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#1
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New study on wind energy
Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about
1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. |
#2
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New study on wind energy
On 7/19/2011 6:12 PM, HeyBub wrote:
Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. Nice, clean windmill sound nice but energy consumed in building them and the need for back-up diesel generators are not considered. They may or may not be putting them offshore here in Delaware and you can imagine the compounding cost of installation and effect of salt water on them, They don't use above ground transmission lines either and cables have to be run under the sea surface. http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/2...NESS/107170308 |
#3
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New study on wind energy
In article , Frank
wrote: Nice, clean windmill sound nice but energy consumed in building them and the need for back-up diesel generators are not considered. do you think that the energy consumed in building any power plant is considered? It's just a guess, but if we actually did that I would imagine the balance point would shift considerably towards all renewables |
#4
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 19, 7:02*pm, Frank wrote:
On 7/19/2011 6:12 PM, HeyBub wrote: Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. Nice, clean windmill sound nice but energy consumed in building them and the need for back-up diesel generators are not considered. They may or may not be putting them offshore here in Delaware and you can imagine the compounding cost of installation and effect of salt water on them, *They don't use above ground transmission lines either and cables have to be run under the sea surface. http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/2...ESS/107170308- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - All power plants have maintenance costs. |
#5
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New study on wind energy
On 7/19/2011 7:20 PM, Malcom "Mal" Reynolds wrote:
In , wrote: Nice, clean windmill sound nice but energy consumed in building them and the need for back-up diesel generators are not considered. do you think that the energy consumed in building any power plant is considered? It's just a guess, but if we actually did that I would imagine the balance point would shift considerably towards all renewables Of course. You have to do complete studies of all of the factors involved. The green energy projects all depend on subsidies. Lot of them are being sucked into Delaware and I strongly suspect when subsidies dry up, so will the companies. The government is being snookered by them. There is a new one with direct conversion of natural gas to electricity with fuel cells. Opponents have pointed out that there are gas burning turbines with the same efficiency that put out the same amount of carbon dioxide but cost far less. Who do you trust more, engineers or politicians? |
#6
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New study on wind energy
"HeyBub" writes:
Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. If that's a "fact" I guess there's no point, but what the hell... The link provided refers to a "Bentek" report but if there is a link to the report, I must have missed it. Here's the Bentek web site: http://www.bentekenergy.com/ "We are a recognized leader in natural gas, oil and NGL market fundamental analysis." On the link provided, there's this odd bit: The Global Wind Energy Council, one of the industry's main lobby groups, claims that reducing the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere "is the most important environmental benefit from wind power generation." I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me. The rest of the page deals with CO2. I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. -- Dan Espen |
#7
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New study on wind energy
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#8
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New study on wind energy
wrote in message ...
stuff snipped I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. Me too. While solar and wind may never fully replace oil and coal, they can put a serious dent in our need for either. We seem to have entered a binary world where things are either black or white. No gray allowed. "If taxing the rich like they used to be taxed doesn't *immediately* solve the money crisis, then there's no sense in doing it at all" seems to be the mantra of many who forgot we got in this mess one day at a time and it's going to take time to get out of it. A similarly nonsensical position is to believe solar, wind, tidal and other sources of power shouldn't be explored because they are not going to replace oil and coal instantly. Even if the Feds have to pony up some seed money, it's better to have the idle machinists in Detroit building *something* useful instead of sitting home doing nothing. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. Finally!!! A person who gets it!!! Why is it OK to steal resources from our children's future but not OK to put them into debt? The answer is, of course, that neither thing is good to do. It's just that the national debt situation makes for good political theater. Maybe if we got smart and didn't hand over billions of dollars to a country that gave safe-haven to Osama bin Laden we could save our way back to prosperity. I don't seem to recall anyone clamoring over how much it cost to start the two wars we have no chance of winning. I don't even recall anyone clearly elucidating what we stood to gain from these wars. What have we gained? So far it seems to me the only thing we have to show for those wars is a large group of horribly wounded soldiers that the CBO estimates might cost ANOTHER trillion dollars to care for duing their (often) miserable lifetimes. I don't know about you, but if I spend two or three trillion on something, I'd like to get at least some value. Obama and Bush were equally stupid about these wars, thinking they could deny Al-Qaeda "training camps." Someone should have told them it's an awfully big world out there and we don't have enough troops to keep it all terrorist free. We weren't able to stop McVeigh on our own home turf. What does that say about the sanity of thinking we can lock terrorism down worldwide? The terrorists are laughing themselves silly at us because we've spent ourselves into near bankruptcy chasing down ghosts and goat herders. That's just what they wanted - to terrorize us