Alternative energy
May. 27th, 2010 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nolawitch58People who complain that society can't transition away from fossil fuels because replacement technolgies aren't robust ignore evolution. Not only are they ignorant, but they also use the lack of replacement technology to do nothing. That serves no one except the dinosaur industries civilization needs to supplant eventually.
Why should anyone ever have invented the light bulb? There weren't any electric lamps or house wiring or utility companies to provide electricity back then. Candles worked just fine. Who needed light bulbs?
To that way of thinking, we should never have adopted the use of automobiles over horses. In their early days, autos wer crude and shonky pieces of equipment. Motorists at the beginning of the 20th Century had to be mechanics and engineers and have adventurous spirits. There were no local parts stores, no tow trucks, no service stations, no paved roads or consistency of auto design. Because the automobile, replacement technology for the horse, was not reliable or inexpensive it should not have been explored.
Nor should we have televisions. Since early sets weren't cable-ready flat-screen plasma high-def TVs, what was the point? When TV was young, broadcasts were in black and white. The average set was 12 inches, contained in a wooden cabinet filled with wires and tubes. The sound quality was hi-fi mono, no stereo. There were three networks, and their broadcast day actually had a beginning and ending time. Because there wasn't an endless flow of trivial entertainment on dozens of channels, TV was a waste of time to bother with.
Applying their logic to phones, since cell phones with their ability to surf the internet, take pictures and play MP3s did not exist from the outset, nothing more than letter writing should have been encouraged. Would the average person today even know how to use a telephone circa 1900? Some of them didn't even have a rotary dial. To make a call, a person had to lift the earpiece, crank the handle and wait for an operator. The operator would ask, "Number, please," and the caller would say an exchange, such as Murray Hill 7, and a number. Hardly anyone today remembers phone numbers; they're all programmed into cell phone contact lists. Phone technology wasn't worth the time either.
These are just a few examples of the hundreds of technologies that started modestly and grew into wonders more impressive than perhaps even their inventors ever dreamed. Why do the naysayers of solar and wind and other renewable, less polluting energy technologies persist in their negative opinion? Perhaps it's fear of being proven wrong. Maybe they simply don't possess the intellect to extrapolate such evolutions themselves. Nevertheless, we have seen in our lifetimes new industries rise from humble beginnings to provide solutions to problems the cold and timid souls among us would have everyone continue to suffer for their lack of vision.
Why should anyone ever have invented the light bulb? There weren't any electric lamps or house wiring or utility companies to provide electricity back then. Candles worked just fine. Who needed light bulbs?
To that way of thinking, we should never have adopted the use of automobiles over horses. In their early days, autos wer crude and shonky pieces of equipment. Motorists at the beginning of the 20th Century had to be mechanics and engineers and have adventurous spirits. There were no local parts stores, no tow trucks, no service stations, no paved roads or consistency of auto design. Because the automobile, replacement technology for the horse, was not reliable or inexpensive it should not have been explored.
Nor should we have televisions. Since early sets weren't cable-ready flat-screen plasma high-def TVs, what was the point? When TV was young, broadcasts were in black and white. The average set was 12 inches, contained in a wooden cabinet filled with wires and tubes. The sound quality was hi-fi mono, no stereo. There were three networks, and their broadcast day actually had a beginning and ending time. Because there wasn't an endless flow of trivial entertainment on dozens of channels, TV was a waste of time to bother with.
Applying their logic to phones, since cell phones with their ability to surf the internet, take pictures and play MP3s did not exist from the outset, nothing more than letter writing should have been encouraged. Would the average person today even know how to use a telephone circa 1900? Some of them didn't even have a rotary dial. To make a call, a person had to lift the earpiece, crank the handle and wait for an operator. The operator would ask, "Number, please," and the caller would say an exchange, such as Murray Hill 7, and a number. Hardly anyone today remembers phone numbers; they're all programmed into cell phone contact lists. Phone technology wasn't worth the time either.
These are just a few examples of the hundreds of technologies that started modestly and grew into wonders more impressive than perhaps even their inventors ever dreamed. Why do the naysayers of solar and wind and other renewable, less polluting energy technologies persist in their negative opinion? Perhaps it's fear of being proven wrong. Maybe they simply don't possess the intellect to extrapolate such evolutions themselves. Nevertheless, we have seen in our lifetimes new industries rise from humble beginnings to provide solutions to problems the cold and timid souls among us would have everyone continue to suffer for their lack of vision.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-28 01:35 pm (UTC)It will be like most new tech: available only to the wealthy until it drops in price. The first ballpoint pen sold (at the turn of the 20th century) for $65 each and was considered a luxury item. It was only when the patent had just a few years left that the BIC company cheapified the product for the mass market, so they could make an extra "killing" before the design went public domain. (I learned that bit of IP law in an advertising class, actually).
Wrong gripe, actually.
