Climate Change: Propaganda Vs Reality

[Jay]

There’s a certain elegance to how none of that connects...

[Amber G.]

The study (Nature journal paper you linked) is quite serious and not “propaganda.”

I do not think it's propaganda. My question was to climate change skeptics here(no judgment) on this thread. When they see a news ticker quoting this paper, how would they approach it and more importantly what would they suggest the decision makers do with this data?

I knew, you did not think that was propaganda, that why I made serious comments. Just leave this for you:

Sanskrit Shloka from the Niti Satakam by Bhartrihari.

लभेत सिकतासु तैलमपि यत्नत: पीडयन्, पिबेच्च मृगतृष्णिकासु सलिलं पिपासार्दित:|
कदाचिदपि पर्यटन् शशविषाणमासादयेत्, न तु प्रतिनिविष्टमूर्खजनचित्तमाराधयेत्॥


There’s a certain elegance to how all (none) of that connects...

[Vayutuvan]

(From memory) Following is the Telugu translation of the above by Ēnugu Lakṣmaṇakavi

తివిరి ఇసుమున తైలంబు తీయవచ్చు | దవిలి మృగతృష్ణలో నీరు త్రాగవచ్చు |
తిరిగి కుందేటికొమ్ము సాధించవచ్చు | జేరి మూర్ఖుల మనసు రంజింప రాదు ||

I up the ante since the game is being played with insults as the currency.

One who knows he knows not is ignorant; teach him.
One who knows not he knows is sleeping; wake him up.
One who knows he knows is a wiseman; follow him.
One who knows not he knows not is a knave; shun him.

[Vayutuvan]

There’s a certain elegance to how none of that connects...

I don't have a problem with the paper nor am I a climate change skeptic. I certainly am a climate change solutions skeptic, especially if the solutions are coming from Western/Eurotrash. I am also including those who want to hold the entire world hostage to feel good about themselves, that they are doing something about it. Their real interests are to protect their nice houses in coastal areas.

Let us not forget that they are bicoastals - left and right. They think that their millions of dollar properties are going to go under in the next 20 years, i.e., before their retirement. The solution? Move manufacturing to China. There is a name for that kind of fallacious thinking.
It is called the Netherlands Fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_fallacy

The Netherlands fallacy refers to an error Paul R. Ehrlich and his co-authors claim others make in assuming that the environmental impacts of the Netherlands and other rich nations are contained within their national borders.[1]

Environmentalists since the late 20th century have analyzed the environmental sink status and sink capacities of poor nations. As polluting industries migrate from rich to poor nations, the national ecological footprint of rich nations shrinks, whereas the international ecological footprint may increase or also decrease. The nature of the fallacy is to ignore increasing environmental damage in many developing nations and in international waters attributable to the imported goods or changes in the economy of such nations directly due to developed nations.

Such an approach may lead to incorrect assertions such as the environmental impact of a particular developed country is reducing, when a holistic, international approach suggests the opposite. This may in turn support over-optimistic predictions toward the improvement of global environmental conditions.[2]

The Netherlands has had a huge impact regarding leaving water footprints across the world. They have made this footprint by importing water from other countries, leaving increasingly scarce regions. Water footprints of a country can come from either water resources used internally or resources that are outsourced. Dutch consumers have left most of their water footprint through agricultural goods and industrial goods.[3]

They are also the ones who objected most strenuously to nuclear power. In the US it was the NIMBY factor. In Europe, due to wrong priorities. Germany is a case in point.

[Amber G.]

Folks - Few Comments!
On..

(From memory) Following is the Telugu translation of the above by Ēnugu Lakṣmaṇakavi

తివిరి ఇసుమున తైలంబు తీయవచ్చు | దవిలి మృగతృష్ణలో నీరు త్రాగవచ్చు |
తిరిగి కుందేటికొమ్ము సాధించవచ్చు | జేరి మూర్ఖుల మనసు రంజింప రాదు ||

I up the ante since the game is being played with insults as the currency.

One who knows he knows not is ignorant; teach him.
One who knows not he knows is sleeping; wake him up.
One who knows he knows is a wiseman; follow him.
One who knows not he knows not is a knave; shun him.

The translation, is quite accurate.. Thanks.
(Is that a popular saying in Telugu too?
__
Given my decades of experience in classrooms, I have seen this kind play out many times.. .. as I recall someone said {I am recalling, my Telugu is a little rusty} in Osmania..

Upadesha" (Teacher's) Perspective:

జ్ఞానం అనేది ఒక పాత్ర వంటిది; దాని మూత తెరిచి ఉంటేనే అది నిండుతుంది. కానీ మూర్ఖుడికి ఆ మూత కేవలం మూసివేయబడటమే కాదు, అది పూర్తిగా అతుక్కుపోయి (వెల్డింగ్ చేయబడి) ఉంటుంది. ఆ పద్యం చెప్పినట్లుగా, అసాధ్యమైన 'కుందేటి కొమ్ము' (శశవిషాణం) కోసం వెతకడం మేలు; అంతేకానీ మూర్ఖుడిని ఒప్పించడానికి ప్రయత్నించడం మన సమయాన్ని వృథా చేసుకోవడమే!"

