Joe Biden has taken us down a rabbit hole

I’m sure the planet’s getting a little warmer, couldn’t say why, but the question for the US is how much pain are we willing to inflict on the population and what effect will it have. The answers are way too much and way too little. Even if the country ceased to exist, the planetary effect would be negligible. IMO we’re too worried about something we have little to no control over. Pollution is one thing, and we are rich enough to protect the environment while developing nations aren’t, but it’s pretty grandiose thinking that there’s things we could do to change the climate of the entire planet.

Or even lower after taking into account efficiency loss and the power factor. I’m reading electric locomotives provide around 6000 to 7000 HP. So unless we’re missing something, it may be even worse than what Created in Space thought. Originally Posted by Tiny

It’s not really that bad once you run the numbers. If we use your hp figure split down the middle and say it would require 6500hp.

6500hp x 746w/hp = 4,849kw

Google says most overhead train lines operate at 25kV so solving for I (current) using P(wattage)=I(current)E(voltage )

4,849,000w / 25,000e = 193.96i

So each conductor would need to be capable of carrying around 193.96 amps (most newer homes have 200a services)and be insulated well enough to stop flashing at such a high voltage. It’s definitely doable, but it doesn’t solve the problem of where that power is going to come from in a world where fossil fuels are the devil and nuclear power is the devil on steroids. We need to make concessions somewhere or it’s all just a fantasy.

Edit: those numbers are grossly oversimplified and there’s 100 other factors that’d run the generation requirement up, probably at least 50%, but are a fairly decent description of what would be required in layman’s terms.

Edit2: Trains use a separate motor on each drive wheel. If the 6500hp number is per motor, not a combined total, the power required could be those above figures x number of motors. IDK.

Do some basic research online. Here is a few links about the issue.

https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/
There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause. Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/
. While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history, the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years.
. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact."
. Scientific information taken from natural sources (such as ice cores, rocks, and tree rings) and from modern equipment (like satellites and instruments) all show the signs of a changing climate.
. From global temperature rise to melting ice sheets, the evidence of a warming planet abounds.

https://theconversation.com/scientis...e-foote-164687
Long before the current political divide over climate change, and even before the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), an American scientist named Eunice Foote documented the underlying cause of today’s climate change crisis. The year was 1856. Foote’s brief scientific paper was the first to describe the extraordinary power of carbon dioxide gas to absorb heat – the driving force of global warming. Originally Posted by txdot-guy

In order to warm a surface there must be a flow of energy to transfer heat. If Carbon Dioxide absorbs heat where is the flow of energy coming from to warm the Earth's surface at an "unprecedented rate"?

The United States is a really big place and I would think that there are a number of long distance stretches that could be electrified much cheaper than some of the more urban areas. It’s been said that perfect is the enemy of the good. Good enough is better than perfect most of the time. Climate change is upon us and we need to start making progress on electrifying a lot of our systems sooner rather than later. Don’t be surprised when a lot of these changes come whether you like it or not. Originally Posted by txdot-guy

I actually don't care what California does, with locomotives or anything else, as long as it doesn't affect where I live. And yes, Washington elites have and will enforce stupid changes on us, against our will.

I could not find a recent (within the last 20 years) cost estimate for electrification of the U.S. freight railroad system. But I can do a back-of-the-envelope estimate. I've adjusted numbers below for inflation with the CPI, so they won't match up with the links.

Estimates for the cost to electrify a rail line vary a lot. The lowest estimate I found was by Bill Moyer in 2016. Moyer, an artist and musician turned environmental activist, estimated $2.6 million per track mile and $3.2 million per double track mile, as noted in 2024 dollars.

In 2018, Pedestrian Observations took a look at three actual electrification project in the USA. Given the likelihood of cost overruns, I think that's the better way to look at this. At the high end, one project in California cost $17 million per mile just for electrification infrastructure. With rolling stock and signaling, the cost was $46 million per mile.

At the low end a project from New Haven to Boston cost $7 million per mile.

