Rene:

What you say may be correct, but the main point is that Raypierre’s analysis of Levitt showed a complete disregard for physical reality. This fact makes anything else he said suspect. If you wish to support whatever Myhrvold has said on his own, this should be the subject of another topic.

Steve

I’m also wondering whether the ANDRILL work has come up with any indication of that kind of rapid event.

Bits and pieces of vaguely related stuff found at http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/07/subglacial-hydrology-basal.html

mitigation_cost = m1 + m2 – zm
sequestration_cost = s1 + s2 – zs
geoengineering_cost = g1 + g2 – zg
none of the above = z1

Best path to pursue is the one with the least (likely) cost.
—
In the above, zg, zs, and zm are the net public benifits that occur by changes in the opposite directions, along various dimensions (including global average surface temperature, ocean pH), as the changes that occur that produce the net public cost z1.

g2, s2, and m2 are the net public costs caused by changes in other dimensions or changes in the same direction as those which cause z1 along some dimensions.

—
(for ‘incomplete’ geoengineering plans, such as SO2 injections:)
“Note that there is no obvious way to get zg as large as z1 by cooling alone, because making the climate too cold is not a net benifit. ”

Well, given prior emissions, it is possible that future actions could cancel out more than the warming caused by future emissions and lead to a greater benifit, within limits.

I am having trouble understanding what your point is so, to be clear– All of the energy released from burning a fossil fuel to move a vehicle (your bullet train example in #512) over some distance, stopped at the same altitude as it started from and cooled down, will have been converted to heat. Do you agree with this, and if not please answer the question, where is the non-heat energy stored?

In #512, you said– “It was used to do work. Work = F x d, right? Sure, you can equate that to “heat” on paper, but it’s not the kind of heat that goes into making the system’s temperature increase (thermal energy).” — But this is not true. Where is the non-heat energy stored?

Steve (the fish)

Here’s one of interest that for once is not paywalled:
Bell et al. Large subglacial lakes in East Antarctica at the onset
of fast-flowing ice streams, Nature 445, 904-907 (22 February 2007).

[Response: Indeed! Ice loss from Antarctic is virtually not at all from melting! I don't recall the numbers off hand but is is probably > 90% from calving.--eric]

You quote: “All of the engine’s power in a train moving along at constant speed on the flat is going into heating those rails and wheel bearings and pushing air out of the way.”

Are you trying to create confusion by changing the stated premises that the train is moving at a constant speed and on the flat?

If you want to change the experiment to include energy needed to accelerate and go up hill, that would be a different experiment.

Looking up entropy in my handy old freshman physics book by Sears (Addison Wesley 1950), I find I am reading about the Second Law of Thermodynamics which Sears says “is the law of entropy.” Sears candidly says, “There is no concept in the whole field of physics which is more difficult to understand than is the concept of entropy, nor is there one which is more fundamental.”

So I doubt if we will get the concept of entropy thoroughly digested on these comment pages.

Now that I have the book open I note Sears also says regarding First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, ” –every process that takes place in Nature,— must proceed in conformity with these two laws.” I rely on this to assert that wind and solar power are under this legal jurisdiction, contrary to some assertions. (Nature of course includes an important source like the sun which I will allow that we on earth can count as free of charge.)

That being said, I leafed back to the beginning of the chapter to find an explicit statement in this, an established reference, that states that “chemical energy can be converted directly to mechanical energy — in an electrolytic cell.” Of course moving electrons are a form of mechanical energy, but it is amazing how many think otherwise.

Thus, my frequent statement is validated that electrical energy is indeed a carrier of energy, like mechanical energy in form of a rotating drive shaft of a car is a carrier of energy. It most certainly is not a fuel that must be first made into heat and then converted to mechanical energy.

If it were, the train wouldn’t be moving – it would be sitting still.

“and the remaining kinetic energy is turned into heat when it stopped.”

That’s why I asked what if the vehicle is going uphill and stops? The kinetic energy goes into potential energy (basic physics).

Here’s your experiment:

Drive your train on tracks cross-country, all flats. Drive it till you’re out of coal. Don’t break – we all know it will eventually stop due to friction. Drive the same train along the same tracks, but tilted at a 45 degree angle. Drive it till you’re out of coal. Don’t break… you notice it stops! Turns out, the track was one of them fancy roller coaster tracks, so your train can go one direction but not the other. For both trains, mind you – we gotta have control over our variables!

One of these systems has coal energy “locked in”, the other doesn’t. How?

It’s the same principle behind the “locking in” of solar energy within the atomic bonds of the coal. Otherwise, why are we getting so bothered about igniting all the world’s fossil fuels in the first place? Yes, all the heat eventually escapes, from everything. But what we’re concerned about is the when and the where of it. Specifically, not all so fast while we’re around.

Nature takes a spectacular nano-machine it’s built called a Seed, and heats it. The seed organizes, builds, gathers. It creates an island of order in a sea of disorder. As long as some of that order remains, there is potential. Fossil fuels are the ghosts of many Seeds. As long as we don’t crack them open, Nature’s potential remains locked inside.

We are of Nature, and in a sense Seeds. We organize, build, gather – build islands of our own. Look around you. All of that order in the things we’ve built is an increase in entropy, and as long as it remains the potential is locked inside. If we cracked open some coal to make what you’re looking at, then some of that coal’s potential is locked inside, still – we transferred it’s entropy. And it isn’t getting out until it returns to the original state that us Seeds found it in.

So yes, all of the energy of the fossil fuels that have been burned to date will, eventually, be spread continuously and homogeneously throughout the biosphere. You could describe it in terms of an increase in thermal energy, if that’s your fancy. But for that to happen, everything that’s been built with those fossil fuels must return to it’s original state of disorder. We still have canyons upon canyons full of garbage – it’s got a waise to go.

Entropy – look it up if you don’t believe me.