Forests of Concrete and Steel

[icefisher]

icecap.us/images/uploads/Driessen-Forestsofconcreteandsteel.pdf

Nice piece on sustainable economics.

The problem is when the government becomes the primary force of creating jobs its a lot like an entire nation depending upon potatoes as a food source.

One nice thing about laissez-faire private enterprise and the survival of the fittest, it allows human ingenuity to flourish in an unrestricted way.

Sure you have economic downturns but there is going to be somebody with a bright idea that is going to bring stuff back together. . . .who will go out and convince others and bring in the necessary support.

When the government creates green jobs like Spain in this article, as soon as the economy goes south those are the first jobs that go south as well.

Finally a word about environmentalism. Its successful nations that implement environmentalist programs. The third world drags its feet and per capita remains the worst of the polluters.

Today we have an element that would suggest its the developed nations that is the problem. But one should note that they are just guessing.

The fact is if CO2 proves to be a pollutant, which I give that idea about an icecubes chance in he11, it will be the developed world that will fixes it.

There isn't really a lot of mystery to this. Some would like to suggest mankind is incapable, stupid, and stogy. . . .and get this. . . .they think they know what is best for us. LOL!

Gore is really a God! Right Socold?

[sigurdur]

Gore is a mouthpiece of Gavin Schmidt and his ilks. He knows less about co2 than I do, and I don't know much. He DOES know where the money trail is and is using it well for himself. His lifestyle by itself shows that he has no concern for co2 emissions.

It really is.......how you live, not how you talk that matters. And former VP Gore is living extremely well off others.

[nautonnier]

Unfortunately, feasibility comes well down the list in priority in political decisions well after "can I get to the end of my term of office before the country reaps what we have sown" and "have I got someone else to blame if it goes wrong".

It is now looking very much like UK will be into California style rolling blackouts as power generating capacity will be reduced with the closure of old nuclear power generating plant that has reached the end of life with no replacement and working coal fired generators that will be closed as they do not meet the EU new stringent GHG emissions targets. There is NO chance that wind power will come anywhere near close to replacing the capacity of just one nuclear plant before these blackouts.

Welcome to Hansen and Gore's Utopia

[curiousgeorge]

“What we have here is failure to communicate.” ( The Captain to Luke )

The real issue for real people is the impact that various upcoming legislation will have on their lives, not whether it’s cooler this year than last or whether CO2 is good or bad. The most well known piece of legislation is HR 2454 commonly known as the “Climate Bill” (although there are over 200 other related bills in work ). According to the EPA, if this becomes law approx. 78 million acres of cropland will be taken out of use and turned into forest by 2050. That is nearly 20 percent of total cropland in the United States. www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/ag/blogs/template1&blogHandle=policy&blogEntryId=8a82c0bc22ad9a120122b23492cd0032&showCommentsOverride=false . That means 78,000,000 fewer acres to grow food on for a lot more people (~ 415million by 2050 in the USA ). This does not include land that may be devoted to growing junk crops for ethanol, or land taken out of production for solar/wind farms, roads, buildings, shopping malls, etc.

Nobody gives a rats patootie about CO2 or a couple degrees of temp up or down when they are starving.

[nautonnier]

Add to the slow south progression of the grow-line in the Canadian prairie and we are setting up for a major problem.

All discussed at length on the 'A cold world with no Oil' thread.

[steve]

How much has the build up of coal and oil production been dependent on subsidies? And how much does it continue to be dependent on subsidies?

In addition to subsidies, coal and oil production depend on infrastructure (grid, roads, railways) that was built with these fuel supplies in mind. Wind and solar power needs an expanded grid and modified transmission methods in addition to the new turbines.

To what degree is it fair to highlight the costs of the new grid and new technology as a subsidy, if it ends up being paid for by the taxpayer, and to downplay the benefits that current infrastructure, also part-paid for by the taxpayer, bestows to incumbent energy sources?

[icefisher]

Jul 27, 2009 9:05:28 GMT steve said:

How much has the build up of coal and oil production been dependent on subsidies? And how much does it continue to be dependent on subsidies?

In addition to subsidies, coal and oil production depend on infrastructure (grid, roads, railways) that was built with these fuel supplies in mind. Wind and solar power needs an expanded grid and modified transmission methods in addition to the new turbines.

To what degree is it fair to highlight the costs of the new grid and new technology as a subsidy, if it ends up being paid for by the taxpayer, and to downplay the benefits that current infrastructure, also part-paid for by the taxpayer, bestows to incumbent energy sources?

Sometimes subsidies are earned. It seems to me that folks were using coal and oil for a whole plethora of things before any subsidies came along. It was the clamouring of the masses to enjoy the same benefits that led to subsidization to bring the "good life" to all.

