Greg/Hugger,
No doubt you consider yourself reasonable. From here you sound like a hysterical panicked Luddite.So, let’s say it went down half the time, which isn’t going to happen but just say.
If any wind turbine farm was “up” — producing power — half the time anywhere in the world, I can guarantee the owners would be holding news conferences. The availability fraction for a wind turbine is generally held to be thirty percent… in areas where the wind is particularly strong. When somebody in one of those 24,000 homes switches on a light, the control system at the power plant makes an infinitesimal adjustment to the fuel feed. The chance that a corresponding increase in wind will occur at just the right time is so tiny that you’d be far better off betting your whole salary on a single spin of a slot machine.
We have a lot of wind turbines here in Texas, and hardly a day goes by that a truck doesn’t pass my store carrying another one. And you know what? — those turbines turn all the time, making just enough power to stabilize them, and that power is thrown away (in heat!) in big resistors because it’s never available when it’s needed, only when the wind blows. You know why they’re there? Because there’s a subsidy, a big one. When money falls from the sky, Texans find their big hats useful. Power generation? It is to laugh. Add up the oil to make the fiberglass blades, the coal to make the steel for the tower and shafts, the natural gas to smelt the copper in the generators, the power to make the silicon in the electronics and the glass and carbon fibers, and and and, the chance that any wind turbine will produce enough net power to pay back the Diesel fuel to truck it to its site and erect it is zero.
As for batteries, your Wright Brothers analogy is crap. The Wright Brothers knew what their problems were: getting enough power from the primitive engines of the time, and control. They worked on those things, and solved them, at least partially — but none of the solutions they arrived at are still in use in aviation! Now, Google “electromotive series”. You will get a list. Pick two substances off it, and you have a battery. The farther apart the two substances are on the list, the better the battery as a power source. BUT (by a curious coincidence) the best candidates for battery electrodes are also highly reactive — for which read, explosive, corrosive, poisonous, or otherwise highly dangerous. Every scientist in the world knows that list exists and how to get access to it. And that’s all there is. Every possible battery in the world is on that list. “New elements” aren’t even credible comic-book material any more. Do you really suppose things haven’t been tried?
And even if you found the wonder battery, you’ve still got to make it, so what you need to do is go back to research: how much is available? The only battery material in the Universe that’s available in quantities large enough to make enough batteries to make a difference is lead. For everything else, you’re looking at anything from triple to a thousand times the current level of mining and refinement, mostly using chemicals that would make any sane EPA bureaucrat’s ears curl. Do you know why there aren’t any Tesla Roadsters on the road? Because the makers bought the entire production of the factory that made the batteries — and didn’t even get enough for all the prototypes!
Solar power is the next best thing to useless in Canada; your sun angle isn’t high enough. Wind power is a toy anywhere; it isn’t dependable, and it’s even more diffuse than solar. Both of them are boondoggles designed to separate you from your tax money and give power to the bureaucrats who “manage” the projects. People who tell you otherwise are lying, and the only thing the numbers they give you establish is that liars can figure.
Excellent rant, Ric. Not to say of course, that figurers are necessarily liars.
For every Ying, there is a Yang . . eh?
http://www.revolttechnology.com/
Pataents and Nano-tech. = TG
I read some where that in switzerland they use excess nuclear power to pump water up to a reservovir to store potential power. Perhaps this is a solution?
What ever the experience of Locke in Texas, it does not disqualify areas where electricity generated by wind power is useful. It does have its well know drawbacks, though it is a good addition to the conventional power generation.
South Alberta is well known for its wind tunnel from the Crowsnest Pass to Lethbridge, the wind is more constant than not. There are currently about 500 wind turbines generating electricity.
In the late 90’s the wind power was more expansive than the coal generated power in the province. Consumers were given an option on their monthly electricity bill to pay extra if they chose the wind power, some did.
Eventually the Calgary Transit bought all of the power to run the C-trains.
At that time there were no subsidies, no handouts to the producers. It may have changed, perhaps Vitruvius might know.
Not being one of the socialist control freaks, greeners or AGW scientologists, it is easy to see that wind power is clean and welcome addition to power generation, as long as the producers pay their own way.
