The secret, dirty cost of Obama's green power push

reply to post by GargIndia


That will be great for urban areas at least. I kinda doubt the bullet trains/subways/whatever will be making stops in the sticks though lol.

TKDRL
reply to post by jdub297

 

Solar panels and radiators require foundries and steel, glass and exotics that are non-renewable, with limited lifespans and production and efficiency.

As does coal, oil and nuclear energy. What is your point? Besides, a lot of those things are recyclable. Or are you against recycling as well?

That so-called "renewables " are not. Thanks for the confirmation.

Wind turbines destroy land and wildlife. They also require metal towers built and shipped from foundries and assembled and maintained using fossil fuels. Construction requires depletion of scarce elements; the "rare earths." Hardly renewable. Intermittent production limits their contributions.

Seen plenty of turbines in upstate NY, no mass destruction of the farmland there. Seen some turbine fields in NS as well. No destroyed land, or piles of dead birds there either. Not sure why you are so against it. Also, the materials are not set in stone you know. We could, you know, improve on them. The towers could easily be made with a reinforced concrete for example, instead of metal.

How is concrete "renewable," or the re-bar used to make it re-inforced?

As for the birds, the damage is well-documented:

Some animal rights activists are wondering just how many birds green energy may unintentionally kill as more and more birds turn up dead at solar energy facilities throughout California.

It happens that many of California's solar plants are ... in the path of "the four major north-to-south trajectories for migratory birds" called "the Pacific Flyway."

Birds are dying in one of two ways. In some cases, they imagine the shining solar panels to be bodies of water and dive straight into them. There they die when they smash into the panels from the sky.
...
There are also thousands of birds killed by wind turbine farms throughout the country. This means that untold numbers of birds, some of them protected species, are being killed by green energy.

Solar Panels Frying Birds Along Major Migration Path

Neither of these pseudo-renewables are commercially viable without huge transfers of money from industry and taxpayers to Obama cronies and outright frauds. These so-called "renewable" projects are littered with scams and bankruptcies, despite billions of our $$ literally given away to get sent back as protection and donations to support the corruption that gave it to them in the first place.

I would much rather money is put towards R+D of better solar and wind energy, than R+D for "better" ways to blow s**t up.

Obama's had 5 years to do that, but his track record shows that winning elections is more important than R&D.

deny ignorance

jw

GargIndia
reply to post by jdub297

 

There is too much misplaced focus on liquid fuels. The car-centric world has to change.
The solution is reduction of cars and increase of public transport, specifically public transport that runs on electricity.
Public transport reduces need of liquid fuels greatly. It optimizes variety of power sources.
Short cuts do not help.

1st, transportation is a minor fraction of the sources of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Many countries and industries have converted their transport services to LNG and CNG, reducing reliance on liquid fuels. Many cities have done the same WITHOUT Washington's prodding or incentivizing - it makes economic sense.
T. Boone Pickens is vilified by the eco-religious, but he has been almost single-handedly leading the charge for mass conversion to natural gas for large transports.

2nd, where do you think electric vehicles get their power? Most electricity production is coal-fired; that means "green" electrics ADD to CO2 emissions on the whole.
Even the Obama-darling Volt uses liquid fuels to enhance range and charge.

3rd, very few major cities have popular or effective public transportation. All the rest (the majority of American cities) have none at all. Public transportation will not supplant personal vehicles in the next 2 lifetimes.

deny ignorance

jw

TKDRL
reply to post by GargIndia

 

That will be great for urban areas at least. I kinda doubt the bullet trains/subways/whatever will be making stops in the sticks though lol.

Those "alternatives" use coal-fired electricity and the dirtiest of diesel. International shipping uses the lowest grade of fuel and adds tons of CO2 and soot to the air. Mass-movement is not a panacea.

reply to post by jdub297


Enjoy your status quo I guess.

reply to post by jdub297


It is not necessary to put up huge wind turbines.

Power can be generated by every home and every farm - by rooftop solar panels and small wind turbines.

Alongwith an efficient electric grid, power can be generated and distributed everywhere.

reply to post by jdub297


Both coal and petroleum use must be curtailed.

We need a mass movement to solar and wind, though I support smaller plants - community and family sized.

Transportation and factories are major energy consumers. Steady conversion to renewables will help a lot.

BTW there is a large scope for improvement in solar - in terms of efficiency. The scientists are working, and we shall sure see better panels.

Electric Tracks for Transportation
------------------------------------------

It is possible to bring a railhead within 15-20 km of every village and into every major town and city.
Laying rails is a well-established technology. The long term cost of rail is competitive with road.

The transport from farm to railhead can be covered by a new transport tech based on compressed air.

TKDRL
reply to post by jdub297

 

Enjoy your status quo I guess.

