I know I'm late to the party, but I was on the beach this weekend with a malfunctioning wireless broadband modem, and by the time I was ready to make fun of Al Gore, Andy Revkin had done it for me. Don't get me wrong, I think that Al Gore has a hobby. I just think it's a pity that hobby is making a fool of himself in public. His speech on global warming is full of misstatements, exaggerations, and outright untruths. What's worse is that I'm sure he believes every word of it.
I'll add only one thing to Revkin's critique, which is that Al Gore's program for energy is not merely costly, it's impossible. Electric power needs several different sources: baseload generation, and peak capacity generation. Alternative energy sources are iffy for this. Wind is not reliable, and the places where it is more reliable tend to be either rather far from where the power is needed, or smack in the middle of the view from Robert F. Kennedy's vacation home. Solar requires vast land area to work, which is its own sort of environmental problem, and again, the best sites tend to be in the middle of the Arizona desert, which means large new investments in transmission. To replace our current, mostly coal fired, fossil baseload generation would involve the construction of massive new nuclear capability. This is a) blocked by Al Gore's friends in the environmental movement b) going to get you into a nasty fight with Harry Reid and c) not feasible in a decade in the current regulatory environment. Forget the price. Where are you going to put hundreds of new nuclear plants?
I understand the strategic value of setting bold goals. But when bold passes into lunatic, I think most sensible people just stop listening.
« Annals of DC driving: Robert Novak edition | Main | Your morning smile »
Gored!
23 Jul 2008 01:17 pm
Comments (176)
And the Dems go right to work demonstrating why they won't be any better at governing the country than the Republicans have been...
Thank you for stating the obvious. Too many are too willing to make him a God (Peace prize, Oscar) just because he went one step further than recognizing the problem. To me his policy is of the 60s' Peace Movement caliber; Of course everyone agrees with the existence of a potential problem; you just can't get there from here without a realistic plan. In the sixties, we all expected everyone to drop our arms and pick up a daisy and hug somebody. Fine, if everyone agrees to do it simultaneously.
Yes, Megan, but he cares. A lot. And it's that that keeps him oh so fashionable among the self-congratulatory limousine liberal set. It doesn't matter how wrong he is, or how self-contradictory his behavior is.
Global warming has the lead spokesperson it deserves. Because whether or not the problem is real, whether or not the problem is a big one or a small one, it's mostly about showing you care, rather than actually caring. Expressing the desire to do something meaningful, rather than actually doing something meaningful. From governments on down to activists.
Alternatively, from the Oil Drum blog here (with, like, facts and figures and science-type stuff missing from Megan's post):
The short answer is: while 100% is probably unrealistic, it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to get pretty close to that number (say, in the 50-90% range) in that timeframe, and it is very likely that it makes a LOT of sense economically.
The author asserts he is an investment banker for the energy sector.
But when bold passes into lunatic, I think most sensible people just stop listening.
Megan, as it related to the environmental movement, I think we passed that point long ago.
Wouldn't we also need massive breakthroughs in battery technology to store that energy for when it wasn't sunny or windy?
But when bold passes into lunatic, I think most sensible people just stop listening.
That leaves the questions of whether any of our policy makers are sensible people, and if sensible, whether or not they give a hoot about the rest of us.
@Bergamot
Wouldn't we also need massive breakthroughs in battery technology..
IIRC, one way that's proposed (may be in use) is to pump water uphill into reservoirs in daytime, and run it out through turbines at night.
Unfortunately, most people, sensible or not, don't know enough about this to appreciate his plan's lunacy.
Wouldn't we also need massive breakthroughs in battery technology to store that energy for when it wasn't sunny or windy?
I've got a better idea. We'll spend the money on buying every American a pony that eats nuclear waste and pisses crude oil. Where's my Nobel Prize?
The short answer is: while 100% is probably unrealistic, it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to get pretty close to that number (say, in the 50-90% range) in that timeframe, and it is very likely that it makes a LOT of sense economically.
The author asserts he is an investment banker for the energy sector.
Ah yes, an investment banker. The ones who conjured up all these financial instruments that have worked so well of late. I have worked with investment banker creations for 20 years, often picking up the pieces long after the bankers have taken their fee and moved on. They are frequently wrong, rarely in doubt, and never without fancy charts and power point presentations to dazzle us with their brilliance.
The point is not whether some I banker can come up with a way to finance a plan like this (an investment banker will always find a way and an economic rationale to justify it ... for a fee) but whether the plan will actually work from an engineering standpoint, or whether the current environmental insanity (find more energy but don't build anything that generates energy or drill anywhere to find it!)will permit such a plan to even get off the ground.
I am not convinced the regulatory approvals could be obtained, the lawsuits litigated through the appeals process and the permits granted in 10 years.
Not sure if you do edits but I think you left some words out of this sentence: "Don't get me wrong, I think that Al Gore has a hobby."
Perhaps you meant that you think it's great that Al Gore has a hobby? Because right now you're just saying you think he has a hobby. Which he probably does.
I'm guessing it's life-size model railroading, judging by the size of his home power consumption.
Al Gorer, I would like to present you with that prize.
Alternatively, we could just mandate that Detroit make cars that use those ponies as engines. Problem solved.
So let me get this straight. Drilling on a small amount of square footage across thousands of acres, in a freezing area of the country, where the supreme court wouldn't even let us send prisoners as it would be labled cruel and unusual punishment, is out of the question.
But we should cover the landscape with bird killing windmills in places where humans want to live. Cover thousands of acres of landscape in bright sunny climates with solar panels. Or build more nuclear plants which produces the deadliest by product of any energy source, that we're not able to store effectively because (depending on who you believe) we can't store it safely or the place where you want to store it is loaded with people who don't want it there.