While some may say that to store the wind generated energy is somewhat awkward at this time, it is still valid to say that it can be done by using the power to extract hydrogen, this then can be used in other ways as a source of energy.
If somebody wants an ideal in all of this, maybe they will live in disappointment for a long time.
“Do you know why there aren’t any Tesla Roadsters on the road? Because the makers bought the entire production of the factory that made the batteries — and didn’t even get enough for all the prototypes!”
Sorry, but that’s just nonsense. The Roadster’s battery pack is essentially composed of 6,800 laptop batteries. Millions of laptops are sold every month. Even if Tesla created 100 prototypes, that’s only 680,000 batteries – much less than the monthly laptop sales of any major manufacturer.
The rest of the rant might be accurate – at least I don’t see any major flaws, but this bit about the roadster is deffinitely RTFO. Anyone who’s been following it’s development would know that the biggest problem causing delays with the Roadster has been the transmission, and that’s mainly due to the fact that the designers demanded a 2 speed transmission, despite the experts telling them to go with a single speed drivetrain.
The trick, as Ric points out, is getting alternative power to supply baseload, not just peak.
Wind is the world’s fastest growing electric energy source. Because it is intermittent, though, wind is not
used to supply baseload electric power today. Interconnecting wind farms through the transmission grid is
a simple and effective way of reducing deliverable wind power swings caused by wind intermittency. As
more farms are interconnected in an array, wind speed correlation among sites decreases and so does the
probability that all sites experience the same wind regime at the same time. The array consequently behaves
more and more similarly to a single farm with steady wind speed and thus steady deliverable wind power.
In this study, benefits of interconnecting wind farms were evaluated for 19 sites, located in the midwestern
United States, with annual average wind speeds at 80 m above ground, the hub height of modern wind
turbines, greater than 6.9 m s -1(class 3 or greater).
It was found that an average of 33% and a maximum
of 47% of yearly averaged wind power from interconnected farms can be used as reliable, baseload electric
power. Equally significant, interconnecting multiple wind farms to a common point and then connecting
that point to a far-away city can allow the long-distance portion of transmission capacity to be reduced, for
example, by 20% with only a 1.6% loss of energy. Although most parameters, such as intermittency,
improved less than linearly as the number of interconnected sites increased, no saturation of the benefits
was found. Thus, the benefits of interconnection continue to increase with more and more interconnected
sites.
Source:http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf
This particular study concludes that the solution is just a matter of scale.
As far as the “we’ve exhausted our ability to develop any new battery technology” argument goes, have a little faith Ric ;).
While interesting from an engineering perspective, the Tesla Roadster is highly impractical. The cost of the vehicle is $100,000 US and the stored energy in the fully charged battery pack is the equivalent of 8 liters of gasoline.
The battery pack is described at http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadsterBatterySystem.pdf
and I have a number of concerns with LiIon batteries. While far better then nickel-hydride batteries, they do lose capacity with repetative charge/discharge cycles. This loss of capacity is temperature dependant and there is also an aging process of LiIon batteries that limits the lifespan of the battery pack to at most 5 years (if the lifespan of my laptop batteries is equivalent to the Tesla Roadster batteries).
If I had $100K to blow on a vehicle, I’d get a Ford Expedition and put the rest of the money aside for gasoline which, even with expected price increases, will probably not get me close to a total cost of $100,000 after 5 years of driving. Actually I can’t imagine spending that much for a vehicle and my last car was a $3700 69 Dodge Dart.
It would be far better to increase fuel efficiency of vehicles until better electrical energy storage technology comes along. I’ll consider going to an electric vehicle once room temperature superconductors are developed.
One fundamental point that pro-wind people miss entirely is that it takes power to make power–a lot of power. A base load coal or nuclear plant requires 50-100 MW to operate all of its pumps, valves, control system, pulverizers, blowers, conveyors etc. A quirky fact about electricity is that when demand outstrips supply, everything dies–this leads to massive regional blackouts as happened in Florida a little while back. When base load plants loose their external supply of electricity, they automatically shutdown until external power is restored. This is why the NY blackout of a few years ago took many hours to resolve.