You guessed Wrong.

I'm all for development and improved efficiency. There's nothing wrong with conservation either; as a landowner, I appreciate and practice conservation. That doesn't require a reversion of industry or de-industrialization as so many of Obama's "czars" have preached.

It is well-understood that as an economy or society advances, it becomes more efficient and conservative of resources.
The number-one rule of intelligent behavior is, "don't piss where you sleep."

deny ignorance

jw

GargIndia
reply to post by jdub297

 

It is not necessary to put up huge wind turbines.
Power can be generated by every home and every farm - by rooftop solar panels and small wind turbines.
Alongwith an efficient electric grid, power can be generated and distributed everywhere.

Farmers have been using wind energy (i.e., windmills) for centuries -- no government handouts needed!
We've also been using small-scale solar for gates, fences, lighting and other uses.

The problem is with Obama's top-down diversion and redistribution of taxpayer dollars to speculative and wasteful projects that do little for net CO2 reduction, and enrich his cronies and their political donation coffers.

deny ignorance

jw

GargIndia
Electric Tracks for Transportation
------------------------------------------

It is possible to bring a railhead within 15-20 km of every village and into every major town and city.
Laying rails is a well-established technology. The long term cost of rail is competitive with road.
The transport from farm to railhead can be covered by a new transport tech based on compressed air.

This actually occurred before the advent of interstate highways, created under Eisenhower.
Most of those tracks are overgrown, abandoned, or pulled-up for a variety of reasons; including basic economics and efficiency.

"It is possible" does not necessarily equate to correct, advisable, or even smart.

jw

reply to post by jdub297


USA has very low level of electrification.

The tracks are needed to be electrified. Electrified tracks can be used far more efficiently as 'locally' generated power can be used for transport.

I cannot comment on Mr Obama. The national development must be driven by national goals which should represent all sections of the society.

Why I brought up 'rail'. Because rail is far more efficient (in terms of power use) and environment friendly (the tracks merge much better into the landscape, and rails are recyclable).

jdub297

sealing
Hell yeah !!
Lets keep using dead dinosaurs as fuel and
keep our 17 Oil billionaires mega-rich, fat and happy.

Screw renewables, Screw the 7,000,000,000
other inhabitants on the planet.

Stupid green energy

Exactly!
Think of all the workers, stores, houses and communities those oil barons have created and support every year.
"Renewables" will never in our lifetimes be the economic drivers of growth, innovation and wealth that fossil fuels have been , are today and will be for the foreseeable future.

There's no such thing as "renewables;" wind and solar consume resources that are neither "green" nor "renewable" in their production and maintenance. Hydro-electric requires huge dams, energy-intensive construction and maintenance, and harm downstream and upstream users of the water source, as well as the local environment.

Development and innovation result in greater efficiency and cleaner production. Look at studies of the "Kuznets Curve," and you will see that growth is the answer, not de-industrialization or blind adherence to inefficient and intermittent alternatives.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be saying that the answer to the problems associated with climate change is to keep doing more of the things that brought climate change about in the first place. We have rising global temperatures, rapidly melting land-based ice in the Arctic, a spring-back effect on the crust of the Earth causing tectonic stress and increasing geological activity, and according to Prof Lovelock we may well be into irreversible positive feedback - in 2008 Jay Zwally, chief climatologist at NASA stated on seeing the state of Greenland, 'The canary is dead, it's time to get out of the mine...'

Can the answer really be to continue doing what we are doing?

I agree the political will is not there in the industrialized (or in the non-industrialized) world to address climate change and we need to ask why, but I'm sorry, to continue doing what has created so much damage already is precisely Einstein's definition of insanity: to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.

We need an intelligent debate aimed at finding a solution instead of apportioning blame, and we need a long term plan which addresses all of the problems.

reply to post by GargIndia


Even then you're on the same slippery slope.

To generate electricity they still burn fossil fuels (for those not on nuclear or wind power). Coal plants are more common than any other type..

If you increase the demands on the electrical grid you increase coal consumption and then you're still stuck in the perpetual fossil fuel cycle. Burning coal is dirty.

reply to post by DaMod


You can design an economy without coal and petroleum.

The electricity is produced from hydel, solar, wind, tide, natural gas, bio-mass etc. I said 'natural gas' as it is a renewable source (gas keeps on forming on earth due to natural processes).

The issue is usually transport, or machines that move. Liquid fuels are superior in energy output compared to other sources. However this is a matter of trade-off. Liquid fuels are also dirty - producing a lot of harmful pollution.

The economy has to get away from liquid fuels eventually. This requires a LOT of investment and determination.

Surface transport using rails is the most efficient in terms of energy use. So there is a lot of merit in promoting electrified rails. This is what is happening in China and India.