OT. Green Energy?

[Dean Hoffman]

Commentary about the pollution involved in producing electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar panels.

The author doesn't have a science background.

[Cindy Hamilton]

Unless we want to implement some sort of Malthusian solution, we will require increasing amounts of energy.

When somebody talks about "clean" energy, they mean it doesn't generate carbon dioxide. A bit of a misnomer, but I'm afraid we're going to have to live with it.

All sources of energy generate pollution. Not all pollution is created equal. Some sources are being used up and when they're gone, they're gone. Burning fossil fuels is like eating the seed corn. It works for a while, but we can't keep it up forever. Sure, all us old fossils on Usenet probably won't see the end of oil, but that doesn't mean it isn't going to happen.

Waiting until we've squeezed the last drop of shale oil into a gas tank before we devise other solutions is foolish. It's also foolish to let OPEC+ have so much power over our economy.

[Ed Pawlowski]

I've read various prediction, like 40 years. We complain at $3 to $4 a gallon but it will be $10 to $20 in the future. Possibly rationed so airlines take priority over cruise ships.

We had a good run, time to plan for the future.

[Scott Lurndal]

"The purpose of this exploration is to point out the absurdity that results from the assumption that we can continue growing our use of energy - even if doing so more modestly than the last 350 years have seen."

It's more than foolish:

[Scott Lurndal]

It will likely be worse than that, it's a bit of a trap, since it takes energy to produce energy, and the more it takes to produce, the less you get. Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) is the typical metric and as it closes on 1:1, alternatives are required. Unfortunately, it takes energy to create the alternatives (e.g. build and install windmills, nuclear facilities, solar panels, etc. et alia, und so weider).

Indeed.

[invalid unparseable]

Rather than smooth transition greenies are imposing draconian solutions.

Nuclear is also unacceptable to them and that is the greenest of energies.

Musk may be correct in basically saying Malthusian times are approaching with much lower birth rates perhaps reducing population.

[Roger Blake]

Speak for yourself. I'm not willing to let the Communists control the narrative and will continue to point out in no uncertain terms that CO2 is *not* a pollutant. "Climate change" is a natural phenomenon. The rest is pure fraud.

It won't happen for centuries. There is no rush to develop alternatives, they will happen in the fullness of time due to the normal pae of scientific and engineering progress.

We will not see "the last drop of shale oil" any time soon. If not for the Communist/DemocRAT senseless fatwah aginst the development of our own fossil fuel resources we could tell OPEC to go pound sand.

[Dean Hoffman]

So is relying on China for anything more important than bottle rockets. The current leader is apparently potentate for life. He recently got reappointed for another term at a big meeting. The previous leader was sitting nearby and was escorted out of the room. The U.S. was energy independent recently. A superpower should keep it that way.

[Scott Lurndal]

What does that have to do with energy sources? China is a net energy importer, by a factor of ten to one.

Cindy is correct, waiting for oil to run out before devising its replacement is more than foolish. It's insane.

China doesn't export energy to the USA in any form other than finished goods.

You should start a new thread rather than highjacking an old one.

[Cindy Hamilton]

No argument from me. I worked in tech for 30 years and it killed me that everything we bought and integrated was made in China, even the components that we turned around and sold in China. And every one of those sales made me think about the issues described in this article:

I'm not sure that matters as much as we think. The Chinese political structure is in the business of protecting itself for the long haul.

Agreed. We might want to save petroleum fuels for applications where they are not easily replaced by electricity or biofuels. There's a lot of opportunity for job creation if we have the will to go after it.

[rbowman]

Leni Riefenstahl never could make 'Triuph des Willens' about the US.

[trader_4]

H2O isn't a pollutant either, but putting too much of it in the wrong place can harm the environment and kill people.

"Climate change" is a natural phenomenon.

Which has nothing to do with the fact that it's clearly possible for man to affect it to. We have documented CO2 levels increasing 40% in the last 100 years, 50% since the dawn of the industrial revolution. CO2 is how higher than its been in over a million years. And previous up cycles took tens of thousands to hundreds of thousand years, not a hundred. And we have sound science that shows how CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere. Sounds like your analysis is like Rush Limbaugh's. His analysis began and ended with the planet is too big for man to be able to have any effect. I'll trust science.

[Scott Lurndal]

While true, you're arguing with someone who routinely advocates mass murder. Don't bother.

[T]

Not only is CO2 not a pollutant, it is part of the cycle of life on this planet.

And if you look at the percent of CO2 in the atmosphere and the percent of that which human have added, the CO2 argument is laughable.

One volcano and/or one "Burn California" event adds tons more CO2 that human causes (although it can be argued that California's forestry practices are so bad that they can be called Human Caused.)

The real green house gas is water vapor, but the control freaks can not get rich trying to regulate it.

And BEV's (battery electric vehicles) are a pollution joke. You want lower air pollution (the real stuff), we need to look at FCEV's (fuel cell electric vehicles) burning natural gas whilst we wait for hydrogen to come on line.

And gasoline engines are getting better and better real pollution wise all the time.

The market should dictate this, not control freaks.

[trader_4]

Following that logic, because water is not a pollutant and is part of the life cycle means that too much water can't be harmful either.

That's a blatant lie. We have documented CO2 levels increasing 40% in the last 100 years, 50% since the dawn of the industrial revolution. CO2 is how higher than its been in over a million years. And previous up cycles took tens of thousands to hundreds of thousand years, not a hundred.

Obviously wrong too. If there are blips in the global CO2 concentration from volcanoes, they are tiny. The graph of CO2 over time shows an accelerating, steady increase, cited above.

The issue is CO2 and those emission are part of the basic combustion process. Ideal combustion would create just CO2 and H20, no way to affect that.

How well did letting the market dictate work out with things like food and drugs around the turn of the 20th century? How well did it work out with pollution of America's rivers and earth up until the 70s? When did seat belts and airbags go into autos?