In Texas not long ago (Feb.), over-dependence on wind power from west Texas nearly caused a major regional blackout. The wind unexpectedly died down, causing a significant drop in available electricity to the grid. Fortunately, automatic controls and grid operator action were able to rapidly cut over 1000 MW of power to certain industrial customers per their emergency plan, and the blackout was averted. Were this not the case, all of TX’s base load plants would have shut down causing a cascading regional blackout.
It is for the basic reasons of electric supply-demand concerns, and the unpredictability of the winds that wind power will FOREVER be relegated to less than 10% of our power production.
That is, unless you want to have very regular regional blackouts–ask Iraqis what it is like to live that way.
the very fact is that the greater oxidation/reduction numbers mean higher bonding and therefore more difficult and more expensive to extract.
no wind turbines would be installed without subsidies.
Texas is a fine place to install wind turbines and is just as windy as southern Alberta.
Even with subsidies , turbines are still installed in the windiest places , save Nantucket where Ted Kennedy wants an unobstructed “heritage view”
Calgary transit may have bought the “green power” but it is purely a contractual arrangement , they actually get less than 5% of the moving electrons from the windturbines and they paid a premiem over normal power rates. more of an advertising scheme than anything else as the electricity is pulled of the same grid as anyone else. Actually a stop and go DC system like the LRT would be one of the worst kind of power draws for a wind turbine system .If Calgary transit wanted to really explain themselves they could explain how they bought the wrong kind of trains last time and had to put inverters on the tops of all of them to change the DC power in the lines back to AC power for the motors. the AC to DC to AC again -just isnt efficient. so couple subsidized power gens, 30% line loss , and 20 % conversion loss and subsidized transit fares and explain the efficiency to me please? could explain the 14% tax increase Bronco Bill and his army of servants wants to drop on us next year in Calgree,Albirda
Wind power Does have its uses. I for one intend to have a small windmill at our future home….
One large drawback I have seen in windmill farms, however: There are a number of them across Pennsylvania, including one massive set near Bethlehem, where two of my cousins live. They sit right in the middle of a major migration route for birds, especially hawks. And they wipe out thousands of birds every year.
But I am sure hugger is fine with that.
“Wind power Does have its uses.”
And the turbine can be used to annoy the kennedy clan.
[quote] I’ll consider going to an electric vehicle once room temperature superconductors are developed.[/quote]
Loki,
I think the existing State of Superconductivity is been considered for DC to DC summing points in AC Electrical Grids. It would change the “wild ride” Source loading problems.
Very good rant!
So the Dutch have been wrong for hundreds of years?
Celina, there’s a similar scheme in the UK for load flattening.
But if all that subsidy money is going from meddling public hands to private corporate interests, isn’t that a good thing? Aren’t all corporate welfare schemes good things in that sense? They deprive the government of the revenue required to hire more tiresome drudges to run your life and to exert control over your activities through observation and enforcement. It is the great circle of life. All that was bad is good again. Go in peace.
Wow!! Give this guy the Nobel Prize. No. On second thought, I’d rather see him honored with some prestigious and worthy of his intellect. That’s the best damned statement against the leftard view of this issue I’ve yet to read. Hard to imagine it will be topped any time in the future.
Kate: thanks for yet another negative piece of information. Now I guess it’s my job to go and find something positive about the chances solar and/or wind power might one day at least augment the burning of fossil fuels. No chance that you might provide the counter argument, eh?
Cal 2 is right on all points. (30 to 40% is max utilization)
Samuel: an interconnected grid as described would be massively expensive not to mention complicated and difficult to control and it still would require coal-fired or similar 100% back-up.
alex: continue with your math and factor in that the US alone consumes 30 million new vehicles per year (200 billion laptop batteries per year by my calc). Ric Locke’s main point is correct – the required materials for that amount of battery capacity simply doesn’t exist.
celina: pump storage – which is what you describe is fairly common and works as advertised (there are quite a few potential sites here in AB, BTW). However, it is just as expensive and environmentally harmful as a regular hydro dam without creating any new power. So, unless there is relatively free power available and the peak demand price is high enough, they are uneconomical.
