How is it that the environmentalists have deluded themselves into thinking backwards "Green" energy sources?
can provide the power necessary to, at the very least, avoid a precipitous drop-off in the human population due to energy starvation?
Is the problem that they’ve never had a decent course in physical chemistry, and thus lack the understanding of how physical principles pertain to the science of economy?
Stu,
It’s ExxonMobil, and I’ve never worked for them. On the other hand, one of the primary conspirators behind the AGW fraud is the Rockefeller Crime Family, which made their fortune from the ExxonMobil cartel (formerly Standard Oil).
Now that people are done making a point in using the fallacy of hasty generalization; I must retort that Environmental Scientists must take courses in physical chemistry and are well versed in science (or so I’d hope, seeing as how they went to college to specialize in this field). Moreover ecology and economy go hand in hand; one example of this would be how high oil prices correlate with low oil supply. Seeing as how the US now imports more oil than it produces, due to the fact that domestic oil fields peaked in the ’70s and Prudhoe Bay peaked around 1988 (and ANWR will only supply about a days worth of oil at current consumption rates), the US need to find alternatives to foreign sources of energy.
So we can watch the iceberg hit the titanic, or we can preempt the future energy crises (unless we find new oil reserves and develop deep drilling technology overnight). There are tons of ways to generate energy, one would know this if they had taken a general chemistry or physics course (one of the most basic ideas is the law of conservation of mass and energy; energy can neither be created or destroyed, only changed or become disordered). Examples of new energy sources might be, the idea of storing reflected solar energy in a tower filled with molten salt to generate a convection cell, or growing algae to use as a source of biofuel. What I don’t understand is how America has gone from a country that used to be on the forefront of developing technology to a bunch of whiny, ignorant little girls who don’t want to think outside of the box.
Ancestral powerful humans developed models for their own maintenance which are based upon millennia old taxation concepts to sustain the state. The bigger the state, the more slavery was required. Maintenance of the status quo is very expensive, and costs lives as well as the price for continued agitation via propaganda. When doom is in the wind, blame the victims. Scapegoating for survival is disingenuous and dishonest. Shareholders of resource corporations benefit as prices rise, as long as the market is sustainable. Attempting to manipulate the market is better left to the covert intelligence community.
Take care of each other, voluntarily, or lose our equality.
If in the askers point of view, we are to export resource exploitation as a means to development, from whom will the resources be taken at a profit? Apparently those least able to claim the resources and defend them. Another war is just as close as the horizon. This robs us all.
Fossil fuels are dirty, polluting, finite resources.
The human population is past the drop off point. This is known as overshoot of carrying capacity. Inevitably, military and governments are facing monstrous decisions, which are not for public consumption. Move along, go home, there is nothing to see here.
How is it that you have deluded yourself into thinking that an economic model of exponential growth is in any way sustainable? I presume that is what you mean by the ‘science of economy’? Economists everywhere worship the God of Growth, without ever considering the Earth has ecological limits, but it does, and those limits are making themselves felt. Economists would like to think that creating ever more consumers (population growth) will ‘sustain’ a model of economic development and expansion that can go on forever, because, of course we will never run out of energy. Wake up and face reality, the party’s over.
You cannot ignore the fact that oil, coal, gas, and even uranium are finite resources. You cannot build a long term, sustainable economy from using these energies, at some point, (and that time is coming sooner than you think) the ONLY sound investment will be in renewable sources. If these are coupled with building efficient housing and heating systems, (passive solar, heat sinks, geothermal and properly insulated,) a comfortable life is still possible.
You talk of a precipitous drop-off in the human population. There is a natural ecological cycle that prevents any one species from becoming overpopulated, but we have bypassed that cycle by using fossil fuel fertilisers and pesticides to increase yields from poor soils and used mechanisation to increase efficiency. As we pass the peak in conventional oil production, food is going to become scarcer, more expensive and depleted soils are going take years to recover from fertilisers being over used. As the oil runs dry, and non-conventional sources are unable to plug the gap, the human population will decrease, and once the oil is all gone (in around 40 years), the population will return to it’s ecological limit of around 2-3 billion. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to prevent this, it is a limit set by natural factors. It would’ve been best if we’d prevented overpopulation in the first place.
