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Re: [Phys-l] Get Aggressive On Global Warming



At 09:35 -0500 4/21/07, James Mackey wrote:

How do you get around the problem of variability with windpower? How do
you find appropriate sites for your windpower generators? How many do
you need to build to replace the coal fired plants? Do I want to pay the
much higher energy costs? At best windpower, solar power remain
supplementary power sources, primarily because they are low quality
energy sources.
Any activity that calls for drastic energy reduction without equivalent
economic advantage to consumers is doomed to failure.

Wind Power isn't going to solve the problem by itself, nor will any other option. Current costs for wind power are around $0.05 per KWh, so cost is not the driving factor. Siting windmill farms in areas of higher sustained winds will be necessary, and they will have to be networked over fairly large areas so that a more or less constant output from the aggregate can be expected. These are problems that need to be addressed. The Power grid will have to be improved and upgraded to handle it (but that will be needed anyway, since the current power grid is hanging on by little more than a thread). Most of the sustained wind areas are not close to populated areas, so the power produced from wind generators will have to be "trucked" over long distances. But having them in less populated areas will also make it easier to build them since opposition to having windmills all over the place will be less.

The problem with the electric power problem, as I see it is that nearly everything that we can do to mitigate the production of greenhouse gases involves doing something that we are not doing now, either because it has not been economically feasible up to this point, it has not been sufficiently technologically developed, or it wasn't significantly less polluting that the current sources of power. We have to change our thinking, and we don't have a whole lot of time. The point at which serious damage to the coastal areas of the world due to sea level rise is estimated to be at a concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere of between 450-600 ppm. We are presently at about 390, and it is growing by about 2 ppm per year. At to that the concentration of about 45 ppm for methane and other greenhouse gases, and we have a real problem.

No source of electricity is without its ecological or economic footprint. We need to face up to that and figure out ways to deal with it. One way would be to start charging the full cost of the power that we now use, which, because the power companies don't have to pay for getting the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, or keeping them out, means that we are in effect subsidizing the production of greenhouse gases which are likely to have the effect of killing us all.

I rather like Pacala and Socolow's approach--the mitigation wedge strategy--where each possible mitigation technology is assigned its sector and then expanded or contracted as the developing technology requires or permits. That allows us to hedge our bets and to follow the best leads with the least time lost. We cannot put all our eggs in one basket. Carbon Capping & Sequestration is still in its early development stages, and is likely to be expensive, but it may help in hte longer term, if it can be developed in such a way that it doesn't just give the coal companies incentives to further destroy the ecology of the coal-producing areas.

There is no magic bullet solution to this problem. We need to pursue every avenue until it is shown to be unproductive. And we need to work very hard to not only stop population growth but to actually reduce world population to a managemable level--almost certainly less than the current world population.

Hugh
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************************************************************
Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Hard work often pays off after time. But Laziness always pays off now.

February tagline on 2007 Demotivator's Calendar