Rough Translation:
Knowledge is a vessel; it can only be filled if the lid is open. For the mūrkha, the lid is not just closed—it is welded shut. As the verse says, let us go find that rabbit’s horn (kurmā-shringa)—it’s a more productive use of our afternoon!
----
Last here: There is another famous subhashita:

स्वायत्तमेकान्तगुणं विधात्रा विनिर्मितं छादनमज्ञतायाः।

Rough equivalence: "It is easier to calculate the n-th digit of Pi using a broken abacus than it is to convince a man who has already decided he is right. The sand might give oil eventually, but a closed mind only gives a headache!"

[Vayutuvan]

I want to make the following points.

1. Europeans and the US do not want India to be self-sufficient in the area of energy.
2. They want to close off all options for India so that India is dependent on
- Short Term: KSA, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, the US, and central asian countries for fossil fuels (which the US controls)
- Long Term: India should import the technology - may it be "clean coal", Nuclear (SMRs and fuel), Solar, Wind from the West for which they
have IP rights. They want to earn money through royalties, licence fees. They also have control and want to gain geopolitical leverage on
India.
3. They want India to side with them when (not if) they go to war with China.
4. They want India to buy weapon platforms from the US (preferably) or one of their close allies (not France).
...
ityadi.

They want to hobble India through all kinds of multilateral agreements, and one of the top ones is the shindy they put up in Rio, Paris, Vancouver, Tokyo, etc., on climate change.

I am objecting to the gullibility of those who are technically more than competent but think that the science/tech they have expertise in will magically solve all energy problems. No other solution(s) is/are possible.

For example, Moniz is a sacred cow who should not be criticized even when criticism is warranted due to his equating India and Pakistan because both are nuclear powers. Same with the SMR tech for which India has to depend on the US companies. As for the thorium cycle, it is still 20 years away. Also we should not forget that "there is many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip".

I am being called a "fool", "compromised", "pompous" (that is a new one), "uncle tom" etc. which is OK. It diminishes them, not me.

[Vayutuvan]

Folks - Few Comments!

The translation, is quite accurate.. Thanks.
(Is that a popular saying in Telugu too?

It is not popular as such. Telugu poetry is required reading in Telugu classes. We had to memorize a few important ones from Niti Shataka (the most famous translation is by Enugu Lakshmana Kavi), Sumati shatakamu, Vemana shatakam, Bhaskara shatakamu, ...

[bala]

The hypocrisy on climate change is a sight to behold. All the lectures on CO2 and its effects on climate. Climate itself is due to 100s if not 1000s of factors and is very hard to predict reliably. However the climate debate has turned into a religion from pompous people. Let us review facts:

US consumes 20 million gallons of crude per day, China around 17 million per day and India around 5+ million per day. So you can gauge who is the worst of the lot in generating C02. Furthermore the Coal fired plants that generate electricity are the highest in US, then China (maybe even more than the US) and then India. The latter two nations are moving towards renewable energy since they are in the favorable sun belt. On a per capita basis the same ranking holds - US, China and then India (which in the world is very very tiny). This per capita consumption includes aircrafts that directly spew C02 in the atmosphere and cause all kinds of issues including depleting the ozone layer of the earth. Then there are sprays like CFC which have a direct bearing on ozone layer. I haven't talked about EU collectively but they rank up there with the rest.

India has a tradition of minimal usage and also using biodegradable products - banana leaves, et al. Plastics, bottles, aluminum cans and other packaging material are a nightmare in terms of recycling worldwide. Most of them are a result of US or Europe in terms of origination of such materials. These things are not going away soon but have to be managed sensibly by collection and recycling.

[Amber G.]

Folks - Few Comments!

The translation, is quite accurate.. Thanks.
(Is that a popular saying in Telugu too?

It is not popular as such. Telugu poetry is required reading in Telugu classes. We had to memorize a few important ones from Niti Shataka (the most famous translation is by Enugu Lakshmana Kavi), Sumati shatakamu, Vemana shatakam, Bhaskara shatakamu, ...

Thanks. FWIW saw something you may enjoy it (In math dhaga I wrote about this father - son pair - a legend too)

[KL Dubey]

The scientific journal 'Nature' recently published a scientific paper saying newer varieties of rice are not evolving as fast as the global temperatures are raising and in about 50 years South Asia and East Asia are predicted to exceed 40c threshold in the rice belt. They say this temperature threshold is crucial because this is where cultivation of rice will start to dwindle.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-03108-0

So, if one is a policy planner, farmer, or an investor how will this paper guide you? Should this be addressed as a potential issue, or just be ignored as climate change propaganda?

It's a terrific paper, poster "Amber G" has summarized the takeaways.

Just a small clarification, the journal is Communications Earth & Environment, which is one of the Nature Group journals. It's not in the journal Nature itself.

