Interesting Links for 07-06-2017

[andrewducker]

Amid coal plant closures, coal mines open (but not for electricity)

(tags: coal materials )

The difficult relationship between mathematicians and publicity

(tags: mathematics )

Kids who weather bitter divorce are 3 times more vulnerable to colds as adults

(tags: disease relationships stress divorce immune_system )

Bob Geldof voting Liberal Democrat for first time

(tags: libdem europe politics uk )

Is white or whole wheat bread 'healthier?' Depends on the person

(tags: food )

Waist-to-height ratio more accurate than BMI in identifying obesity, new study shows

(tags: BMI obesity weight height )

Dirt has a microbiome, and it may double as an antidepressant

(tags: health mentalhealth nature microbiome )

How "We Rate Dogs'" Matt Nelson Turned Joke Twitter Account Into Successful Business

(tags: business dogs twitter )

The key psychological differences between terrorists and controls

(tags: psychology terrorism )

The world's first commercial carbon-capture plant opens in Switzerland

(tags: co2 carbon Switzerland globalwarming )

UK police arrest man via automatic face-recognition tech

(tags: police uk faces Technology )

The Strange Brain of the World’s Greatest Solo Climber

(tags: brain fear mountains climbing )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

Coal is a many-splendored thing.

I'd forgotten about the coking coal for the steel industry.

Still, it's going to be a significantly diminished coal industry in ten years' time even allowing for lots of steel usage in China and Africa and India.

I'm surprised by the Swiss carbon capture plant.

I wonder if there is a business in the future using waste heat from steel plants to drive CO2 capture to turn the CO2 in to high density carbon to go in the steel plant as a feedstock.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, if that's all coal is used for then it's going to be a _lot_ smaller industry.

I'm also ssurprised the carbon capture is worthwhile, I assume it's only so because of government subsidies. If they can make it worthwhile in the long run that would be awesome though.

[danieldwilliam]

My expectation is that they are benefiting from some form of subsidy for the technology and capital costs and getting the benefit of cheap waste heat.

In a future where non-dispachable renewables make up a large part of the electricity supply I think this is the sort of thing you might use to take up surplus power for grid balancing with a useful product.

I'm not sure what you do to sequester the carbon. I saw some suggesting just dumping blocks of pure carbon covered in concrete in subduction zones on the sea floor and thus inserting the carbon in to the lithosphere. I wonder if you could use it to make construction diamond and if so, would replacing all our built infrastructure over 200 year with diamond instead of concrete and steel. I don't know how much the built environment weighs if built of diamond.

[andrewducker]

Can we actually get carbon out of the atmosphere though? So far as I can see we're capturing CO2 and then doing stuff with that, not turning it back into actual carbon.

[danieldwilliam]

Once you have the CO2 out of the atmosphere you can turn it in to carbon if you throw enough energy at it.