Richard ball: something called the internal combustion engine and the steam boiler replaced the dutch wind turbine.
The Dutch aren’t wrong itjust happens that the storage problem isn’t the same for pumping stations, and that pre-modern the poor dutch had no alternative power sources, so you make do, you notice as soon as the Dutch and danes and Brits had an alternative trad windmills were no longer built…
Modern wind power has it’s uses. They are providing an intermittent stream of power in certain places that must usually be stored up in batteries. The places this makes sense are : A. isolated (makes it too expensive to maintain a fueled gen unit, or string some cable to it)
B. Really Windy C. And usually doesn’t actually need much power – radio / light beacons, a single isolated house, a monitoring station.
Ask any serious power enginneer/economist – the guys and gals who make sure your damn lights turn on when you flick the switch, and the that the elevators run amd your fridge stays cold 24/7 – and who kow what a kilowatt costs and what it costs to NOT have it when you need it – uniformly they HATE wind turbines, except in special cases noted above, as it is a mal-investment.
Unless some underlying technology radically changes there is no substitute for heavy baseline power plants if you want modern civilization.
Modern civilization, like democracy, is a poor system, but the alternatives are all worse. A LOT worse.
Being convinced of a mistake by the best available science doesn’t make it less a mistake.
Some of the best scientific experts of their day were convinced (a) heavier-than-air flight was impossible, (b) travelling by train at more than 50 mph would kill passengers via asphyxiation, (c) the sound barrier was physically impossible to break, (d) the energy that could be obtained by splitting the atom was negligible at best.
You don’t have to consciously lie for your figures to be wrong – you just have to be wrong. Which can happen to anyone. (And the old canard about wind farms, or solar panels, never producing enough energy to pay back the energy expended to make them is just incorrect – the site renewableenergyaccess.com is a good intro on some of the figures on this.)
There are two generating systems in Pickering Ont. One is a wind turbine and the other, 2 Nuclear Generating Stations. You can win 10 carbon credits if you guess correctly which one is the backup?
Perhaps you might want to know that coal generating power stations like Sundance, use between 40 -50% of the power generated, to run all the pumps that are used in the cooling system.
I most graciously accept my new role as a contributor to Kate’s sources from whence to Cherry pick. Equal billing should be afforded of course.
I did post substantiating material regarding battery technology development, and more grounded applications of examples of Electric based automotive innovations than the example above. But we wouldn’t want to confuse anyone would we?
On presenting overall common sense base arguments, the pack went off course 90% and went headlong into the favored diversion. That discussion is still ongoing. If you read my response to the above poster, you will see no one effectively addressed that either. Then there was my posting on sea levels rising. No opinion or facts were offered to dispute my contentions.
Some people appear afraid of the oil companies mantras being challenged.
Now let’s consider that wind turbine generated power can be routed into the grid, and thus supply can be regulated at conventional sources as is currently the case. Let’s consider that wind generation can be individually or commercially applied. Let’s consider that even as it is currently, it is a positive contributing factor to reduction in use of carbon based fuels. Let’s consider it is an industry in its infancy. Perhaps you could think of sporting about Sas catchy wan in a Model T truck hauling a load of sod for your new home.
Information regarding our locale;
A quick check of the Northumberland Straight area suggests average annual wind speeds in excess of 30 km per hr.
Generally, average annual wind speeds of at least 4.0-4.5 m/s (14.4- 16.2 km/h; 9.0-10.2 mph) are needed for a wind turbine to produce enough electricity to be cost-effective.
Did you check the price of gas lately? Better still, the price of diesel. The stuff all those 18 wheelers run on. Diesel is a byproduct in the process of refining gasoline is it not? In other words, if you are going to make gas, you get diesel whether you want it or not. So why is it in the $1.40 per litre range? The only justification I’ve heard is that they can only make so much and all those nasty people buying Jetta’s and such are at fault. Must punish and deter them.