[Vayutuvan]

Thanks. FWIW saw something you may enjoy it (In math dhaga I wrote about this father - son pair - a legend too)

I did read it. Very interesting.

[bala]

Very interesting.

In Rocket movie, Dr. Nambi Narayanan of ISRO mentioned that to get stability in rocket trajectory some instability is required (actually it is induced) to make the flight stable. This is similar to what M. Vidyasagar concluded in control theory which is great. There is the other Upadrasta Vidyasagar musician from AP who is an outstanding composer, many of his song compositions I like.

[Amber G.]

Thanks. FWIW saw something you may enjoy it (In math dhaga I wrote about this father - son pair - a legend too)

I did read it. Very interesting.

Glad you liked it ..some posts about this father - son pair <here and nearby in math dhaga> and among others eg Prof Bruce Berndt and other familiar names to you..

[Jay]

The hypocrisy on climate change is a sight to behold. All the lectures on CO2 and its effects on climate.

Where is the hypocrisy coming from? Almost all the lectures that come from the western world now a days are reserved for US, and some for china as most correctly understand that these two are the biggest culprits, especially the US.

[Vayutuvan]

Where is the hypocrisy coming from? Almost all the lectures that come from the western world now a days are reserved for US, and some for china as most correctly understand that these two are the biggest culprits, especially the US.

No, no, no. Some Eurogreens were giving lectures to India as well right after the Paris Accord. Some of these activists are elite folks having a large following on SM. They did not want nor did they like India being given until 2032 (?) to reduce her GHG emissions. Both the US and China can thumb their noses at these jokers, but India cannot. Rajiv Malhotra pointed out in one of his debates that India gets hurt more disproportionately, even though attackers attack all three countries with equal force. Same with Soros funding USD 1 billion to effect a regime change in India.

[Vayutuvan]

Europeans are the biggest hypocrites of all.

[Cyrano]

If this doesn't convince you, nothing will.

[Manish_Sharma]

The hypocrisy on climate change is a sight to behold. All the lectures on CO2 and its effects on climate. Climate itself is due to 100s if not 1000s of factors and is very hard to predict reliably. However the climate debate has turned into a religion from pompous people. Let us review facts:

US consumes 20 million gallons of crude per day, China around 17 million per day and India around 5+ million per day. So you can gauge who is the worst of the lot in generating C02. Furthermore the Coal fired plants that generate electricity are the highest in US, then China (maybe even more than the US) and then India. The latter two nations are moving towards renewable energy since they are in the favorable sun belt. On a per capita basis the same ranking holds - US, China and then India (which in the world is very very tiny). This per capita consumption includes aircrafts that directly spew C02 in the atmosphere and cause all kinds of issues including depleting the ozone layer of the earth. Then there are sprays like CFC which have a direct bearing on ozone layer. I haven't talked about EU collectively but they rank up there with the rest.

India has a tradition of minimal usage and also using biodegradable products - banana leaves, et al. Plastics, bottles, aluminum cans and other packaging material are a nightmare in terms of recycling worldwide. Most of them are a result of US or Europe in terms of origination of such materials. These things are not going away soon but have to be managed sensibly by collection and recycling.

its a funny take, never read such angles explored before:
https://x.com/md_deepesh/status/2052358 ... 68672?s=20

You are a virus.
That’s what they told you.
Hollywood said it first.

In The Matrix, humans are a disease.
In Avatar, humans are parasites.
In Interstellar, Earth is dying because of us.

Billions spent.
To make you feel guilty for existing.

Now pause.

Ask one question.

Who funded these stories?

Now let’s talk science.

Earth’s surface: 510 million km².
Ocean: 361 million km².
Land: 149 million km².

Of that land.
33% desert.
10% ice.
24% mountains.

Habitable: ~71 million http://sq.km.
Population: 8 billion.
Each person gets ~9,000 sq.m.

That is not crisis.
That is space.

Now food.

We produce enough for 10 billion.
Yet 32% wasted.

That's not shortage.
Distribution failure.
Political failure.

Now population truth.

South Korea: 0.72.
Japan: 1.2.
China: 1.01.

Italy.
Spain.
Germany.
Below 1.5.

Russia shrinking.
Eastern Europe emptying.

Brazil: 1.7.
India: 2.0.
Thailand: 1.3.
Iran: 1.7.

By 2100.
183 countries below replacement.

We are not exploding.
We are dying.

So how did the world come to believe the opposite?

1974.
Henry Kissinger signs NSSM 200.
CIA.
Pentagon.
NSA.
State Department.
Same room.

Claim: Population threatens limited Resources.
Reality: Threatens control over resources.
Threatens American Corporation Interests.

Solution: reduce populations.

They called it “family planning”.
It was resource strategy.

Then came the machinery.

USAID.
Rockefeller Foundation.
Ford Foundation.
Open Society Foundations.
Gates Foundation.

They funded research.
They funded governments.
They funded guilt.

Then the UN stepped in.
UNFPA was born.