into not thinking clearly - and it just BURNS me that we've allowed them to succeed to the point where we're near broke and openly fighting amongst ourselves. Both parties have people in them with good ideas but they're getting drowned out and run over by leaders who believe that winning is the ONLY thing. It's more important than getting the country back to prosperity. If there's a SINGLE economist who thinks the plan to default on the US debt is a *good* idea, I haven't come across them. Universally they seem to be saying that going into default has the potential to double our trouble by raising the cost to borrow money and paying the added costs of dealing with the chaos a government shutdown would cause. Ironic, considering it was two wars, the TSA and a pro-business Medicare drug plan that have helped drive us so deeply into debt. All that happened under someone else's watch. We've reached the uneviable situation where political leaders are saying, in reality, "we would rather see the baby cut in TWO rather than have those devils in the OTHER party get it all!" -- Bobby G. |
#9
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New study on wind energy
HeyBub wrote: Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. Hi, Every coin has two sides. Been to Denmark? They have hundreds of wind turbines along their coast line. Denmark is not a country of children, is it? |
#10
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 12:23*am, jamesgangnc wrote:
On Jul 19, 7:02*pm, Frank wrote: On 7/19/2011 6:12 PM, HeyBub wrote: Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. Nice, clean windmill sound nice but energy consumed in building them and the need for back-up diesel generators are not considered. They may or may not be putting them offshore here in Delaware and you can imagine the compounding cost of installation and effect of salt water on them, *They don't use above ground transmission lines either and cables have to be run under the sea surface. http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/2...107170308-Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - All power plants have maintenance costs.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - PV? |
#11
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 4:21*am, Tony Hwang wrote:
HeyBub wrote: Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. Hi, Every coin has two sides. Been to Denmark? They have hundreds of wind turbines along their coast line. Denmark is not a country of children, is it?- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - The Danish are a special case. They have many ideal sites for turbines. At times of high wind, they can export surplus power to other countries,(Norway and Germany.) They make most of their money selling turbines to others (mostly us it seems) They get subsidies for power produced (again a lot from us) |
#12
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 3:46*am, "HeyBub" wrote:
wrote: I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me. The rest of the page deals with CO2. I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant. Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. *I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. -------- Which commodities were they? (Just about everything seems more expensive to me.) Why does costing more make them harder to find? |
#13
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New study on wind energy
harry wrote:
We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. -------- Which commodities were they? (Just about everything seems more expensive to me.) I mis-remembered. There were five (picked by Ehrlich). The wager was $1,000 each. Whatever the differential in price after a decade would go to the winner. chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten "Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history. But by September 1990, without a single exception, the price of each of Ehrlich's selected metals had fallen, and in some cases had dropped significantly. Chromium, which had sold for $3.90 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.70 in 1990. Tin, which was $8.72 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.88 a decade later." Why does costing more make them harder to find? It doesn't. Being harder to find makes them cost more. Price is a convenient metric for scarcity. |
#14
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 3:24*am, harry wrote:
On Jul 20, 12:23*am, jamesgangnc wrote: On Jul 19, 7:02*pm, Frank wrote: On 7/19/2011 6:12 PM, HeyBub wrote: Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. Nice, clean windmill sound nice but energy consumed in building them and the need for back-up diesel generators are not considered. They may or may not be putting them offshore here in Delaware and you can imagine the compounding cost of installation and effect of salt water on them, *They don't use above ground transmission lines either and cables have to be run under the sea surface. http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/2...308-Hidequoted text - - Show quoted text - All power plants have maintenance costs.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - PV?- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Limited life span then the cells have to be replaced. Supports, controls, etc all require maintenance. Nothing wrong with the government subsidizing renewable. Economies of scale will reduce the costs and at the same time the costs of non- renewable fuels will continue to rise. At some point the scale tips and the renewables become cheaper. Until then the government accelerates the growth with subsidies. Just makes the inevitable happen a few years sooner. |
#15
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New study on wind energy