Hmmmm.... Drilling off the coastline, far beyond the line of site or drilling in the middle of nowhere in a place pretty much no one has ever been to seem like pretty intelligent alternatives to me.
Thanks, yancey, I was looking for that.
Megan, what makes you talk about Obama's ideal VP candidate like that. Where is your interest in a democratic and moral victory!!!
I am not convinced the regulatory approvals could be obtained, the lawsuits litigated through the appeals process and the permits granted in 10 years.
It's never too late to poke fun at Al Gore - the Greenhouse Gashog! http://americandreamcoalition.org/adcblog2/?p=714
Sam:
How is Yucca Mountain in anyone's backyard? Seems to me that NIMBYism shouldn't be allowed to work there. BTW geologically speaking the Southwest has lots of such mountains for safe storage of nuclear waste.
I am not convinced the regulatory approvals could be obtained, the lawsuits litigated through the appeals process and the permits granted in 10 years.
I know Gore-bashing is your favorite hobby, Megan, but whether you think his vision is feasible or not, you should be a fan of his rhyming Pigou Club slogan: "Tax what we burn, not what we earn."
"IIRC, one way that's proposed (may be in use) is to pump water uphill into reservoirs in daytime, and run it out through turbines at night."
You may have just mis-typed but the way pumped storage is used is to pump at night and run during the day. There is much higher demand during the day.
Besides its highly inefficient anyway. I used to work for a company that owned a pumped storage facility and you only got about 60% of the power that you pumped up hill back when you ran the water the other way.
And there is not enough potential hydro capacity for most of it has already been tapped and is in use. The rest is either un usable or off limits for environmental reasons (Salmon and all).
Anythihg over about 10-15% for wind power is a total joke and solar is even worse. Just getting to 20% renewable (not including the 10% from hydro) would be a huge acheivment unless you count burning wood, grass, hog waste, and trash. But those sources are not exactly environmentally friendly. Curently evern with subsidies wind power represents less than 1% of total US generation.
re: the oildrum's blogpost.
I see two major problems with his numbers.
One, he assumes approximately a 28% capacity replacement rate. That is, 1 Watt of wind capacity can replace .28 Watts of conventional capacity. This 4:1 ratio is required because the wind doesn't blow constantly, so any given wind farm can only produce 28% (in this case) of its rated capacity in the long term. The super-duper electric grid does not change this fact, it just means that it doesn't matter which 28% of the time your local wind farm happens to be generating.
I believe this number (28%) is ridiculously high. Germany, the world leader in installed wind power (in 2004), gets slightly better than 8% (in 2003), and predicts that as their system expands, they will be getting 4%. That would imply that oildrum's cost and capacity numbers are anywhere from 1/4 to 1/7 or more of the required amounts. When 100-150 billion becomes something between $400 billion and $1 trillion annually, that's a huge economic problem.
Oildrum also implies that you can mitigate this problem somewhat by keeping the current plant capacity 'in reserve', only turning the plants on when necessary. I'm an engineer, but not a power engineer, but I know that one cannot turn a coal-fired power plant on and off as if it were a light switch. I don't know how difficult and detailed shut-down and start-up procedures are, but I imagine they are quite onerous. (if someone with better knowledge wants to correct me, please do so).
German wind power generation data comes from here by way of the coyote blog.
Tax what we burn, not what we earn
...Which, by itself, is regressive. Replacing the income tax with carbon taxes is unmitigated stupidity. By design either you have a rapidly escalating tax on carbon emission energy or decreasing revenue. If you go for the former, you're strangling the life out of the poor, if you rely on the former, you're strangling the life out of the budget.
IIRC, one way that's proposed (may be in use) is to pump water uphill into reservoirs in daytime, and run it out through turbines at night.
As ecodog points out, this is also stupidity and ignorance. There aren't anywhere near enough places to store the pumped water.
Just think about it. Look at the Hoover dam, it generates only 2 GW from the differential created by lake Meade. You are right, pumped storage is used, but there are only so many places you can put lakes of sufficient size. We already use a lot of them.
This is the fatal flaw of the majority of renewable energy solutions: scalability. Wishful-thinking doesn't make it disappear.
Tax what we burn, not what we earn
...Which, by itself, is regressive. Replacing the income tax with carbon taxes is unmitigated stupidity. By design either you have a rapidly escalating tax on carbon emission energy or decreasing revenue. If you go for the former, you're strangling the life out of the poor, if you rely on the former, you're strangling the life out of the budget.
IIRC, one way that's proposed (may be in use) is to pump water uphill into reservoirs in daytime, and run it out through turbines at night.
As ecodog points out, this is also stupidity and ignorance. There aren't anywhere near enough places to store the pumped water.
Just think about it. Look at the Hoover dam, it generates only 2 GW from the differential created by lake Meade. You are right, pumped storage is used, but there are only so many places you can put lakes of sufficient size. We already use a lot of them.
This is the fatal flaw of the majority of renewable energy solutions: scalability. Wishful-thinking doesn't make it disappear.
I can't help but wonder what "Jane Galt" said about Gore's position on the Iraq Invasion and Bush's tax cuts. She's come around since then. Was Gore right all along? Was "Galt" making a fool of herself? Yes and yes. Will history repeat itself?
Megan, I'm not sure what your argument is here. I read Revkin's annotations, and they mostly seem pretty inconsequential and/or trivial.
Like, ok, maybe it's unrealistic to think we can completely replace all carbon-emitting sources of power generation by 2020. But it's obviously a worthy goal (despite the tenor of Revkin's comments, and most of those here). And pretty much nobody with any scientific credibility disagrees with that.
