Re: global warming

On Oct 16, 7:44 pm, ChrisQ <m...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Bill Slomanwrote:

I'm for replacing the current generation of coal and gas-fire power
stations with windmills.

Sorry, but that shows just how far off the wall you are. Stuff I've read
over years tells me that wind could never provide more than 10 to 12% of
current uk energy needs and that even those figures have been skewed to
conveniently omit the fact that there is no wind for much of the time.

You might try getting your reading up to date. Current estaimates are
that we could co,lect some 77TW of windpower against a global power
consumption of 12TW

http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/windpower/ResourceMap/index-world.html

Even if it were realistic, there's no storage, so we would need giant
infrastructure projects to provide pumped water systems to fill the gaps.

Or pumped air, or fossil-carbon powered base-load stations with carbon-
dioxide sequestration.

How much will this cost and who will pay for it ?.

About twice as much as we currently pay, with current technology and
scale. As with all other technology, enlarging the market brings
economies of scale, and wind energy is expected to break even with
today's coal and oil fired generators around 2030. A serious push
towards renewable power would bring that forward.

Fossil-carbon fired power stations could be
built to capture CO2 as it was produced and bury it - it would double
the price of price of power, but that does seem to an inevitable
consequence of doing something about anthropogenic global warming, and
it wouldn't do any noticeable violence to the economy.

Much too clumsy, expensive and complicated.

Certainly more expensive and complicated than exisiting power
stations, but not a lot more expensive or complicated.

Forget fossil fuel and build nuclear.

We've been building nuclear for fifty years now and we still haven't
worked out how to dispose of the radioactive waste. If you want
expensive, clumsy and complicated nuclear fission is the way to go.

Again, sorry, but that's the most realistic short term
(decades) answer while we figure out how to make fusion work properly.

Realistic - as in mind-bendingly stupid.

Agreed, there's waste, but we will figure out a way to deal with that as
well.

We haven't yet, and it looks as if we never will.

As for the economy, what do you think would be the effect of doubling
the price of electricity and gas, to any western economy ?.

If it happened overnight, much the same as the Arabs quadrupling the
price of oil back in 1973 - a short recession and a lot of emphasis on
improving efficiency.

Of course, it wouldn't happen overnight - we can't build windfarms
that fast - and a progessive rise would have much the same negligible
effect as steadily rising oil prices have had.

Cars will have to become electric in a tolerably rapid tempo, and
international flights are going to have to be cut back a lot. Tourists
are going to have to get around in train and boats.

So we will probably need to double the number of power stations to
charge the batteries. How will this happen, what will it cost, how will
it be paid for and and what will fuel them ?.

How do power stations ever get built? It will cost a lot, but nothing
we can't afford - the military may have to get used to waiting a
little longer between getting new toys to play with - and the fuel
will have to be something sustainable. Probably wind-power in the
first instance, but we should get aroud to covering a few deserts with
solar power generators before long, and build some decent sized super-
conducting DC links to get the power to where it is needed.

Electric would be a good idea, but won't really be ready for prime time
until the range problem is solved.

I hardly ever exploit the full range of my car's petrol tank, and most
other people use their cars for short journeys. The world won't come
to and end if you have to refuel your car nmore frequently.

That looks years away, as does the
refuelling infrastructure required to support mass electification of
transport. Then there's the fact that countries like China hold much of
the world's lithium reserves, whose price will skyrocket once mass
electrification starts and we have another gotcha. Once again, who will
pay for all this ?.

China may hold the most easily exploited sources of lithium, but if
the price goes up much people will find other sources, and battery
technologists will work out how to get more battery out of less
lithium, or work out how to make batteries out of something completely
different. Economies of scale tend to show up unexpectedly.

A Prius would be a step in the right direction, but a well-used Prius
isn't easy to come by.

Now i'm sure you are not being serious. The Prius is ugly, gutless,
expensive to produce and own and has no range on electric alone. Even
the name sucks, sounding as it does like some unmentionable medical
condition.

The Japanese have never had much luck finding names for their cars
that sound good to English speakers. The Cedric was probably the low
point. The Prius is designed to appeal to the mature and responsible
motorist. It may be gutless, but while I was peeved when my wife
traded in our old 2-litre Nissan Primera for a later 1.6 litre model,
nowdays even the 1.6 litres is essentially wasted - now that radar-
controlled speed cameras have spread all over Europe, I can't drive
the car anywhere at faster than 130 km/hour, even though it can and
did cruise for hours at 160 km/hour back when the French never
bothered to enforce the speed limits. on their toll motorways.

A much better solution would be one of the later small diesels, some of
which apparently show more mpg and less pollution than the prius. Just
not fast enough and enough fun though :-(...

One spends so little time driving a car on lightly travelled
interesting roads that it doesn't make much sense to pay much for a
car that could be fun on these rare occasions.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

.

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