Wind or Nuclear?

[Skull Pilot]

Wind or Nuclear? - Ray Harvey - Mises Institute

Energy is like a river; it exists in two ways: flows and stores.

When you store energy, you create a dam to capture it.

What environmentalists call "renewable energy" is really just the stored energy of the sun.

In actuality, there's no such thing as "renewable energy": all energy, even the sun, is limited.

This is a good point even if it is semantics. even wind power is not "renewable" Once the wind has gone past a turbine, the energy is transferred to the turbine. that particular chunk of wind is gone not reused.

Fossil fuels are energy stores as well — specifically, they are stored solar energy, a process that takes millions of years — and they are highly concentrated, ten times more so than, for instance, wood.

In terms of wind and raw solar energy, the flow is exceptionally diluted: solar is ten to fifty times less concentrated than fossil fuel. When you can't concentrate it, then the only way to harvest it is to use more and more land. That's the limiting factor for both sun and wind energy.

T. Boone Pickens's now-infamous plan would require 1,200 square miles for a single power plant.

Compare that to nuclear, which would require only one square mile.

here is the rub for environmentalists. Do you want more and more acreage used for wind and solar until as far as the eye can see not one square inch of open land is left or do you want the same energy producing, greenhouse gas free energy produced at smaller unobtrusive plants that can be built almost entirely underground?

Coal is extraordinarily abundant — we'll never run out — and pound-for-pound contains twice as much energy as wood. Coal is a concentrated storehouse of energy.

It seem counter intuitive to me to ignore the one energy resource that we own. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal and yet we demonize its use rather than investing in ways to make coal cleaner, we have decided to make energy from coal unaffordable.

Octane molecules in gasoline, however, are even more concentrated. In fact, they're the densest store of carbon energy we've ever discovered. Pound-for-pound, gas possesses four times as much energy as coal. There's a popular misconception today that gasoline is inefficient and wasteful. Nothing could be more inaccurate.

Gas molecules are not only by far the densest form of carbon energy we've ever discovered; they're also easy to transfer because they're fluid. These are two of the greatest reasons we've adopted gasoline.

Nuclear, on the other hand, is something else entirely. The public hasn't even begun to grasp nuclear energy.

These are the facts:

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A handful of uranium contains more energy than 100 boxcars full of coal.
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Consumption of energy creates more energy, not less.
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Despite years of government subsidies (regulators, for instance, have forced utility companies to buy "renewables"), these same renewables generate only about 0.9 percent of our total electricity.
*

The most efficient solar panels currently in use (on the space station) are costly, and their conversion efficiency is about twenty percent, which is not very much.
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Twelve miles of solar reflectors generate about 300 megawatts, a minuscule amount. Furthermore, those reflectors must be kept squeaky clean, maintained to the hilt, or they won't work.
*

At our current level of technology, no conceivable mix of solar, wind, or wave can meet even half the demand for energy.

If, however, wind, wave, and solar are to become more efficient, it is only science and technology — as opposed to environmentalism's plan of blasting us back into the Dark Ages — that will get them there.

We begin to know about a resource only when we begin to use it. Knowing about that resource includes a cursory calculation of its quantity.

The more we use of it, therefore, the better we become at finding it and calculating its quantity, extracting it and refining it. Thus, the more we use of a resource, the more of it we're able to find.

that last bit is part of the problem with wind and solar. we have to wait for the diluted energy to come to us. Here in New England, June has been one of the cloudiest on record in the last 50 years. Solar dependence would have left a lot of us in the dark. we do not live in a good wind corridor here so ant power produced by wind would have to be transported here at great expense. Or we could build small reactors to supply all the regional power we could ever want.

This may sound counter-intuitive, but only at first: then you glimpse its awesome logic. The entire history of resource use and extraction has followed this pattern without deviation.

Boone Pickens is calling for massive subsidization of the wind-power industry.

As with ethanol and recycling and a host of other issues, you must ask yourself again, if these things are so efficient, why do they need to be subsidized? Answer: they're not so efficient.

Energies that require massive subsidization benefit absolutely no one; the only reason they need to be subsidized is that they cannot compete on the open market.

That fact alone tells you everything you need to know about them: they're simply not good enough yet.

When they are, the free market will adopt them naturally.

subsidizing only adds to our costs. Not only do we pay higher prices for less efficient energy sources but our tax burden increases to subsidize these power sources.

The reason wind power still won't get us very far is that transmitting this power is such a huge difficulty.

