Y2Kyoto: We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans

More Money Than Brains 57 Comments

He’s on the “cusp of a movement”.

“I’ll never recoup the money,” Leblanc says, only a touch of defeat in his voice. “It’s not for nothing they have those hydro dams.”

Undaunted, the Montreal Gazette’s Andrew Halfnight soldiers on…
h/t Fraser in BC

57 Replies to “Y2Kyoto: We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans”

  1. This is a global warming story and very positive for the area.
    Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?
    James Owen
    for National Geographic News
    July 31, 2009
    Desertification, drought, and despair—that’s what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear.
    Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.
    Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall.
    If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities.
    This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.
    Green Shoots
    The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers).
    Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.
    The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan.
    The transition may be occurring because hotter air has more capacity to hold moisture, which in turn creates more rain, said Martin Claussen of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, who was not involved in the new study.
    “The water-holding capacity of the air is the main driving force,” Claussen said.
    (See a map of global warming’s impacts.)
    Not a Single Scorpion
    While satellite images can’t distinguish temporary plants like grasses that come and go with the rains, ground surveys suggest recent vegetation change is firmly rooted.
    In the eastern Sahara area of southwestern Egypt and northern Sudan, new trees—such as acacias—are flourishing, according to Stefan Kröpelin, a climate scientist at the University of Cologne’s Africa Research Unit in Germany.
    “Shrubs are coming up and growing into big shrubs. This is completely different from having a bit more tiny grass,” said Kröpelin, who has studied the region for two decades.
    In 2008 Kröpelin—not involved in the new satellite research—visited Western Sahara, a disputed territory controlled by Morocco.
    “The nomads there told me there was never as much rainfall as in the past few years,” Kröpelin said. “They have never seen so much grazing land.”
    “Before, there was not a single scorpion, not a single blade of grass,” he said.
    “Now you have people grazing their camels in areas which may not have been used for hundreds or even thousands of years. You see birds, ostriches, gazelles coming back, even sorts of amphibians coming back,” he said.
    “The trend has continued for more than 20 years. It is indisputable.”
    Uncertain Future
    An explosion in plant growth has been predicted by some climate models.
    For instance, in 2005 a team led by Reindert Haarsma of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in De Bilt, the Netherlands, forecast significantly more future rainfall in the Sahel.
    The study in Geophysical Research Letters predicted that rainfall in the July to September wet season would rise by up to two millimeters a day by 2080.
    Satellite data shows “that indeed during the last decade, the Sahel is becoming more green,” Haarsma said.
    Even so, climate scientists don’t agree on how future climate change will affect the Sahel: Some studies simulate a decrease in rainfall.
    “This issue is still rather uncertain,” Haarsma said.
    Max Planck’s Claussen said North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modelers.
    Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen added.
    “Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend.”

  2. traino,
    Didn’t you get the memo? The International Left wants Africa to starve. If they prospered, what reason would there be to pour billions of hard earned dollars down the African toilet?
    Move along now.

  3. I noticed a two page ad in Saturday’s Star Phoenix that was obviously paid for by the coal industry. They dropped a number of 170 tonnes of coal to make the steel required for a certain sized wind tower. I know it may be the old cutting off your nose to spite for face thing, but why are the energy requirement numbers to build turbines and newer energy efficient cars never discussed publicly?

  4. Hmm, but we know that global temperatures are dropping, so that is probably what’s causing Sahara to grow bush. Otherwise I don’t understand how global warming can be not global and not warming, but still an alarming climate change.

  5. Lets see, 50 years old, government job, living in an apartment, has a bunker-like living room.
    Sounds like a serial killer.

  6. Skytrail,
    Now you know..170 tonnes of coal/steel for a wind turbine (size not known). Your homework (should you accept the assignment….). I think if all the production energy numbers were known it would surprise us.
    I remember reading that it took 25,000 gallons of fresh water to produce 1 automobile in Detroit. Don’t know if the figure is 100% accurate but it’s close I believe.

  7. “Leblanc says he would need another 10 turbines, 300 panels and 60 batteries to produce and store the 2,000 watts needed to power his two-bedroom pad.”
    ROFLMAO.

  8. “Sitting in his bunker-like living room, which is laced with cables and stacked with four 60-pound batteries”
    Somehow I keep thinking of the character, Saul, in ‘Soylent Green’, riding his bike to charge the batteries.

