[onlooker]

What Energy unlimited says is also akin to what Republican voters do, when they vote in politicians who minimize or downplay the AGW or other environmental concerns but rather harp on about how "It's the Economy stupid". Well, at some point those people will be forced to wake up and realize that all along the Economy is but a subset of the Environment and wholly dependent on it.
Suicide Mission?

[dohboi]

In other words:

The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herman_E._Daly

[evilgenius]

It'll be interesting to watch what happens as Venezuela bleeds people out of it, into the rest of South America. I don't think your average Venezuelan is that much different from your average Brazilian, Colombian, Ecuadoran, or Peruvian. They won't be able to make such easy assessments of each other, except maybe over economics. The same forces of distress and necessity will, however, work true. If the Venezuelans don't eventually move back, how will those other countries refer to them in order to see them the same way that Europeans see Africans or Middle Easterners? I think it's only human nature that they will.

Our systems can be overloaded. When they are fear of the outsider tends to prevail. We stop seeing the individual's plight and begin to see groups. It's inevitable that dire motives will be associated with them. Even marginal activity by a very small group of people that falls outside of the bounds will bring this about. How else are people supposed to deal with something that has passed out of control? Ever since Hitler rose to power out of a small power base it is no longer possible to ignore rhetoric or behavior from marginal groups, as long as they have understandable influence beyond a certain point. It seems to me that the world finds itself in need of a new way to deal with refugees. Simply flooding into the next place is not a very good idea. I think we ought to fashion ways to make places for refugees that are not such a burden upon those places into which they flood. Maybe there is a tech savvy way to make a city from scratch? How would such a thing hook up to the environment? How would people make sure that the rule of law prevailed in such places? It's only going to get worse. There will be entire cities whose populations are going to have to move somewhere else. So many people live close to the oceans.

I just have to add that there are economic reasons why the refugee situation is what it currently is. Refugees tend to provide cheap labor into an economy. With the advent of artificially intelligent robotic workers, that's not going to be an incentive to perpetuate the current model anymore. Many of the voices which masquerade as refugee's friends will turn about. That'll make it worse too.

[dissident]

What Energy unlimited says is also akin to what Republican voters do, when they vote in politicians who minimize or downplay the AGW or other environmental concerns but rather harp on about how "It's the Economy stupid". Well, at some point those people will be forced to wake up and realize that all along the Economy is but a subset of the Environment and wholly dependent on it.
Suicide Mission?

Some people don't have the intellectual fortitude to accept the fact that the party is over. They refuse to believe that regular economic activity is driving the whole planet into a dead end. They refuse to believe that technology is rubbish and is not evolving into a Star Trek utopia. Such people are willfully blind.

Lacking intellectual fortitude is also consistent with having a Mickey Mouse model of reality. For example, believing that the magical market place chooses systematically the optimal technology with an exponential convergence to utopia. Of course, this requires deficient powers of observation. The use of internal combustion engines in cars until today says it all. It is cheaper for the profit-obsessed market to market the same sh*t repackaged than to actually spend money to develop and adopt new technology. That development of fuel cells and hybrid drive-trains occurs does not imply that everything is hunky dory. These activities are government incentivized and boutique activities. And the car companies took their sweet time to offer such choices when things are beyond recover and charge you a nice and juicy premium. These technologies should have been the low price, high volume base-line already for decades.

It is clear for decades already that CO2 is a proxy metric for entropy of human society. The more it grows and develops the less evidence there is for any attenuation of CO2 emissions. CO2 moves lock-step with the GDP and declines are highly correlated with real GDP contractions (e.g. the early 1990s decline associated with the collapse of communism). Technology is clearly failing to change the linkage. And even if by some miracle there is a technological revolution that removes anthropogenic CO2 emissions (only in fairy tales) then it does not matter since humanity as locked in at least 2 C of warming that is releasing crysospheric carbon reservoirs and changing the biochemical regime of the oceans that will lead to much more warming, likely beyond 3 C on top of any human effect. (It is not clear what will happen to the global ocean CO2 under the magic human switch-off of CO2 emissions today; it is quite possible that the global ocean will still become a net CO2 source rather than sink and this will send us into a period of runaway warming for centuries that will take several hundred thousand years to settle down).

[SeaGypsy]

There's still no replacement for kerosene jet fuel, which aside from getting a lot of us around from time to time, provides a heat shield which will also vanish.

[KaiserJeep]

Many people are denying the obvious, that 7 or 9 or 15 billion humans are just too many for the planet to survive. It's not the political system, the economic system, the type of agriculture, climate change, or anything else. It is simply population overshoot, too many people and not enough stuff to feed them and keep them healthy.

Yet as conditions worsen, our reproduction rate will increase. That is how evolution has shaped us to handle adversity. As the population increases, the damage we do to the pitiful remnants of what resources mankind had before will also increase dramatically.

[Newfie]

Evil,
I think your “refugee city/state” would look a lot like Israel and Palestine.