Wind is also unpredictable; it's therefore hard to integrate into an electrical grid, since grids have to maintain a voltage balance, or you'll get brownouts, blackouts, and power surges that destroy equipment by the ton.

The "grid," incidentally, refers to the entire energy infrastructure. It even includes the electrical wires that go into your house.

Grid operators spend their whole lives trying to balance supply and demand on the grid.

Energy demand changes all throughout the day, all throughout the year. In summer, for instance, demand is higher. Late at night, demand is lower.

Grid operators balance all this.

Factor in the wind, which you cannot predict more than, at most, five hours in advance, and try pulling all that wind power into a grid, and you'll begin to see how impossible the task is.

Wind needs constant backup.

"Spinning reserve" on an electrical grid refers to the amount of backup power that is sitting there, waiting to go at a moment's notice in case something goes wrong. In general, twenty percent extra power is the standard spinning reserve on the grid. Wind can indeed supplement a grid with this needed twenty percent spinning reserve, but it cannot come close to replacing fossil fuel.

Here's what you don't see in the fine print: The vast majority of wind energy needs to be transmitted. Thus, you'll need to step up voltage to 745 kilovolts (which is a lot) so that wind doesn't lose all its energy in the transmitting process. That infrastructure alone — forget the actual windfarms — will cost billions.

We'll also have windmills covering the entire great plains. Quoting energy expert William Tucker, "If Boone Pickens's dream is realized, you'll be able to drive from Texas to North Dakota without ever being out of sight of a windmill, just as in Denmark."

That is, except for Boone Pickens's backyard. Said Pickens, "I'm not going to have the windmills on my ranch: they're ugly."

Indeed.

Again if reducing transmission distances of power is less expensive, why do we insist on putting all our energy needs on power that has to be transmitted over vast distances because it can only be produced in the most remote locations? Is it worth the trillions of dollars it will cost?

And once again we see the hypocrisy of Pickens and his ilk. it's fine for him to have tax payer foot the bill for his projects as long as he get the profit and doesn't have to look at a windmill out of his living room window.

And that, in part, is why people are already objecting. Windmills are taller than the Statue of Liberty, and they're loud; the Audubon Society calls them "condor Cuisinarts."

Wind comes strongest along mountain crests. Thus the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Adirondacks, the Appalachians, and so on would all have their ridges lined with these monstrosities. Yet environmentalists object to the building of one small nuclear plant, which, compared with a windfarm, is tiny.

I still don't understand this especially when you factor in the true amount of nuclear waste produced by a reactor and not the inflated quantity the alarmists say is produced.

Uranium generates gigantic amounts of energy in a very small space, which wind and solar combined cannot come close to. Those who say otherwise — those who are antinuclear, in other words — have brought the world 400 million more tons of coal used per year, because for thirty years now, since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, we've been using more coal.

The meltdown of the uranium core in 1979 at Three Mile Island was so overblown by antinuclear groups that it went virtually unnoticed that the containment vessel at Three Mile Island had done its job and prevented any significant release of radioactivity.

Uranium is abundant, clean, and safe — in technological societies.

The catastrophe at Chernobyl — which, once again, sent greens groups worldwide scurrying to their soapboxes — only happened because that state-run reactor was astonishingly unsafe: in the words of Peter Huber, "You couldn't have operated a toaster oven out of it."

Few scientists disagree that the discovery of energy at the nucleus of the atom is the greatest scientific feat of the 20th century. All this talk about how we need to "discover a new form of energy" therefore misses the point: we've already done so. It's called nuclear energy. And it's amazing.

We discovered that the concentration of energy in the nucleus of the atom is 2 million times as great as energy in the shell of an atom.

There are tiny amounts of uranium residue in coal; those trace residuals have more energy potential than all the coal itself.

Chemical energy, which is everything from wood to crude oil to gasoline to coal, consists of playing with the electrons, changing their energy state. With nuclear, however, the big discovery was that there's far more energy in the nucleus of the atom. Therefore, it produces a far, far smaller "footprint."

More bang for the buck but we still would rather spend our money on the most inefficient energy rather than the most efficient.

In fact, there's really no such thing as "nuclear waste": a nuclear reactor is refueled by its waste. In other words, almost all "waste" can be recycled. Indeed, ninety-five percent of a spent nuclear fuel rod is natural uranium, and so it can be put right back in the ground, just as it was found.

The radioactive part constitutes only about five percent, but of that, half is uranium and plutonium, and so it can be recycled as fuel — specifically mixed-oxide fuel, which is exactly what the French have been doing for twenty-five years now.