  9. a decorating dilemma- all those batteries and cables. Wonder if the White House is setting up their own system yet. We should encourage them to do so- you know – walk the talk….

  10. the Helyx, available in several colours “to match the motif of your home,”
    I never gave it much thought before but if I had to pick a motif to describe my home it would be “celebrating mankind’s achievements”.
    I don’t want to live like my ancestors; hell, they didn’t want to live that way. If it was bad enough for them, it’s bad enough for me.

  11. The Prop (Wind Mill) looks like a nice lightning Arrestor (attractor).. I wonder how “area” solar panel arrays avoid a strike.. What is the cost of insurance?
    It puts a new meaning to the term “Step Voltage” (that’s the safe distance, measured in steps, from a hi-current induced field.. such that you are not fried).

  12. [Hydro-Québec recently introduced a “net metering rate option” rewarding homeowners who feed homemade electricity into the grid with a discount on their hydro bills.]
    Question:
    Why does HQ not buy the wind energy turbines itself and “make” all that “free” money itself ??
    Answer:
    Because their engineers KNOW it is a lost cause without subsidies.
    (But HQ will gladly accept taxpayer dollars that Politicians hand out)
    Question:
    But why Why WHY do politicians keep playing the game ?
    Answer:
    Because the likes of Gore and Suzuki own the media mikes and front pages and the politicians would get lambasted by arts lounge journalists.
    Question:
    But why are Journalists so misinformed ?
    Answer:
    See above.

  13. Don’t worry tranio, there will be an eco-environmental movement to save the endangered desert rat, or camel or some such critter after the Sahara greens up.
    And it will be our fault that the habitat loss is taking place.
    All we’ll need to do is to give the leaders of those african nations billions of dollars to save the ‘brown humped desert rat’.

  15. Garry re: the amount of fresh water,
    You’d be surprised to find that suck-zuki includes the water which we use to generate electricity in his damming of Canadians “waste” of water.

  18. The truth is that if you bought a wind generator large enough to make, say a 50% redux in your energy bill, you’d need a 75 foot tower in the back yard. In many of the new developments, they wouldn’t allow it. I was raised in Southern Sask. Many farmers had Jacobs Wind Generators. A small 2500 watt unit needed a 60 Ft. tower and blades that were over 12 Ft. in diameter. Suggestion: Get a side line, work two extra hours a week, apply the money towards a credit on your power bill, and let Sask. Power take care of the generators!

  21. This is a temporary situation, as cap and trade will make these devices economical. He should think about whether the children in Africa, India, and China are able to have their bread toasted – my gosh, how bourgeois – and be thankful that the taxes imposed that make electricity unaffordable are going to needy people like Al Gore in the form of carbon credits.
    As to when his neighbor on the other side of the cusp puts up a larger turbine and creates a wind shadow, all I can say is that he is entitled to his fair share of wind, and maybe, just maybe, he can get some excess from Ontario. I understand it even comes preheated.

  22. L O S E R
    Probably the worst place to try and generate power via wind – or any other means – and compete with the grid’s supplier would be Quebec. Quebec hydro sells its power to locals for far less than the open market price (i.e. what they could get it for by selling it to the US or Ont.). it is so cheap that people actually heat their homes with it – a very inefficient process and lots of people heat their outdoor swimming pools year-round to boot. Meanwhile Quebec Hydro touts how green they are whilst they encourage Quebecers to be arguably the most wasteful consumers on earth. (and they submerge a land area equal to PEI times three – unless they gave all those displaced Caribou, bears, artic hare etc water-wing there are a lot fewer of them. I digress)
    And the kicker is that by earning fewer revenues in selling it for cheap, the governent of quebec gets about 2 billion more every year in equalization payments than they otherwise would. IOW alberta is paying a big chunk of the subsidy.

  23. Windmills also require huge, deep concrete foundations that also have a huge “carbon footprint”, that, like the carbon for the steel, is a subject never raised.

  24. Gord Tulk
    The same can be said about Manitoba. Same lower-than-market priced electricity, same wastefulness, same equalization payments issue. So if you live in Alberta, thanks for the cash.

  25. All this for a mere 100 watts! It would have been far cheaper to get a stationary bicycle connected to a generator and this can easily produce 100 W for a long period of time and is accompanied by considerable cardiovascular benefits.

