Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 07/21/2008 8:59:48 AM PDT by george123
algore has come up with an improbable reality, his 10-year, all fossil fuels replaced by wind, sun and other things. A couple of thoughts crossed my mind.
1. Installation. Build enough wind and solar capacity to replace our current use which was 2005 was approximately 4,000 TWh (trillian watt hours) in 2005 http://www.iaea.org/inisnkm/nkm/aws/eedrb/data/US-elp.html . Remember, it goes watts, kilowatts, megawatts, gigawatts and then terawatts. Of this number you can see that the conventional (coal/natural gas aka thermal) usage was about 70% or 2,800 TWh. This is a s__t pot of power! In 10 years we build enough windmills and solar panels and network plus interconnects to run the country entirely on wind and sun. No sweat. Who pays? You guessed it. What do the electric utilities do with the plants they have on their books amortized over 40 years? Their accountants will figure it out.
Or we can look at capacity. As of December 31, 2007 the US generation capacity was a little over 1,000,000 Megawatts of which about 77% came from thermal sources. http://www.eei.org/industry_issues/industry_overview_and_statistics/industry_statistics/index.htm The most powerful wind generation unit puts out about 5 megawatts but that is at optimal operation with wind at about 40 miles per hour. Realistically the useable capacity is about 30 to 40 percent. So we only get about 1.5 megawatts out of the contraption. Again this corroborates the need for about 750,000 to 1,000,000 wind towers.
algore’s proposal also has everyone driving electric cars so we have to assume the usage will increase by at least 25% to 50% and that's just a wild-ass guess. So now we are at 3,500 to 4,200 TWh or about 1,500,000 megawatts!
2. Operation. It is dark at night. We use most of our lights at night. So wind power is needed to power the country at night. So we need enough wind power to run the country at night. Sun power would be an adjunct during the day. Maybe we plug in our cars during the day but wait, during the day a lot of people are at work. Oh, well. The bureaucrats can work that out. After all, this will all probably be run by the government. Nationalized power supply.
Now we do know it is dark at night. Does the wind blow all the time? Probably somewhere. Probably the wind is blowing somewhere in the US at any point in time. Does it blow everywhere in the US all the time? Probably not.
Ah, one would say. All we need is batteries. I have a battery backup on my computer (which uses less than 200 watts). It is enough to keep me up for about 15 minutes so that I can effect an orderly shut down when the lights go out. Now what we would need is enough battery capacity to provide, let's guess, 50% of the thermal usage or 1,400 TWh. This is a s__t pot of batteries. Or maybe just enough battery capacity so each citizen and business and effect an orderly shutdown in 15 minutes.
So, periodically, we would have to adjust to brownouts or blackouts and keep flashlights around so we can keep reading our books or cooking dinner...whoops! With no electricity we would not be able to cook dinner. We could keep sandwiches in the fridge for meals during blackouts. That's an idea. Whoops! Hope the electricity isn't off so long the food in the fridge spoils. Etc, etc, etc.
3. View. Have you ever driven up the Coachella Valley towards LA and seen the wind farms there? Picture the US with millions of windmills dotting the landscape. Windmills above the Grand Canyon, along the front range, on the Roan Plateau (gasp!), on hills in Vermont, next to the US Capitol, in Governor Ritter's mansion's back yard, along the Appalachian Trail, etc. Cape Cod of course would be an exception because windmills would ruin Teddy Kennedy's view. And then we'd wonder what happened to our bird population as the windmills not only decimate, but probably wipe out whole species of birds.
Then, all of a sudden, the politicians will discover that wind isn't practical (as they soon will about ethanol which will leave a bunch of investors owning ethanol plants with some warm dung in their hands). So we will have a million towers or so dotting the countryside. Maybe they could be used as cellular towers. Maybe something could be rigged up to make carnival rides out of them. Thrill rides! Our country could become a gigantic theme park for the world! Wow!
So what we have is a crackpot proposal from a certifiable nut case who owns a carbon credit company and who probably owns (through shell companies) wind power manufacturing companies and solar panel manufacturers.
I put algore in the intellectual midget class with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Chuck Shumer.
Nuclear power would solve it all.
Therefore it’ll probably never happen.
Wind power seems to be working very well in West Texas - never a shortage of wind. I read about a small school system that had put up a single wind turbine and it was expected to provide half of their power needs for the school year.
Gore Says Climate Crisis Worse Than Terrorism
Former Vice President Al Gore (D) offered the opinion that global warming, not terrorism, is the biggest threat to America. The former VP said that it is imperative that the nation go “green” before it is too late.
“Terrorists may kill thousands,” Gore said. “Warming will kill billions and destroy civilization. If the government doesn’t take immediate action, the survival of the United States as we know it is at risk.”
Step one of Gore’s proposed plan of action calls for the federal government to establish a “carbon-offsets” reserve. The reserve, modeled on the “Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” would have the government purchase carbon-offset certificates from Generation Investment Management, a London-based company with offices in Washington, D.C., and store them in underground vaults for later use.
The former VP dismissed critics’ complaints that the plan is “self-serving” (Gore is the chairman of Generation Investment Management). “This is no time for finger pointing or arguing about the cost,” Gore insisted. “The American people must make sacrifices if I am to save the nation and the planet.”
Senator Obama praised Gore’s “vision,” promising to name him “Environmental Czar” and incorporate his proposal into a comprehensive energy/environmental plan once he is elected president.
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
Nuclear power would solve it all.
Given the 10 year time frame, the only realistic way to meet Gore's goals is to use nuclear weapons to reduce the worlds population by 95 % and then the survivors would go back to hunter / gatherer society. energy problem solved.
The primary evidence that CO2 and the greenhouse effect have anything to do with raising global temperature is missing entirely. It isn't there.
No Smoking Hot Spot (The Australian)
That is a short and easily understandable article showing the plain truth. The hinge pin that links global temperature to the greenhouse effect is missing. It is easily measurable and hundreds of probes have done so.
This guy crunched the numbers to find out how the UK could actually move to non-petroleum based energy. The amount of pumped storage alone to absorb peaks was staggering.
This link is to a four page executive summary of the report: Synopsis
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