Why Sustainable Power Is Unsustainable 1108
Urchin writes "Although scientists are agreed that we must cut carbon emissions from transport and electricity generation to prevent the globe's climate becoming hotter, the most advanced 'renewable' technologies are too often based upon non-renewable resources including indium and platinum —
resources that could dry up in 10-15 years if they were widely used in the renewable energy market."
Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
"Although scientists are agreed that we must cut carbon emissions from transport and electricity generation to prevent the globe's climate becoming hotter"
They are NOT agreed.
Wind? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's an idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Use less energy.
No, it can't solve everything, but more conservation would be vastly more helpful than trying to exploit new energy sources.
Why You Don't Focus on One Thing (Score:3, Insightful)
The article points out Indium in some of the better solar cells in the lab (40% efficient), and Platinum as an important catylist in a hydrogen fuel cells. Both of these are already valuable metals for existing applications, and will easily see minable reserves dry up if you add on renewable energy applications.
However, this is why you don't focus on one and only one solution to this problem. Solar reflectors, wind, tidal, and nuclear all have roles to play.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
That's some top notch marketing tactics, there, Dave.
Back in reality, lakes are drying up [wikipedia.org] and deserts expanding [wikipedia.org] due to human activities.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Feel free to review the evidence yourself, and come to your own conclusions.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:1, Insightful)
aka "be more poor".
You're the kind of person that recommends starving people just eat less.
"Why Sustainable Power Is Unsustainable" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's even narrower than that (Score:5, Insightful)
Take it even further. Neither nuclear nor geothermal suffer from this supposed problem. And not even all solar power systems face it--molten salt and biomass-mediated systems, for example, won't suffer either.
So really we're down to a potential problem with photo-voltaic solar power, and only then on the assumption that no systems based on plentiful materials are waiting in the wings.
Bah.
--MarkusQ
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no more evidence of that, than carbon emissions affecting pirate population.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'm saying conspicuous consumers should cut down a little. If one commutes less distance or drives a more efficient vehicle, for example, is one therefore poorer?
And I'm also also that everyone can benefit from energy savings. That does not make us poorer... it makes us richer. What do you think the whole "Green IT" thing is about? Does big enterprise really care about environmentalism, or are they thrilled about cutting the huge energy costs for traditional data centers?
Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
My new windows reduced my heating bill, but don't detract from my standard of living.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:1, Insightful)
what? That computer that you are using right now, could it be made more efficient and still have the same computing power? I would say yes it could, it just takes a bit more research. How in the world is that being more poor? We waste and incredible amount of resources because it is easy and relatively inexpensive to do, not because we need it to live the lifestyles we are accustom to. Why be lazy about wasing energy and resources when we could reduce what we use in the first place with a bit of work?
Re:indium (Score:3, Insightful)
But although silicon is the most abundant element in the Earth's crust after oxygen, it makes relatively inefficient cells that struggle to compete with electricity generated from fossil fuels. And the most advanced solar-cell technologies rely on much rarer materials than silicon...
...The efficiency of solar cells is measured as a percentage of light energy they convert to electricity. Silicon solar cells finally reached 25% in late December. But multi-junction solar cells can achieve efficiencies greater than 40%.
Hmm, so Silicon is the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust at 25% efficiency and the alternative at a measly 15% performance gain will dry out in around a decade. Disclaimer: I wish there was more information in TFA on what "greater than 40%" is.
Do the math. Looks like we'll be melting down more sand and (hopefully) augmenting our nuclear power in the near future.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether global warming is true or not really doesn't matter much. We still need to take precautions to prevent pollution and switch to cleaner energy sources. It will benefit our own health and safety as well as be a matter of prudence.
Because you can't make a magnet without neodymium? (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad we don't have any other way to make magenets...oh wait.
Don't you love the impartial scientific tone here? And the sheer illogic of this statement is staggering. If you know you are going to have large amount of episodic oversupply there are all sorts of useful things you can do with it. Make ice. Melt salt. Run pumps. I wouldn't be surprised if the "giant toaster" is some clever over supply utilization system being ridiculed by TFA's evidently clueless author.