Maybe Gore does exaggerate slightly about certain dangers (I say "maybe" because I'm not an expert and have no desire to delve into the Talmudic readings necessary to become one for this post). But again, um, who the hell cares?
If the choice is between a regime that actively and aggressively obstructs pretty much every attempt to achieve a sensible energy profile, and one that aims for the ideal profile, how is that even a debate? All the nitpicking and sniping does is distract from the real issue at hand, which I doubt you really disagree with.
It basically comes off as petty and small. You, and most of your commenters, are smarter than you appear in this post.
Abe:
Bravo!!
Just getting to 20% renewable (not including the 10% from hydro) would be a huge acheivment
And would probably result in some pretty serious grid instability as peaking plants struggled to keep up with the oscillations caused by the interaction of daily usage variation and the less-predictable variation in renewable output. Aside from which, you still need 100% redundancy unless the population at large is willing tolerate rolling blackouts in the event of renewable failure.
Absent efficient storage with very short cycle times, we can't allow renewables to rise too much above the noise in the system.
Kind of reminds me of when someone asked Will Rogers what to do about the U-boat menace during World War I. He said, “Boil the oceans. That’ll force all the subs to the surface.” Asked just exactly how to boil oceans, Rogers dismissed the question as mere detail.
Like, ok, maybe it's unrealistic to think we can completely replace all carbon-emitting sources of power generation by 2020. But it's obviously a worthy goal
You mock Megan's approach, but you argue like this?
You're literally saying "Hey, who cares if we can actually do it, it's a good thing." That's completely backwards. There are innumerable "worthy goals." The only useful question is whether or not we can actually attain them.
The attitude that a "worthy goal" is more important than reality is disasterous. The only reason we avoid disaster is because such attitudes and opinions are completely ignored. Your determination of practicality is the desirability of dreams. That's folly.
The fact that you dismiss those who try to inject reality into the discussion, such as revkin and megan, as the ones who are "inconsequential," "petty," and "trivial" is surreal.
Oh man, this deserves a comment as well.
If the choice is between a regime that actively and aggressively obstructs pretty much every attempt to achieve a sensible energy profile, and one that aims for the ideal profile, how is that even a debate? All the nitpicking and sniping does is distract from the real issue at hand, which I doubt you really disagree with.
Which choice is this? The one you got from "Strawmans 'R Us?"
Because what "regime" are you referring to? Bush's? That choice is almost 4 years past man, and it was before Gore anointed himself as GW's premier prophet. This "choice" of yours is completely fictitious and an obvious strawman.
I've notice that, for all your dismissal of nitpicking, you haven't responded on any level when it comes to discussions of physics and engineering or even economics and legality. You simply ignore all that. It seems that real dialogue about real things is trivial and inconsequential when compared to misleading rhetoric and big dreams.
Gore keeps saying "listen to Scientists." Well, ok. I charge him to listen to the engineers.
I read Revkin's annotations; he's not making fun of Al Gore. I think, he basically agrees with Al, but thinks the problems are harder to solve than Al says and quibbles with some of Al's statements.
You, on the other hand, write, "Electric power needs several different sources: baseload generation, and peak capacity generation," which is just nonsense. What, were you so eager to trash Al Gore that you didn't take the time to proof read your sentences for meaning?
And you settle for the standard do nothing answer because the Democrats won't let you do what you want even though, you suggest, there is nothing effective to be done.
Climate change, peak oil, destroyed fisheries, destroyed forests, droughts are serious issues to one extent or another. Serious people can disagree about these issues and their solutions.
And, yes, I know it's tough to be a libertarian when faced with these difficult issues that seem to demand collective action if they are ever to be resolved. But making fun of Al Gore, a man who has accomplished more than most of us can even dream, is no substitute for real analysis and debate.
In retrospect, Mr. Gore would have been a better president than Mr. Bush, though, I admit, I did not vote for Gore in 2000. The bright side is that the opposition to Mr. Gore's ideas is much weaker today after our eight years of experience with the Bush administration, whose only skill appears to be not opening emails.
You, on the other hand, write, "Electric power needs several different sources: baseload generation, and peak capacity generation," which is just nonsense. What, were you so eager to trash Al Gore that you didn't take the time to proof read your sentences for meaning?
Wow. If you don't understand even the barest basics of electricity generation, lxm, you probably should be a little more careful before accusing other people of spewing nonsense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseload
You call for "real analysis and debate" but you don't know enough about the subject to understand it when it's right in front of your face.
Like I said, these apologies for Al Gore would be a lot more effective if the people making them actually understood the critiques.
On the issues of peak energy useage, some musings:
An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true.
As far as using water pumps to store energy, it is already being done:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant
Again, goes with that peak usage stuff etc etc etc. More of these might be useful? Who knows, I'm not expert.
But it's obviously a worthy goal (despite the tenor of Revkin's comments, and most of those here). And pretty much nobody with any scientific credibility disagrees with that.
What on earth does scientific credibility have to do with deciding what is or is not a worthy goal?
"An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true."
Yes they do. You don't just throw a bunch of coal in a furnace and light a match. The furnaces have to be brought up to tempature. It takes a while. I don't know about days, but it is not like flipping a switch.
"An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true."
Yes they do. You don't just throw a bunch of coal in a furnace and light a match. The furnaces have to be brought up to tempature. It takes a while. I don't know about days, but it is not like flipping a switch.
While it is true that coal and particularly nuclear plants are very slow (days) to bring on and off line. There are natural gas plants that can be started and stoped very quickly and can be ramped up and down within a certain range within seconds.