World Bank added pressure.
Loans became conditions.
Adopt population control.
Or lose funding.

Pharma entered.
Contraceptives scaled.
Hormonal drugs.
IUDs.

Sold as aid.
Priced as profit.

Now psychology.

They don’t hate humans.
They don’t care.

To them.
You are a unit.

A unit that consumes.
A unit that demands wages.
A unit that resists when it grows.

Fewer units.
Fewer problems.
Just arithmetic.

Then came automation.
AI.
Robotics.
Built quietly.

Not to assist humans.
To replace humans.

When machines produce.
Humans become liability.

Capital stops needing labour.
Capital stops needing consumers.

Only controlled population remains.
That is the endgame.

Now guilt programming.

Top 100 companies.
71% emissions.

But message to you?
Have fewer children.
Use less water.
Don’t celebrate.

Your existence is the problem.

Educated class absorbed it.
Delay children.
Limit families.
Parenthood made expensive.

They built the cage.
Then said you chose it.

Now Mother Earth itself.
4.5 billion years old.

Survived extinction.
Asteroids.
Volcanoes.
Ice ages.

It does not need saving.
It will outlive foundations.

The planet is fine.

What is dying…
is your belief to exist.

So the real question is not…
Can Earth sustain us?

The real question is…
Who decided… it shouldn’t?

[bala]

Now Mother Earth itself.
4.5 billion years old.

Survived extinction.
Asteroids.
Volcanoes.
Ice ages.

It does not need saving.
It will outlive foundations.

The planet is fine.


The real question is…
Who decided… it shouldn’t?

Yes indeed and thanks for the article!

Besides the YT by Thomas Kurz (who explains many factors at play) cited by Cyrano just above, according to Vedas there is the concept of "holder" of an entity. The "holder" is required since otherwise it would decay and fade away. Tis similar to you taking care of a garden, or a car, or a house. No "holder" then things whither and perish. The earth believe it or not has a "holder" it is not nature or some rationalist would believe it "works by itself" due to physics. No. That is not the "holder" concept. Some shraddha is required to have faith in the "holder" of earth. No matter what man does it does not matter much because there is so many unknown "healing" of the entity due to the "holder" of the entity.

If you need to understand more read up on अस्तित्वम् and holder and Vedic Logic

[Jay]

Earth will always live on and there will be life that gets adjusts to new reality and thrive no matter what the climate does. No body is worried or even countering about that aspect. What people in general want to know is, IF there are any human factors that alter our climate in such a way that we have to change our lives for the worst, then A) how do we identify those actions and consequences, and What can we do so that we do not lose our way of life and face mass problems. Planet Earth does not give a shit about one way or another.

[Cyrano]

Agreed. Soil, water, air pollutants, and bio diversity due to our modern life style are genuine concerns, and they must be addressed. This CO2 obsession is a first world scam that distracts from true environmental problems of the entire planet.

[A_Gupta]

This post is without any links to the literature - it is largely from memory but if necessary can be tightened up considerably. Actually, I will count on Amber G to correct and go into depth on this if there is interest.

In terms of how geologists have divided up earth's 4+ billion year existence, Earth is currently situated in the Phanerozoic Eon, Cenozoic Era, Quaternary Period, Holocene Epoch and Meghalayan Age.

The Meghalayan age began 4.2 kilo years ago (i.e., around 2200 BC) and began with a 200 year drought in the northern hemisphere. The Meghalayan age is so named because the evidence found in stalagmites in Mawmluh Cave in Meghalaya. Stalagmites grow in geologically stable caves; mineral-rich water drips on to the floor of the cave, and evaporates leaving deposits of calcium carbonate and other minerals. The ratio of the oxygen 18 and oxygen 16 isotopes left in these deposits indicates how intense the rainfall was. The heavier isotope condenses out of the atmosphere first, and so the more the rainfall the lower the O18/O16 ratio. What the data shows is that there was an around 20% reduction in the monsoon rain for about 200 years. That this reduction was across the northern hemisphere is confirmed by many lines of evidence.

The above is as much of a fact as anything in geology can be.

This drought affected the agriculture of the civilizations Saraswati-Sindhu, Mesopotamia, Egypt and China, "decimated" is a word used. This is a matter of the archaeological and historical record.

What caused this 200 year drought? There we get into a less settled area of science - there were probably many contributing factors; but among them the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is accepted as one of the factors.

The AMOC is the surface north to south ocean current on the surface and return circulation in the deep ocean that carries a petawatt or more from the equator to the poles. The Pacific Ocean for various reasons does not have the equivalent current. The AMOC is known to have a global influence on climate. The AMOC is also why the northern Atlantic countries are warmer than equivalent latitudes in the Pacific, and so the European and American climate scientists have a deep interest and concern about the stability of the AMOC, which (unjustifiably) might seem remote to people in Asia.