After twenty-five years, the French store all their so-called waste in one room, under La Hague, which is about the size of a basketball gymnasium.

I've posted articles that have said this very same thing about so called nuclear waste. once again our government doesn't allow the recycling or reuse of nuclear materials so rather than benefiting from nuclear, we would rather pursue less efficient but more expensive power sources.

Why haven't you heard this? A writer for the New Yorker magazine named John McPhee in 1974 published a highly influential book called The Curve of Binding Energy, which convinced President Jimmy Carter (et al.) that people could steal used plutonium from nuclear plants and makes bombs with it. But this is untrue. Nevertheless, solely on the basis of this detrimental misinformation, our country now has fifty thousand tons of nuclear "waste," because our government won't allow nuclear plants to reuse it.

The stated policy of the Department of Energy (DOE) is "not to reprocess" a perfectly reusable byproduct — and all for absolutely no good reason. That is why Yucca Mountain is unnecessarily, and at great cost, being built in southwestern Nevada to store a nuclear "waste" that could instead be simply and efficiently reused.

Nuclear "waste" is also used for medical isotopes. Over forty percent of medicine now is nuclear medicine. Currently, we must import all our nuclear isotopes because we're not allowed to use any of our own. This is not only profligate; it's a kind of lunacy.

We're the only country in the world that doesn't reuse its nuclear byproducts. Nuclear energy is the cleanest, most efficient energy we have — by light years. Anyone who tells you differently, is flat-out wrong.

And I'll add that we'll all be flat out broke because we are pursuing the flat out wrong course on energy.

 

[strollingbones]

wind energy has its own set of problems and is not the solution for all areas....the northeast demands so much electricity that it buys it from canada...as does california....nuclear energy will meet the needs of more people than wind or solar...as far as enviroment...wind kills birds and bats...so you are back to solar or hydro generated electricity....since water is going to become the new oil....hydro is out..for much of the country...so you are back to solar or nuclear....solar could be the solutuion if they can come up with batteries that can store more electricity at a time..

 

[Old Rocks]

It is not a choice of wind or nuclear. The real choice is continueing on the same path as we are today, or all of the above for alternative energies, including nuclear. But in order to do any of this, we must completely rebuild our grid, and make it a distributed grid that can pick up energy from a 2 kw home solar installation as well as a 10 gw nuclear plant.

Continueing the use of coal plants is not only about putting more GHGs into the atmosphere, it is also about putting more lead, mercury, and arsenic into our childrens bodys.

 

[PubliusInfinitum]

ROFLMNAO...

Anyone that wants to see the results of designing a culture around 'no coal' and flaccid 'alternatives' such as wind and solar, need go no farther than the Socialist Democracy of C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A... The highly subsidized (which is not to say bankrupt) state of Delusion.

California started on this nonsense WAY BACK, with a BIG Push in the 70s, another in the 80s and of course spent a fair chunk of the 90s in the DARK! Which of course was blamed on greed... and decidedly NOT the idiocy of chasing energy production out of the state for 30 years.

Had the US built a network of Nuclear power plants to handle the electrical load, we'd be well on our way to energy independence right now. Who knows what alternatives would exist today, if the left had not shit the bed and essentially stopped the development of nuclear energy.

Id wager that we'd have a nuclear power train engine, which powered miles and miles of cargo from east to west, north to south... and while the diesels are highly efficient... I doubt that few could argue that the nuclear train wouldn't be more so and that the diesel presently being consumed by trains wouldn't be useful in the stores used to operate the nations trucks.

Wind and Solar are a distraction and an energy novelty... Solar will only come to a reasonable value when Science finds the biological code to unlock it's natural potential to synthesize biological reactions of systems which serves efficiencies, well beyond our present means to capture and manipulate.

Of course nature has been working on it for a billion years and at present has only developed solar powered propulsion systems, such as that which is typing this message and these systems require the need to consume other solar driven biologics for additional energy stores.

The problem that we're facing is what it always is... and that is the intellectual means of the common leftist is simply insufficient to comprehend the problem, thus their means to find a solution is non-existant... yet here we are discussing 'Leftist solutions' as if they're even RELEVANT...

And as long as the problem is tasked with finding a solution... the problem will only get worse and the solution will always remain, right there... the enormous elephant in the room, that nobody wants to see...

Nothing particularly complicated really... just ignore the Left and solve the problem.

Nuclear for Electricty and the rest sorts itself out fairly qucikly.

The problem is, of course; that the Left itself is preventing Nuclear development; which brings us back to that pesky elephant...