[onlooker]

What Kaiser says is absolutely true. No solutions exist now because our population numbers have run amuck. And I also now happen too believe that Climate Change has not much of a solution as it is now feeding on itself. Nevertheless, we are a resilient species and we probably will not go extinct in the near term ie. this century.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Many people are denying the obvious, that 7 or 9 or 15 billion humans are just too many for the planet to survive. It's not the political system, the economic system, the type of agriculture, climate change, or anything else. It is simply population overshoot, too many people and not enough stuff to feed them and keep them healthy.

Yet as conditions worsen, our reproduction rate will increase. That is how evolution has shaped us to handle adversity. As the population increases, the damage we do to the pitiful remnants of what resources mankind had before will also increase dramatically.

Evidence available now suggest that our conditions are worseninig and our reproduction rate is also worsening.
Only in Africa it is not the case, but child mortality and conflict/disease should make a trick, unless Ms Merckel grabs all excess and move it to Germany.

[Tanada]

There's still no replacement for kerosene jet fuel, which aside from getting a lot of us around from time to time, provides a heat shield which will also vanish.

That is quite a stretch of a statement SG. For example roasting most types of coal gives you a few gallons per ton of 'coal oil' aka Kerosene during the coking process. In addition to that South Africa has been manufacturing Kerosene/Diesel#2/Gasoline for decades using the FT cracking process starting from raw coal, other companies like Shell have offered drop in Methane to Kerosene conversion plants to convert stranded natural gas or biogenic methane as feedstock to make liquid fuel. Failing all of the above jet engines can be 'tuned' to run on alternative fuels like Dimethyl Ether, Ammonia, or even liquified natural gas.

[EnergyUnlimited]

That is quite a stretch of a statement SG. For example roasting most types of coal gives you a few gallons per ton of 'coal oil' aka Kerosene during the coking process. In addition to that South Africa has been manufacturing Kerosene/Diesel#2/Gasoline for decades using the FT cracking process starting from raw coal, other companies like Shell have offered drop in Methane to Kerosene conversion plants to convert stranded natural gas or biogenic methane as feedstock to make liquid fuel. Failing all of the above jet engines can be 'tuned' to run on alternative fuels like Dimethyl Ether, Ammonia, or even liquified natural gas.

Combination of GTL and FT would be perhaps the most efficient idea to produce synthetic kerosene.
All other fuels you have mentioned are fine, with the exception of liquid ammonia perhaps.
I would feel extremely uneasy to board a plane carrying few tens of tons of liquid ammonia on it.
Minor leak could result in quite a horrible death of passengers.
Also it reacts with aluminium alloys used in aviation as well as with copper wiring. Bad corrosion results. Too many possibilities for mishaps.
Mind you, my observations of global economy are suggesting that we are on slide down already.
It still looks well but only due to *paper engineering*.
Otherwise there are only mountains of debt piling up and no idea at all how to deal with it.
20-40 years from now on we may well not be concerned with wide spread access to passenger aviation.
There will be other, much more pressing issues like decommisioning ailing nuclear power plants and dangerously neglected bridges/buildings or about dressing codes and voting rights for women in european caliphates.
Meantime Muslims in Europe and in US will press governments to lower sexual consent age to 9 because Prophet Muhammad did it.

[dohboi]

"I would feel extremely uneasy to board a plane carrying few tens of tons of liquid ammonia on it.
Minor leak could result in quite a horrible death of passengers."

Nice point!

On your last claim, is that based on any evidence, or are you just spreading groundless paranoia here?

You may (or may not?) be interested to know that some areas where one might not expect it, things are going in a different direction (and yes, I have evidence ):

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featu ... 09603.html

[EnergyUnlimited]

"I would feel extremely uneasy to board a plane carrying few tens of tons of liquid ammonia on it.
Minor leak could result in quite a horrible death of passengers."

Nice point!

On your last claim, is that based on any evidence, or are you just spreading groundless paranoia here?

You may (or may not?) be interested to know that some areas where one might not expect it, things are going in a different direction (and yes, I have evidence ):

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featu ... 09603.html

Regarding Malawi, it is predominately *christian* country, so it is easier to fight against child marriage there.
In Muslim countries situation is much more intractable.

There is plenty of evidence about how things are going on in Europe.
Check for example http://www.voiceofeurope.com and references there.
Personally I got several bookings this summer from Germans and Swedes where main reason of booking holiday in Poland was *safety of vives and daughters while sunbathing*.
When they came, there was much bitching about collapse of law and order in their homeland.

Read about Muslim paedophilia rings and *female trade* in the UK and also about wide spread FGM there.
In many schools all girls must wear Muslim like clothing to avoid harassment. Google "grooming gangs in the UK" for example.
UK police is already intimidating/persecuting those who are *reporting* these crimes or talking publicly about them, out of plain fear of terrorist attacks and similiar activities, should they challenge Muslims on these accounts.