Now we enter the realm of computer modeling of the ocean and the climate. Up to about a decade ago, the ocean and climate models on super computers used a grid size of around 100 kilometers. This has now improved to grid sizes of 10 kilometers, which enables more oceanic phenomena (oceanic eddies) to be included in the models. With these finer resolution models, a team from the University at Utrecht found "that the AMOC is more sensitive, less stable, and more prone to abrupt transitions than previously estimated, especially when models include eddy‑resolving ocean dynamics and realistic meltwater inputs."

In particular, the resolution is fine enough to follow what happens to the Gulf Stream - which is part of the AMOC, it hugs the coast of the US until around Cape Hatteras in North Carolina after which it detaches from the coast and heads north east into the deep ocean. They found that as the AMOC weakens the separation point moves northwards, and when the AMOC approaches a tipping point then there is an abrupt northward jump of around 200 kilometers which precedes by about twenty-five years the total collapse of the AMOC.

As far as I know, the data that we have shows some weakening of the AMOC, but the duration of our data is too short to show a trend, it could be natural cyclic variation.

The big threat to the AMOC is considered to be the melting of the glaciers of Greenland. The fresh water released from there dilutes the salinity of the North Atlantic waters. It is the sinking of the denser higher salinity water in the Northern Atlantic all the way to near the ocean floor that is the engine of the AMOC -- there is no equivalent in the Pacific, where the currents remain closer to the surface.

---
Remember that a 10-fold increase in the surface resolution of a climate model means 100 times the grid areas; and then there is the resolution vertically through the atmosphere which is of a different scale. So it takes more and more computational power and improved algorithms to make a higher resolution model that teach us new things.

---

Now, climate science says that global warming is causing the Greenland Ice to melt at an increasing rate.
FWIW, global warming and increased melt of Greenland Ice are also facts.

----

Now, what should policy makers do about this? (trying to address Jay's question).

The policy makers in one country, even as large as India, cannot address the human causes of climate change on their own. However, even just the US-Israel-Iran war shows how vulnerable India is to the fossil fuel supply; and so renewables (solar, wind, biogas, etc.) and nuclear as the "fill-in-the-gaps-of-the-intermittency-of-solar-and-wind" makes a lot of sense just from a strategic point of view. It also makes sense from a economic point of view as the costs of the alternatives to fossil fuels continue their downward trends; and also from an ecological view (if you burn less fossil fuel, you have cleaner air, and less respiratory and other health problems and so on).

Also, in preparation for a possibly drier future, whether from weakening of the AMOC or other reasons, improving the catchment and retention of rainwater, recharging aquifers, changing the crop mix towards lower water use/higher temperature tolerant crops, and people's customary food habits, sewage water treatment and reuse, and so on make sense whatever you think about climate change, because even without any diminution of rainfall over the country and snowfall in the Himalayas, the availability of freshwater per capita is not going to improve, while the usage of water is going to climb with Vikasit Bharat. Being more efficient and frugal with water simply makes sense whatever your ideology is.

Perhaps for areas along the coast, desalination can help with urban water supplies.

Ideally, short term economic calculations of actors in a free market drive these changes naturally; and policy support by government can accelerate the trends. The point is that all these changes make sense whether or not you are a climate skeptic.

In any case, what is needed is a sense of importance and urgency in making these changes, so whatever the climate future, the people and economy, and the flora and the fauna of India are resilient and can adapt to the change.

[Vayutuvan]

...
In any case, what is needed is a sense of importance and urgency in making these changes, so whatever the climate future, the people and economy, and the flora and the fauna of India are resilient and can adapt to the change.

A_Gupta ji, what an excellent post. Pranam.

I disagree with only one point. India will do and has been doing all that can be done, given our needs and the interests of different stakeholders.

West has tech in several areas, but they are unwilling to share without significant license fees.

Let me take the example of Biogas (which I know a little about - at least the business aspects like logistics, quantum of investment, and optimization of the processes).

Biogas plants are broadly divided into three generations depdening on the feedstock.

1. First-generation: Feedstock Biomass includes edible parts as well as inedible. Has a lot of sugar that helps keep the bacteria healthy and strong.
Germany leads in this tech. They have commercialised and scaled up to very large plants. The production sits at 2000+ TPD. These plants require a large upfront investment, and feedstock logistics are a problem. In India, German companies are willing to invest up to 49% with 51% Indian partner investment. All the machinery comes from Germany. They will do EPC (program SCADA and all that fun process engineering stuff) and handover operations to the Indian partner. It is the responsibility of the Indian partner to manage logistics - collect biomass, transport it to the facility, store enough at the facility so that the digester does not starve for feedstock. German companies will charge a tech license fee in the form of a royalty, a few INR per KG of Methane sold. They also obviously take dividends as per their shareholding. They will have enough representation on the board to have a say in whom to employ to the top posts, where to source the equipment from, etc.

Initial costs are in the range of 4000 cr INR (IIRC).

