OT Gas Prices and the Blame Game

Actually they make very good peaking plants. They will deliver best mostly when the load is most.

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I first saw this in a DOE list of energy saving ideas:

Sounds promising...

Paul

Well said. We need to start thinking more about what is the "right" thing to do, with the future in mind, rather than what just seems like the best action to take in the short term. In the US, at least, the average person consumes far more energy than almost anyone else, and the cost of that energy is only now approaching par for what it is in the rest of the world for the most part. In an increasingly global economy, we will need to reduce our conspicuous consumption and irresponsible waste, if for no other reason than the same lifestyle cannot be sustained for all of the earth's population equally. I try to do my part by driving a 35 MPG vehicle, heating mostly with wood, recycling, and other reasonable measures, and I am very disappointed in the large number of Americans who continue to live beyond their means and measure their success by very materialistic criteria.

There are a lot of benefits to the "green" movement that will be seen as it becomes more popular and eventually necessary for our survival. I think it will lead to healthier individual and social lifestyles, and it will spawn smaller, more local economies that will have better economic impact on our neighbors and communities. We need to look at the motives of those who attempt to discredit global warming and limited energy supplies and urge people to continue to spend and consume and pollute the environment. The big energy companies and industries that are closely tied to them are hard-wired to expect continued growth of demand, and need to perpetuate their own myths to keep their profits soaring, while those who urge conservation have no such economic benefit, but in fact are making their own sacrifices now to set an example. Otherwise even greater sacrifices will be forced on people, and the big business owners will have made their wealth at our expense, while the middle class will cease to exist as we know it.

Paul

No it isn't.

I know it conflicts with your wierd politics which requires maximal environmental destruction and profligate waste as a patriotic act.

Not at all. Even recognised dittohead scientists like Sallie Baliunas will admit that after around 1970 you *have* to include greenhouse forcing into the equation to balance the energy flows on the Earth.

Hint: we have satellite monitoring of the solar flux for this period so lying dittoheads cannot pretend that the sun magically got brighter.

Long term and periodic changes due to the solar irradiance and variation in the Earths orbital elements are well known.

I refer you to a paper by Baliunas & Soon covering the past hundred years where global records and proxies are relatively good.

They conclude (despite having pristine denialist credentials that make them darlings of the ultra-right) that slightly more than half of the warming since the 1880s was due to natural solar variability and the rest due to greenhouse gasses occurred only in the last few decades.

They tried and failed to find a way to balance the books without AGW forcing and could not. They still peddle ultra-right wing doubt about climate change as deniers for hire.

She also has a past history denying the reality of CFC catalysed ozone depletion too. The latter is now proved beyond doubt.

Regards, Martin Brown

ore

Of course, if Michael Terrell took his own advice, he'd vanish up his own fundament. Note the absence of factual content in his response.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Sorry Rich, but you really are a twit. Clouds don't seem to make any difference - not because they don't reflect more light than bare ground, but because the level of cloud cover seems to stay pretty much constant over a wide range of global temperature regimes.

Water vapour does make a difference and it is figured into every global warming model. It doesn't get any interest because the water vapour content is determined by the local surface water temperature (close to the ground - and the local air temperature as you go higher

- and equilibrates with a couple of weeks, so working out how much water vapour to allow for is a no-brainer.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I can think of a few items that have nothing to do with the economics of the installation:

It puts the little generation it does at their end of the wires and distributes the generation around. This does do a little to make another Enron scam harder to pull on California.

The demand of the systems may drive the production quantities up enough to get more people working on making such systems better or less expensive. PV power needs a little more development. It is a way for government to drive that effort forward a little.

Also the poor people own it so they have a stake in the outcome. This may be good for social stability.

If you aren't rich and thus wn't be going to Starbucks, that would be a cup of coffee for the owners.

google:

No, actually. I would be hurt by a switch away from oil more than helped by a switch to solar.

Umm, none of that makes sense of any sort.

John

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I generally agree with the above, but in addition to cutting consumption, I would cut the number of people. The planet needs to get a handle on exponential population growth, or no amount of reduced consumption is going to work. I suspect Mother Nature has several (perhaps yet unidentified - but we have identified plenty) ways to cut back on over-population.