In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote: wrote in message ... stuff snipped I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. Me too. While solar and wind may never fully replace oil and coal, they can put a serious dent in our need for either. We seem to have entered a binary world where things are either black or white. No gray allowed. "If taxing the rich like they used to be taxed doesn't *immediately* solve the money crisis, then there's no sense in doing it at all" seems to be the mantra of many who forgot we got in this mess one day at a time and it's going to take time to get out of it. Actually it wouldn't be. Taxing the rich like they used to be would actually make it worse. According to IRS figures, 1980 the top 1% (and you can't get any richer than that) paid 19.05% oF fed income taxes. By 1987 (I toss this in since the tax changes in '86 include some in the definition of Adjusted Gross Income so prior to this is not exactly comparable) it was 24.81% and by 2008 (the last I could find) it was 38.02%. So, in order to tax the rich like we did in the 80s, we would have to cut their taxes in half. A similarly nonsensical position is to believe solar, wind, tidal and other sources of power shouldn't be explored because they are not going to replace oil and coal instantly. Even if the Feds have to pony up some seed money, it's better to have the idle machinists in Detroit building *something* useful instead of sitting home doing nothing. Not from an economical standpoint. If the only reason something is "successful" is because of the tax impacts, when they go away so will the jobs. Better to get the person in something that is going to last than to put him into make work jobs. The second wave of S&L failures, for instance, were largely related to a change in the tax laws that (retroactively) took away some artificial incentives to build. These were largely built as a tax dodge (which made at least some econ sense until the advantages went away). -- People thought cybersex was a safe alternative, until patients started presenting with sexually acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz |
#16
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Wide vs narrow blades (was: New study on wind energy)
HeyBub wrote:
"The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions." When you look at an ordinary fan, it has large blades that occupy a significant portion of the cross-sectional swept area. When you look at a wind turbine, the blades are very thin, occupying a very minimal amount of swept area, allowing much of the wind energy to flow right through or between the blades. If a fan has fan blades that are designed to *efficiently move air*, then why won't that same basic blade design also be *efficiently moved by air* ? |
#17
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Wide vs narrow blades (was: New study on wind energy)
On Jul 20, 9:03*am, Home Guy wrote:
HeyBub wrote: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions." When you look at an ordinary fan, it has large blades that occupy a significant portion of the cross-sectional swept area. When you look at a wind turbine, the blades are very thin, occupying a very minimal amount of swept area, allowing much of the wind energy to flow right through or between the blades. If a fan has fan blades that are designed to *efficiently move air*, then why won't that same basic blade design also be *efficiently moved by air* ? That's not true. Look at a propeller airplane. It's blades move air and they are long and thin. |
#18
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 8:27*am, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article , *"Robert Green" wrote: wrote in ... stuff snipped I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. Me too. *While solar and wind may never fully replace oil and coal, they can put a serious dent in our need for either. *We seem to have entered a binary world where things are either black or white. *No gray allowed. *"If taxing the rich like they used to be taxed doesn't *immediately* solve the money crisis, then there's no sense in doing it at all" seems to be the mantra of many who forgot we got in this mess one day at a time and it's going to take time to get out of it. * Actually it wouldn't be. Taxing the rich like they used to be would actually make it worse. According to IRS figures, 1980 the top 1% (and you can't get any richer than that) paid 19.05% oF fed income taxes. By 1987 (I toss this in since the tax changes in '86 include some in the definition of Adjusted Gross Income so prior to this is not exactly comparable) it was 24.81% and by 2008 (the last I could find) it was 38.02%. So, in order to tax the rich like we did in the 80s, we would have to cut their taxes in half. * * * A similarly nonsensical position is to believe solar, wind, tidal and other sources of power shouldn't be explored because they are not going to replace oil and coal instantly. *Even if the Feds have to pony up some seed money, it's better to have the idle machinists in Detroit building *something* useful instead of sitting home doing nothing. * * Not from an economical standpoint. If the only reason something is "successful" is because of the tax impacts, when they go away so will the jobs. Better to get the person in something that is going to last than to put him into make work jobs. The second wave of S&L failures, for instance, were largely related to a change in the tax laws that (retroactively) took away some artificial incentives to build. These were largely built as a tax dodge (which made at least some econ sense until the advantages went away). -- People thought cybersex was a safe alternative, until patients started presenting with sexually acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz You're pulling the typical conservative stunt. Cherry pick statistics to support your point. What about the percenatges of wealth held by the rich. And the increased difference between the wealthy, the middle class, and the poor. You can't take one stat in isolation and use it to prove a point. You have to look at the whole picture. Besides it's not just the rich, what about tax breaks for oil companies that post record profits? What kind of sense does that make. How do you defend that? |
#19
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Wide vs narrow blades (was: New study on wind energy)
On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 06:09:59 -0700 (PDT), jamesgangnc
wrote: On Jul 20, 9:03*am, Home Guy wrote: HeyBub wrote: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions." When you look at an ordinary fan, it has large blades that occupy a significant portion of the cross-sectional swept area. When you look at a wind turbine, the blades are very thin, occupying a very minimal amount of swept area, allowing much of the wind energy to flow right through or between the blades. If a fan has fan blades that are designed to *efficiently move air*, then why won't that same basic blade design also be *efficiently moved by air* ? That's not true. Look at a propeller airplane. It's blades move air and they are long and thin. I feel an aerodynamics lesson coming. Jim |
#20
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Wide vs narrow blades
On 7/20/2011 8:03 AM, Home Guy wrote:
.... When you look at an ordinary fan, it has large blades that occupy a significant portion of the cross-sectional swept area. When you look at a wind turbine, the blades are very thin, occupying a very minimal amount of swept area, allowing much of the wind energy to flow right through or between the blades. If a fan has fan blades that are designed to *efficiently move air*, then why won't that same basic blade design also be *efficiently moved by air* ? Size has a lot to do with the design limitations. Interestingly enough, the efficiency of adding blades is relatively small; a one-blade rotor is nearly as efficient as two and the third is even less of an increase. While it doesn't go into a lot of technical detail, the wiki article outlines some of the basics of the various competing factors that go into modern generator blade design. Limiting is more the physical characteristics required for survival and control and related cost and the efficiency obtainable within those restrictions as opposed to only the efficiency (altho modern designs run probably nearly 80% of theoretical Betz limit of kinetic energy extraction which is roughly 60% of input field KE. I've not read the article for a while to see what, if anything has been added/updated, but had the link bookmarked-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design -- |
#21
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Wide vs narrow blades
On Jul 20, 9:50*am, dpb wrote:
On 7/20/2011 8:03 AM, Home Guy wrote: ... When you look at an ordinary fan, it has large blades that occupy a significant portion of the cross-sectional swept area. When you look at a wind turbine, the blades are very thin, occupying a very minimal amount of swept area, allowing much of the wind energy to flow right through or between the blades. If a fan has fan blades that are designed to *efficiently move air*, then why won't that same basic blade design also be *efficiently moved by air* ? Size has a lot to do with the design limitations. Interestingly enough, the efficiency of adding blades is relatively small; a one-blade rotor is nearly as efficient as two and the third is even less of an increase. While it doesn't go into a lot of technical detail, the wiki article outlines some of the basics of the various competing factors that go into modern generator blade design. Limiting is more the physical characteristics required for survival and control and related cost and the efficiency obtainable within those restrictions as opposed to only the efficiency (altho modern designs run probably nearly 80% of theoretical Betz limit of kinetic energy extraction which is roughly 60% of input field KE. I've not read the article for a while to see what, if anything has been added/updated, but had the link bookmarked-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design -- The trick is balancing the one blade model. Interestingly the same things apply to boat propellers. It also occurred to me there is another example of powered thin blades, helicopters. |
#22
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New study on wind energy
Kurt Ullman wrote:
Seems like we do this over and over again. -snip- Actually it wouldn't be. Taxing the rich like they used to be would actually make it worse. According to IRS figures, 1980 the top 1% (and you can't get any richer than that) paid 19.05% oF fed income taxes. Lets just say for the sake of argument that the whole enchilada is $100. That top 1% made 8 1/2% of the money in 1980. Their rate was 34%. [data from http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html ] The gov't collects $2.89 from those boys/girls. By 1987 (I toss this in since the tax changes in '86 include some in the definition of Adjusted Gross Income so prior to this is not exactly comparable) it was 24.81% and by 2008 (the last I could find) it was 38.02%. So, in order to tax the rich like we did in the 80s, we would have to cut their taxes in half. In 2008 they were making 20% of the money. And their rate was 23%. the gov't collects $4.46. So the gov't would make out pretty well if they started paying what us peons pay [if we include FICA] Jim |
#23
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New study on wind energy
"HeyBub" writes:
wrote: I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me. The rest of the page deals with CO2. I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant. No. Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve. If you know of a combustion process that produces only CO2 I'd like to know about it. I didn't say CO2, I said pollution. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. It's ridiculous to think we can take tungsten, helium, iron, copper, tin, lithium, etc out of the ground and scatter them through landfills without using them up. Yes, with advances in technology we can dig deeper and extract more. To think that this can go on forever is wishful thinking. Mining landfills is in our future. It won't be pretty. -- Dan Espen |
#24
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 19, 7:46*pm, "HeyBub" wrote:
wrote: I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me. The rest of the page deals with CO2. I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant. Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve. CO2 is poisonous to us in excessive quantities, just as is Oxygen, Water, etc. Nature has adjusted to the what was the average CO2 content back before the industrial revolution. It is now adjusting to our adding to it and we are not going to like the result. As to reducing our part in it? Ain't gonna happen. Best we can do is not increase our contribution above what it is today. Nothing we can do will reduce it withough totally wrecking industry. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. *I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. Availability of resources has zip to do with whether we are depleting them. We are. The supply of any mineral, oil, etc. resource you can name is finite. The truth of the matter is that we (humankind) meet every definition of a parasite. All take and no give. Even our funeral practices do everything possible to keep even our worn out bodies from decomposing thus denying even that little bit from returning to nature. The world would be a much better place without us. Harry K |
#25
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New study on wind energy
harry writes:
On Jul 20, 12:23Â*am, jamesgangnc wrote: On Jul 19, 7:02Â*pm, Frank wrote: On 7/19/2011 6:12 PM, HeyBub wrote: Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. Nice, clean windmill sound nice but energy consumed in building them and the need for back-up diesel generators are not considered. They may or may not be putting them offshore here in Delaware and you can imagine the compounding cost of installation and effect of salt water on them, Â*They don't use above ground transmission lines either and cables have to be run under the sea surface. http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/2...107170308-Hide quoted text - All power plants have maintenance costs. PV? Pretty low maintenance costs. Bell Labs just put up a PV farm not far from me. These are in a field about 4 feet from the ground. I'm curious about how they are going to cut the grass or keep plants from growing in there. I thought they might use mulch or a ground cover, but so far it doesn't look like it. They used to just mow the area with a big ride on mower. Now the panels are in the way. Maybe they can be tilted out of the way. Anyway, it mostly just sits there and pours electricity into the grid. Pretty cool, especially with this heat, you can imagine all the air conditioners it's running. -- Dan Espen |
#26
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New study on wind energy
Harry K wrote:
On Jul 19, 7:46 pm, "HeyBub" wrote: wrote: I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me. The rest of the page deals with CO2. I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant. Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve. CO2 is poisonous to us in excessive quantities, just as is Oxygen, Water, etc. Nature has adjusted to the what was the average CO2 content back before the industrial revolution. It is now adjusting to our adding to it and we are not going to like the result. As to reducing our part in it? Ain't gonna happen. Best we can do is not increase our contribution above what it is today. Nothing we can do will reduce it withough totally wrecking industry. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. Availability of resources has zip to do with whether we are depleting them. We are. The supply of any mineral, oil, etc. resource you can name is finite. depleting them? what are they being transmogrified into? they are simply being moved around and either aggregated or diluted to some degree. |
#27
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Wide vs narrow blades (was: New study on wind energy)
On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:41:21 -0400, Jim Elbrecht
wrote: On Wed, 20 Jul 2011 06:09:59 -0700 (PDT), jamesgangnc wrote: On Jul 20, 9:03Â*am, Home Guy wrote: HeyBub wrote: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions." When you look at an ordinary fan, it has large blades that occupy a significant portion of the cross-sectional swept area. When you look at a wind turbine, the blades are very thin, occupying a very minimal amount of swept area, allowing much of the wind energy to flow right through or between the blades. If a fan has fan blades that are designed to *efficiently move air*, then why won't that same basic blade design also be *efficiently moved by air* ? That's not true. Look at a propeller airplane. It's blades move air and they are long and thin. I feel an aerodynamics lesson coming. Jim One word.......plastics. er, no, I mean feathering. --Vic |
#28
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 10:41*am, Harry K wrote:
On Jul 19, 7:46*pm, "HeyBub" wrote: wrote: I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me. The rest of the page deals with CO2. I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant. Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve. CO2 is poisonous to us in excessive quantities, just as is Oxygen, Water, etc. *Nature has adjusted to the what was the average CO2 content back before the industrial revolution. *It is now adjusting to our adding to it and we are not going to like the result. As to reducing our part in it? *Ain't gonna happen. *Best we can do is not increase our contribution above what it is today. *Nothing we can do will reduce it withough totally wrecking industry. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. *I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. Availability of resources has zip to do with whether we are depleting them. *We are. *The supply of any mineral, oil, etc. resource you can name is finite. The truth of the matter is that we (humankind) meet every definition of a parasite. * All take and no give. *Even our funeral practices do everything possible to keep even our worn out bodies from decomposing thus denying even that little bit from returning to nature. *The world would be a much better place without us. Harry K- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I agree we are depleting resources but the mining for materials and fossil fuels is two completely different categories. Mineral resources are not actually being depleted. For the most part all the elements on the planet are still on the planet. Just because we dig up some copper, use it for something, and then bury it in a landfill doesn't reduce the copper. We could dig it back out of that landfill and use it again. Or we could quit burying it in the landfill and start recycling it which is more practical than digging it back up. But who knows, maybe some day our descendants will be setting up mines where we buried stuff. Fossil fuel is a energy resource. It is the result of plants capturing the energy in sunlight and it being turned into hydrocarbons. Which is the chemical storage of energy. Like a battery. We are converting that stored energy into heat energy for the most part. Energy like matter is never lost but after we're finished, the heat energy contributes to the gradual equilibrium of the energy state in the universe which makes it of no further use to us. The issue is that we're converting that stored energy at a tremediously faster rate than it was stored. Years of our use equals millions of years of capture. So no matter how good we get at finding the hydrocarbons we will eventually use them all up. Will that happen in 50 years or 500 years is debatable but most people would agree the practical number is somewhere between those two. Bottom line we really are using up the energy in fossil fuels. As to the co2, we are also raising the co2 level. That's a fact. The bydrocarbons were buried in the ground. We're releasing them and breaking them up and combing the freed carbon with oxygen to produce co2. Who knows maybe we will be the start of the next cycle that produces new hydrocarbons for some other lifeform to dig up a couple hundred million yeasr from now. On the short term the consequences might not be so good for us. |
#29
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New study on wind energy
On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:12:17 -0500, "HeyBub"