2. Second-generation: The digsters are fed only waste biomass - agriwaste (corn stalk, pressed mud from sugar industry, rice stalk, food industry waste like potato peels from chip making facilities, soy trash, chicken litter, aquafarm waste). This tech is not well-developed. We have been working on this tech for the last 10-12 years. We are on the cusp of large-scale commercialization. The process has been wholly developed in India. We have a two-fold advantage over First-generation German tech. Firstly, we use agriwaste. Secondly, plants are economical at a modest 15 TPD methane production. The produced methane is cleaned to the NG standards or better. These plants can be distributed across rural areas. But they are also modern in that all sensors can be remotely monitored and parameters optimized. We are also trying to reduce imported machinery components. There are enough quality manufacturers in India itself who would be able to fabricate what we want.

3. Third Generation: This is the holy grail of biogas. Feedstock is algae grown in glass tanks in a climate-controlled building. There are companies in India that are operating small-scale facilities. They require pure 99.9% CO2, which our second-generation plants can provide. We have done that with one algae research facility. Their algae production doubled.

Gobar gas is a dead-end. It also doesn't scale.

Business case for second-generation plants for India: Punjab has agriwaste aggregators. Other states are also building those networks slowly but surely. The technology is proven. Scaling, i.e., the number of small plants, is happening as we speak. The potential is that there is enough agriwaste feedstock to feed 50K 15 TPD across India. We can potentially replace 60% of the NG imports with Biogas. The tech is C-neutral and has minimal impact on food security.

[Cyrano]

Good post Gupta ji.
I live in Europe, and witness the madness daily. Anthropogenic global warming due to CO2 and of late methane , which is leading to uncontrollable climate change with disastrous consequences has been force fed to the population for decades now. Their response is degrowth and they are shit scared of developing countries increasing their standards of living which comes inevitably by increased energy consumption. They keep scaring people with peak oil and runaway climate extrêmes using "models" and non stop propaganda of doomsday scenarios. Reeks of neocolonialism.

[bala]

Scaling, i.e., the number of small plants, is happening as we speak.

Vayu saar, do you have any news on your projects?

Small plants: this is the key. At the micro level take care of issues and the larger picture will automatically be solved. India is doing many things correct and we don't need lectures and sermons from crooked scientists like Dr. Fauci types. The loud mouths in Eurotard nations and the US can be ignored completely, they are more hot air and personally, in turn, increase pollution of the earth by jetsetting to conferences.

India is on its renewables journey: Solar/wind/hydro and now Nuclear with thorium cycle is well on its way. Ethanol blend of petrol is at 20% in India. The car/truck scene is changing with more electric vehicles being inducted. Ola is making the 4860 cell in India. Leyland is into electric trucks, Mahindra and Tata have electric cars and the scooter/motorcycle arena have so much competing electric powered vehicles. India in general uses very low energy on a per capita basis and is heavily into reuse wherever possible. Deployment of solar power on rooftops is increasing - both water heating and electricity generation. Indian railways is 99.9% electric traction and freight movement is increasing. All in all, I think India is a good citizen of the earth in terms of renewable energy.

[Amber G.]

This post is without any links to the literature - it is largely from memory but if necessary can be tightened up considerably. Actually, I will count on Amber G to correct and go into depth on this if there is interest.
<snip>

Careful, A_Gupta ji—you know what happens when you 'count on' me to correct things! It might end up rewriting the entire Lagrangian for the Atlantic circulation!

You mentioned the jump in the Gulf Stream separation, but let’s be honest- at a 10km grid resolution, those climate models are finally starting to look like real physics rather than just 'creative' bookkeeping.

While the AMOC might be 'unjustifiably remote' to some, a 20% reduction in the monsoon isn't just a geological 'fact'—it's a reminder that even the most robust systems are just one phase transition away from a very dry history book. Though, I must say, I found identifying a drought from 4,000 years ago using a stalagmite quite fascinating ..is the kind of 'remote sensing' RISAT series or the Cartosat family (or NavIC) might envy!

There is actually some "nerdy" research into using NavIC signals that bounce off the ocean or ice and are then picked up by other receivers to measure sea-state (or ice density). So, who knows, in a very convoluted, multi-path way, we might turn a navigation signal into a remote sensing tool

(For monitoring the health of the Himalayas We have Cartosats!!--- India’s remote sensing satellites have been instrumental in studying the "Karakoram Anomaly," where certain glaciers in that specific range have remained stable or even slightly expanded, bucking the global trend of glacial retreat.)

[Vayutuvan]

How does one solve that Lagrangian?

[Amber G.]

How does one solve that Lagrangian?

Lagrangian density L, which for geophysical fluid dynamics involves the kinetic energy of the ocean currents minus the potential energy (incorporating density gradients and gravity), plus terms for the Earth's rotation (Coriolis force):
L = T - V +L_ext
Now apply the Euler-Lagrange Equations
===> Apply the Principle of Stationary Action. You require that the variation of the action S is zero.

For the AMOC, this yields the primitive equations of fluid dynamics (a form of Navier-Stokes) specialized for a rotating, stratified sphere.
Now move to the numerical grid-
As A_Gupta noted, the "real physics" happens when you move from the continuous Lagrangian to a discrete mesh. This is where you choose your methodology:

• Finite Element Method (FEM): Directly discretizes the variational form of the Lagrangian.