These plants however tend to be the most polluting type of natural gas plant. The trade off is efficiency for flexibility.
Regardless, the intermitency of wind is a huge problem and it will never be able to serve as a base load power source.
"An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true."
Yes they do. You don't just throw a bunch of coal in a furnace and light a match. The furnaces have to be brought up to tempature. It takes a while. I don't know about days, but it is not like flipping a switch.
I'm trying to nail down where we stand on this issue.
Are we saying that:
(a) The IPCC's findings are right. However, it's impossible to act on their recommendations becasue of the scale of the changes required.
...or...
(b) The IPCC's findings are wrong, and there's no need to undertake this.
We seem to be skirting the issue of necessity by attacking Gore's proposed solutions. That feels dishonest to me.
If it's critical that we change our energy model, but it's too late to do it, then let's just admit it.
The oil drum article points out that for the US currently, already 1 of 4 total TWh generated in the US is nuclear and hydro. That's 25% for a start.
If the US were to take up a challenge like this, part of the taking up that challenge would be changing the legal landscape in regard to regulations and law suits, so I think the 'it'll take 10 years just to get started' notion is somewhat unfair to the proposal.
In regard to 'peak demand' issues, technologies like solar tend to work in favor of that - peak demand is in the day, when solar is available. So it isn't all working against us.
Furthermore, using convention power at peak demand isn't about restarting a coal plant, it's about ramping a gas powered plant, at least that's what the link on the Oil Drum notes.
A grid manager in France, who didn't like wind (France is nuclear) said, "The second point is about wind's contribution to peak demand: despite wind's intermittency, wind farms reduce the need in thermal power plants to ensure the requisite level of supply security. One can speak of substituted capacity. The capacity substitution rate (ratio of thermal capacity replaced to installed wind capacity) is close to the average capacity factor of wind farms in winter (around 30%) for a small proportion of wind in the system (a few GW). It goes down as that proportion increases, but remains above 20% with around 15GW of wind power."
In regard to power storage, while pumping water into a reservoir might not be practical in any case, the point remains that there are many ways to store power that don't require batteries. You could simply heat water, for example, or make hydrogen and oxygen gas.
In regard to Germany's results with wind power vs. the Oil Drum posters projections, it is important to consider what the average wind speed is at the proposed wind site. In Germany, the capacity replacement rate of 8% will drop to 4% as the project expands presumably because they will be using less well suited sites for wind generation. Given the much greater area of the US and our diverse climates (desert, coastline, etc) I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that we've got some areas that are considerably more windy than tiny Germany. (For comparison, the US has 25 times the area and cover 17 degress of latitude vs. 6 degress for Germany.)
Also note that the report from France is a 30% substitution rate.
The department of energy has a very informative link: http://www.20percentwind.org/default.aspx
An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true.
Depends on the source. For coal or nuclear baseload, that sounds about right. For example, a typical coal-fired plant has to be brought up to full heat gradually to avoid stressing the boiler; each boiler's firehouse (up to three or four per site) is something like 150+ feet in height and suspended from the ceiling of the boiler room to allow for metal expansion, which is on the order of several feet between the steady-state cold and operational temperatures. Power output is usually in the range of 200-400MW per boiler depending on the age and physical size.
For peaking generation, turbines are typically used (basically a large jet engine, but designed to drive a generator rather than produce thrust). Each turbine may be anywhere up to around 70MW and designed to run on natural gas, fuel oil, or both, often with an intake water sprayer to humidify the intake charge and increase mass flow. There is no practical limit other than space and fuel availability for how many may be installed on a site. For the largest turbine generators, the preheat to full-load generation time is about ten minutes.
(b) The IPCC's findings are wrong.
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have no effect on global temperature. Don't take my word for it, take the word of "the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector."
"I am shocked, shocked" that Al Gore would propose that the US take unilateral action to eliminate fossil fuel use. Where is the coalition?
Even eliminating US fossil fuel use in 10 years would not reduce global annual CO2 emissions, since China's emissions are increasing more rapidly than we would be reducing ours. Global emissions would be lower than they would have been if we hadn't stopped emitting, but still higher than they are now.
The only way to come close to Gore's goal in the US is to make a big investment in nuclear power.
You could probably replace the 50% of generation coal plants produce with nuclear plants. Right there you would cut your carbon emissions from the power sector by 60-70%. This would take a lot of time but probably could be done in 20 years.
Any unexploited hydro should also be used. But available sites are limited.
Nuclear plants are not well suited to cycle so you would still need gas plants for load following but combined cycle gas plants have a lower carbon footprint than coal so they would still be better.
Wind power could then be exploited where feasible to make up what it could.
To me this is the most reasonable plan for carbon reduction given available technologies. The problem is the hostility of some (not the majority) to nuclear power.
As someone with an engineering degree, I think Gore's plan is feasible only if:
- you junk environmental impact processes
- give the power companies eminent domain ability that makes the Kelo case look like a fight over a crack house
- throw huge amounts of money into expanding production of solar cells, wind turbines and the like
- accept a huge toxic waste problem (mass production of highly efficient solar cells will have lots of nasty byproducts, they tend to use a lot of toxic rare earth metals.)
There are also a few technical issues:
- the best places for solar and wind power are mostly not located near the demand areas. Despite much research into high temperature semiconductors, there aren't any available to be used for power transmission. And the line losses in lines from Az to NY would be .... large.
- solar systems are about a factor of four away in cost and a factor of two away in efficiency before they can be cost effective. Wind has similar problems.