wrote: Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. "For years, it's been an article of faith among advocates of renewables that increased use of wind energy can provide a cost-effective method of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The reality: wind energy's carbon dioxide-cutting benefits are vastly overstated. Furthermore, if wind energy does help reduce carbon emissions, those reductions are too expensive to be used on any kind of scale. " And in conclusion: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions. The latest Bentek study should be required reading for policymakers. It's a much-needed reminder of how the pesky facts about wind energy have been obscured by the tsunami of hype about green energy." http://www.forbes.com/2011/07/19/win...-carbon_2.html The report overlooks the fact that wind energy is for the children. As is the debt we are passing down to them. Aren't we wonderful! -- Mr.E |
#30
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 12:52*pm, "HeyBub" wrote:
harry wrote: We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. -------- Which commodities were they? *(Just about everything seems more expensive to me.) I mis-remembered. There were five (picked by Ehrlich). The wager was $1,000 each. Whatever the differential in price after a decade would go to the winner. chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten "Between 1980 and 1990, the world's population grew by more than 800 million, the largest increase in one decade in all of history. But by September 1990, without a single exception, the price of each of Ehrlich's selected metals had fallen, and in some cases had dropped significantly. Chromium, which had sold for $3.90 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.70 in 1990. Tin, which was $8.72 a pound in 1980, was down to $3.88 a decade later." Why does costing more make them harder to find? It doesn't. Being harder to find makes them cost more. Price is a convenient metric for scarcity.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Ah,you got it mixedup :-) Population is the main problem I think. Everything comes back to that. Nature will soon organise a cull. |
#31
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 1:27*pm, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article , *"Robert Green" wrote: wrote in ... stuff snipped I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. Me too. *While solar and wind may never fully replace oil and coal, they can put a serious dent in our need for either. *We seem to have entered a binary world where things are either black or white. *No gray allowed. *"If taxing the rich like they used to be taxed doesn't *immediately* solve the money crisis, then there's no sense in doing it at all" seems to be the mantra of many who forgot we got in this mess one day at a time and it's going to take time to get out of it. * Actually it wouldn't be. Taxing the rich like they used to be would actually make it worse. According to IRS figures, 1980 the top 1% (and you can't get any richer than that) paid 19.05% oF fed income taxes. By 1987 (I toss this in since the tax changes in '86 include some in the definition of Adjusted Gross Income so prior to this is not exactly comparable) it was 24.81% and by 2008 (the last I could find) it was 38.02%. So, in order to tax the rich like we did in the 80s, we would have to cut their taxes in half. * * * A similarly nonsensical position is to believe solar, wind, tidal and other sources of power shouldn't be explored because they are not going to replace oil and coal instantly. *Even if the Feds have to pony up some seed money, it's better to have the idle machinists in Detroit building *something* useful instead of sitting home doing nothing. * * Not from an economical standpoint. If the only reason something is "successful" is because of the tax impacts, when they go away so will the jobs. Better to get the person in something that is going to last than to put him into make work jobs. The second wave of S&L failures, for instance, were largely related to a change in the tax laws that (retroactively) took away some artificial incentives to build. These were largely built as a tax dodge (which made at least some econ sense until the advantages went away). -- People thought cybersex was a safe alternative, until patients started presenting with sexually acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz Not everything is about economics. We've seen where the "free market" and "economics" lands us. Right in the **** where we are now. |
#32
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Wide vs narrow blades (was: New study on wind energy)
On Jul 20, 2:03*pm, Home Guy wrote:
HeyBub wrote: "The wind energy business is the electric sector's equivalent of the corn ethanol scam: it's an over-subsidized industry that depends wholly on taxpayer dollars to remain solvent while providing an inferior product to consumers that does little, if anything, to reduce our need for hydrocarbons or cut carbon dioxide emissions." When you look at an ordinary fan, it has large blades that occupy a significant portion of the cross-sectional swept area. When you look at a wind turbine, the blades are very thin, occupying a very minimal amount of swept area, allowing much of the wind energy to flow right through or between the blades. If a fan has fan blades that are designed to *efficiently move air*, then why won't that same basic blade design also be *efficiently moved by air* ? Ordinary fans are made to a restricted diameter. They are inefficient because each blade is close to, and in the turbulence of, it's predecessor. Wind turbines have less restriction on their diameter and are much more efficient. |
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 2:19*pm, jamesgangnc wrote:
On Jul 20, 8:27*am, Kurt Ullman wrote: In article , *"Robert Green" wrote: wrote in .... stuff snipped I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute.. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. Me too. *While solar and wind may never fully replace oil and coal, they can put a serious dent in our need for either. *We seem to have entered a binary world where things are either black or white. *No gray allowed. *"If taxing the rich like they used to be taxed doesn't *immediately* solve the money crisis, then there's no sense in doing it at all" seems to be the mantra of many who forgot we got in this mess one day at a time and it's going to take time to get out of it. * Actually it wouldn't be. Taxing the rich like they used to be would actually make it worse. According to IRS figures, 1980 the top 1% (and you can't get any richer than that) paid 19.05% oF fed income taxes. By 1987 (I toss this in since the tax changes in '86 include some in the definition of Adjusted Gross Income so prior to this is not exactly comparable) it was 24.81% and by 2008 (the last I could find) it was 38.02%. So, in order to tax the rich like we did in the 80s, we would have to cut their taxes