What Do We Think About Climate Change

or a capitalists slave?

 

Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel introduced his new article on renewable energy by openly worrying about “hereticide” — the all-to-common historical phenomenon of putting heretics to death.

As a long-time Green, Ausubel has good reason to be concerned given his article condemns renewable energy as “wrecking” the environment.

“Renewables are not green,” is how Ausubel begins the article published in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology. It’s a remarkable statement coming from someone who beat his fellow Greens to global warming alarmism by at least 10 years.

Ausubel’s Rockefeller University bio says that he “was one of the main organizers of the first U.N. World Climate Conference (Geneva, 1979) which substantially elevated the global warming issue on scientific and political agendas” and that he “played major roles in the formulation of both U.S. and world climate-research programs.”

Ausubel’s remarkable article, however, may very well cost him whatever exalted status he may have had in the Green movement, which is likely to brand him an out-and-out traitor to the cause.

But the Green’s loss is a big gain for the rest of us — particularly those interested in sensible energy and environmental policy as opposed to ill-considered, pie-in-the-sky hopes for a renewable energy-powered civilization.

Ausubel calculated the amount of energy produced by various renewable energy sources — including hydroelectric, biomass, wind and solar power — in terms of power output per square meter of land disturbed.

If you could collect the average annual rainfall of the 900,000-square-kilometer Canadian province of Ontario — about 680,000 billion liters of water — and store it behind a dam 60 meters tall, you would produce about 11,000 Megawatts of electricity — which is only about 80 percent of the output of Canada’s 25 nuclear power stations, Ausubel says.

In other words, this works out to a power production rate of 0.012 watts per square meter of land. It would take 1 square kilometer of land to provide enough electricity for about 12 Canadians, according to Ausubel, who says this inefficiency is a key reason for the reduced demand for hydroelectric power.
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Biomass is an even worse renewable source of energy than hydroelectric power in terms of ecological harm.

Large-scale power generation from biomass would require that “vast areas be shaved or harvested annually,” Ausubel says. It would take 2,500 square kilometers of prime Iowa farmland to produce as much electricity from biomass as from a single nuclear power plant.

“Increased use of biomass fuel in any form is criminal,” Ausubel stated in a media release. “Every automobile would require a pasture of 1-2 hectares.” He added.

Wind power? While it’s much less land intensive than biomass, that’s not saying much. A 770-square-kilometer area would only produce as much electricity as a single 1,000 Megawatt nuclear plant.

A wind farm the size of Texas would be required to extract, store and transport annual U.S. energy needs. “Every square meter of Connecticut” would have to be turned into a wind farm to provide all of New York City’s electricity demands.

Solar power is also quite a land hog. As photovoltaic cells are only 10 percent efficient and have seen no breakthroughs in 30 years, U.S. electric consumption would require a 150,000-square kilometer area of photovoltaics, plus additional land for electricity storage and retrieval.

The photovoltaic industry would have to step up its production by 600,000 times to produce the same amount of power as that generated by single 1,000 Megawatt nuclear plant.

Aside from land misuse, Ausubel also raises the other undesirable consequences of renewables: wind power produces low-frequency noise and thumps, blights landscapes, interferes with TV reception, and chops birds and bats; dams kill rivers; and solar power would require that large areas of land be essentially “painted black” with photovoltaic cells.

In terms of resource use, the infrastructure of a wind farm takes five to 10 times the steel and concrete used in a 1970-vintage nuclear power plant.

The first part of Ausubel’s heresy closes with a sobering assessment: “Cheerful self-delusion about new solar and renewables since 1970 has yet to produce a single quad of the more than 90 quadrillion BTU of total energy the U.S. now yearly consumes. ... Let’s stop sanctifying false and minor gods and heretically chant ‘Renewables are not Green.’”

The second part of Ausubel’s heresy, which will have to be addressed in more detail at another time, is his prescription for nuclear power.