As it stands, the next decade will be difficult for everyone as the price of oil and everything to do with it, (about 95% of the lifestyle of a person in the developed world,) goes up. The crop failures in 2009 will translate to higher food prices, and we will moan about the cost of filling up on a tank of petrol but will still not give up the car until we are too far in debt to run it. Our lifestyles are unsustainable, but we are in deep denial, and will keep up the facade until we have to face the awful truth.
That’s the real delusion.
"Can’t do" people hold the rest of us back. I’m a "can do" citizen. You don’t embrace change, do you?
As Common Sense pointed out the environmentalist often kill deals in the backcountry. Diane Feinstein champion of the environment killed this large scale PV plant.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/business/energy-environment/22solar.html
The claim that Green Energy sources are backward thinking is preposterous. Green Energy is forward thinking. One must do some investigation into the energy grid and how it works to see the benefit of green energy resources. Did you realize that 15 percent of the operating power plants that we pay for in our electric bill are operational for 7 to 20 days per year? That is to accommodate the need during the hottest days of the summer that place a huge load burden on the power grid.
Green sources such as PV electric, Solar Thermal can help ease that burden and help take some of those units off line. Combine that with Energy Efficient buildings and we can further ease the burden on the grid. The point is to shave the current need on the grid not replace it.
Furthermore anyone with any training in sustainable technologies realizes that these sources cannot replace the current need. We are a long way from large scale production of renewable energy.
The CPV technology is an example of forward thinking in the renewable energy field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrating_solar_power
One workshop I attended claimed that enough energy falls down from the sun in one hour to maintain the needs for the entire human population for three years. We do not have the technology to harness it at this time. It is free fusion energy factory and worth the effort to figure out how to plug into it. We are only scratching the surface at this point.
I believe further advances in science and funding scientific research in the renewable and energy efficiency and building science field is not only valid but necessary.
Our current resources for energy cannot last forever. We must find new areas for our appetite and ever expanding population.
Dawei: meet Vampire Muffin Man.
I have taken more course in physical chemistry than I care to mention so please expand on your thoughts if you really to talk to about p-chem. I am all ears. Otherwise, I will think you are just throwing around big words without really knowing what you are talking about.
I have never heard anybody seriously propose that we drop all "non-green" energy sources. Do you just make this stuff up, or is this something that Rush told you?
Dawei,
You’ve I’m afraid fallen for the alternative energy industry propaganda regarding GHGs savings using wind powered turbines, solar panels, wave power etc.
All these devices are net producers of GHGs, not saving on carbon products or pollution.
Denmark has now realised this and will no longer be investing in this technology.
Even British Greenpeace now agree that the way ahead is electricity from good old nuclear power generation, not fripperies or children’s playthings. Interesting devices yes, but that’s about all they are.
Have a nice day.
You really don’t understand that natural forces such as wind and solar can provide orders of magnitude more energy than current fossil fuels, do you?
You also don’t understand that throwing money at old technology has a horrible return on investment. Maybe not in the short term, but in the long term, your just setting yourself up for a massive economic crunch.
New energy technologies are necessary to provide for future energy demands. Old technologies just can’t provide what we will need in the future and the sources will run dry.
A combination of various sources is the best idea in ANY case as it provides a lot more security and lower energy costs as well as lower infrastructure maintenance costs (transmission lines) since more power can come from more local sources.
My personal plan happens to be a combination of wind and solar with the possibility of hydro (you can actually get small scale hydro turbine generators, though I haven’t looked into it too much, yet) in conjunction with high efficiency systems to possibly provide a net surplus of power on my property. As for energy storage, I really like the idea of fuel cells rather than batteries, though that’s another thing that I have yet to research. It may be much more cost effective to stay on the grid and sell all surplus and buy when needed than to store on-site.
Maybe expensive initially, but if I’m cut a check instead of paying hundreds a month, I think the investment is worth it, especially if I’m not polluting the environment in the process… The more the tech is developed, the cheaper it will get. Meanwhile, fossil fuels will continue to get more and more expensive and more and more untenable as a sustainable source of power.