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/is...st-prohibitive

https://pedestrianobservations.com/2...ectrification/

Let's assume $5 million per mile. I suspect that's conservative.

The freight rail network consists of 140,000 miles.

So the estimated cost to electrify the whole thing is 140,000 x $5 million = $700 billion.

How much will that reduce USA greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? According to the Association of American Railroads, admittedly a biased source, U.S. railways account for 0.5% of the country's total GHG emissions.

The USA accounts for 11.2% of worldwide GHG emissions according to Statista.

Finally, what will the GHG emissions from the freight railway system be after electrification compared to before electrification? I'm going to guess the reduction is about 50%. The majority of the electricity to power the electric locomotives will still be generated from fossil fuels. Supposedly in West Virginia, which is especially reliant on coal, the reduction in GHG is 30%, but it should be more where there are more gas fired power plants and renewables.

But you argue, if we produce all our power from renewables, then the reduction will be 100%, not 50%. Well then, you need to account for all the GHG emissions that will come from the mining, processing and manufacturing of the new power plants and infrastructure to install the incremental renewable power for the railroads. I think the 50% is reasonable.

So the estimated reduction in worldwide GHG emissions is

.005 x 0.112 x 0.5 = 0.028%.

If it costs as much to go to net "0" for everything else (for example, power generation, automobiles, cement, steel, airplanes, cow farts) as it does to electrify our freight railway system how much would it cost? Well,

$700 billion / 0.00028 = $2500 trillion!!!

For comparison, world GDP in 2024 will be around $115 billion. So that's 22 years of world GDP!

The UN and others estimated back around 2020 that the cost of going to net "0" by 2050 would be about 145 trillion (again in 2024 dollars). If they're right, and I strongly suspect that's way low, then electrification of our freight railway system is a very, very bad deal.

Yes, perfect is the enemy of good. And electrifying the freight railway system is a huge waste of money.

You can legitimately question some of my assumptions, but I don't see how you're going to come away with the idea that electrification makes sense.

https://www.columbian.com/news/2024/...or-in-the-u-s/

Amazon’s Maple Valley warehouse is built for speed. At night, big rigs pull up to one end to unload boxes and padded mailers – some after a short drive from a bigger warehouse down the road, others following a flight in the hold of a cargo plane. Waiting employees scan, sort and load them into rolling racks.

Before 7 a.m. each day, many of those racks are wheeled out to dozens of vans lined up in four painted lanes. It’s the starting line at a Formula One race, but for $22-an-hour delivery drivers who ferry bottles of shampoo and packs of batteries to suburban Seattle doorsteps.

Their routes, the last step in a journey that can take products thousands of miles, are the source of a large chunk of the carbon emissions Amazon has pledged to eliminate in the coming decades.

The solution lies in the parking lot across the street: 309 Siemens electric vehicle chargers, which power delivery vans built by Rivian Automotive Inc. Making deliveries without tailpipe emissions, and increasing the size of the electric fleet, is among the most straightforward ways Amazon can wipe carbon from its operations.

In a little more than two years, Amazon has installed more than 17,000 chargers at about 120 warehouses around the US, making the retail giant the largest operator of private electrical vehicle charging infrastructure in the country. “We’ve figured out the path,” said Tom Chempananical, who oversees Amazon’s fleet of last-mile delivery vehicles.

Slowly but surely the American economy is being electrified. As long as we remember that perfect is the enemy of the good we’ll be able to make some real progress. Originally Posted by txdot-guy

This might have happened anyway without involvement by the U.S. government. Using electric vehicles operating reasonably short distances from distribution centers, where they can be charged overnight or when electricity prices are low, makes perfect sense.

And it probably would have happened without the subsidies if Obama and Biden had implemented a reasonable carbon tax, to help pay off the debt or reduce taxes, like what's described in post 12 in this thread. Unfortunately politicians far prefer ladling out pork to common sense solutions. And the Democratic politicians in particular think they and Washington bureaucrats are smarter than markets.

It’s not really that bad once you run the numbers. If we use your hp figure split down the middle and say it would require 6500hp.