- much of the wind power potential is available in winter, when demand is lower. Most is offshore, so take the NIMBY problems of Cape Cod and spread them along most of the US coastline. And there are problems with hurricanes in some of the best areas, though clever design might mitigate this.
A few technologies that could be used instead or might help Gore's scheme:
- there are lots of research teams attacking solar cell efficiency and cost. Breakthoughs are possible, but not predictable.
- LEDs could become the light source of choice, cutting total demand for electricity by 8-10% as they get adopted. Great progress in production of white light LEDs that aren't too blue and harsh has been made. They will be at least twice as efficient as CFLs, without the toxic material problems.
Nuclear is the only near-term technology that can be considered ready for large scale deployment. Standardizing plant designs could streamline the permit process and allow production lines to run, lowering costs. Waste disposal is a solved problem - glassification of the most dangerous wastes has been demonstrated, and the resulting blocks can be dropped into subduction zones in the oceans or stacked in Yucca Mountain. (Isn't it easier to tell Nevada to STFU about Yucca Mountain than pave over Arizona, Utah, and Nevada and plop windmills in front of all our tourist beaches and across the Great Plains?)
While I don't think Gore's goal is feasible in 10 years, or 20, for that matter; I do think we ought to be moving that way. For a somewhat more feasible approach, Scientific American did a cover story on a plan to replace all imported oil with solar power by 2050. They figured it would take 40+ years and over $400 billion. At completion, solar would provide 35% of total energy use and 69% of electricity use.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
They correctly point out that this would have to include building a new transmission system, as well as power storage facilities (they suggest compressed air instead of pumped water). The cost is impressive, but remember that it would be spread over 40 years. We have managed to spend well over $400 billion over the last 5 years on the GWOT, without crippling our economy, so $400 billion over 40 years should scare us.
For that matter, we need a new power grid anyway, because the current one is obsolescent at best. Our existing grid is at increasing risk of major blackouts due to the lack of adequate computer monitoring. A new grid would be designed for real-time monitoring from the beginning.
Also, if people are disturbed by the thought of covering 30,000+ square miles with solar cells, think about just how much of this country we have covered with asphalt. Also consider how much area we use mining coal and other energy generation.
Oops,
that should have been
$400 billion over 40 years should not scare us.
right. al gore is making up climate change.
thats why the ice cap is going to completely disappear this summer for the first time ever in human history.
so we'll just do nothing. and when sea levels rise and there are billions of refugees with no where to go and there's no food because we won't have the resources to plant and grow them...
well...at least you'll have made fun of al gore. and won't that be worth it?
Amen Megan. Join the consensus.
'...take the word of "the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model'
An interesting article. Thanks very much.
Is there a clear consensus among climatologists about this, or are his opinions an outlier? It makes all the difference...
In regard to 'peak demand' issues, technologies like solar tend to work in favor of that - peak demand is in the day, when solar is available. So it isn't all working against us.
That's a bit simplistic, peak demand is different depending on region, and different within region depending on the year. You can't simply say peak demand and solar output are going to match up.
In regard to power storage, while pumping water into a reservoir might not be practical in any case, the point remains that there are many ways to store power that don't require batteries. You could simply heat water, for example, or make hydrogen and oxygen gas
Pumping water is likely the best solution. The other two you mention are ridiculously inefficient. Hydrogen particularly, hydrolysis is extremely inefficient, and then you have to compress the resulting gas with even more energy. Heating water isn't much better, you have to heat the water into steam with electricity, and then turn that steam back into electricity. You also have yield loss from storing the steam, which isn't a trivial issue either.
Given the much greater area of the US and our diverse climates (desert, coastline, etc) I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that we've got some areas that are considerably more windy than tiny Germany. (For comparison, the US has 25 times the area and cover 17 degress of latitude vs. 6 degress for Germany.)
The size of the US works against us! You have to build dozens of thousand-mile long transmission lines to reach the areas that have sufficient wind from the areas that have sufficient demand. You can't even use traditional AC transmission, we'd need to use extremely high voltage DC or the capacitive power losses would kill you, not to mention the herculean task of synchronizing such a thing.
JB,
Even if anthropogenic carbon emissions were causing global climate change, Al Gore's "crash program" would not stop global climate change, unless every nation on the globe signed on and actually executed the program.
Dream on!
JB, Price of MAYBE cooling the planet a degree...$300,000,000,000,
Making fun of a fear mongering hypocrite... Priceless
JB, Price of MAYBE cooling the planet a degree...$300,000,000,000,
Making fun of a fear mongering hypocrite... Priceless
JB, Price of MAYBE cooling the planet a degree...$300,000,000,000,
Making fun of a fear mongering hypocrite... Priceless
This just feeds into my peak oil apocalypse paranoia. Global warming seems like a walk in the mark compared to running out of oil. I'm completely convinced we will run out of oil at some point (hopefully not in my lifetime) and if there isn't an alternative, things will be pretty shitty. People in western democracies live in a remarkable golden age and history suggests these things don't last forever. Pessimism is not really an option because it carries with it a lot of risk. People don't like pessimists and if pessimist predictions turn out to be true (to the point of catastrophe), there is no guarantee they will be able to cash out their bets. Just look at what happens to people who try and make money off catastrophes: at best they get prosecuted under some quickly enacted proscription against price gouging; at worst they get strung up.
Meagan - To replace our current, mostly coal fired, fossil baseload generation would involve the construction of massive new nuclear capability.
1. Not necessarily replace coal plants and abandon the ratepayer investment for the huge capital cost it took to construct dozens of modern, low-polluting coal-electric units.