There was an interesting show on NPR the other day about some study that indicated even poor and disadvantaged people in the US have a much greater carbon footprint than the average world citizen. And further, due to all sorts of built in subsidies (public transportation, etc..) it would be quite difficult, even for the poor, to substantially lower their carbon footprint. To me, this was counter-intuitive, until I took a moment to think about all the subsidies involved. -mpm

That would be the least efficient choice(*). Better to have the money flow through as many hands as possible.

(*) "efficient", i.e., votes per dollar.

It's a do-gooder twofer: charity (to someone whom they wouldn't actually trust with the money itself) + pseudo-green bonus points. Very trendy.

James Arthur

Well! Well! Well!

I sent an E-mail to APS asking about the Saguaro Solar Trough.

Didn't really expect a response but...

I just got a call from an APS engineer, about my age, got his nuclear experience in the Navy, has built gas-fired steam plants, and is now involved is solar heat-exchanger and solar steam plants.

He referred me to this...

Abengoa has built a plant here in AZ that APS will be buying power from... 3¢/kWh.

He also said that the Saguaro Solar Trough was just an experiment... they could have built a 60MW plant for the same cost.

But he also believes photo-voltaic will come into its own... but it'll be a "eureka" moment rather than the stuff we have now.

...Jim Thompson

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Wow! So basically, 100 MW + 7 hours sunset capacity for roughly 1.5 sq. miles of land.

Let's see: Back of napkin calculation..... Mojave - 25,000 sq. mi. Sonoran - 120,000 sq. mi. (of which half is in United States) Chihuahuan - 175,000 sq. mi. (of which about a third is in the United States) Great Basic Desert - 190,000 sq. mi (Nevada)

Obviously, not all of this is flat, or otherwise suitable land area, but sure seems like this would put a serious dent in our dependence on foreign oil.....

Yep. Isn't that nice! Much better than P-V, inverters and micro-controllers ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Oil? We generate very little electricity from oil.

John

I agree. The world already has too many people, and the natural selective processes are subverted by subsidies, entitlements, and free food, shelter and medical care, without any real responsibility on the part of the recipients. Many welfare programs reward additional children, and there is considerable resistance against most effective forms of birth control.

One effective method would be to offer anyone a bounty of, perhaps, $5000, to be sterilized. This offer should be extended unconditionally to anyone of legal age, so that it would not unfairly target any ethnic or economic group, although it would certainly be most attractive to the poor. Yet that is the demographic that needs to be addressed, and this amount of money is far less than what would be spent on public assistance for an unwanted child, and probable additional expenses later for incarceration or institutionalization of those who, either from genetic or environmental problems, become mentally or physically deficient or criminal.

I have not found a specific reference to such a program. It is certainly not the same as forced sterilization as recommended by eugenics:

Here is a story about eugenic sterilization in NC, but again it was cumpulsory, and based on IQ or other controversial factors:

Here is a more direct article, although critical of a program that offered $200 to drug addicts:

This seemed to be close, but did not directly address the issue:

Here is an interesting article about tubal ligation in Argentina:

And here is information on Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood Federation:

Most of the information I found is very negative toward eugenics and sterilization. I would say that no one should be sterilized aginst his or her will, at least as long as they are not being subsidized by the state (ie, you and me). If someone is so poor that they must use public assistance and medical care for having and raising a baby, then they should at least be offered to option of sterilization, and at the same time it should be offered to the male partner who is equally responsible for the unwanted pregnancy.

The largest base of opposition to birth control and prevention through sterilization most likely comes from the church, especially Roman Catholics. I have no problem with that, as long as they are willing to take care of those who have these children. If they expect the rest of society, and people who may not share their beliefs, to spend money so that their followers may practice their teachings, that goes against the principle of separation of church and state. There should be even less opposition to sterilization than abortion, where there is the question about when life begins. Preventing an unwanted life seems to be logically and morally correct.

Paul

Double your pleasure... double the incentive to leftist weenies ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Try rebooting your brain. The development of any product depends on companies seeing a market for it. The actions of people depends on what they believe about their situation.