6500hp x 746w/hp = 4,849kw

Google says most overhead train lines operate at 25kV so solving for I (current) using P(wattage)=I(current)E(voltage )

4,849,000w / 25,000e = 193.96i

So each conductor would need to be capable of carrying around 193.96 amps (most newer homes have 200a services)and be insulated well enough to stop flashing at such a high voltage. It’s definitely doable, but it doesn’t solve the problem of where that power is going to come from in a world where fossil fuels are the devil and nuclear power is the devil on steroids. We need to make concessions somewhere or it’s all just a fantasy.

Edit: those numbers are grossly oversimplified and there’s 100 other factors that’d run the generation requirement up, probably at least 50%, but are a fairly decent description of what would be required in layman’s terms.

Edit2: Trains use a separate motor on each drive wheel. If the 6500hp number is per motor, not a combined total, the power required could be those above figures x number of motors. IDK. Originally Posted by CreatedInSpace

You know much, much more about this than I do. Like a million times more. I studied it in physics and a Network Analysis class, which was mostly matrix algebra. But I forgot all of it.

The 1000 kva uninsulated cables on the ground through Bumfuck Idaho sounded like a big deal to me, and Ripmany pointed out the 1000 kva was low. I have no idea though.

I really posted to show that Ripmany is a lot smarter than many here would think based on his sometimes-sloppy grammar and spelling. Which may be intentional. He correctly converted from kilovolt amps to horsepower, which is something that some of our less mathematically proficient posters wouldn't be able to do.

I’m sure the planet’s getting a little warmer, couldn’t say why, but the question for the US is how much pain are we willing to inflict on the population and what effect will it have. The answers are way too much and way too little. Even if the country ceased to exist, the planetary effect would be negligible. IMO we’re too worried about something we have little to no control over. Pollution is one thing, and we are rich enough to protect the environment while developing nations aren’t, but it’s pretty grandiose thinking that there’s things we could do to change the climate of the entire planet. Originally Posted by CreatedInSpace

Good post. People don't consider that this is in the hands of countries like India, China, Indonesia, etc. As noted above, the USA only accounts for 11% of worldwide green house gas emissions.

It would be hugely dangerous at a fraction of what trains need to run. Current flow is determined by the applied voltage and the resistance of what it’s applied to. The human body’s resistance is high, but nowhere near high enough to prevent a couple milliamps (all it takes to stop the heart) through it if grounded and touching a 25kV line. They’d need to hire a lead car/train to get all the dead animals off the tracks.

[QUOTE=txdot-guy;1063491632]Or maybe the research you referenced isn’t on the internet because it’s not relevant or has been debunked or is a figment of your imagination. I’ll continue to believe NASA and the thousands of other scientists who have read and done the science thank you very much. The planet is warming and it is caused by human activity. Specifically the release of greenhouse gases caused by industrial and other human based activities.[/QUOTE


You don't think, you just believe garbage. Non of their climate predictions have been even close to accurate. Many temperature locations have changed or got surrounded by concrete which skews the temp data.

It would be hugely dangerous at a fraction of what trains need to run. Current flow is determined by the applied voltage and the resistance of what it’s applied to. The human body’s resistance is high, but nowhere near high enough to prevent a couple milliamps (all it takes to stop the heart) through it if grounded and touching a 25kV line. They’d need to hire a lead car/train to get all the dead animals off the tracks. Originally Posted by CreatedInSpace

Get the dead animals off the track, haha!

Since you kind of brought it up, I have a safety question. In doing the research for my "nail in the coffin" post (#94 above), I ran across a comment that it could make sense to have an electric freight railway system, separate and apart from our existing system, to transport flammable materials. The writer believed the electric railway would be safer. Do you think that would be worth the cost? Intuitively I'd suspect it would be a big waste of money.

