Nature’s (Not-Quite) Perfect Battery
by Indur M. Goklany
The major drawback of solar power and other renewables is that they cannot be relied on to deliver energy at their rated capacity for every hour of every day of the full year. Hence, the dollars, effort and human capital devoted to developing more efficient and low cost batteries.
But Nature has already solved this problem for us a very long time ago. It developed a system to capture solar energy and store it underground for future use in gas, liquid or solid form — to be used any time or anywhere we want, in rain or shine or in windy or calm conditions.
We call this energy capture system, “photosynthesis”, and this battery, “fossil fuels”.
Nature would never have thought that elements of humanity would look this gift horse in the mouth. That—even as they use it to turn night into day and make their labor more productive, allowing them to devote much of their waking hours to activities more fulfilling than the constant pursuit of food and sustenance—they would complain about returning the basic building block of its energy store, CO2, back to the atmosphere whence it came, particularly, since this building block sustains much of the living world, including humanity itself.
Some human beings have gone so far as to favor newer storage sources (AKA biomass) over fossil fuels. But biomass itself returns its carbon to the atmosphere. So long as one uses carbon-based combustion, the chances of reducing CO2 emissions are nil, whether one uses new biomass or a fossil fuel. In fact, since newer carbon sources are also associated with higher moisture content in the fuel, burning them would increase CO2 per unit of usable energy.
But Nature’s battery is not perfect, it does release air pollutants. However, CO2 isn’t a pollutant. And the air pollutants that it emits are today cleaned relatively easily without suffering a massive energy or economic penalty.
Should we not celebrate Nature’s (not quite perfect) battery, even though it isn’t perfection itself?
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Stick with carbon fuel. There is lots of it. Even with billions of grant money handed out like free candy, three energy of the future companies fail. Solyndra is the third such company to file for bankruptcy. . Spectrawatt Inc. of Hopewell Junction, N.Y., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Aug. 19. Evergreen Solar Inc. of Marlboro, Mass., filed for Chapter 11 on Aug. 15.
Coal, oil, methane, propane, nuclear. Energy you can rely on. The fuzzy make you feel good wind and solar energy only sounds nice.. When you need most, it simply is not sufficient.
Mike Reed says:
September 2, 2011 at 11:51 am
Careful – this discussion pops up from time to time, Anthony generally has to squash it before it turns into a slugfest. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/15/natural-petroleum-seeps-release-equivalent-of-eight-to-80-exxon-valdez-oil-spills before getting too caught up in this go-around.
Or Google |”abiotic oil” site:wattsupwiththat.com| for more mentions here.
Alexander says (September 2, 2011 at 2:34 am): “3. This is why the Nature created humans. Their biological role is to burn all fossil fuels, thus returning the stored energy and resources into the biological cycle of Earth, thus enriching it. :-)”
I’ve come to the conclusion that Gaia created us to protect her from those pesky asteroid impacts that keep messing up her garden. 🙂
Richard says (September 2, 2011 at 4:41 am): “The viewers might consider the life of mold on the skin of an orange. From small beginnings, the mold prospers at a rapid rate until if totally covers the skin of the orange. Then as the orange is consumed the mold dies leaving behind mold spores seeking another orange. Earth is the human orange.”
Oooooh, good analogy!
Except of course the “human orange” loses only trivial amounts of resources to its environment (all the iron ever mined is still here, for example), the orange’s resources are continually recycled thanks to the energy supplied by a nearby “pumpkin” (yes, the sun), and the “mold” has the curious property of reducing its reproductive rate when it gets rich.
Come to think of it, not such a good analogy. 🙁
Well the battery analogy does make for a nice picture.
So over millions of years the fossils fuels are stored and then we release their energy over a period of 100 years.
If this is a battery we charge it up over night and then put a short circuit across the terminals.
You should all do this experiment to see what happens. I am predicting that you will burn down you house.
Lazyteen,
The vast majority of hydrocarbons in the ground will never be recovered.
We represent a trickle discharge at most.
This is a very interesting map, showing the real global trade in carbon
http://coal.infomine.com/commodities/Global/Assets/Images/CoalSeaborneTrade.jpg
Australia is the biggest supplier. Europe and Japan the biggest consumers.
LazyTeenager says:
September 2, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Lazyteenager,
I accept your concerns that man made CO2 pollution must be stopped as your genuine and sincere belief. I urge you to demonstrate your personal commitment to eliminate your man made CO2 contribution by ceasing exhalation immediately. Each of your exhalations increases the local CO2 concentration by 2 orders of magnitude, unacceptable by your personal commitment to reducing CO2 emissions, as your comments on many of the topics discussed on WUWT have so aptly expressed…..
“You should do this experiment to see what happens.” If you succeed, we will all mournfully applaud your determinedly fatal commitment and take up a collection to send flowers to your bereaved mum and poppy. If you fail, well, we must conclude that you are disingenuous in both your commentary and your actions.
LazyTeenager says:
September 2, 2011 at 6:45 pm
Well the battery analogy does make for a nice picture.
So over millions of years the fossils fuels are stored and then we release their energy over a period of 100 years.
================================================
I’m wondering, how do you know this? You have no idea how long it took, nor to you know how much of it we’ve released. It is silly to state such things as if you do know. Worse, even if what you state is true, you don’t know that it isn’t better for humanity that we did such. Why lament success? Even if it may be fleeting?
No references in the article, oh well.
Hey, and the fossil fuel batteries are even rechargeable… as long as you don’t mind waiting for millions of years and the right geological conditions to occur. Oh joy.