Talk is that in a 40-year transition vs, Gores silly "dire, 10-year is all the time humanity has left!!!" window of transition, many of the coal plants can have their coal boiler ripped out and replaced by just a couple of load following Pebble bed nuclear reactors that you cannot melt down.
2. This (nukes) is a) blocked by Al Gore's friends in the environmental movement b) going to get you into a nasty fight with Harry Reid and c) not feasible in a decade in the current regulatory environment.
Harry Reid, if he has any brains, ought to have fears he is history if Las Vegas tourism is wrecked by high travel and energy prices.
And we can predict that the current regulatory climate that has blocked nukes, refineries, drilling for oil and gas, locking up oil shale is about to collapse in a pile of screaming lawyers in Armani suits if gas stays where it is, then slowly starts doubling again, along with electric and nat gas bills.
Forget the price. Where are you going to put hundreds of new nuclear plants?
They take up less land than a solar farm producing 0.03% as much as a nuke plant, erratically, and at 60 times the cost of nuke or coal electricity.
They can be cooled by ocean water or waste water from sewage (Phoenix wastewater was enough to plan 12 1250MW units 50b miles away at Palo Verde Nuke Station. 3 were built. Densely populated, small states like Connecticut (5544 sq miles, 0.2% of America's landmass less Alaska) sported numerous nuke plants before environmentalists succeeded in shutting half of them down. Connecticut had 4 running in the mid-90s. Now it has two. Once CT was a 90% CO2-free generator of electricity, beating even France..
Also, for what it's worth, there's currently only one factory in the world (!), in Japan, that can cast the gigantic steel domes used as the inner shell in current reactor designs - I understand they're already booked for the next several years.
(And yes, you could build more casting plants, or go to new designs, but half your decade is gone already at that point.)
Posted by Mike Earl
Eliminate the ability of environmentalist lawyers to block construction, and you could have reactor vessel foundries built and running in a year. Though investors would prefer putting those jobs in Asia away from the risk of America's capricious and uncertain legal and government systems. Better all the high tech jobs for that go to Europe or Asia or Canada.
*********************
I am not convinced the regulatory approvals could be obtained, the lawsuits litigated through the appeals process and the permits granted in 10 years.
Posted by Ed Reid
You are thinking of this as status quo, business as usual, the all-mighty courts will decide all matters when their majesties and highnesses deign to...
It's not gonna be that way as the energy crisis intensifies into a national emergency based on energy shortages as Open Borders grow US population of energy users from 300 million to 434 million in 2050 - and as losing 700 billion a year in national wealth to foreign energy producers produces a dramatic drop in standard of living and stagflation worse that what Carter bungled...
Lawyer and courts will not stand up to an enraged American public that blames them and the environmentalists for 30 years of blockage dealing with problems that slowly grew into crisis, and a lost American high quality of life - if they seek to continue to block the public Will to fix things.
Two simple proofs that Al Gore isn't serious, and that he knows it:
1) His proposal effectively was to exterminate the United Mine Workers union (not to mention the rest of the coal industry) as coal produces 50% of the electric power in the US.
Yet the UMW was not bothered at all. No reaction. Perhaps this is because Al proposes to exterminate the UMW using windmills, instead of nuclear?
I understand the UMW is even sending him a check to further "windmill research". Hey, it's green too!
Now if Al had said something like...
"France is effectively fully nuclear powered, safe, economical and CO2-free. That proves it CAN be done for a modern economy. I propose that it BE done here with nuclear, starting NOW, and that Democratic interest groups like the the UMW will just have to get out of the way for the good of the nation and the world."
... that would have been interesting. How would the UMW, Harry and Nancy have reponded to that, eh?
Instead ... windmills! How many unionized mine workers are going to be unemployed by windmills?
2) The US govt has just frozen development of all solar energy projects on federal land in the sun states -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, "119 million surface acres
of federally administered land in the West ideal for solar energy ... where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts" -- for TWO YEARS.
More than 130 solar power development projects are now on hold as a result.
Why? Envronmentalists complained, of course. So there is going to be an environmental impact study.
"The manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact study, Linda Resseguie, said that many factors must be considered when deciding whether to allow solar projects on the scale being proposed, among them the impact of construction and transmission lines on native vegetation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/us/27solar.html
So Al's URGENT plan to save the world in 10 years is set back by a good two years, 2 of 10, to study if saving the world may be harmful to desert vegetation.
You'd think Al maybe would be angered by this? Concerned? Have some comment on priorities?
"..... silence ....."
Saving the world seems of secondary importance to pandering to Democratic interest groups.
I can't help but think that Megan makes fun of Gore simply because she's a Republican (which she is, come on). How many times does Gore have to get [stuff] right before Republicans like Megan gives him the benefit of the doubt (as she did, say, George Bush, Jr.)? The answer, of course, is infinity. Because Megan is a Republican.
Global warming seems like a walk in the mark compared to running out of oil. I'm completely convinced we will run out of oil at some point (hopefully not in my lifetime) ...
Remember that "oil" as we use it comes not out of the ground but from a factory, it is manufactured.
The raw material feedstock for this product exists in vast quantities ... heavy oil, coal, tar sands, etc. (even garbage). Without even being surveyed there is enough for a thousand-plus years, it is impossible that we will ever "run out".
This is not theoretical -- Germany during World War II ran its economy on oil-from-coal, as did South Africa during the embargo years, two modern economies that did fine as far as that went.(Well, until the USAAF bombed the German oil factories.)
