this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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US aiming to ‘crack the code’ on deploying geothermal energy at scale (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 5 months ago by silence7 to c/climate
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[–] tunetardis@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I've always wondered to what extent the horizontal drilling revolution could help with geothermal? It certainly did wonders for fossil fuel extraction, but perhaps this is the silver lining?

[–] silence7 6 points 5 months ago

Yeah, it might enable geothermal-anywhere. Cost drops sharply each time people try it, as we start a learning-by-doing cycle.

[–] Daxtron2@startrek.website 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Does that have the same issues with micro quakes that fracking has or is that from the high pressure injections and not the drilling itself?

[–] aodhsishaj@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Likely not due to no need for high pressure liquid being injected into boundary layers.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-can-cause-earthquakes/

However dried up fracking wells could very well be filled with ambient pressure water and used as a thermal sync for hydrothermal energy.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fracking-for-renewable-power-geothermal/

I do not condone the creation of new fracking wells or more oil and gas extraction. However we could use old dried up wells and mines for green energy. Also it'll get more eyes on methane seeps and wells so we can stop the release of unburnt methane into the atmosphere

https://www.iea.org/reports/global-methane-tracker-2024/understanding-methane-emissions

[–] Daxtron2@startrek.website 2 points 5 months ago

Very cool, thanks for the links as well!

[–] Dempf@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 months ago

Yes, I believe horizontal drilling has been explored for geothermal and is very beneficial.

I heard that due to that and some other breakthroughs recently, areas that were once thought to be unviable for geothermal like most of the East Coast actually have a lot of potential.

I don't have sources handy, but my friend stays on top of all of this stuff, so I could have him dig up the relevant papers if necessary.