  28. Very helpful Vitruvius. Going to work that into a spreadsheet, along with Loki’s point, and see if there is a business case in using the power from stationary bicycles in an exercise club. At the very least, one should be able to put a decent charge into an iPod – say, enough to play the previous night’s SDA Late Night Radio treat.

  29. Wind generated electricity does nor make economic sense in Quebec, Ont. or I suspect any part of North America. That is not the point. The purpose is to give politicians like McGuinty the appearence of “doing something” about global warming. In Ont., conventional electricity costs about 6 cents a kwh to produce; the subsidy on Wind generated power is 13.5 cents and that does not include hook up costs, or the cost of backup sources for calm days. The growth in demand for electricity is in urban Ont., but the wind turbines are all slated for rural areas.
    What McGuinty, George Smitherman, Al Gore, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Fruitfly all have in common is that they will never have to look at wind turbines in their neighbourhoods. Stick the wind mills in Bruce Co and yet the yokels deal with them.

  30. As I had it explained to me wind and solar are good for running pumps for geothermal and solar heat water systems and not much else.

  31. I would hope that someone is advising these idiots to make sure that they have proper ventilation in the rooms that house all of these batteries.
    I have extensive experience with DC power systems, and the health and safety hazards that accompany battery plants are numerous. And I can only imagine the state of the cabling, fusing etc.
    As someone said here earlier, leave producing power up to the pro’s…..but oh no, these leftoid jerk offs think they can re-engineer our whole way of life.
    I D I O T S !

  32. I’ll second that kingstonlad.
    If these geniuses had any sense they would go out a buy a ‘green efficient PC’ that goes into sleep/hibernation mode and save electricity costs that way.
    Moreover, with the new tax credit and 100% write off for businesses in a single year the net generation of power saved over the North American population would power several large North American cities.
    I did that just recently with a computer sporting the new Intel i7 core 920 CPU. Nice race horse when you need it to crank out graphics and data but hibernates like a good Canucklehead bear when not in use.
    Now if the ‘Goracle’ was anchored in one place he might generate enough wind to make it a profitable exercise. But you might need to make him some cement shoes….Oh oh wrong imagery.
    Cheers
    Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht-Commander in Chief
    Army Group “True North”
    1st St. Nicolaas Army

  33. Solar power and wind generators are used for offsetting the main power source and they only make sense if the cost of the primary power is HIGHER than the cost of the alternative generators.
    Places that have Hydro at 25cents per kwh are boarderline… places that use diesel generators at upwards of a buck per kwh are a slam dunk.
    In either case the system planner and the operator needs to know what the hell they are doing.

  34. From Australia, a Statement by Mr Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, Australia.
    The Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition, Mr Viv Forbes, today called for Liberals who oppose the ALP Ration-N-Tax Scheme Bill (the RATS Bill) to leave the Liberals and join the Nationals.
    Forbes explains:
    “Barnaby Joyce has become the real leader of the Opposition and deserves to be supported. Malcolm Turnbull no longer serves liberal values and actually promotes the interests of big business mates who aim to do very well out of trading carbon credits.
    “The Liberal leadership has lost all idea of their philosophical base and are now the paralysed party of the extreme centre. They should have learnt from the history of Don Chipp’s Democrats and The Australia Party that parties of the extreme centre end up standing for nothing and are abandoned by their supporters.
    “The Liberal Party is now on that dead-end road.
    “Mr Turnbull should also ponder the philosophical goals of the deep green zealots who promote the Green Religion. He will find them consistent with the philosophies of Mao and Stalin, and totally opposed to the beliefs of freedom supporters such as Menzies, Thatcher and Regan.
    “Once our Parliaments held people like Bert Kelly and John Hyde of the Liberals and Peter Walsh and Michael Costa of the ALP who supported the freedom philosophy for both business and workers. Today, liberty finds few friends in Parliament.
    “Mr Turnbull determines his policies by “Business Feedback”. He should talk to more than organisations such as the Business Council of Australia, where 60% of the membership has no direct carbon tax liability and expects to benefit greatly by participating in the new Bubble Business to be created from trading hot air certificates.
    “Big banks, national law firms, transnational accounting firms, Wall Street traders and the merchant bank millionaires are not the real industry of Australia – they are the froth and bubble floating on the real rivers of productive industry.
    “Since the days of the Wool Boom and the Gold Rush, Australian prosperity has always rested on the primary wealth created by its outback industries. Mr Turnbull needs to pull on his RM Williams boots, don a hard hat and venture out of the air conditioning to find the opinion of the real businesses of Australia. He should talk to farmers and graziers, fishermen and foresters, miners and explorers, those who process our minerals and food into things of real value, and those who run the trucks, trains and planes that keep the swarming cities functioning.
    “Far from the genteel cocktail circuit of the Sydney-Melbourne Clubs, the Nationals have sensed the growing grassroots revolt against the Rudd road to carbon penury. They have done what every good politician does – find out where the people are heading and jump in front calling “Follow Me”. Many others will now join that revolt.
    “Barnaby Joyce is right. The RATS Bill cannot be made acceptable – it must be destroyed in the Senate.”
    Two points about this:
    1. The Aussies are world leaders in denial! Good on yer mate!!
    2. The “Liberalo Party in Australia is, in fact, a center right party; the Nationals are righter.
    OK 3 things:
    3. I like the use of the term “EXTREME CENTRE”