--MarkusQ
Re:Why You Don't Focus on One Thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
aka "be more poor".
Righto.. Because this past year I bought a new fridge that uses 1/5 the energy of my old fridge and replaced all the bulbs in my house with CF ones. This year I'll insulate my home (it currently has very little).
So in your opinion I'm now "more poor" than I was before? That's a bit odd, because all those decisions were purely economic ones, and I expect the fridge to pay for itself in 5-6 years. The lights are harder to calculate, but they shouldn't be more than a couple years. The insulation will pay for itself in one winter. So in my case using less energy makes me LESS poor because it winds up costing me less money.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:3, Insightful)
The average consumer could cut their energy use quite a bit (say 30%) without affecting their lifestyle one bit.
Conservation is not the same as going back to the stone age. That's just a lousy attempt to use reducto ad absurdum to avoid taking even simple steps to reduce energy waste.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Those that bother to look at the math instead of the politics, at the history instead of the hype, are agreed.
Nothing is fully renewable that... (Score:5, Insightful)
.. is suitable for realistically providing power for the typical modern life.
Nuclear is clean, safe and practically inexhaustible. The latest advances could provide small nuclear "batteries" the size of a hot tube that could provide power to an entire neighborhood decentralizing much of the power systems (and huge networks of wires) we've come to think of as unavoidable. Making our power systems virtually fool proof. For too long we've lived in the fear from the propaganda of the illiterate press. It's time to start using the miraculous energy source we uncovered and made practical nearly 3/4 of a century ago. It's there, it's understood, it's completely doable and for a hell of lot less money than the democrats want to steal from the people of the US right now.
Go nukes! Go nukes! Go nukes!
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
Scientists who study climate are in agreement. Some non-experts who study unrelated fields disagree. I'll stand with the people who know what they're talking about, and whose arguments I find sensible. Feel free to review the evidence yourself, and come to your own conclusions.
I have to say, I've heard some of the most ridiculously bad physics in arguments from the climate-change deniers. Now, not all of the climate change deniers argue physics, but the ones who do have pretty much made me lose respect for the position. My overall opinion is that if they can't bother to understand physics, I'm not interested.
Re:ore supplies and reserves are *always* limited (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cooling for 10 years (Score:1, Insightful)
Yup, the planet's been cooling for 10 years. Ask your newspaper why it's not news.
If you actually look at the data [wikipedia.org], you'll see that's not true. The climate -hange deniers who have a clue-- and most of them don't-- sometimes argue that the planet hasn't heated up on the last few years (and if you look carefully at the graph, you can in fact argue that). But it most certainly hasn't, on the average, "been cooling."
But the average climate-change deniers aren't interested in the data that hasn't passed through Rush Limbaugh first.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop being a hypocrite, correlation does not equate causation, especially when we're talking about the globe. Picking two places off the map doesn't mean jack shit.
Re:Because you can't make a magnet without neodymi (Score:3, Insightful)
non-re-new-able (Score:5, Insightful)
The situation with renewable energy is different. Yes when it takes energy to manufacture biomass into fuels. But if is done right, we are taking carbon out of the atmosphere one year, and putting it back in the next, creating a steady state. Clearly there are some issues now, but that is political. In the US, instead of using weeds, the corn growers, which have been pushing the US for years to a deadly philosophy of monoculture, is using food crops. On the other point, I don't think that biofuels is causing food prices to increase any more than lack of oil is causing the current high prices at the pump. demand for luxury food is increasing, the economic expansion of the past several years means that people are buying more, and there is much less focus on the needs of those that have no food.
As far as rare metals, these are not consumed. All these products can be remanufactured. The issue is political. In my US town, trash is picked up once a week at every house, but recycling is picked up only every other week at some houses. Houses are allowed to throw away dangerous materials without any fine. The only way to send electronics for remanufacture to go to the drop off on a work day. Of course a lot of this has to do with the costs involved. it is cheaper to mine new material rather than reuse old. for these materials the economics might be reversed, and we might the trend reversed.
Re:Because you can't make a magnet without neodymi (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing the power company can do is sell that energy for a cheaper price. They are a power company, not a "salt melting company". Building a plant to perform these kinds of activities costs a lot of money and needs a very complicated business plan that depends heavily on logistics-related factors.
A salt-melting (or any other kind of process) plant would need to run 24/7 to be profitable, using valuable energy during most of the day. The only difference from a normal salt-melting company would be the cost of a single part of their operation, during specific times of the day.
Conclusion: They would be selling energy at a cheaper price. But to themselves, while needing to run a new (to them) and complicated business. It's better to simply sell the energy to anyone else.
And they already do that: they sell energy at a lower price during low usage times. And the part the can't be sold is simply wasted using giant "toasters". It's cheaper to simply burn the excess energy than powering off the thermoelectrical plant.
Re:Real sustainable power available since decades (Score:2, Insightful)
And you have discovered how to advance the technology enough for it to be buildable within the available open space, without destroying habitats and greenspaces that are protected? The solar energy concentration is not sufficient to convert the amount of energy we need with the technology we have without bulldozing half of the available landmass. This argument is similar to the (thankfully abortive) ethanol argument, which had Brazil contemplating how much of the rain forest they could knock down to grow corn without destroying the world's oxygen supply.
If it were as easy as you think, it would already be solved, for Pete's sake.
Re:Wind? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because something is not found in plants doesn't make it a non-viable energy source... or do you really mean to tell me that because nature never found a way to burn petroleum or coal for energy that they aren't effective? Heck, almost nothing except for humans even uses FIRE for energy, and that one's dead obvious.
That fallacy aside, think about what would actually be required for a plant to use wind or tidal power effectively in terms of habitat and engineering. Wind would actually require free-moving parts just to function, and they'd probably use solar too (it works well, so it would be a distinct disadvantage NOT having it as an energy source). Tidal would require plants to grow, essentially, semi-submerged along open coast, vulnerable to things like crashing waves and migrating sand... even seaweed has trouble growing along beaches because the habitat is so turbulent and marginal.
That said, I agree that solar is by far the most obvious and readily available renewable energy source we have, and I still don't get why we're so concerned with the others when so little has been done so far with that one.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:5, Insightful)
YES IT DOES, RTFA!!!!
Also the UK government didn't buy any salt for the snow we had this week because they thought global warming wasn't going to make it cold enough. Another example of why it matters when people lie about global warming.
To say repeating the same bullshit line has no consequences is just moronic.
Please stop turning the global warming debate into a religion, you're being part of the problem including your silly little precaution speech.
Here's another speech, Why not believe in God just to be sure you're going to heaven even though there is no data either way?
See how you're saying the exact same thing?
Re:indium (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been hearing about indium and platinum shortages from chicken littles for a couple of years now. In fact, there is 3 times more indium than silver in the Earth's crust and I haven't heard anyone shouting about a silver shortage - especially since digital camera's became popular. When the price goes high enough, more money will go into mining, extracting, and refining both minerals. And only solar cells, out of the currently common "sustainable" technologies, require these rare minerals.
The Indium Corp couldn't be biased. [indium.com]
It's an open market, so it must be true. [openmarket.org]
Back in 2006 this blogger noticed we use indium. Scroll down a bit. [wordpress.com]
The price is going up, but hey, copper prices sure fell. [siemens.com]
I'm not worried. This just someone wanting some attention and web page hits.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Desterification is happening in California, Africa, and Madagascar. Lake Chad drying up is directly attributable to human activity, though not necessarily due to CO2. It's a form of anthropogenic climate change, in any case. And it's also happening to Lake Superior [thedailygreen.com].
Meanwhile, Oceans are acidifying [wikipedia.org] all over (the chemistry involved is directly attributable to CO2). Polar caps are melting, putting pressure on the polar bear population. Being the alpha predator of the region, this will remove the ecosystem's ability to keep prey species in check, causing far-reaching problems elsewhere.
None of this is from some sketchy model formed up by some graduage student as a doomsday scenario. It's stuff we can go out and directly observe right now.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
As is often the case, people who try to deny global warming think they are not only entitled to their own opinion, but also their own facts.