You don't think, you just believe garbage. Non of their climate predictions have been even close to accurate. Many temperature locations have changed or got surrounded by concrete which skews the temp data. Originally Posted by farmstud60

The “garbage” you are referring to is accepted science. Not all of their predictions, i.e. theories have been proven absolutely true but that is why they are called theories and not predictions. Predictions are related to tarot cards and mediums and not science.

Climate change is a complex issue and it’s occurring whether you agree with me or not. Drought is becoming more frequent and in areas where it has not historically occurred. Storms are becoming more frequent and stronger over the decades. Sea level rise is here now especially across the southern united states.

Will this destroy the world, of course not but it will certainly make it more difficult for humanity to survive in the way we have become accustomed.

Southeastern U.S. Seas Are Rising at Triple the Global Average
Sea levels have surged along the coastlines of the southeastern United States, new research finds — hitting some of their highest rates in more than a century.

They've risen more than a centimeter a year over the last decade — about triple the global average — and the effects on communities near the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean already are being observed in the form of increased flooding, more severe hurricanes and eroding shorelines.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...lobal-average/

Yeah, SCIENCE!!

I’ll see your AP story and raise a Time Magazine.

Originally Posted by texassapper

Hahaha.... Nobody seems to get it do they? They have to be paid to believe it, lol.

@CreatedInSpace; texassapper:

Yeah, that was quite a time, wasn't it! You could hardly pick up a magazine or newspaper without seeing an alarmist story about how we were entering a new "little ice age," and that we'd better start getting prepared for it. We were also supposedly running out of oil and gas! President Jimmy Carter continually talked about the need to do with less, and characterized the supposed need for sacrifice as the "moral equivalent of war." (Remember his so-called "malaise speech" in 1979?)

How many times have you seen experts' predictions of megatrends look ridiculous in retrospect? (Remember all the reports in the late 1980s on how all the experts seemed certain that Japan, with all its massive industrial policy initiatives, was going to kick our asses all over the globe in the 1990s? How did that work out?)

Now, if you believe Al Gore and Greta Thunberg, the world will become virtually uninhabitable in 12 years if we don't take emergency action. (These people always refer to 12-year periods, all the way back to James Hansen's alarmist statements 35 years ago!)

This is an excellent example of what Bjorn Lomborg has shouted from the rooftops. We're going to waste ridiculous amounts of money in the USA and Europe to make small percentage reductions in global carbon emissions. Money that could far better be spent on real problems... Originally Posted by Tiny

Yes, it sure is! A rapid rush toward railroad electrification is exactly the sort of Quixotic "green dream" project that would cost enormous sums of money while doing little to alleviate the problem. And remember, Lomborg does not claim that warming is not occurring or that it should be of no concern; merely that it's hardly the impending calamity claimed by the alarmists, and that the suggested "solutions" would be staggeringly expensive while not doing very much to alter the trajectory of the earth's temperature.

Here is a bit of a reality check. According to some estimates, all form of transportation account for about 29% of US emissions. And rail transport accounts for only about 2% of all transportation-related GHG emissions:

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fa...-gas-emissions

As Tiny noted, the cost of developing overhead line catenary power supply would be humongous, and no one is likely to believe for a minute that all that investment would come remotely close to paying off in any way.

However, if battery innovation advances to the point at which the cost of large packs declines by 50-75%, and some researches believe it will within the next decade, battery-electric locomotives will become feasible and cost-effective.

Electric motors already drive the wheel's axles on trains, and there's a good reason for this. Electric motors produce max torque right from "RPM one," while diesel engines would require a complex and very large transmission with a whole lot of speeds in order to pull an extremely heavy load from a standing start and then accelerate it to cruising speed.

Here's a very interesting and short rundown of how diesel-electric locomotives work:

https://science.howstuffworks.com/tr...locomotive.htm

So, as you can easily see, battery-powered electrification of rail transport will make wonderful sense when batteries become cheap enough to reduce the costs to or below current diesel-electric economics, and that will happen if innovations substantially reduce the cost of batteries per kWh of capacity.

At that point, executives and investors will want to electrify rail transport, and it will not need to depend on government mandates or subsidies.

(Which is as it should be!)