put out as its a chemical fire and self sustaining GULP, but aside from that in some examples such as power stations only combustion will give the large sorts of power outputs when its dark and no wind and given it takes a lot of energy to make Hydrogen ,the hydrogen gas turbine isnt really the genius thing it seems to be , but some big engeering companies were all into it a while ago , nor i think is Hydrogen as a transport fuel , to put this into perspective , a diesel powered modern railway engine , when you do all the figures for green Hydrogen and its keeping , will transport more people for less CO2 than Hydrogen.
The third lesson is what if someone had invented a really cool way of doing high energy combustion ???? watch this space !!!!