 

[Navy1960]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWzy9mUxVPI]YouTube - Is Nuclear Power Worth the Environmental Cost?[/ame]

Adm. Bowman makes a much better case on this issue than I ever could in regards to the myths associated and often put up by various environmental groups. Wind,Solar, other so called eco-friendly technologies while viable solutions for small, and off-peak, and filler energy needs. They should never be seen as a overall energy solution. Fossil fuels are not going away anytime soon and the poster was very correct in his comment on coal as it applies to the US stockpiles. The US should it put efforts to use that coal in a clean manner along with the construction of nuclear power plants. as well as wind and solar and other technologies along with developing our own natural resources , our energy needs would be met for year to come. There are many benefits in developing this sort of plan not the least of which would be ending our nation being held hostage by middle eastern oil barons. Those that oppose US involvement in regions that claim the US is there to protect it's oil interests should be the loudest champions for develping domestic production as well as those energy resources I spoke about rather than supporting a movement that has a very narrow focus and a limited view based on an earth first touchy feely mentality. This sort of view will never end our dependence on foreign oil, rather it will keep this nation hostage to OPEC for many years to come. Why you ask? because there are simply some technologies that will not run on anything but fossil fuels, i.e. aviation. That is of course your willing to conceed the development of the nuclear jet engine of the 60's again, however I don't think the greenies would like that one too much.

 

[Old Rocks]

There are no clean coal plants in the US that even in construction. The only one that I know of that is being built now is in China. Clean coal is a myth.

Wind is now producing in the giga-watt range in Oregon alone. Solar, as it becomes very cheap, will be a huge producer. Consider all the industrial and commercial roofs that are available. Geo-thermal has immense potential as well, at less cost than nuclear.

In the next five years I think there will be enough proof for all but the most ideologically driven that we have created a catastrophe. Global warming, and the climate change that it is causing is a reality.

 

[dilloduck]

There are no clean coal plants in the US that even in construction. The only one that I know of that is being built now is in China. Clean coal is a myth.

Wind is now producing in the giga-watt range in Oregon alone. Solar, as it becomes very cheap, will be a huge producer. Consider all the industrial and commercial roofs that are available. Geo-thermal has immense potential as well, at less cost than nuclear.

In the next five years I think there will be enough proof for all but the most ideologically driven that we have created a catastrophe. Global warming, and the climate change that it is causing is a reality.

What kind of energy do they use to create solar panels and wind turbines ?

 

[Navy1960]

Currently, the largest wind farm in the US – and the largest in the world – is Florida Power & Light's Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, located in Taylor County, Texas. The Horse Hollow project operates 421 wind turbines and has a capacity of 735 megawatts

Rocks did you know that the entire capacity of wind in the Untied States is enough to serve 4.5 million homes just about equal to that of Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station here in Arizona that serves Approx. 4 million. So while wind has it's place in an overall solution , nuclear would seem to be a much better solution in terms of power generation, jobs, and long term power generation.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Lighting's dirty little secret: The swirly florescent bulbs that will by law be required, as incandescent bulbs are banned? Mercury. Where's it all gonna go, from the billions of these discarded? Into the groundwater! Love it!

Wind power's dirty little secret: It takes 4 barrels of oil per year, per wind turbine, for the gearbox. And another five barrels for the transformer below each turbine. And these turbines leak and sling this oil. Great for the groundwater!

Multiply those figures times a million, two million wind turbines planned -- and you see why oil magnates like Pickens are pushing this. They stand to sell millions of barrels of oil!

Dirty little secret of solar: The production of solar panels involves nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) emissions be released. NF3 is about 17,000 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The concentration of it in the atmosphere has increased 20 fold during the last two decades by its use in manufacturing processes. The level is increasing 11 percent per year.

The weaker CO2 stays in the atmosphere up to 100 years. NF3 stays in the atmosphere for 700 years or more.

Dirty little secret of Hydrogen: Water Vapor is the product of combustion. Sounds great, right? But -- Water vapor is far and away the #1 greenhouse gas. This according to the IPCC and every other scientist on both sides of the issue. It's the one thing they do ALL agree on. Hmmm...

Dirty little secrets of Ethanol: Yeah, it's "cleaner" if you believe CO2 is really really bad, because it does produce less when combusted. But it also produces the definite pollutant and definite poison to all living things -- CO (Carbon Monoxide) 100 times more than gasoline! Also, it takes 1,200 gallons of water to make a gallon of this crap!