The issue is not "running out", the issue is price. At today's oil prices these alternatives are fully viable and are ramping up fast. But it takes time ... and the time is lengthened by the risk of lower prices returning -- remember that only nine (9) years ago oil produced in the US was selling for $8 a barrel. Nine years ago wasn't so long ago! Oil, being inelastic on both the production and demand side, has a price that whipsaws -- down as well as up. That gives investors in new expensive alternatives pause.
But in the long run manufacturing productivity improves by about 3% a year -- which means that 100 years from now oil from such alternative sources that would cost us $1,000 a barrel today would cost the equivalent of about $50 (actually much less considering rises in income) ... so there is no chance that we will actually "run out".
Hugely more likely is that by that time we will "move on" -- to solar, nuclear, zero-point, "Mr Fusion" garbage recyclers, whatever, driven by global warming concerns or not. And all that oil product feedstock will be left in the ground forever.
A close comparison is the late 1800s Britain, where there was a serious "Peak Coal" concern. Top flight economists (like Jevons) made all the arguments heard today about Peak Oil -- coal existed only in a finite amount ... the entire economy depended on it ... demand for it was compounding upward indefinitely ... the best and cheapest coal was going first and in fact was already gone ... the inevitable result was ... QED.
Today there is more coal sitting in the ground over there than they ever knew they had back then, literally worthless. It doesn't pay to dig it out.
Think about it: Coal has been used in huge quantities far longer than oil. Why isn't anybody worried about running out of coal?
lxm you said,
I know it's tough to be a libertarian when faced with these difficult issues that seem to demand collective action if they are ever to be resolved.
It would be good for you and other supporters of the gore plan to remember that the first collective action technology approach to carbon emissions was biofuels.
This collective action designed to reduce carbon emissions actually substantially increased carbon emissions. In the process it caused massive environmental destruction and did not replace a useful amount of petroleum transport fuel.
I would hope the biofuel disaster would teach people that slowing down and paying attention to the engineers is a good thing.
Especially before implementing new government energy policies designed to replace traditional carbon based fuels.
chris ford,
Puppies roll over on their backs when you scratch their bellies. I'll believe regulators, environmentalists, lawyers, judges and city councils will do the same when I see it happen. I hope you're right, but I don't believe.
Jim,
I completely agree with what you say. We will have carbon based fuels for a long time. It's just that price does matter. It indicates scarcity and people fight of scarce things (especially where the demand for those things is inelastic). Supply scarcity leads (and I concede to knowing very little about the complexities of economics) intuitively to a drag on growth and all sorts of bad things. Demand scarcity doesn't seem so bad because SOMEONE is theoretically making stuff, it's just not you, but maybe that isn't a bad thing because maybe you are more productive making other stuff anyway. When I say run out of oil, what I mean is very pricey oil and significant supply shock constraints on growth. I have no idea what the future will bring, but I figure a 10-20 year really crappy period not unlike the Great Depression while the world works things out not an unlikely scenario. My nightmare is for the bad times to hit when I'm between 50 and 60. It would suck to lose 10-20 years of earning potential and end up poor at 70 in a mean world. Kind of like being 65 when the USSR collapsed except multiplied by some X factor.
So what is the time frame for complete replacement? From a pure construction if-the-survival-of-the-human-race-depended-on-it standpoint, it could be done in ten years. As someone as pointed out, the next-gen pebble bed reactors are looking really good. They are also relatively easily scalable. If just one design was approved, finalized, and mass-produced, this time frame (by 2020) wouldn't be a problem.
So if this is such a ridiculous goal, what's everyone's best estimate? I'm curious as to who merely wants to bash Gore, and who is serious, and what they think the difficulties would be (and how to get around them.)
chris ford,
Puppies roll over on their backs when you scratch their bellies. I'll believe regulators, environmentalists, lawyers, judges and city councils will do the same when I see it happen. I hope you're right, but I don't believe.
Posted by Ed Reid
Puppies also roll over on their backs when you shoot them, gas them, or they sense an Alpha dog and roll over on their backs and submit to the pecking order.
Now, no one is talking shooting or gassing the lawyers and environmentalists or local political obstructionists - but the public is getting pretty infuriated at them and at government no longer working, us pissing away a trillion in long-worked for wealth every year to foreigners that either out-compete us or sell us our energy.
They are sick of lawyer-judge-special interest group (the corporatists and environmentalists maimly)- imposed Gridlock on energy, immigration, education reform, trade deficits, our rotting infrastructure, trashed financial system, Globalist outsourcing and other disasters the public doesn't have a real vote or say in.
Lets admit we are just a few more years away from true emergency conditions on energy prices, food prices, and currency collapse.
We are basically becoming the Alpha dog and if the puppy lawyers, judges, and special interest groups cannot understand the palpible scent of frustration and ugly mood on the wind and submit and roll on their backs...they may face an enraged Alpha dog in the mood to do some chewing and casting bad puppies out of the pack.
They are sick of lawyer-judge-special interest group (the corporatists and environmentalists maimly)- imposed Gridlock on energy,
Mm-hm. Google " 'grandma millie' enron" for a different perspective.
We are basically becoming the Alpha dog and if the puppy lawyers, judges, and special interest groups cannot understand the palpible scent of frustration and ugly mood on the wind and submit and roll on their backs...they may face an enraged Alpha dog in the mood to do some chewing and casting bad puppies out of the pack.
Please tell us more about how tough you are, Mr. Ford. Thanks again for being so awesome.
ScentOfViolets,
I don't think people would be bashing gore if he had pushed for the construction of more nuclear power.
What he is getting bashed over is the idea that we could get a 100 percent of our energy from renewable resources (wind and solar) in ten years.
If you know anything about wind, or solar, or the amount of energy used in this country gore's proposal is the height of ignorant grand standing.