What was the Earth’s climate like back when these fossil fuels were formed? How long did it take to create them? Were they all formed at the same time? Is it a wise idea to be using up our batteries and putting the newly released CO2 out there at such a fast pace? Much more to answer, but alas the article can’t cover everything.
Geoff Sherrington wrote: Trees are no longer sustainable once their repeated removal has taken required nutrients like P and K from the soil, leaving it barren. Then you have to fertilize. Guess what?
The trucks that take biomass feedstock to the refinery can take the non-carbon nutrients back to the farms. P and K recycle in a small loop, C recycles in a large loop.
Not a problem.
How nice! A chance to inform Indur Goklany that he is one of my favorite scientists, partly because he is well-reasoned and competent, but mainly because his approach to things is supportive of human life. I like people.
The “problem” with fossil fuels is that they recycle carbon that has been buried in the Earth for a long time, thus making:
1. More renewable energy if the CO2 grows new trees or crops that are burned for fuel. Thus, fossil fuels (carbon fuels, wherever they really came from) and only fossil fuels are SUPERRENEWABLE.
2. More life on Earth, which “greens” actually hate. Fossil fuels and only fossil fuels can increase the life on Earth. I have a picture, which may or may not come out here:
http://i1088.photobucket.com/albums/i332/LadyLifeGrows/Local%20BizPix/LifePurpose/Desert2GreenwAro.jpg
Once upon a time the Earth had a much thicker atmosphere, mostly carbon dioxide. Virtually all of that eventually got tied up in minerals like limestone by marine organisms. Very little of it ended up as oil. Virtually all the oil and gas on and in the planet was formed far deeper and hotter abiotically, and has been contaminated by small amounts of biological material later. (Biogenic oil would have significant amounts of magnesium and iron; “fossil fuel” oil has almost none. Hence it is not biotic.)
Atmospheric CO2 is at near-plant-starvation levels. Boosting it would be and has been a great idea, but it’s hard to get back to optimum levels around 2,000 ppm. We should give it our best shot, though. Any warming it brings is a bonus, since all life, including humanity and its civilizations, do much better when it’s warming rather than cooling. But CO2 has a dependent relationship to warming, not causative. Oh, well. Can’t have everything.
Rick Werme Careful – this (abiotic hydrocarbon) discussion pops up from time to time, Anthony generally has to squash it before it turns into a slugfest.
Rick – I’ve not yet seen Anthony squash or quash an abiotic discussion.
How did you quash the thermodynamic constraints imposed on the fossil theory?
==========
The constraints imposed on chemical evolution by the second law of thermodynamics are briefly reviewed, and the effective prohibition of transformation, in the regime of temperatures and pressures characteristic of the near-surface crust of the Earth, of biological molecules into hydrocarbon molecules heavier than methane is recognized.
J. F. Kenney , Vladimir A. Kutcherov, Nikolai A. Bendeliani, and Vladimir A. Alekseev
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/17/10976.long
=============
Geochemical (abiotic) organics:
=============
Reaction 3:
Methane + Magnetite → Ethane + Hematite
nCH_4 + nFe_3O_4 + nH_2O \rarr C_2H_6 + Fe_2O_3 + HCO_3 + H^+
Reaction 3 results in n-alkane hydrocarbons, including linear saturated hydrocarbons, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, aromatics, and cyclic compounds.[27]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin
=========
And,
========
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is a mysterious place. Its thick atmosphere is rich in organic compounds. Some of them would be signs of life if they were on our planet.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEM696HHZTD_0.html
=========
In other words, the hydrocarbons and organic molecules on Titan are produced abiotically.
There was no carboniferous era on Titan.
Chemistry is universal.
No special pleadings for Earth.
Septic Matthew says: September 3, 2011 at 11:10 am “P and K recycle in a small loop, C recycles in a large loop.”
Matthew, If you study economic geology, you will realise that K comes from places like Canada and western Sth America. P comes from Florida, used to come from some Pacific Islands like Nauru and Christmas Is. Look them up on Google Earth and see if that’s a small loop to your farm. (These are not the only sources, so my response is simplified).
I meant in more expanded terms that one cannot farm any ground for long without depleting at least one critical nutrient that will have to be replaced as fertilizer. As for encouraging fertility with sugar, you have to face the same problem with repeated cropping of cane or beet. Sugar cane is very hungry for nitrogen from synthetic fertilizers.
This also applies to this magical terra preta of which so much junk is written. One can achieve much the same by fertlizing ordinary ground with coke from coke ovens used in steel making. Unfortunately, inexorably, over long enough time, it oxidizes and gets taken up, bit by bit, by plants and mostly ends up as – you guessed it – atmospheric CO2. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
There are many mistakes in the brains of green advocates, arising because they look at problems in the short term and fail to realise that even if you delay CO2 production by 1,000 years, you’ll still have the problem 1,000 years later.
“Is it a wise idea to be using up our batteries and putting the newly released CO2 out there at such a fast pace?”
Only if those in the future can make better use of it than we can. Better fed and better educated societies will be less likely to engage in hostilities where innocent folks tend to die in large numbers. The best investment we can make in the future is to bring less developed societies up to the higher standards we now enjoy. The sooner the better.
The sooner the world becomes civilized the less energy we will waste.
“However, CO2 isn’t a pollutant.”
I’m going to go double the amount of salt in my saltwater fish tank. It’s not a pollutant, so I’m sure the fish won’t care.
Try doubling the amount of water. Did the fish die? How about doubling the amount of gravel? Did the fish die? Double the amount of glass? Air? LOL GK
Just double the amount of CO2 dissolved in the water. I assure you the fish won’t care.