I’m kind of (ok, really) confused by how you are so anti- ExxonMobile/Rockefeller, yet you think that paying them for power instead of using solar or wind power is the way to go… Personally when I’m pissed off by a company or whatever, I don’t do business with them anymore. For instance, I don’t EVER buy gas from Exxon or Mobile stations. One time I had to put $5 in so that I could get to another station, but that was just once in the past 10+ years…
_
There are some very funny and predictable comments to this one, the usual tripe about "anti-capitalist, anti-democratic forces" and other such nonsense from Tom (disciple of James E).
The usual talk about economy which usually boils down to a working class hatred of anything that may affect jobs, this is, as always short term thinking, over moderate time periods jobs change and disappear anyway and Green actions have had little effect on jobs, you only have to look at history to see that, how much call is there today for blacksmiths or whalers.
Professions like farming and car manufacture only employ a tiny percentage of the people they used to, this has nothing to do with greens but improvements in technology. One major industry that greens do protest about is forestry, and even here most job losses over the last few decades are related to automation, they now have trucks with robot arms that can grab, cut down and strip a moderate sized tree and drop it on a haulage truck in less than 20sec.
As for "the science of economy?" you are kidding right, there is no such thing.
"primary conspirators behind the AGW fraud is the Rockefeller Crime Family"
Whoops, James your slip is showing!
Too much LSD, cocaine and marijuana coupled with greed.
Many environmentalists that I know are druggies and experiment with all kinds of mind altering chemicals. I believe they do this to escape some type of mental suffering, possibly schizophrenia. Schizophrenics imagine all sorts of bizarre things and often fail to recognize some fatal flaw in their fabricated reality.
Environmentalists have been taken over by anti-capitalist, anti-democratic forces .. they are illogical and often time nutty … but there is a goal to their madness.
At this time they also enjoy a lot of funding and get preferential treatment by the left leaning press.
These guys are about controlling everything without accountability … much like soviet style government where everything comes down to faith in the ruling regime … logic, science etc… are subjugated to the rule of the elites.
Knowing that they have little to offer … we just have to abandon the media who give them credence and vote in governments that will not destroy our economy and democratic traditions that celebrate/feature individual freedoms.
hope this helps
Windmills cost 20x what nuclear plants do.
This would be the case if it were ever required to only use wind turbines and PV, but as far as I know, nobody in their right mind is actually considering this.
Everyone I’ve ever seen who is serious about reducing carbon acknowledges that wind and PV will only ever be a fraction, and only used in areas where it is most viable. Combining these technologies with others like solar thermal, tidal, nuclear, geothermal, hydroelectric (there is still potential out there), biomass/WTE, increased efficiency, and even better used fossil fuels can add up to big reductions in emissions and continued growth of energy.
No one believes it would be easy or simple. But people who do little more than scream about how photovoltaics are not a silver bullet are really just arguing with themselves, and not contributing anything rational to the discussion.
How long have you worked for Exxon Mobile?
Funny how the same "green" idiots are always the first ones to raise a fuss about wind mills in their neighborhoods.
Or drilling for clean efficient natural gas.
Or exploring for oil reserves (you know,,,,,,the stuff they have to have to power their cars and multiple toys, ie boats, ATV’s etc.etc.)
No way will we ever have another nuclear power plant.
No you cant have a solar panel on your house, it will not look good for the neighborhood.
Dont have any pets because they add to the carbon footprint.
Dont have any kids because it only leads to overpopulation. But it’s OK for the immigrants.
Very true, but seems to me that the upper eshelon is also full of many hipocrites. Al Gore is making bank by trading carbon credits…which doesn’t actually reduce Co2 levels, but spent $10,000 in utility bills. One of the more active enviromentalists has a home with redwood floors.
The governors and senators traveling to Copenhaugen made a larger carbon footprint than most when they flew in style to the conference, meanwhile bilking money from the taxpayer for this little luxurious weekend to which Pelosi won’t answer any questions on.
Seems to be one big corrupt venture into catering to themselves and stiffing the taxpayer.
As for a ‘Green" source of power, Nuclear power plants are pretty green and have limited waste, yet congress stands in the way of building new ones. The Obama administration is also trying to shut down the coal industry even though we are the ‘saudi arabia’ of coal.