Given that government action produced the biofuels debacle and given the stupendous amount of ignorance the political class in DC has on energy related issues I'm pretty sure the safest and most productive thing to do (from a political action standpoint) is nothing.
The $100 plus price per barrel of oil is doing more to drive development of sustainable renewable sources of energy than any government policy could.
This same price is driving conservation efforts on a scale that would be impossible for the government to mandate.
More speeches and less action from the politicians is the safest and most effective approach to the energy situation at this point.
But doesn't the quote say:
"Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years."
That doesn't suggest limiting the alternatives to wind, solar, hydro and the like. He's right on the amount of energy available from wind and solar, btw. But the technology that could make effective use of those sources is, shall we say, just a little premature.
I don't think people would be bashing gore if he had pushed for the construction of more nuclear power.
They sure as hell would be -- and they'd be his people, not us, doing it, which he can't afford to happen. That's why he can't say the word "nuclear".
Forget the anti-nuclear greens, say "United Mine Workers". Coal fuels 50% of the electricity in the US.
If Gore said: "We're putting the UMW out of business starting now, we're going to do it with nuclear, and it CAN be done! France has already done it! The UMW and the coal industry are going to take the hit to save the planet. I publicly call on Obama and Harry and Nancy to endorse this ..."
... the UMW would go nuts, into a stark rage. Them and the enitre coal industry and Sen Byrd and all the other political leaders of the coal states would go mad. Obama and Harry and Nancy would run away from Al as fast as they could. End of the free ride for Al!
So instead Al says: "We are going to get the US off of coal ... with windmills." Then looks over to the UMW people and mouths silently, "So not in any of our lifetimes! Heh, Heh!"
The UMW then sends him a contribution for "windmill research", Obama, Harry and Nancy all embrace him, and everybody loves Al!
He does a Hollywood movie sequel, gets a whole 'nother bunch of money and awards for it ... and the left continues to marvel at what a warrior for the environment he's become!
I know we can't use plutonium as a fuel because Carter banned it out of fear it might be stolen and it would be pretty easy to make into a nuclear weapon. But is the danger really that great? We still have nuclear missles, after all. It seems like we're just throwing fuel away for no good reason. Recycling what is now nuclear waste should both reduce waste and also decrease the cost of nuclear power.
Also, why aren't we doing something to harvest the helium produced by the nuclear waste we put in glass. It's my understanding that currently our helium comes from oil wells and is a result of nuclear degradation. If oil runs low, helium should too. And since helium is an inert element that can't be held by the earth's atmosphere, we can't really make more, except as a result of nuclear processes.
... Plutonium ... proliferation risk
There's actually an interesting technical point here.
If you have a breeder reacter or ordinary spent fuel, some of the U238 will have turned into Pu239 [the weapon isotope] but then a substantial portion will absorb another neutron but will not fission and will become Pu240. Pu240 is a bad thing to have in a plutonium bomb because it fissions spontaneously. This will cause premature detonation during that instant when the weapon is just barely supercritical, leading to a bad fizzle.
In a power reactor substantial Pu240 is created. In a reactor designed to make bomb-grade meterial, not much of the U235 is burned so very few U239 nucleii get that second neutron.
See the wikipedia article on Plutonium.
So the proliferation problem is not that there is material lying around just waiting to be made into weapons. It's the "if the US does it, how can they tell US not to", combined with the fact that a nation with a fuel recovery program can start cycling uranium when it is only a few percent burned -- a lousy way to run a power reactor but a great way to make bomb-grade Plutonium.
-dk
The US rejection of Nuclear Energy made perfect sense in a world of cheap oil. The interesting (for me--who isn't a "thinker") question is whether markets open up opportunities for alternative strategies or plunge headlong into a super efficient but highly risky system where one ring rules them all. The intuitive fear of the layman (me) is that we achieve efficiency at the cost of redundancy to the point where the sigma of a catastrophic event drops to an almost predictable level. I suppose the orthodox libertarian view is that people are always going to be dumber than markets regardless of the circumstances. This may be true but it require a bit of a leap of faith. I realize that my instincts might be wrong but my instincts suggest that putting all our eggs in the "market" basket might expose us to doom. On the other hand, I realize that not putting all our eggs in the "market" basket might provide pointless good feelings but expose us to more doom. Even Reagan understood that when a bullet is heading your way, you should duck.
The interesting (for me--who isn't a "thinker") question is whether markets open up opportunities for alternative strategies or plunge headlong into a super efficient but highly risky system where one ring rules them all.
They open up opportunities for alternative strategies. People always have different opinions about what's the right answer. Under a market economy, they can pursue those different strategies. Under central planning, what we get is some mishmash of the few people entrusted with making the central plan.
The intuitive fear of the layman (me) is that we achieve efficiency at the cost of redundancy to the point where the sigma of a catastrophic event drops to an almost predictable level.
This doesn't make sense. Efficiency and redundancy are not opposites. It is efficient to invest in redundancy up to the point where the costs of further reducing the risk of a catastrophic event outweighs the benefits. So we see stockbrokers investing in backup generators because to them it is more efficient overall to spend money on redundancy to reduce the risk of not being able to access the markets.
By the way, this trade-off in risk management is inherent. Regardless of your economic system, you can't eliminate all risk of a catastrophic event.
Also, for what it's worth, there's currently only one factory in the world (!), in Japan, that can cast the gigantic steel domes used as the inner shell in current reactor designs - I understand they're already booked for the next several years.
(And yes, you could build more casting plants, or go to new designs, but half your decade is gone already at that point.)
Posted by Mike Earl | July 23, 2008 1:24 PM