Cleaner little secret of gasoline powered internal combustion: Today's engines put out 95% fewer emissions than their 1970 counterparts!

It's what they DON'T tell us that really winds up hurting the environment in the long haul.

 

[Care4all]

most nuke plants are stopped from being built by the LOCALS...within the area it is proposed to be built, NOT by environmentalists....NIMBY Not In My Back Yard syndrome!

 

[JBeukema]

'clean coal' does not exist.
Nuclear power has its own problems, such as the nuclear waste.

JB's Solution?

• First, we decentralize the American power grid. Each building will use any solar and wind energy it can gather. Any extra energy produced is passed into the local grid.
• Each city (or sector, in the largest cities) will have its own micro-grid. This will isolate the regions in a bottom-->up system that keeps rolling blackouts from spreading in the case of failure of or damage to any part of the system. The regions gather any energy they can using whatever sources are available to them, : wind, solar, geothermal, small hydroelectric dams...
• Each state then has its own grid. Any surplus power from the lower grids are passed to the next grid up, to provide energy to any lesser grids that may experience a deficit, just as each lesser grid passes any surplus to and draws any needed energy from the levels above them. The states operate large-scale solar farms, wind farms, geothermal farms, and any other resources available to them.
• The Federal grid is a series of supergrids capable of drawing surplus from and reinforcing all the lesser grids. At the national level, we construct a number of nuclear power stations. The USA is broken into a grid system that isolates each region from the others to prevent massive failures and rolling blackouts as have been seen in the past. This protects the system form failure, accidents, or attack. Each of these major grids is powered by a series of nuclear racotrs and possesses, in addition to the connections to the state grids in accordance with the system described earlier, a number of 'direct connects' to major metropolitan area in order to ensure that,. if an area experiences failure or requires additional energy beyond the capacity of the levels above it, these nuclear plants can target these regions for power through these emergency and reinforcement systems.
• The nuclear facilities are to be operated and controlled under federal supervision. The state-level systems are to be operated by the states themselves, and the lesser systems shall be controlled by any private companies which seek to invest into the primary or construct parallel systems to serve their customers
• The buying and selling of additional energy shall be conducted between the parties involved (homeowners and cities, cities and regions or states, states and the fed) with prices to be determined by the free market and the negotiations of the parties involved.
• Power plants fueled by fossil fuels shall be phased out over the course of 20 years (timeline to be modified as necessary) as the systems come online.
• Homeowners and other parties will be rewarded with significant tax breaks for being among the first to participate, with the option to cell any excess energy they produce serving as a further incentive. Some individuals already do this with their local power companies, their homes being outfitted with solar panels.

 

[JBeukema]

Decentralization is usually a good thing in general. I almost always oppose the idea of placing all one's eggs in a centralized basket.
​

 

[AllieBaba]

I live in windmill country.

They're problematic.

 

[AllieBaba]

 

[American Horse]

Our state of Indiana has lots of coal, but it isn't very clean burning. Because of that problem Duke Energy is developing and building a carbon sequestration coal fired plant at the source of the problem, here in Indiana.

" “We think that greenhouse gases will be regulated, and coal gasification plants with carbon capture and sequestration technology hold tremendous promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and help address global climate change,” said Duke Energy Indiana President Jim Stanley. “Our goal is to make this one of the nation’s first demonstrations of capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide from a power plant.”

The approximately 630-megawatt plant will use advanced integrated gasification combined cycle technology. The new plant will produce 10 times as much power as the existing plant at Edwardsport, yet it will emit less sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury than the plant it replaces. Due to the plant’s superior efficiency, it also will emit 45 percent less carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour than the existing facility.

Integrated gasification combined cycle technology uses a coal gasification system to convert coal into a synthesis gas (syngas). The syngas is processed to remove sulfur, mercury and ash before going to a traditional combined cycle power plant, using two combustion turbines and a steam turbine to efficiently produce electricity.

The technology can also remove the carbon dioxide from coal during the syngas conversion process and sequester or store it in underground geologic formations. "

But there is plenty of opposition. The carbon would be captured, and injected into geological strata deep within the earth remaining compressed there. The carbon would be under great pressure and remain liquefied, presumably never to escape; that is the theory.

But the commonness of coal as a source of energy and the cheapness of open mining it provides a powerful incentive to make use of it, in spite of the opposition. That's why the biggest drag line coal shovel in the world was built to scrape it up. If a resources is valuable but hard to get to, its value is diminished to the point of nonexistence; but coal is extremely accessible.