Hugger
Lev and Stephen J:
Please cite your evidence/examples. None of the wind facilities I have read about are economic particularly when the cost of back-up is factored in
John Daly – I think you misunderstand the process here. Rik Locke put out his statement and Kate posted it. Several who have commented on the post have given a different perspective. That is what this site is about. Different points of view and a sharing of information. Don’t vilify Kate for putting this on her site. If you have issues with the piece, as they say, don’t shoot the messenger, shoot down the message. Are you capable of that?
We have a lot of wind turbines here in Texas, and hardly a day goes by that a truck doesn’t pass my store carrying another one.
Funny thing is Good Morning America just had a story on this same subject and nothing of what Ric says was mentioned on the show. Just that the turbines are an eyesore to neighbors. Go figure!
They sit right in the middle of a major migration route for birds, especially hawks. And they wipe out thousands of birds every year.
But I am sure hugger is fine with that.
Posted by: otter at April 21, 2008 5:24 AM
Properly sited, today’s wind farms seem to present much less danger to bird populations. Nevertheless, studies show that in the U.S., turbines kill between 40,000 and 70,000 birds per year. However, these numbers must be put into perspective with the generally far greater hazards posed by land clearing due to residential sprawl, road traffic, large buildings, power lines, traffic, hunting and agricultural pesticides, which together account for billions of bird deaths annually. One study estimates that each year 57 million birds are killed by cars and 97.5 million by collisions with plate glass. Domestic cats are reported to be responsible for the demise of hundreds of millions of songbirds and other species every year. The numbers must also be compared to the dangers from other forms of energy generation – for instance, the Exxon Valdez oil spill alone is estimated to have killed between 375,000 and 500,000 birds.
In other parts of the world, where the wind industry is better developed, the research is relatively positive. Danish radar research, for instance, shows that most birds tend to change their flight route some 100 to 200 meters (109 to 219 yards) before they arrive at a turbine, passing above at a safe distance, research that has been confirmed at several Australian wind farms. One of the more comprehensive pieces of research is the eight-year Danish Offshore Wind Study on Key Environmental Issues, which looked at pre-construction and post-construction data on the effects of off-shore wind farms on birds, marine mammals, fish and the people living in neighboring coastal communities. It found that there were virtually no negative impacts of the offshore wind farms to birds, and noted that tagged birds altered their flight paths around the turbines.
Hugger
Oh — a company was installing a wind generator to supplement electric power at our local senior citizens housing project. We are finally going green and the lefties were in all their glory! They took about $10,000.00 USD as a down payment three years ago and we just can’t seem to find them anymore! Go figure!
Can’t give you any references as to current conditions. The wind generation conditions at the time of involvement, were such as described.
The wind generation is not so much as a primary source as an auxiliary source. However you look at it, as long as it is not sucking in the tax money, it really does not matter how, where who and what about this and what about that.
Hugger,
I don’t have time this morning to fully address this, but let’s start with the batteries. You’re either an ignoramus or a liar. Look back at the “electromotive series”. Every possible battery is on that list — pick two substances and use them. (Fuel cells, too. At that level the difference is a matter of nomenclature.) That list is public knowledge and has been for a century and a half, about; anybody at all is free to pick a battery chemistry and implement it. Even you. Go get rich; the data is before you.
The “wonderful improvements” in battery technology come from people trying to implement a particular combination. For instance, lithium batteries (actually lithium-oxygen) operate at 10% to about 40% of theoretical capability, because their builders (somewhat understandably) prefer for the things not to explode. The notion that geeks don’t need their genitals is a demeaning stereotype, and having laptop batteries blow up randomly would be somewhat objectionable. Even with the precautions they take, errors happen — vide the recent spate of recalls because of them burning up.
Nanotechnology, in particular, offers the exciting prospect of actually realizing something close to the full potential of various battery technologies, by isolating the active materials in structures that allow electron flow without exposing them to the outside world. They’re still on The List, because The List is what there is; there ain’t anything else.
Briefly: What was the sea level in the Bay of Bengal in the year 900 CE, when Leif Ericsson’s customers were growing barley in Greenland, wine-grapes were grown in Thuringia, the Chaco Canyon and Angkor Wat cultures thrived, and it was possible to paddle a canoe from Baffin Bay to the Bering Strait three months out of the year? Was the present site of Dhaka under water? Show your sources.