  35. OMMAG at August 31, 2009 7:11 PM
    There has just started up a wind farm on Wolfe Island, outside of Kingston. It will be profitable for the operators as they will be paid 27 cents/kWHr.
    The retail price of that electricity, let alone bulk price, is 5.7 cents/kWHr.
    Tell me how this economic and technological miracle works, please.

  38. Hans-Christian:
    I just realised we’re only a few blocks away from each other…small world!

  43. Mazda rotary engines have a reputation for being relatively small and powerful, at the expense of poor fuel-efficiency. They are starting to become popular with kit car builders, hot rodders and in light aircraft because of its light weight, compact size and tuning potential stemming from its inherently high power to weight ratio
    I’d say anyone with a wankel for green purposes should say , “I am a wanker”

  44. Gord Tulk,
    Wasn’t thinking of investing or comparing quality of websites…just wondering about what was mentioned as being a more efficient product. Don’t know (no background in it…ask me about ATC, though…)…just wondering.
    Thanks.

  45. Windmills (as we know them) appeared in Europe in the 12-13th century (nobody is really sure) and ground and wobbled until the 19th century when they were abandoned for other cheaper, more reliable power….thus ended the wind age….
    It didn’t end because of a lack of wind anymore than the stone-age ended due to a lack of stones….
    Water power is very reliable and extremely flexible……perhaps this is why the greenies hate hydro-dams so much….
    I recall the local flourmill which was originally water powered was converted to electricity….although the mill pond was vast it had silted up but still powered the mill during the spring runoff period and was used to start the mill each morning to defeat Ontario hydro’s demand meter…LOL….

  46. Wind power? Probably a dead end. But direct capture of solar? Standard bldg. technology in many parts of the world and most definitely growing here. http://www.canadiansolartechnologies.ca/solar-technology/
    We’re talking about domestic hot water heating and hot water radiant heating, not electricity generation.
    So what if it only works during daylight. Do your laundry and run your dishwasher during those hours. These things put out a LOT of hot water!

  47. I laughed at the fellow complaining that his toaster sucks up too much juice.
    I’ve got a nice little solar/wind power rig I built myself using mostly scavenged parts that I use on my camper to power LED lighting and provide juice for the laptop, DVD player, and stereo.
    I built the turbine myself out of magnets scavenged from dead hard drives and copper from old network cabling. The batteries were nicked from the local recycle centre and reconditioned for pennies on the dollar. I bought the 1000W inverter used at an auction for $10 (it was -30C on the day of the auction and no one showed up). My biggest expense was the $200 for the two solar panels.
    I sure as hell wouldn’t try to run a kitchen appliance or an electric heater off this system, but it’s more than adequate to keep my camper going for a week without a plugin nearby. It would probably be damned silly to try and set something like this up in the city.

  48. Garry, it’s just an electric motor used to move a car. All electric motors use magnetic induction. The technical problem is extremely simple and quite insoluble at this time. It’s powered by electricity, which means that it’s limited by very low power density of the battery storage.
    Using a car burning hydrogen fuel instead of an electric motor helps a bit, but the energy density of hydrogen, unless it’s liquid, is still far less than gasoline.

  49. Thanx cgh,
    That’s exactly the thread of the conversation. We were standing beside an C/B Electric Forklift (I was instructing the operator) and this was his side of the conversation. He was speaking of ‘a better mouse trap’.
    Cheers.

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation