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Text of the page (random words):
e climate crisis his first book was supposed to show the science about global warming and climate change but he got the science wrong and thereby gave ammunition to the denialists the best known mistake was the graph that showed the correlation between global average temperature and co2 concentration over the last 400 000 years what he may have failed to notice and certainly didn t point out was that the temperature changes preceded the co2 changes by hundreds of years which contradicted his thesis so expectations weren t high when he published this new book which deals with the solutions and we were neither disappointed nor pleasantly surprised he covers all the important points in the subject some of the information no doubt is accurate and valuable unfortunately it s poorly referenced so readers can t distinguish between solid information and his own opinions and we see grating inconsistencies our interest here is mainly in nuclear energy as an important part of the solution he shrugs it off saying only that a very great investment is needed to implement it his solution besides the usual exhortations to practice efficiency and conservation he gives us only the usual tired nostrums wind solar and geothermal energy as we have shown here to the point of tedium the investment required for wind and solar energy is higher than that for nuclear and geothermal could at most provide only a few per cent of our electricity requirements by his logic nuclear should be at the top of the list of solutions sadly his information doesn t carry him to the right and obvious conclusion he does get credit for at least considering the problem of intermittency here again alas he falls down he proposes that plug in hybrid car batteries will solve the problem of storing enough energy to get the country through periods of low energy production from wind and solar we happen to know how much electricity has to be stored as we calculated here the us would have to store between 141 and 386 billion kwh depending on how much comes from solar and how much from wind based on current consumption rates but toyota s intended battery has a storage capacity of 202 volts x 13 amp hours or 2 6 kwh each battery costs around 10 000 the number of plug in batteries required would be 54 billion to 148 billion in a country with 306 million people or if every person owned one battery and used it only for energy storage the combined capacity would be only 0 2 to 0 56 of what s needed for the storage to provide 5 of the amount needed would require technological improvements that aren t even on the horizon ironies abound in the second half of the book he points out the undeniable fact that the most effective way to limit population growth is to promote economic security in poor countries the most powerful contraceptive is the confidence by parents that their children will survive he quotes julius k nyerere tanzania s first prime minister and president but he wants to limit their energy sources to the most expensive and unachievable ones he offers us this crucial conclusion the only meaningful and effective solutions to the climate crisis involve massive changes in human behavior and thinking that clearly is true and it s too bad he doesn t apply it to his own attitudes about nuclear energy he refers to the confusion over climate change mentioned at the beginning of this article he blames the confusion on self interested political groups that spread misinformation about the subject they didn t have to prove they were right they just had to create doubt about the truth he quotes climate scientist michael oppenheimer what they ve done is try to take scientific understanding and put it on the same level with political opinion why can t he grasp the fact that the same thing happened to nuclear energy as was the case for the first book mr gore s errors fortify the arguments of those who oppose his program for some time they ve been pointing out that if the situation is as dire as he makes it out to be then he should be calling for massive nuclear construction his demands for solutions that are more popular but less effective undermine his credibility and it follows his argument so that s the deal on his book certainly some of the information has to be good but it s not referenceable the pictures are good if your public library has it you definitely should read it posted by red craig at 8 03 pm 6 comments labels a plan to solve the climate crisis al gore climate change compressed air energy storage global warming nuclear energy our choice renewable energy thursday april 23 2009 lobbyists cynicism and energy policy update eating words when you re wrong you should say you re wrong in the article shown below in its original form i complained that president obama was offering only symbolic gestures in dealing with the important problem of greenhouse gas emissions today may 19 2009 he announced important changes in the rules governing co2 emissions from vehicles some plans were in place to limit emissions in 2020 a time so far off in the future as to be meaningless under the new rules auto manufacturers will have to start meeting new fuel efficiency standards beginning in 2012 the rules will be tightened yearly until 2016 when passenger cars will have to achieve 39 mpg and light trucks 30 mpg one could protest that the changes are too little and too late for onlookers who are concerned about the headlong rush to habitat destruction in which humans are engaged the plan seems over solicitous of auto executives but it clearly isn t a symbolic gesture i still think that jon wellinghoff s comment discussed in the article below is cause for alarm since the president faces political constraints most of us can t appreciate though i suppose we should respect his judgment and look for continuing reforms to the country s energy and environmental policies original article i haven t added articles for a long time because anything i said would be repetitious but something has changed so maybe it s right to do another when president obama was running for the office he holds now he spoke against cynicism the era of scooter libby justice and brownie incompetence and the karl rove politics of fear and cynicism will be over spartanburg sc november 03 2007 he promised us soon after taking office he barred former lobbyists from working for agencies they had lobbied within the past two years and required them to recuse themselves from issues they had handled during that time and barred officials of his administration from lobbying their former colleagues for as long as i am president new york times january 21 2009 pres obama set the rule at two years because he isn t one to limit his options so how does pres obama deal with the important problem of energy and global warming he appoints jon wellinghoff to be head of the federal energy regulatory commission chairman wellinghoff is a lawyer who has made a career of lobbying on behalf of consumer and anti nuclear political groups before joining ferc he was nevada s consumer advocate for customers of public utilities prior to that while a lawyer in private practice he was the primary author of the nevada renewable portfolio standard rps act he spent over thirty years lobbying on behalf of renewable energy businesses ferc so we see the rule against lobbyists only applies to lobbyists who didn t support candidate obama it s okay though because of the two year rule what about cynicism here s what chairman wellinghoff has to say about nuclear energy we may not need any ever his solution natural gas is going to be there for a while because it s going to be there to get us through this transition that s going to take 30 or more years new york times april 22 2009 what this means is that cynicism has taken over energy policy in the obama administration maybe the president and the chairman are right the problem of global warming is so daunting perhaps even insurmountable that there s no point in trying to solve it political considerations preclude ignoring it especially since it faces us every day in the news so the only response left is symbolic gestures we ll put up some wind turbines and solar panels we ll sprinkle money around university research labs to pretend we take new age gimmicks seriously mainly we ll follow t boone pickens s plan to burn natural gas until it s all gone obviously cynicism is no substitute for policy but it doesn t matter because the destructive effects of global warming will hit after pres obama retires see how that works posted by red craig at 1 43 pm 3 comments labels energy policy ferc jon wellinghoff lobbyists nuclear energy pres obama monday november 24 2008 the case for nuclear energy this article is a brazen plug for a new web page that lays out the argument for nuclear energy based on several years of debating on the internet it shows that the opponents arguments don t stand up to scrutiny the page can be found here posted by red craig at 12 25 pm no comments saturday november 15 2008 solar energy wind power intermittency and storage download pdf version in ordinary conversations about renewable energy the issue of energy storage is often overlooked renewable sources generate energy on their own schedules not customers schedules the difference must be met either by backup energy supplies or by energy storage this article describes some storage calculations in the absence of fossil fired or nuclear sources the calculations can be downloaded from here this is a plot of electricity generation for the us this writer doesn t have data for any other countries and wouldn t presume to offer advice if he did doe for the rest of this analysis the average generation for the years 2003 2007 will constitute the model year first compare the demand curve with the availability of wind energy wind energy is approximately proportional to the cube of wind speed density is also a factor and there is considerable mismatch at very high and very low wind speeds but those differences won t change the conclusions this analysis is based on wind speed cubed the data show wind speeds for 265 cities we have deleted cities with low winds or high differences between high wind and low wind months we also have deleted alaska cities owing to their unique characteristics and their separation from the us power grid 244 cities are left noaa clearly wind energy doesn t match electricity demand well next compare electricity generation with solar potential cities with poor solar characteristics were deleted from the data leaving 221 out of 238 nrel so we see that solar energy matches the electricity demand somewhat better for our first cut we shall calculate the maximum amount of solar energy that can be generated and used within a month and we find that 80 6 of the yearly demand can be met with solar energy on these terms now we can consider the remaining demand after all that solar energy is accounted for now we can compare the remaining demand with available wind energy the calculations show that 200 billion kwh of storage is required we can do the same calculations for other shares of supply from solar energy with the results shown here our calculations show that the storage requirement ranges from 141 to 386 billion kwh there is no way to store that amount of energy in fact we ll have to devise a fictional example to illustrate the problem imagine that a lake exists named upper lake fead which is equal in size to lake mead lower lake fead is the same size and is located at the bottom of foover dam which is identical to hoover dam however all the water in upper lake fead can drain through the water turbines lake volume 30 000 000 acre feet average head at dam 520 feet if the efficiency were 100 then energy volume x pressure volume x head x weight density 30 000 000 acre feet x 43560 sq ft acre x 520 feet x 62 4 lb cu ft 4 24 x 10 16 ft lb 16 billion kwh we ll set the turbine efficiency at 85 and account for pump inefficiency by upsizing where necessary thus upper lake fead is good for 13 6 billion kwh so we have calculated that the us would need between 10 and 28 foover dams each with upper and lower lake feads depending on how much electricity is generated with solar energy there are in fact no foover dams and no locations for building any posted by red craig at 1 08 pm 5 comments labels energy storage intermittancy intermittency solar data solar energy solar pv wind data wind power thursday october 30 2008 nuclear energy costs every responsible study has shown that nuclear electricity is as cheap as any of the non fossil alternatives and is competitive with fossil fired electricity for example the international energy agency and the organisation for economic co operation and development s nuclear energy agency determined the costs as follows cost per mwh in us dollars discount rate 5 10 coal 25 50 35 60 nat gas 37 60 40 63 nuclear 21 31 30 50 wind 35 95 45 140 micro hydro 40 80 65 100 solar pv 150 200 the university of chicago compared several detailed calculations with a range of discount rates and summarized the results thus cost per mwh in us dollars coal 37 49 nat gas 56 68 nuclear assuming old designs 65 77 nuclear assuming new designs 36 55 nuclear assuming advanced fuel designs 57 64 wind 55 77 solar pv 202 308 solar thermal 158 235 a question that immediately presents itself is why do the two studies give different numbers the answer is that every study depends on assumptions such as interest rates and fuel costs both these factors and other factors such as taxes pollution controls and equipment lifetimes vary in time and place this introduces an opportunity to do mischief since a motivated commentator can pick and choose results to bolster his intended conclusion these numbers only have significance if they re calculated on equal terms and only if they re read relatively not absolutely a common argument being made now is that nuclear construction costs have risen so fast they have rendered nuclear plants too expensive to build this argument is anchored on a report about some calculations made by cambridge energy research associates cera that allegedly show a cost increase of 185 between 2000 and 2007 imagine an almost tripling of costs in seven years however cera doesn t publish the results in a public forum nor does it show the calculations so they can be verified indeed there s no way even to know what methods it used it is true though that costs have risen strongly since china and india began their notable advances in material progress these cost rises apply to all kinds of construction and in particular apply to alternative energy sources here is some information on the cost of windpower construction which has doubled and some data oct 28 2008 on solar electric construction it has essentially held constant but at us 4700 per kw rated power or over us 20 000 per average kw it still is hopelessly expensive what this shows is that the pressure...