Regards,
Ric
“Did you check the price of gas lately? Better still, the price of diesel. The stuff all those 18 wheelers run on. Diesel is a byproduct in the process of refining gasoline is it not? In other words, if you are going to make gas, you get diesel whether you want it or not. So why is it in the $1.40 per litre range? The only justification I’ve heard is that they can only make so much and all those nasty people buying Jetta’s and such are at fault. Must punish and deter them.”
No, Hugger, that’s not correct. Fuel is produced through fractionation at refineries depending upon the desired product. There are a host of reasons why gasoline and diesel prices are high which have nothing to do with the price fixing you hint at. Do you imagine that refineries can be switched over immediately to produce different fuel types? So, if we start producing more diesel, who makes up the shortfall in gasoline?
1. About a quarter of Nigeria’s crude oil production has been lost over the past few months primarily because of attacks on the infrastructure.
2. Refining capacity has not kept pace with growth in demand for vehicle fuel. As a result, there’s little spare capacity margin to allow for plant outages. This is a long term problem which has grown steadily worse over the past 25 years. Mostly it’s the result of relentless opposition to new refining capacity.
3. Making both of the above worse, there’s not one single grade of regular gasoline in the US, there’s dozens of them. Gasoline octane and additive contents are regulated at the state level. As a result, refineries have to make dozens of what are essentially boutique grades of gasoline to supply their markets. This makes for a highly fragile supply system in which the effect of any interruption is magnified.
4. There has been a large increase in demand for diesel vehicles over the past year. Given the no significant increase in refining capacity and little redundant capacity within the refining industry, that adds up to a fuel shortage, as manifested by the rising price.
Boone Pickens, a self made billionaire, is considered one of the sharpest minds in the oil industry. He knows the business of energy as well as anyone, and he is putting billions of dollars into wind energy. What does that say about it?
Photo-voltaics will work financially in markets where KwH consumption charges vary during the day. Third party financing is making this possible, amortized over 25 years.
Local generation of power by a fuel cell should have been the answer. Carrier Corp had a working model, yet it has disappeared from the market.
Imagine if every new home had a fuel cell running on natural gas? Heat and power for the home, plus excess power to the grid.
OTOH if the Inuit went back to their tradiational ways, burning whale oil for light/heat, then the polar bears would be saved from electro-diesel plants running 24×7, for sattelite TV, etc.
Take every car in the world, now visualise that many windmills. Even on that scale it would only make a dent in “replacing fossil fuels”
I get a kick out of all the wind power experts.They have never lived a day relying on the wind for power.I have.On the prairies before the electrical grids were constructed,there were hundreds of farms with wind mills and wind chargers to pump water and supply electricity.Every one had an engine backup for to pump water and another for electricity.Also a battery backup system.You shut the light off when leaving a room.No one had air conditioning.No one had a heating system that relied on electricity.No one had a car heater or a block heater.No one had an electric dryer.No one had an electric water heater.Some had an electric washing machine that was used once a week but the engine generater had to run if an electric motor of any kind was in use.Batteries were only good to run lights and wind chargers were ONLY good enough to charge batteries.ONLY THE MORE WELL OFF FARMERS HAD THESE SYSTEMS! THEY COST TOO MUCH FOR POOR FARMERS!
It says there’s a subsidy. Money is falling from the sky, and T. Boone Pickens has one of the biggest hats around.
Find us a source of platinum at or below $100/troy oz and/or a method for making one-molecule-thick platinum films, and there will be fuel cells in $5 Chinese plastic toys. “Breakages, Ltd.” is a myth, however wish-fulfilling it may be.
Regards,
Ric
To address Mr. Locke’s contention that only lead is available in sufficient quantities to fulfill commercial battery requirements, here is some food for thought.
The main component in the new technology being developed by EESTOR is barium-titanate powders. This is a common component of capacitors. Perhaps some of the people involved in the Engineering, Scientific or manufacturing communities would offer some insight as to the availability of this product? From what I can tell, the components are commonly available and used in such things as paint and fertilizers.