Greens traditionally oppose nuclear power wherever and whenever they can. Even those Greens that say it’s time to consider nuclear power seem to be paying no more than lip service to the concept — witness the lack of progress on greenhouse gas-free nuclear power despite all the hoopla about the supposed fossil fuel-caused manmade climate change.

But Ausubel says that, “Like computers, to grow larger, the energy system must now shrink in size and cost. Considered in watts per square meter, nuclear has astronomical advantages over its competitors.”

In a time when those who question the Green agenda are scurrilously defamed and routinely intimidated — just for the sin of expressing contrary opinions — the Green Ausubel should be applauded for having the courage to stand up and speak the truth: that renewable energy wasn’t, isn’t and ought not ever be.

Delenda est viridis

 

Again I will agree with much of what you say. To do what Ausubel is analysing in the article, would be outright rediculous and anti-environmentally friendly. Like the 600 billion litres dam, for example.

However, here he's completely misinformed:

Boeing is already making and selling 41% solar cells. Suntech from China hs 20% regular solar panels. So that argument is heavilly outdated. 11% efficiency applies to thin film foils which can be fited to windows of every glass skyscraper in every city in the world. A 100 meters tall building, 30 metres wide has, generally speaking, 4 sides each having gross external surface of 3000 m2. Let that be 2000m2 of available glass surface which can be covered with those thin films.

1 m2 on average receives 100W/hour. 10% of that is 10W/h

Multiply that with the surface:

2000 x 10 = 20 000 W/h

Multiply that now with 4 sides:

20 000 x 4 = 80 000W/h


I am sure that even with average production of 20 000 W/h (allowing for all the possible losses due to clouds, short days in the winter etc.) 20 kW/h would help reduce the building/s bill significantly over time. Chinese are in fact planning to do so in Beijing and Shanghai, covering the glass with films and every available roof with concentrating solar panels.

Again, not MY personal patronising, like so many of people here do. Here's what Forbes, usanian web site, says:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/16/china-solar-power-business-energy-china-solar.html

While Ausubel is living in his 1970' the world has moved on and is working on new and better technologies. Sharp has already reached 46% but they will not commercialise the cell because they ar already working on teh new one that should reach 50% efficiency.

In a couple of years solar cells built with the nano technology will provide around 70% ( I forgot the name of the very well known German Institute developing solar cells, working on nano cells. If you search for concentrating cells , they will eventually pop up.).

Nothing revealling here. Instead of his apparent heresy, awakening, whatever you want to call it, Ausubel should start thinking with his head and accepting the basic fact: instead of increasing the production to accomodate the growing population, we should start REDUCING the population.

The earth is only so big. If we keep growing the number of people just so shitty capitalists can grow their profits, we'll eventually run out of the space.

Hoyt and I have a simple solution. Reduce the number of the people.

All problems will be solved. Ecology, energy, global cooling (or warming, whatever makes you fat and happy), food, water, nuclear energy, everything.

 

"Hoyt and I have a simple solution. Reduce the number of the people.

All problems will be solved. Ecology, energy, global cooling (or warming, whatever makes you fat and happy), food, water, nuclear energy, everything."

......you are sooooo right mate, we have gone from 1 to 6 billion people in 100 years, totally unsustainable. Why is it so obvious yet nothing is being done....we are all crazy.

 

Are you saying that CO2 levels follow the same curve as population levels?

 

...all high levels of whatever will be increased by high populations forcing use of waste or useable product....it is a natural follow on that more must be consumed and more must be wasted.

 

I didn't say to reduce the population! God loves His children or there wouldn't be so many of them. If the greenies try to reduce our numbers, however, they may find some of their numbers falling as we attempt to defend ourselves.

 

....i am not saying either to reduce the current population, I mean to reduce the future populations, ie, stop bloody breeding so many ****** will help...we need to educate people that the 6 billion people here now need to seriously reduce their breeding habits so that the world can return by itself to a sustainable number of individuals that can and will think for themselves.....yeah sure, that will happen.