The Earth's climate is getting warmer. I'm not sure it matters too much why at this point, but rather what we can do about it.
Seems to me that the technologies involved in "sustainable energy" would be beneficial no matter what the reason for the earth's warming. We're still going to need non-fossil energy, advances in insulation, etc.
And for those of you who believe that the Earth is always "making" new oil, can you tell me why none of the major oil fields in production for the last 40 years have shown any sign of "refilling"? Not a single one.
As far as these new energy technologies being somehow defective because of certain materials that are in short supply, that's also a straw man. New technologies often develop along parallel lines. Should the computer industry have stopped research and production in 1988 because there were not yet efficient means of production for some components? When photographers used to use platinum in their prints, should they have just given up on photographic technology because they'd eventually run out of platinum or it was too expensive? No, because right around the corner was the development of silver emulsions that could also do a good job, and cheaper.
Or maybe, to make it more understandable to some of you, should the computer game industry have stopped developing techniques for new games because there were not yet video cards that could push the pixels that the games they conceived would require?
No matter how you cut it, research (and production) of new, cleaner, sustainable forms of energy is a very good idea.
I heard a guy the other day on the radio who was supposed to be the world's number one expert on energy. He said "Barring a technological advance, we'll still be a fossil fuel economy in 25 years". I wanted to mention to him that "technological advances" are exactly what human beings are good at. They've been doing it for at least a few dozen millenia and it's silly to think the technological advances are going to stop now. In fact, with the Republicans safely out of power in the US, it's a good bet that there will be technological advances coming that only a few of us can even conceive. I'm not yet prepared to be against humanity.
Non-Issue (Score:2, Insightful)
This doesn't stop us from building solar-thermal power plants and wave farms rated in the hundreds of megawatts. Show me a windmill, or a hydraulic ram, or a steam turbine that uses either of these metals in any appreciable volume. Nuclear reactors might use some, but when you have nuclear power plants rated at over a gigawatt, that doesn't seem like a bad investment at all.
Re:Because you can't make a magnet without neodymi (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm, I think you missed the point there.
Making ice, melting salt, and running pumps are methods for storing energy (like a battery) so when you are making too much power you can save up the excess and extract it later when you are producing too little power.
The poster wasn't suggesting that power companies become molten salt salesmen.
Another Oil Company Blow Hard (Score:2, Insightful)
We can use the sun, wind and waters to generate more power than
we could ever fit humans onto this planet to use.
Who are all these 'tards who keep flogging oil, coal, and nuclear?
Instead of slurring alternate energy sources start designing
and engineering them.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the IPCC says that humans are the cause, it is their job to say that:
The IPCC's job is to study human-induced climate change, so their jobs depend upon finding human-induced climate change.
Re:non-re-new-able (Score:3, Insightful)
There are always losses in any recycling process. You cannot cheat thermodynamics.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:2, Insightful)
YES IT DOES, RTFA!!!!
Also the UK government didn't buy any salt for the snow we had this week because they thought global warming wasn't going to make it cold enough. Another example of why it matters when people lie about global warming.
umm.. one would have thought they didn't buy salt because they hadn't received snow like that in a decade... But I'm sure you're right, because it makes sense for them to base the decision some sensationalist headline on -insert some website here-.
One word (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh!
Anyone who has believed otherwise has been caught drinking too much of the spiked Kool-Aid.
We live in an effectively finite ecosystem with finite resources. Had we not allowed human population to explode as it has, particularly in the last 200 years, virtually none of what we consider "crises" would even be problems worth noting yet. We would still have had to address them eventually perhaps, but we would have had centuries more to learn before then. Unfortunately the species is very adept at burning the candle at both ends. What we're experiencing now is not much different than the crash of withdrawal after binging on some hallucinogen. The morning after is always a bitch.
Again, human overpopulation is the 800-pound Samsonite gorilla in the room. Until we deal with that, none of the rest is anything but posturing.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
you can't be serious? what if in your attempts to "fix" the problem you end up fucking with the earths natural cycles, making things worse?
frankly i'm horrified people are taking the stance that any action is better than no action just because we don't understand the situation.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm 33 and have lived in the UK all my life. It snows several times every year, but there hasn't been snow like this since I was a kid. We had over six inches here and it's stayed for a week, in the past decade the most we've had is 3 or 4 inches and it's been gone in two or three days.
Wind, waves and water (Score:5, Insightful)
The WWW is the solution.
Wind, waves and water can be harnessed for renewable enegy without exotic metals.
The premis of the title is wrong as it makes the assumption that the only way to get good energy is through current solar cell technologies.
No exotic metals here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power
or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity
or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power
or here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
A comet is crashing towards the area you live in. Scientists have a raging debate as to whether or not it will completely disintegrate before hitting your house. Do you stay in your house till they reach a "consensus" or get the hell out of there?
Add an "insurance company" selling "anti-comet credits" into the picture, with payments to said company quickly adding up to about twice what your house is worth now, and *then* think if you should be following special interests-induced paranoia so blindly...
This is not to say that we should not be cleaning up our mess with real pollution, but, hey, CO2 is *not* a pollutant!
Paul B.
Re:Why You Don't Focus on One Thing (Score:3, Insightful)
Also what the fuck do they mean with non-renewable? It's not like they do any radioactive stuff with them is it? So obviously they are "renewable", just recycle whatever you trashed. Sure they may not be easy to come by but that's a totally different story.
Oil = Abundant, non-renewable in a short time perspective.
1 TW solar panels the size of a propeller cap = Rare but would give renewable energy as long as we have the sun close alive and kicking.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:4, Insightful)
"Scientists who study climate are in agreement. "
Of course. Because any climate scientist who isn't in agreement suddenly finds he has no govt funding, and loses credibility in his field. That's how most research grants work. If your final results don't support the underlying theory that the sponsor wants proved, then that sponsor doesn't use you the next time. Same deal for "independent" pharmaceutical research.
It's undeniable that the climate is changing. It has been for as long as we've kept records, and archeological evidence suggests even bigger swings in the past. What is debatable is how large of a role humans are playing in it.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:1, Insightful)
correlation does not equate causation
Could people please stop rating posts that contain this shit 'insightful'?
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:4, Insightful)
When has there ever been a unanimous consensus in something like this, exactly?
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
And nobody ever mentions that as the CO2 amounts are going up, large swaths of forest are being clear cut. You know about forests, right? They take CO2 in and output O2. I suspect (and since I'm pontificating on the internet I don't really need to back up) that that has more to do with ocean acidification and general CO2ness than stupid cars.
The demonstratable anthropomorphic climate change examples are likly predominated by too many people stripping the land bare more so than CO2 output of energy production.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:5, Insightful)
hence the statement "scientists are agreed" is not true, assuming the statement is meaning "all scientists" as opposed to "most scientists".
Nobody without an agenda (or a fondness for excessive pedantry[1]) uses the "absolutely all X" definition of "agreed" when talking about large groups of people, because you never get 100.00000000% agreement. If a large majority of scientists and an overwhelming majority of specialist scientists agree it's both reasonable and accurate to say that "scientists are agreed".
[1] I do have a fondness for excessive pedantry, but I try to keep it under control.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:2, Insightful)
Um... the question was about whether scientists who study climate are in agreement or not. So I cited a survey that shows that yes, very clearly they are for any reasonable definition of 'agreement' (oh, and meterologists study weather not climate. If you don't know the difference between the two or why they're distinct then you should go look it up).
If you have a problem with the N then I suggest you take a statistics class or two. If you don't, then can you rephrase your problem with the data in a way that is comprehensible?
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:4, Insightful)
If I'm reading that study correctly, the list of potential respondents was drawn only from academic institutions and government agencies, and from that list, the actual respondents essentially self-selected.
And you think that's an accurate reflection of reality?
The argument all along has been that the scientists with the most to gain from government action -- through grants or regulation or whatever -- are the ones most likely to agree on anthropogenic climate change. In that much, the study seems right on target...
EDIT: If other users can keep posting the same study, then I can keep posting the same reply. Bite me, asinine Slashcode spam blocker.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:4, Insightful)
The greenhouse effect has been known for hundreds of years, even Mythbusters have managed to reproduce it.
What you need to do next is draw a circle on some paper then draw another circle outside it which represents the atmosphere.
The Earth's radius is about 4000 miles and about 99% of the atmosphere is below 25 miles.
Clue: You'll have trouble doing it unless your pencil is very sharp.
If you can look at that and say that man can't change the composition or that burning 100 million barrels of oil per day will do nothing, you're an idiot.
And that's just oil. There's still natural gas and cow burps, which are nearly as bad.
Re:Nothing is fully renewable that... (Score:4, Insightful)
This destroys the landscape and has a lot of waste (i.e. dirt)
Yes, we must not get dirt on the nature - we wouldn't want our beautiful outdoors getting dirty.
While most mines aren't exactly candidates for national parks, they're relatively small and contained, and may cover a few tens of thousands of acres. In comparison to the huge amount of space out there, they're trivial. Plus, in western countries, mining companies are almost always required to do reclamation work when they leave to restore the landscape to something usable.
I find a big hole in the ground no more visually disagreeable than an equivalent surface area of solar arrays, or buried under the waters impounded behind a dam. Both just aren't natural, but such is the cost of the industrial society most of us want.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't matter, if we keep repeating that Goebbels made that quote, then people will believe it.
Problem solved.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Definition of "sustainable"? (Score:3, Insightful)
The first problem is what exactly is meant by "sustainable"? The weakest definition is something like "not using fossil fuels" or some such nonsense. Why is this nonsense? Because unless you want to define the lifespan of the humann race as your own, it is meaningless.
Today, we have "sustainability" problems because of multiple factors and fossil fuels is only a small part. There is the matter of recycling wastes into raw materials, something which happens through natural processes. The only problem is today there are far, far more wastes being produced than can possibly be processed before the raw materials are needed. The only way out of this trap is to either obtain resources off Earth or to reduce the resource consumption to the level where natural recycling can occur. The latter means a big population reduction, on the order of 95% or so.
Well, that isn't going to happen. That pretty much means that use of off-planet resources is an absolute necessity for the human race to survive for more than another couple of generations. Would that be "sustainable" enough?
No. We need to look at a longer term. Where are things going to be in 1,000 years? How about 10,000? We are poised at a cusp where we must make some hard decisions. If we choose to fix problems on Earth first, pie-in-the-sky kinds of things like eliminating poverty, we are going to run out of resources and will to obtain off-planet resources. This effectively dooms us to the first alternative mentioned above of population reduction. Somewhere around 1850 was the last time that Earth recycled wastes through natural processes at a rate equal to or better than the rate the resources were being consumed. What the population back then? Think about that for a while.
Sustainable means it is good until the Sun expires. Currently the only thing that comes close to this is nuclear power with a breeder reactor fuel cycle. This is permanent. Solar power satellites with an orbital and lunar industrial base would be pretty much permanent. Virtually every other proprosal either falls far short of current power requirements (which are just going to grow with the population) or doesn't last for even 100 years.
Personally, I think we can hope for a solution that nobody has dreamed of yet and plan for a big population reduction. We have maybe 10 years before the decision is made for us no matter what we want. After that we will likely be struggling to keep the lights on and not likely doing a real good job of it.
Re:Wind? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you talking about pumped storage or simply using a traditional power plant to cover the difference.
I didn't mention any particular method of storing energy but there are a number being worked on. Besides fuel cells, where excess energy is used to produce hydrogen, there's thermal energy storage [wikipedia.org], ultra capacitors [wikipedia.org] which someone above mentioned may become feasible, and other methods of energy storage [wikipedia.org]. I think one of the more promising sources for baseload power [altenergystocks.com] is geothermal. The Department of Energy [pdf] [energy.gov] says "Because geothermal can provide a large amount of sustainable, indigenous, clean, base load and affordable energy for the nation"
Falcon
Re:rtfa (Score:3, Insightful)
And nuclear and conventional power don't need generators?