• Spectral Methods: Useful for global models where you expand the solution in spherical harmonics.

4. Solve the Resulting System
Once discretized, you get a system of non-linear partial differential equations (PDEs):

• Time-Stepping: Using schemes like Runge-Kutta to evolve the "state" of the ocean forward.

Coupling: The Lagrangian must be solved iteratively with the Hamiltonian of the atmosphere to account for heat exchange.
Hope this helps.

[Vayutuvan]

How does one solve that Lagrangian?

Hope this helps.

Yes, in a very high-level 30K feet view.

But that is not enough.

It is a lot more complicated than that, isn't it?

(I am just curious to know whether this was an AI-generated answer. If so, would you please provide the series of prompts you gave and number of tokens used)

[Amber G.]

^^^ FWIW: The 30k-foot view is just the map - the actual terrain is a swamp of non-linearity. To get into the weeds, solving a Lagrangian for a system as chaotic as the AMOC, obviously involves more than just writing down $\delta S = 0$. (In practice, You have to parameterize sub-grid scale processes (like small eddies) that the Lagrangian doesn't explicitly capture.. etc

On the "AI" Query - (assuming query is genuine and not trolling, I found it rather odd) - let me just say - whether a post is drafted with a fountain pen, a mechanical keyboard, or an LLM is secondary to whether the physics holds water..As for "prompts and tokens"—I find it's generally more productive to spend that energy on the Navier-Stokes equations than on analyzing the metadata of the conversation. If the math checks out, the "series of prompts" is simply a lifetime of reading the literature.

[bala]

Gobar gas is a dead-end. It also doesn't scale.

Vayu saar, found this at scale plant supported by Suzuki R&D in Gujarat. What do you think about this industrial scale production facility.

[Jay]

Gobar gas is a dead-end. It also doesn't scale.

Vayu saar, found this at scale plant supported by Suzuki R&D in Gujarat. What do you think about this industrial scale production facility.

Bala ji, We have been on this “gobar gas” train for about 50 years now, and it is just as inefficient and boutique today as it was back then. There seems to be an unhealthy obsession with it, even though it is a dead-end technology. This particular plant produces fuel for roughly 850 vehicles from 100 tons of raw material, which is highly inefficient. Unless there are no other fuel sources available, or this is the best way for a farm to dispose of byproducts from livestock farming, there is little reason for mass adoption of this technology.

[Vayutuvan]

Gobar gas is a dead-end. It also doesn't scale.

Vayu saar, found this at scale plant supported by Suzuki R&D in Gujarat. What do you think about this industrial scale production facility.

[youtube...]yzdcXnOfHfI[/youtube]

Bala ji, what I gathered from that video is that their primary output is organic manure. Methane is secondary and correctly so. Gobar is too wet. Due to water content, it has low energy density. One needs to transport low-energy-density input using a higher-energy-density fuel.

oTH, assuming that they have located the plant near a cluster of big and small dairy farms, manure/fertilizer becomes the primary output. There will be enough demand for the product to help grow feed for the animals. They seem to be in an arid area, hence the land is not used for growing food. In that sense, it is not competing for land with paddy/wheat farming.

[Vayutuvan]

^^^ FWIW: The 30k-foot view is just the map - the actual terrain is a swamp of non-linearity. To get into the weeds, solving a Lagrangian for a system as chaotic as the AMOC, obviously involves more than just writing down $\delta S = 0$. (In practice, You have to parameterize sub-grid scale processes (like small eddies) that the Lagrangian doesn't explicitly capture.. etc

I would even say that it is a 300K foot view.

Going from "Lagrangian coupled with Hamiltonian" to numerical methods has several steps in between.
...
(Snipped stuff that would have come across as I am tooting my own horn... )
...
Just saying that physics holds is saying that 1 + 1 = 2. Sure, but what I want to know is how you go from Lagrangian and Hamiltonian to Navier-Stokes equations.

You claimed that there is a high likelihood of phase change for the worse. All from the 300K ft view or from your friends in Climate modeling community or from Gemini?

Refining the discretization is going to only consume more computing cycles, but the results would be the same (or worse) if the input data and the models are not clean. GIGO.

Are the measurements done on a fine enough spatiotemporal grid to catch the nonlinearities? If that grid is not fine enough, refining the CFD grid is useless. In fact, phase changes (bifurcation) might be an artifact of accumulated numerical errors.

My point is that every time you want to understand or do something, you don't have to start from the first principles like why 1+1 = 2.

It is almost always preferable to go middle out. That is how and why university education works.

[Vayutuvan]

Just to be complete, I am posting the following link to the Wikipedia page. Interested people can follow "See Also" Wikipedia pages and external links.

"Physics holds" trivializes the hard problems scientists face in implementation - discretization, adaptive grids, moving or fixed grid, types of elements used, etc.