Lockheed Martin are interested enough in the technology to pursue its use. Specifically the EESUs units that EESTOR are developing. Also, ZENN car manufacturing here in Canada are awaiting shipment of the batteries later this year to be used in their Electric cars.
As for your input today Mr. Locke, I did provide sources on rising water levels on a recent blog. Go look. I remember your input about how much oil it takes to make a blade for wind turbine and your assessment. How much natural gas does it take to produce a barrel of oil from the Alberta tar sands, and how much fresh water does it take, and what happens to the contaminate??
Hugger
I don’t have time this morning to fully address this, but let’s start with the batteries. You’re either an ignoramus or a liar.
Posted by: Ric Locke at April 21, 2008 10:02 AM
Apparently Sir, you have mistaken me for someone who cares what you think. As I said to you a couple of days ago, in response to that post of yours which is HEADLINED above, you sound like the typical denier.
Hugger
Properly sited, today’s wind farms seem to present much less danger to bird populations – Hugger
Ahh, the ‘ol “I know you are but what am I” argument augmented by the low grade slur of “big oil’s useful idiots’ line.
Aside from bad logic and ad hominem – Hugger – you are naive and ideological.
Wind is flakey. It doesn’t always blow. When you have a ventilator at a hospital, a traffic light, or any other power sink that is critical to our society, it cannot be succeptible to megavar degradation or amp drop.
Aside from selective peak shaving – generation from wind is near useless outside of servicing a single house/complex.
They are a blight on the landscape, destroy migratory bird patterns, and are simply a bad excuse to wrap one’s lips around the taxpayors wallets – all in the name of helping humanity. Your arguments are driven by ideology – not rationality.
The real issue underlying Suzuki/Gore/Tree-hugging eco nuts isn’t climate change/emissions/societal waste – it’s an ideology that is at odds with contemporary western society.
And that’s cool. I believe in reducing our society’s energy footprint. I believe in creating less waste – toxic and otherwise. But these idological whackjobs push their cash creating agenda with lies, half-truths, and scare tactics that do not reflect fact.
Analogously, clinging to a generation form that is not simply less than ideal – but injurious to surroundings for a marginal benefit (I state there is none) – is simply delusional.
Embrace your cognitive dissonance, and grow as a person.
The more one strays from fact in trying to sell a philosophy – the harder the fall when everyone catches up.
I am convinced that guys like the Fruit Fly and the Gore-ackle have done more harm to the environmental movement than can be quantified. Because Joe and Jane Canuck will realize the lies they’ve been peddled, and will be less inclined to listen in the future. Try googling ‘boy who cried wolf’.
Waaaaaaaaaaha! It’s still all true!
MSDS for barium. Highlights: We don’t know the effects in people of ingesting low levels of barium over the long term. Animal studies have found increased blood pressure and changes in the heart from ingesting barium over a long time. We don’t know the effects of barium from breathing it or from touching it. Apparently you’re all about invoking the Precautionary Principle to justify massive intrusion into people’s lifestyles and energy-use choices, but as regards spraying toxic chemicals around the ecosphere, not so much, eh?
Regards,
Ric
How come we’re told we must recycle because we have no more room to dump garbage but we can allocate large tracts of land to windmills?
“Do you imagine that refineries can be switched over immediately to produce different fuel types? So, if we start producing more diesel, who makes up the shortfall in gasoline?”
cgh at April 21, 2008 10:09 AM
What I know, and am not imagining is that in our small market area there used to be 5 refineries, and now there are two. This in spite of tremendous increase in usage over the past two decades when this transpired. What I know and am not imagining is that one of those refineries was built at tax payer expense, and when it became idle due to market forces etc. the government of Canada refused to lease it to an individual who had the background, and ability to make it work. But the big players in the industry didn’t want that nasty little dog nipping at their heels. I also know the refinery ended up being sold for scrap price to an American company who removed it.
1. Opec says there is no shortfall. I read that last week.
2. Addressed above.
3. Gasoline additives are added after the refining process, no? Additionally, are you old enough to remember paying for something that wasn’t added to fuel anymore?