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:4, Insightful)
Scientists who actively publish are doing real scientific research.
There is a trap here, however. To be published in a peer reviewed journal, your peers have to agree to it. So in a highly politicized area these sampling parameters have a bias, which invalidates any statistics: to be published, you must agree with what others are saying - otherwise they will not let you pass the peer review. Many people believe this is going on - almost everyone agrees that this is a highly politicized area of research.
Personally, I don't care that much who causes global warming - because the benefits of reversing global warming do not currently outweigh the costs. I think we should carry on studying global warming (so that we can start to predict what will really happen), and keep on our normal path of technological progress. By the end of the 100 year time frame used by the reports, we will have advanced so much technologically that we will be laughing at our current proposals to deal with climate change - just like how we laugh at the people from 1908 meeting to try to avoid the horrors of horse poop.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:2, Insightful)
To claim that man has contributed to global warming is a reasonable statement. But, now we need to determine HOW MUCH he has contributed.
Why? So we can decide whether to feel guilty or not? The big questions are whether and what we can do about it and whether we should do them. If global warming is a problem for us and there is an available course of action to mitigate the effects then it would be pretty stupid to refuse to take it on the grounds that the problem isn't entirely (or even at all) our fault.
Re:Here's an idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, while I attempted the same thing earlier this year - and every single CFL light bulbs I installed burned out within 1 month. Every single one. Three different brands. I caused more pollution in one month with those bulbs than will be made back in the entire time I own my house.
It is critical that we all realize that what is best for ourselves is not what is best for our neighbors. Stop dictating what others should do!
For me, money is basically no object - so I installed normal fluorescents, which are not only brighter but also use less power. But another person in my situation would probably be better off using incandescents. Our power is nuclear anyway.
Note that my solution, being more expensive, is almost certainly more polluting... as is most politically motivated conservation.
Re:Nothing is fully renewable that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Uranium is non-renewable energy. It would deplete very quickly if world usage were ramped and it's peak even is not to far away [wikipedia.org].
Re:ore supplies and reserves are *always* limited (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Nuclear clean? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear is not clean!
It's there, it's understood, it's completely doable and for a hell of lot less money than the democrats want to steal from the people of the US right now.
So I guess CATO and Forbes [cato.org] are Democrats. Where are these commercially running plants?
Falcon
Do the right thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Trashed econmomy."
BS. Seriously. We buy new cars anyway, so why NOT more efficient ones? Besides, if everyone drove dramatically more efficient vehicles it ALSO mean reducing (or eliminating) our trade deficit in oil. How does THAT trash the economy?
Eliminate dependence on foreign oil, and it also means we don't have to spend billions sending our kids off to die every time the Middle East hicups. How does THAT trash the economy?
And there are as many economic OPPORTUNITIES in doing the right things as there are not doing them. Solar cell have to be manufactured and installed. Wind turbines constructed. And so on. That spells jobs.
Less polution. Reduced environmental impact. Economic growth. Reduced trade deficit. Eliminate dependence on foreign oil. And perhaps, taking out some insurance on our planet. There are many, many, many reasons for making the investment.
And practically none for NOT doing so...
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:5, Insightful)
You may wish to double check those ice core data.
The ice core data is legit. You're not a climatologist. You're not a paleoclimatologist. They did their homework. Don't pretend that you somehow know more than they do unless you've got your own data and methods to publish.
At least twice in history, CO2 levels have shot up higher than they are today[...]
Not within the last 400,000 years covered by that chart it didn't. Before then, many millions upon millions of years ago it has, but that Earth is a very different Earth. You don't want Paleozoic CO2 levels imposed upon present day ecosystems in less time that it could have occurred naturally. It's bad in terms of evolution. Even IF CO2 didn't cause warming, it will cause other problems (ocean acidification, and many plants will likely have difficulty retaining water as elevated CO2 can cause the pores in the leaves to transpire more). Evolution works, but only so quickly.
CO2 levels have shot up higher than they are today, in very short periods of time.
Not in as-short periods of time as we've had present CO2 shoot up. The slope of that line is higher than any slope elsewhere. If you don't believe me, you can download CO2 concentrations from several places, throw them all into a spreadsheet, and calculate the delta-CO2 ppm. All the data is publicly available as txt files.
Something that isn't clear, is whether CO2 levels preceded temperature increases, or the other way around.
Oh not at all. It's quite clear. You just don't know what you're talking about. It's also abundantly clear you don't study climatology, environmental science or physics. You are actually entertaining the idea that the Earth first retains more heat than normal, THEN the heat-trapping gases follow. Please explain the physics that would allow for such a thing to be remotely plausible.
It is indisputable that our fossil fuels account for the increase in CO2, as the correlation with the industrial revolution is damning. We also know that CO2 is opaque to thermal radiation. We can take a thermal camera, put it behind a glass container of CO2, and not see heat through the camera. I'm pretty sure we've never magically seen thermal radiation get blocked by a tank of warming air, then seen the CO2 concentration in that air spike as a result. Admittedly, I could be wrong since magic, sorcery, and thermodynamic witchcraft aren't fields I research in.
And, no, solar activity has NOT been dismantled. It HAS been cast into disrepute by the "consensus". But, popular opinion does not make science.
Nobody here suggested popular opinion made the science.
The popular opinion of the scientific community makes the science (as established through years of peer-reviewed published literature). That's how science works. If you've got a more scientific approach to global warming than those people did, by all means, enlighten us.
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
That is indeed how it is supposed to work.
It is not how it works in practice, in some highly politicized fields. It does lead to bias regardless, as humans have a natural tendency to question more closely things that they do not agree with.
My point is merely that we, as outsiders, cannot evaluate the level of bias that exists. (Bias always exists - the quest is how statistically significant it is.)
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the UK government didn't buy salt/equipment because regardless of global warming to date, the UK's weather last week is a once-in-20-years event. It doesn't make sense to have lots of idle equipment for once in a 20 year event - it's far cheaper to take the disruption once every 20 years. And anyone who studies climate, such as the Met.Office's Hadley Climate Centre also advises that global warming doesn't mean that there will be an absence of cold weather, and indeed, global warming can paradoxically make some locales colder due to changing oceanic/atmospheric conditions.
renewable vs. scarce (Score:3, Insightful)
from TFA:
"the most advanced "renewable" technologies are too often based upon non-renewable resources"
No, that's wrong.
Some technologies (solar cells) are require scarce materials in their construction. These materials are not used up to generate power. These materials don't have to be renewable. It doesn't matter that these materials are scarce, except from an economic point of view. And, most likely, these materials are used in a renewable way. When these constructions need to be replaced, can be recycled and the scarce materials can be re-used.
Re:Why are there so few responses to the easy fixe (Score:2, Insightful)
It's great to be on your high horse, but when you need a new water heater or washer and dryer in your place, you need to get a truck to haul it. Better hope you don't have a yard or want to add on to your house, either... oh, wait. You just consume and pay other people to have trucks to do things for you and act smug because you don't have one.
Get over yourself. Not everyone who owns a truck is part of the problem.
who does what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the people on the planet now (including us) did not create the problem.
We, and I include myself in that, maybe making things worse. As someone once said, "if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem."
At the moment, the idea is to determine what the best course of action is. To me, it seems like the best way to handle the situation is to get as much low hanging fruit as possible (change light bulbs, etc, etc) in the short term. Things like this reduce energy usage and also don't really add an economic cost.
As happened to me, many others are finding out making some changes actually saves them money.
In the long term, switching to nuclear power would probably be the best way to go.
I haven't been convinced nuclear power is needed never mind the best way to go. Some say it's needed as a baseload, however geothermal energy [pdf warning] [energy.gov] might be used as a baseload as well. And without subsidies nuclear power wouldn't be profitable. The Free Market CATO Institute has this article from the business and investment magazine "Forbes" on "Why conservatives should join the left's campaign against nuclear power", "Hooked on Subsidies [cato.org]".
Falcon
Re:Wrong Premise (Score:1, Insightful)
Right, because people with funny names are NEVER right. Nice logic!