The "greens" believe the carbon would escape and are attempting to prevent the plants development, the same as they did nuclear plants in the eighties. That's why we now have a 600 acre abandoned plant which was under construction here which will remain for hundreds of years as a monument to the power of their beliefs; actually a source of great pride for them.

In these coal strata is also a lot of natural gas waiting to be converted to energy. Lots of it is piped to the surface, and burned off into the atmosphere. In the last decade or so there have been many small "peak load" gas powered plants built and tied into the electrical grid, injecting and selling the power they produce at times of high demand into the system, producing income for the developers of these mini power plants. Few people are aware they are even there.

A huge power plant like our abandoned "Marble Hill" plant on the Ohio River, was too easy for the greens to focus on, and their law suits and charges of poor construction practices were unrelenting, bankrupting Public Service Indiana, which was one of the best run energy companies in the US; it was then snapped up by Cinergy, Cincinnati, Ohio, then finally Duke Energy of Charlotte, N.C.

What is needed now, like the small peak load gas fired plants, is small nuclear plants, perhaps on something of the same schemata. The time to build them could be mere moments as compared to the huge plants which took a decade and longer making them an easy target of the green movement. The beleagured Marble Hill plant's construction continued on for 14 years.

A mini-nuclear plant could be built, and the equipment trucked in or brought in by rail, and be in service before the greens could focus their demonstrations and lawsuits. It would take government approval to ease that path, but it may happen yet.

 

[Care4all]

I live in windmill country.

They're problematic.

why?

 

[strollingbones]

a friend of mine is thinking about instaling a 5 kw windmill....reasoning is ...getting off the grid and selling power back to the electric company....right now its at the start point of testing wind speeds etc. i am curious as to how this will go...can they purchase a 50 k windmill and make it work....make it pay for itself then turn "pure" profit. this area has experimented with windmills...nasa put a big one in ...it was not a success...it was finally removed...i think the reason..too much wind....causing the windmill to be shut down more often than not...

Boone: Windmill City

 

[ErikViking]

Lighting's dirty little secret: The swirly florescent bulbs that will by law be required, as incandescent bulbs are banned? Mercury. Where's it all gonna go, from the billions of these discarded? Into the groundwater! Love it!

Wind power's dirty little secret: It takes 4 barrels of oil per year, per wind turbine, for the gearbox. And another five barrels for the transformer below each turbine. And these turbines leak and sling this oil. Great for the groundwater!

Multiply those figures times a million, two million wind turbines planned -- and you see why oil magnates like Pickens are pushing this. They stand to sell millions of barrels of oil!

Dirty little secret of solar: The production of solar panels involves nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) emissions be released. NF3 is about 17,000 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The concentration of it in the atmosphere has increased 20 fold during the last two decades by its use in manufacturing processes. The level is increasing 11 percent per year.

The weaker CO2 stays in the atmosphere up to 100 years. NF3 stays in the atmosphere for 700 years or more.

Dirty little secret of Hydrogen: Water Vapor is the product of combustion. Sounds great, right? But -- Water vapor is far and away the #1 greenhouse gas. This according to the IPCC and every other scientist on both sides of the issue. It's the one thing they do ALL agree on. Hmmm...

Dirty little secrets of Ethanol: Yeah, it's "cleaner" if you believe CO2 is really really bad, because it does produce less when combusted. But it also produces the definite pollutant and definite poison to all living things -- CO (Carbon Monoxide) 100 times more than gasoline! Also, it takes 1,200 gallons of water to make a gallon of this crap!

Cleaner little secret of gasoline powered internal combustion: Today's engines put out 95% fewer emissions than their 1970 counterparts!

It's what they DON'T tell us that really winds up hurting the environment in the long haul.

Finally someone did something constructive - this list clearly shows what kind of challange we face when moving to more sustainable forms of energy.

It doesn't sound too hard reducing the need for nitrogen trifluoride in creating solar panels or switch to another form of lubrication for wind turbines? Perhaps we can leave out gasoline engines, they seem pretty close to perfect as it is.

 

[editec]

There is no reason not to use windpower where it will give us a good return on the investment.

We are not faced with a Hobsan choice here.

Both wind and nuclear power are options we can choose and we should choose both.

 

[Care4all]

There is no reason not to use windpower where it will give us a good return on the investment.

We are not faced with a Hobsan choice here.

Both wind and nuclear power are options we can choose and we should choose both.

Maine plans on being all of New England's Hub for Wind Power....


Wind farm starts up - Bangor Daily News