in half. * * * A similarly nonsensical position is to believe solar, wind, tidal and other sources of power shouldn't be explored because they are not going to replace oil and coal instantly. *Even if the Feds have to pony up some seed money, it's better to have the idle machinists in Detroit building *something* useful instead of sitting home doing nothing. * * Not from an economical standpoint. If the only reason something is "successful" is because of the tax impacts, when they go away so will the jobs. Better to get the person in something that is going to last than to put him into make work jobs. The second wave of S&L failures, for instance, were largely related to a change in the tax laws that (retroactively) took away some artificial incentives to build. These were largely built as a tax dodge (which made at least some econ sense until the advantages went away). -- People thought cybersex was a safe alternative, until patients started presenting with sexually acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz You're pulling the typical conservative stunt. *Cherry pick statistics to support your point. *What about the percenatges of wealth held by the rich. *And the increased difference between the wealthy, the middle class, and the poor. *You can't take one stat in isolation and use it to prove a point. *You have to look at the whole picture. Besides it's not just the rich, what about tax breaks for oil companies that post record profits? *What kind of sense does that make. *How do you defend that?- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Rob the poor to pay the rich is how politics works in America. You are all slaves to capitalism. Kept in check by the myth that one day you may become rich. That drawbridge is pulled up. Keep the proles in their place. Who is bailing out the banks? Not the people who made all the money. |
#34
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Wide vs narrow blades
On Jul 20, 2:59*pm, jamesgangnc wrote:
On Jul 20, 9:50*am, dpb wrote: On 7/20/2011 8:03 AM, Home Guy wrote: ... When you look at an ordinary fan, it has large blades that occupy a significant portion of the cross-sectional swept area. When you look at a wind turbine, the blades are very thin, occupying a very minimal amount of swept area, allowing much of the wind energy to flow right through or between the blades. If a fan has fan blades that are designed to *efficiently move air*, then why won't that same basic blade design also be *efficiently moved by air* ? Size has a lot to do with the design limitations. Interestingly enough, the efficiency of adding blades is relatively small; a one-blade rotor is nearly as efficient as two and the third is even less of an increase. While it doesn't go into a lot of technical detail, the wiki article outlines some of the basics of the various competing factors that go into modern generator blade design. Limiting is more the physical characteristics required for survival and control and related cost and the efficiency obtainable within those restrictions as opposed to only the efficiency (altho modern designs run probably nearly 80% of theoretical Betz limit of kinetic energy extraction which is roughly 60% of input field KE. I've not read the article for a while to see what, if anything has been added/updated, but had the link bookmarked-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design -- The trick is balancing the one blade model. *Interestingly the same things apply to boat propellers. *It also occurred to me there is another example of powered thin blades, helicopters.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - There is two sorts of balancing. Static and dynamic. Put simply,static is balancing the weight of the blades. Dynamic is balancing the force they generate. The one blade prop. can be statically balanced but obviously not dynamically. |
#35
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 3:37*pm, wrote:
"HeyBub" writes: wrote: I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me. The rest of the page deals with CO2. I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant. No. Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve. If you know of a combustion process that produces only CO2 I'd like to know about it. *I didn't say CO2, I said pollution. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. *I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. It's ridiculous to think we can take tungsten, helium, iron, copper, tin, lithium, etc out of the ground and scatter them through landfills without using them up. Yes, with advances in technology we can dig deeper and extract more. To think that this can go on forever is wishful thinking. Mining landfills is in our future. *It won't be pretty. For plastics too I reckon. |
#36
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 3:41*pm, Harry K wrote:
On Jul 19, 7:46*pm, "HeyBub" wrote: wrote: I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me. The rest of the page deals with CO2. I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant. Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve. CO2 is poisonous to us in excessive quantities, just as is Oxygen, Water, etc. *Nature has adjusted to the what was the average CO2 content back before the industrial revolution. *It is now adjusting to our adding to it and we are not going to like the result. As to reducing our part in it? *Ain't gonna happen. *Best we can do is not increase our contribution above what it is today. *Nothing we can do will reduce it withough totally wrecking industry. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. *I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. Availability of resources has zip to do with whether we are depleting them. *We are. *The supply of any mineral, oil, etc. resource you can name is finite. The truth of the matter is that we (humankind) meet every definition of a parasite. * All take and no give. *Even our funeral practices do everything possible to keep even our worn out bodies from decomposing thus denying even that little bit from returning to nature. *The world would be a much better place without us. Harry K- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Hey, tell me that ain't a suicide note? |
#37
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New study on wind energy
On Jul 20, 4:14*pm, jamesgangnc wrote:
On Jul 20, 10:41*am, Harry K wrote: On Jul 19, 7:46*pm, "HeyBub" wrote: wrote: I suppose CO2 emissions could be important, but it seems to me, having a power source that doesn't run out seems pretty strategic to me. The rest of the page deals with CO2. I don't know about you, but I LIKE power sources that don't pollute.. I'm willing to pay a little more just for that benefit. You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant. Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve. CO2 is poisonous to us in excessive quantities, just as is Oxygen, Water, etc. *Nature has adjusted to the what was the average CO2 content back before the industrial revolution. *It is now adjusting to our adding to it and we are not going to like the result. As to reducing our part in it? *Ain't gonna happen. *Best we can do is not increase our contribution above what it is today. *Nothing we can do will reduce it withough totally wrecking industry. But the real issue is being prepared for the future. We're hearing all this crazy deficit talk as if we're creating a problem for our children. *I think using up resources on the only planet we have is much more important. We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. Look up the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which a doom-sayer* wagered $10,000 with a more pragmatic scientist over whether the scarcity of ten commodities (picked by Ehrlich) would cost more (and therefore be harder to find) in ten years. Ehrlich lost. Availability of resources has zip to do with whether we are depleting them. *We are. *The supply of any mineral, oil, etc. resource you can name is finite. The truth of the matter is that we (humankind) meet every definition of a parasite. * All take and no give. *Even our funeral practices do everything possible to keep even our worn out bodies from decomposing thus denying even that little bit from returning to nature. *The world would be a much better place without us. Harry K- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - I agree we are depleting resources but the mining for materials and fossil fuels is two completely different categories. *Mineral resources are not actually being depleted. *For the most part all the elements on the planet are still on the planet. *Just because we dig up some copper, use it for something, and then bury it in a landfill doesn't reduce the copper. *We could dig it back out of that landfill and use it again. *Or we could quit burying it in the landfill and start recycling it which is more practical than digging it back up. But who knows, maybe some day our descendants will be setting up mines where we buried stuff. Fossil fuel is a energy resource. *It is the result of plants capturing the energy in sunlight and it being turned into hydrocarbons. * Which is the chemical storage of energy. *Like a battery. *We are converting that stored energy into heat energy for the most part. *Energy like matter is never lost but after we're finished, the heat energy contributes to the gradual equilibrium of the energy state in the universe which makes it of no further use to us. *The issue is that we're converting that stored energy at a tremediously faster rate than it was stored. *Years of our use equals millions of years of capture. *So no matter how good we get at finding the hydrocarbons we will eventually use them all up. *Will that happen in 50 years or 500 years is debatable but most people would agree the practical number is somewhere between those two. *Bottom line we really are using up the energy in fossil fuels. As to the co2, we are also raising the co2 level. *That's a fact. *The bydrocarbons were buried in the ground. *We're releasing them and breaking them up and combing the freed carbon with oxygen to produce co2. *Who knows maybe we will be the start of the next cycle that produces new hydrocarbons for some other lifeform to dig up a couple hundred million yeasr from now. *On the short term the consequences might not be so good for us.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - There is exactly enough hydrocarbon fuel in the ground to convert all the oxygen in the atmosphere to CO2 and water. Because that's where the oxygen all came from in the first place. So we know exactly how much fuel is there. It may not all be recoverable and we need to stop a long time before we turn all the earth's O2 back into CO2 and water. |
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New study on wind energy
"HeyBub" wrote in message m... Warning: It's not pretty. Summary of a report based on power usage by about 1/3rd of the nation's consumers (110 million) over three years. You sure know how to pick 'em. This "report" was created by Bentek Energy. Guess which segment of the energy industry Bentek represents--come on, guess. If your answer is the fossil fuels segment, specifically the natural gas and related areas (like propane), you're right. Forbes of course goes where the money is, so if the fossil fuels industry is profitable and wind generation of power is not (at least not yet) then it isn't hard to guess who Forbes will side with. Hey, if next week the bottled water industry releases a report saying that home water filtration is a bad idea, will you believe them? |
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New study on wind energy
"jamesgangnc" wrote in message ... Nothing wrong with the government subsidizing renewable. Economies of scale will reduce the costs and at the same time the costs of non- renewable fuels will continue to rise. At some point the scale tips and the renewables become cheaper. Until then the government accelerates the growth with subsidies. Just makes the inevitable happen a few years sooner. Bingo. I wonder how long we would have waited for an interstate highway system if it had been left up to private enterprise to build it? |
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New study on wind energy
"HeyBub" wrote in message m... You're presuming that CO2 is a pollutant. Were it not for CO2, there wouldn't be any plants. With no plants, there would be no cattle. With no cattle, there'd be no food. We'd starve. Badly broken logic. Water is necessary for life too, but that doesn't mean you want to be caught in the middle of a flood. We're NOT using up resources. More precisely, we're using resources but we're accessing more than we're using. Today, there is five times the known reserves of natural gas than there was just five years ago. More broken logic, as all fossil fuels are available in finite quantities which means eventually the expense of extracting them will make them economically impractical. Or do you think that China and India competing with us for oil isn't responsible for the price staying up? If we're finding more oil than we're burning, why isn't it twenty dollars a barrel? And aside from that there is the little problem of pollution, e.g. "clean coal" being a marketing phrase rather than something the industry can actually deliver. |
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