4. Addressed above re: refining capacity and another thing, when the genius’ in Ottawa were busy gutting the Railway back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I says to meself, self, they are going to be sorry. Are you contending, as I mentioned that it’s the increase in Jetta’s etc. that is making the difference?
Lastly, in refining are you referring to straight run or catalytic cracking capability?
Hugger
There are a lot of aspects of this that, for me, fall into the category of “hilarious if they weren’t dangerous”, and the biggest one is foot-shooting amongst the proponents.
University professors, “Human Rights Commissions”, extensive bureaucracies for minor matters, and the like are examples of conspicuous consumption. Wealthy economies can maintain them out of pocket change; less-wealthy ones struggle to keep at least a symbolic number around to maintain the appearance of keeping up with the Joneses. They are the SUVs of sociopolitics, of some limited real utility but mostly just “bling”.
So what happens if they get their way? A Canada or a United States that was getting by on a couple of KW per citizen would not have anything like the resources to maintain them in the lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to. I can pretty well guarantee that when the choice comes down to funding the Premier’s bar bill or the Womyn’s Studies Department, it’ll be the barmaids that squeak through.
Oh, and Boone Pickens was mentioned above. Recall the old saying “A fool and his money is soon parted”? There is a philosophy that extends that idea to a moral imperative: “It is morally reprehensible to allow a fool to keep his money.” T. Boone Pickens is among the foremost advocates of that concept, and has gotten really really rich applying it. He avoids criticism of his business practices, even among capitalists, by making that obvious. If Pickens thinks he can make money off something you’re doing you need to have a really serious re-think.
Regards,
Ric
Thanks Ric Locke …
I am supporter of alternative energy development and I agree that ALL you points are valid!
I would however argue that at some point the cost of producing the wind generated electricity becomes less than the use of alternatives.
I’d also argue that in order to get to that point sooner rather than later it is necessary to have development take place. Thus I see every installation as a pilot project and learning opportunity that is in the long run going to be beneficial. Even if it means that wind power will be rejected in favour of other developments.
BTW – it does not matter in the least if there are power losses in the wind generator. What does matter is the consistency and the total life span or reliability.
Cheers!
Ric Locke at April 21, 2008 11:41 AM
The position you so strenuously put forth was based on availability of necessary resources to support wide scale production of alternative battery technology, not health concerns. Am I to assume you are also an expert in Medicine as well as your previously stated qualifications?
So, answer the question if you can. What’s all that Waaaaha stuff? Step on your dick?
Hugger
Apologies for the spelling .. accidentally hit post instead of preview!!!
I’m for anything that will eliminate ME, especially Saudi oil revenues.
Germany has the largest wind installation. It is running on average at 18% efficiency. It needs to be at 30%. I guess they’re still working on how to get the wind to cooperate.
Clean coal, despite what the leftards say, is still very viable, especially with the scrubbers and C02 sequestering technology. Properly retrofit, coal plants can burn everything from hay to garbage pellets as well. North America has a 250 year supply of coal.
Nuclear is zero C02 emissions.
Transportation is anybody’s guess right now. But, as I said, I’m all for anything that ends foreign, especially Saudi oil dependence. Finding an alternative fuel solution might have been a smarter place to put at least some of the trillions spent on the Iraq war.
As it is we are fighting and at the same time funding Islamic conquest and terrorism.
Last Sunday I mowed the lawn. Today Nanook is home from school because the busses aren’t running. I’ll be digging out the snowblower a little later today.
Praise the Lord and pass the global warming please.
BTW – it does not matter in the least if there are power losses in the wind generator. What does matter is the consistency and the total life span or reliability.
Posted by: OMMAG at April 21, 2008 12:10 PM
The last word you use is the most critical OMMAG – reliability in power terms is either on, or off. Yes, or no.
Wind is variable, and not reliable. Anywhere.
And that’s why business needs big handouts from taxpayers – because no business model would be able to attract significant capital to engage a random payback profile.
Some trading and hedging can mitigate, but not chnage this fact.
Nuke is the way.