I don't think anybody had to invent a problem to make that happen.

Plenty of places in the world still where little infrastructure exists where you can go and subsidize alternatives. Imagine Steve, when oil runs out what a favor you would be doing for the 3rd world!!!

[steve]

I have no ideological problem with subsidies. But the masses in the West now, mostly, have access to power from coal, oil and gas, so the direct subsidies should stop now surely.

Obviously, now we currently have the benefits of all this fossil fuel at our fingertips, it is easy to construct a superficial case against alternatives. But as well as the CO2 issue, there is (for Europe) the issue that oil comes from the Middle East and gas from Russia.

So if there is a case to be made for building the infrastructure to support a wind-energy industry, then there is also a case to be made for it being subsidised.

[stevenotsteve]

steve.
In addition to subsidies, coal and oil production depend on infrastructure (grid, roads, railways) that was built with these fuel supplies in mind. Wind and solar power needs an expanded grid and modified transmission methods in addition to the new turbines.

Lets not forget that in addition to all of the above we also need WIND. I drive past 6 turbines every day and they are stationary sometimes for days at a time. Maybe we need to build turbines in pairs facing each other so that when there is no wind we can use the coal fired power stations to turn one into a fan to blow the other around..

We need 80GW of generating capacity going up to 100GW by 2020 according to the national grid. Our local turbines are 2MW turbines but have averaged only 440KW over the last few years. The governments 30% wind/renewable target will be 33GW by 2020 or 75000 turbines or one every 1.5km covering the UK. These are generally sited in windy areas to get the 22% efficiency. Are there 75000 windy locations in the UK?

Can you not see that even though it sounds like a great idea, why bother subsiding something that simple maths shows cannot work.

[nautonnier]

There is another aspect to covering the country with windmills, they take energy out of the atmosphere. I do not believe there is such a thing as a 'free lunch'. The energy extracted from the wind will lead to an increase in the surface boundary layer drag and the wind direction and strengths will be affected.

Has anyone done any research on the impact all this energy extraction from wind may have on weather?

[poitsplace]

Jul 27, 2009 23:41:07 GMT nautonnier said:

There is another aspect to covering the country with windmills, they take energy out of the atmosphere. I do not believe there is such a thing as a 'free lunch'. The energy extracted from the wind will lead to an increase in the surface boundary layer drag and the wind direction and strengths will be affected.

Has anyone done any research on the impact all this energy extraction from wind may have on weather?

Actually the models (that I read about) showed that they caused a slight drop in energy flow away from the poles...so it's kind of a crap shoot. On the one hand if we ARE causing the planet to warm, that would help to restore the pre-warming temperature ranges (at the cost of warming the equatorial regions a bit more). On the other hand, if the earth is about to cool that would make it get cooler that much faster because of increased ice-albedo feedback.

Its pointless to consider though, I think we'd have to build something like a 100000-150000, three megawatt turbines to meet US power demands.

...of course, this assumes the models are able to predict anything in the first place

[steve]

I recall reading a report saying similar to what poitsplace said. I think they were talking about very very large numbers of wind turbines.

Yes I know about the issues with windy/not windy days. That's why for "renewables" you need a new grid (to allow power to be transmitted from windy to non-windy areas) using new technology such as high voltage DC (to reduce power losses), new storage mechanisms (dams, batteries) and new equipment that can cope with outages ("intelligent" meters and equipment that can afford to run when there is an excess of power and shut down when power is expensive).

None of that stuff will get developed without the odd subsidy here or there.

[poitsplace]

Or we could just use the newer reactors that only use about 1% U235 and produce the rest as they go...all in a sealed reactor with a sort of rolling breeder reactor process. Then we could forget about the big push for renewables...with their higher infrastructure requirements, higher costs, enormous footprints and unreliable output.

[stevenotsteve]

poitsplace.
Or we could just use the newer reactors that only use about 1% U235 and produce the rest as they go...


That would get my vote. Isn't it interesting that whenever the greens talk about nuclear it's Chernobyl and waste dumps and not countries like France that have an excellent nuclear industry and safety record.

[steve]

Jul 28, 2009 8:04:13 GMT stevenotsteve said:

poitsplace.
Or we could just use the newer reactors that only use about 1% U235 and produce the rest as they go...

That would get my vote. Isn't it interesting that whenever the greens talk about nuclear it's Chernobyl and waste dumps and not countries like France that have an excellent nuclear industry and safety record.

Yes, the French are a strongly market-oriented country that wouldn't dream of using tax-payers money to subsidise their industries. Also, every year the French put a big cloth over their reactors, say "Et voila", remove the cloth and all the waste has magically disappeared to Siberia. Marvellous technology.