[Tanada]

That is quite a stretch of a statement SG. For example roasting most types of coal gives you a few gallons per ton of 'coal oil' aka Kerosene during the coking process. In addition to that South Africa has been manufacturing Kerosene/Diesel#2/Gasoline for decades using the FT cracking process starting from raw coal, other companies like Shell have offered drop in Methane to Kerosene conversion plants to convert stranded natural gas or biogenic methane as feedstock to make liquid fuel. Failing all of the above jet engines can be 'tuned' to run on alternative fuels like Dimethyl Ether, Ammonia, or even liquified natural gas.

Combination of GTL and FT would be perhaps the most efficient idea to produce synthetic kerosene.
All other fuels you have mentioned are fine, with the exception of liquid ammonia perhaps.
I would feel extremely uneasy to board a plane carrying few tens of tons of liquid ammonia on it.
Minor leak could result in quite a horrible death of passengers.
Also it reacts with aluminium alloys used in aviation as well as with copper wiring. Bad corrosion results. Too many possibilities for mishaps.

First, its not like you are piping the fuel through the Passenger cabin on its way to the engines, in most passenger aircraft all the tanks are in the wing structure itself. Also if you are switching form jet A to Ammonia the aircraft will need significant modification, its not a drop in fuel manufactured synthetic kerosene or even dimethyl ether. For one thing it needs to be kept under a minor level of pressure to remain liquid, so you would have to replace all the tanks and fuel lines anyway, might as well do a full upgrade if you are going that far. Secondly because ammonia is a vapor at sea level pressure and even more so at high altitude any leaking tank or line will be releasing a rapidly vaporizing fluid that will blow away without leaving behind flammable residue. A Kerosene leak on the other hand puddles and saturates fibrous materials like cargo netting or sound proofing panels which creates a long duration fire hazard in the event of a mishap.

After all flying around with thousands of gallons of flammable kerosene isn't exactly a risk free enterprise either. I am not married to the ammonia idea, but I think it is foolish to dismiss it offhand when it has both advantages and disadvantages just like any other alternative fuel option. Ammonia is just one of the options and in all honesty not a high up one on my list, but we already make a heck of a lot of the stuff every years for fertilizer so expanding the industry to make substitute fuel is one small possibility.

[EnergyUnlimited]

First, its not like you are piping the fuel through the Passenger cabin on its way to the engines, in most passenger aircraft all the tanks are in the wing structure itself. Also if you are switching form jet A to Ammonia the aircraft will need significant modification, its not a drop in fuel manufactured synthetic kerosene or even dimethyl ether. For one thing it needs to be kept under a minor level of pressure to remain liquid, so you would have to replace all the tanks and fuel lines anyway, might as well do a full upgrade if you are going that far. Secondly because ammonia is a vapor at sea level pressure and even more so at high altitude any leaking tank or line will be releasing a rapidly vaporizing fluid that will blow away without leaving behind flammable residue. A Kerosene leak on the other hand puddles and saturates fibrous materials like cargo netting or sound proofing panels which creates a long duration fire hazard in the event of a mishap.

Regarding fuel tanks, boiling point of ammonia is -33*C at 1 at.
At sea level, eg in airport you would need it pressurized to approx. 5-8 at to keep it liquid and that would require redesign of wing structure, increasing weight of the structure.
At traveling altitude ammonia would be close to its boiling point at temperatures and pressures involved, probably *just* remaining in liquid form.
Fuel lines would be in need of through redesign too.
Any incident involving loss of integrity of fuel tanks would not be survivable to passengers.
Crash on takeoff or landing would not be survivable for large proportion of airport customers and staff as well and it would be a major chemical incident.
On the top of it ammonia is made from methane, water and air in two distinct steps.
CH4 + 2H2O--->CO2 + 4H2
N2 + 3H2--->2NH3
So why not to convert methane to hydrocarbons in one GTL process?
It is cheaper.
Personally I think that ammonia fuel is just a buzz, very much like hydrogen economy and not much will come out of that. Too dangerous.

[dissident]

What is needed is an industry to convert CO2 back to synthetic carbon fuels with desired volatility properties. Of course there is no free lunch and energy will need to be sunk into this process. But generating C8 type hydrocarbons using catalytic chemistry would be more intelligent than trying to use pressurized fuel tanks for H2, CH4 or NH3. It would also nullify any global warming effect of these fuels.

[Newfie]

Or maybe we just conserve?

[onlooker]

Or maybe we just conserve?

With so many people on the planet, conservation has limited effect. What is really needed in all honesty, is a few billion to disappear and Industrial Civilization to be debilitated and downsized and transition to a more Earth friendly mode. Not holding my breath.

[Newfie]

^1+

[EnergyUnlimited]

What is needed is an industry to convert CO2 back to synthetic carbon fuels with desired volatility properties. Of course there is no free lunch and energy will need to be sunk into this process. But generating C8 type hydrocarbons using catalytic chemistry would be more intelligent than trying to use pressurized fuel tanks for H2, CH4 or NH3. It would also nullify any global warming effect of these fuels.

Ethanol? rapeseed oil?
Somehow I do not believe in feasibility of economic reprocessing aerial CO2 by means other than photosynthesis.