Date: 2010-05-29 01:52 pm (UTC)They never (and I do mean *never*) consider the implications and whole-lifecycle cost of their proposed changes.
Furthermore, they have scored so many insane own goals that they've turned a great many people against them.
For example:
Electric Road Vehicles.
These are actually very bad for the environment at present, as well as totally impracticable.
Why?
These vehicles can *only* be 'zero-emission' if powered from a 'zero-emission' electrical source. At University we did some energy-consumption and emissions analysis using the published figures for electric vehicles, assuming then-current generating stock.
The result was that an electric vehicle had almost identical* emissions to an equivalent petrol vehicle - all it did was move the emissions to a generating plant.
Furthermore, the batteries inside them are not recyclable** and contain large amounts of heavy metals - Lithium, Cadmium etc.
Electric Trains are a much better idea, because they don't have to carry the batteries.
To make it even worse, the very same people who are suggesting we move over to electric vehicles are also insisting that we close down all our existing generating stock - coal, nuclear and gas - and 'replace' it with a replacement that simply cannot do the current job.
- Let alone the doubling or quadrupling of the demand that electric road vehicles would require.
It's even worse because they refuse to countenance nuclear, which is the only compact zero-emission technology in existence.
Wind is obviously incapable of replacing the current generating stock, and the reasons why are very simple:
Wind is not predictable, wind is not constant, and finally, (which should be the killer) wind is very low energy density.
Concrete example:
The London Array (Wind, under construction) is intended to generate up to 1000MW from 341 turbines, across 245 km2.
- It will only produce that much in perfect wind conditions. Too little and the output drops, too much and they have to turn the whole thing off completely.
I cannot find any statistics for predicted mean output - every stat is given in terms of 'up to', which going by my broadband connection means that the actual generation will be half that.
Drax Power Station (Coal) generates a maximum of 3960MW and it can do that continuously, on demand. The site is about 2km2, including coal dump.
(Google Maps Image)
To give a sense of scale, at the moment of posting, UK demand is 33406MW.
There are renewable methods that we should be looking at:
Solar furnaces (NOT photovoltaic) - a lot of work has already been done in Spain, France and the USA.
Wave generation - a lot of work is being undertaken in the UK, but nothing has scaled up so far.
Tidal would be devastating to the environment, plus it only actually works twice a day so has to be coupled with some kind of storage, such as pumped-storage hydro.
Nuclear can and should take the base load - as is done in France.
This could be done now - and if it isn't, then we'll have rolling blackouts in the UK the moment any of the current stock of nuclear plants are decommissioned.
Thus engineers like myself just get irritated at the Greens, because they issue edicts with no thought behind them.
Electricity is not free, and it cannot be easily stored - it must be generated somewhere at the moment of usage.
*CO2 increased, some other pollutant gases increased and decreased, but the change was minimal and inside the error bars.
Ash was ignored as it is reused as a building material.
**This may change, but not soon.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-30 04:56 am (UTC)I've figured out how our government works, I've figured out how some of our protest movements work, I can tell you clean energy is coming, but it is being artificially slowed.
The biggest thing standing in the way of clean energy is of course money. Not how much it costs to implement, but how much of the "monetary flow" that runs our world is wrapped up in petrochemicals. I will say, even without the "monetary flow" it would take us a century at minimum to become 100% petrochem free, but we have the ability to hit 95% in a couple of decades - the last mile issue will always be an issue. To me 95% is a good place to be.
The problems:
Right Wingers in bed with petrochem companies.
Left Wingers blocking every clean energy project they can.
Oil companies are "leading" the way towards oil independence. In other words the fox is guarding the hen house. They know their days are numbered, and they ARE developing and patenting technology, however they aren't rolling it out while their bread and butter is still viable. This is why BP officially changed their name from "British Petroleum" to "Beyond Petroleum" years ago, to mask their position. Shell is building lots of windmills. Why are they shooting themselves in the foot? They're NOT! Most electricity in the US is NOT generated by gasoline, it's coal, followed by natural gas and nuclear. They only have a small fraction of electrical generation, notice they throw a lot more money into municipal power than electric vehicles.
There are a lot of solutions to the individual car problem. Nobody wants to build them, and on the rare occasions they are built they are sabotaged. One of the solutions I brought up at work is long distance train travel with your car. It keeps people from driving on the interstate, saves fuel, saves lives, saves nerves of those who would otherwise have to drive. An old codger at work who loves trains and has for decades gave me info. It's been done. Turns out if you try this employees have a lot of "accidents", train tracks tend to get destroyed, trees happen to lay across those tracks, even where trees don't grow to those sizes.
The problem isn't lack of initiative of the individual - it's protectionist policies. Turns out the US government isn't all that different from Mexico's, the difference is that Mexican officials want bribes from individuals, in the US the line between government official and corporate employee is a bit blurry.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-17 11:23 am (UTC)