Commerical CFD and FEM codes give a wide range of elements for modeling spatial dimensions of 1 (beams), 2 , and 3 dimensions. Some of the most useful (and hence popular) elements are 8-noded hexahedral, 10-noded tetrahedral, and 4/8-noded shells.

For automeshing of complex geometries (domain on which the PDEs are defined and on whose boundaries boundary conditions are applied), a 10-noded tetrahedral is the preferred element. But it tends to increase the size of the resulting system of linear equations.

In general, CFD solvers are harder to program due to the linear systems becoming non-symmetric. Incompressible fluids make the linear system dense because zero divergence couples every variable to every other variable in a global sense. Also, the reaction-diffusion of different species needs to be taken into account in the modeling, all the while making sure that boundary conditions and initial conditions are correctly specified.

It is axiomatic that we only have algorithms to solve a system of linear equations somewhat efficiently.

Non-linear steady-state problems are handled with what is known as pseudo-timestepping. The problem is linearized with a variation of Newton-Raphson iteration. Smaller \delta{t} is preferred. Too small a \delta{t} and one ends of doing too many calculations, too big and one runs the risk of diverging from the "true" non-linear trajectory.

Numerical error accumulation is unavoidable. This is because digital computers can do only finite-precision floating-point operations. whereas the theory of Linear Algebra and Matrix Analysis assumes infinite precision.

General circulation model

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_circulation_model

Model accuracy

AOGCMs internalise as many processes as are sufficiently understood. However, they are still under development and significant uncertainties remain. They may be coupled to models of other processes in Earth system models, such as the carbon cycle, so as to better model feedback. Most recent simulations show "plausible" agreement with the measured temperature anomalies over the past 150 years, when driven by observed changes in greenhouse gases and aerosols. Agreement improves by including both natural and anthropogenic forcings.[23][24][25]

Imperfect models may nevertheless produce useful results. GCMs are capable of reproducing the general features of the observed global temperature over the past century.[23]

A debate over how to reconcile climate model predictions that upper air (tropospheric) warming should be greater than observed surface warming, some of which appeared to show otherwise,[26] was resolved in favour of the models, following data revisions.

Cloud effects are a significant area of uncertainty in climate models. Clouds have competing effects on climate. They cool the surface by reflecting sunlight into space; they warm it by increasing the amount of infrared radiation transmitted from the atmosphere to the surface.[27] In the 2001 IPCC report possible changes in cloud cover were highlighted as a major uncertainty in predicting climate.[28][29]

Climate researchers around the world use climate models to understand the climate system. Thousands of papers have been published about model-based studies. Part of this research is to improve the models.

In 2000, a comparison between measurements and dozens of GCM simulations of ENSO-driven tropical precipitation, water vapor, temperature, and outgoing longwave radiation found similarity between measurements and simulation of most factors. However, the simulated change in precipitation was about one-fourth less than what was observed. Errors in simulated precipitation imply errors in other processes, such as errors in the evaporation rate that provides moisture to create precipitation. The other possibility is that the satellite-based measurements are in error. Either indicates progress is required in order to monitor and predict such changes.[30]

The precise magnitude of future changes in climate is still uncertain;[31] for the end of the 21st century (2071 to 2100), for SRES scenario A2, the change of global average SAT change from AOGCMs compared with 1961 to 1990 is +3.0 °C (5.4 °F) and the range is +1.3 to +4.5 °C (+2.3 to 8.1 °F).

The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report asserted "very high confidence that models reproduce the general features of the global-scale annual mean surface temperature increase over the historical period". However, the report also observed that the rate of warming over the period 1998–2012 was lower than that predicted by 111 out of 114 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project climate models.
...

Of course, the page was last updated in 2015. Since then, most probably, more and more processes are included in the models. Accuracy might have been improved.

Maybe that is what @Amber_G ji is hinting at when he said cryptically that (I quote from memory) "@A_Gupta ji knows that physics happens at that level of discretization".

I have no idea why they feel that only theoretical physicists are capable of understanding "where physics happens". More over it is patently wrong.

[Vayutuvan]

A lot of (non-technical) information is available at this website.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research

For example

[Cyrano]

Wise and honest men speak carefully while zealots and scamsters are full of certitudes!

[Vayutuvan]

Came across David McKay (I did know of his research before) while conducting cursory research on Occam's Razor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay

In 2003, his book Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms[29] was published. (Ed: It is available online)
...
In 2008 he completed a book on energy consumption and energy production without fossil fuels called Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air. MacKay used £10,000 of his own money to publish the book, and the initial print run of 5,000 sold within days.[30] The book received praise from The Economist,[31] The Guardian,[30] and Bill Gates, who called it "one of the best books on energy that has been written."[32][33] Like his textbook on Information theory, MacKay made the book available for free online.[34] In March 2012 he gave a TED talk on renewable energy.[35]
...

Link to "Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air" is https://www.withouthotair.com/. This book touches on all the points we are discussing here in this thread, but missing one notable sustainable tech, i.e., Biomass (and Biomethane).

(link to the book on Infor theory, I will post in Math dhaga)