 

World CO2 anthropogenic emissions, 2005 (CDIAC): 8 Gt

Projected China only CO2 emissions, 2050 (USDOE) 19-24 Gt

(in a 'business as usual' scenario, US CO2 emissions will have grown to ~7Gt by 2050)

No scheme yet proffered by the chicken littles even comes close to addressing these facts. The proposed schemes will only enrich the financial speculators while doing absolutely nothing to curb emissions.

Jimbo

 

He must be seriously fond of mosquitoes, then.

Hoyt, why are you and Mark so quick to translate everything into a violent scenario, and start strutting around talking about how you're gonna kick ***? It's absurd; you sound like fourth grade children.

Even in China they don't kill people to reduce population growth; they limit the number of children per family. And it should be quite obvious to anyone with common sense that no one in the US is going to get away with forced birth control or sterilization on a mass scale -- much less start gunning us down to hurry the process.

I suggest we take the conversation up to at least high school level, and stop giving the world the idea that typical Americans are brain-damaged.

 

We have been arguing about human produced CO2 and its alleged impact on climate.
I say it is bull.
You say it is going to make the place a tad hotter.

Since I know it is bull, I don't really care. And if it is true, I don't care either because a few degree hotter does not make any difference.

However ... And this is the real cross road. If you are a practical man, you think in what if scenarios. I am and so I say ...what if this lunatics are right and CO2 does increase the temperature beyond comfort? What can we do about it?

Greens all over the planet are telling us, besides their usual overflowing amount of manure, that we must embrace alternative sources of energy. Instituted "earth day" and want us to go to work on a push bike.

If you are a practical man, you KNOW this is not an alternative. And neither are all the other feel good proposal that cost 20 times more and are 50 times more unreliable.

None, and I repeat, NONE of the existing alternatives can come even close to replace not even a fraction of what is needed to remain static, let alone to continue developing as nations.

So what is all this talk about reducing emissions? Emissions can not be reduced with existing technology unless:
A) we cut back dramatically in our energy usage, meaning, shut down factories, and office buildings and trains and lifts and street lights and stoves and ovens and I can go on and on until we are back to colonial times.
B) make the nations like China and India shut down everything they are doing and go back to horse carts and rice paddocks.

Since the above is impossible to even consider, all the talks about "reducing emissions by going to work on a push bike are the product of deluded minds who think that there must be some other person who straps a helmet and sweats to work whist I can go to work in my car. The patronising that is implicit in every talk about "reducing emissions" (your emissions not mine, reducing human population meaning you jump off the cliff not me etc) is flabbergasting, and I hate it. The worst that one can do to a grown up that has even the slightest inclination to be successful is to talk down to him as if he was 5 yo.

This is a reality check for whoever wants to save the planet and is convinced that CO2 must be reduced (Not me I don't believe it for a minute)

There are no REAL ways to reduce emissions. There are theories, little experimental hobby-like-toys that cost a fortune and need 20 times emissions they would save just in order to make them and subsidise them. (By the way, have you ever thought how much emissions are necessary to produce the money that goes to subsidies the toys that allegedly reduce some smidgeon of CO2 emissions?) No right? The equation is negative, waaaaaay negative.

So if anyone is serious in his belief, rather then going around blaming the capitalist, or the other energy users, he should be funding the inventors that will eventually come up with a cheap and abundant form of clean energy. Meantime, let the world go around, your talk only produces more heat.

 

Mosquitos are a necessary part of the food chain, and keep us humble. Many of our most loved fauna would disappear without them, as they are, in their great numbers, a great nutrient to non-vegan life.

 

those that talk that way , mostly have never served

what"s the word for that?

 

does that go for republicans too?

 

Chickenhawks. The name was probably derived from the Warner Bros. cartoon figure, Henery the Chickenhawk. But at least Henery was cute....