If the climate activists have their way there will not be any other source of backup equipment after 2030 to provide any electricity when the wind doesn't blow or the sun doesn't shine.
There seems to be another climate emergency (or whatever its called this week) conference going on soon. On the early morning news there was an activist from California and one from the UK spouting off about we have the technology of Windmills and Solar (nothing else) to replace all fossil fuel generation by 2030.
In Extinction Rebellion have their way there will be no oil to lubricate the moving parts for the windmills, no oil to make tyres for their bicycles and no tarmac for their cycle lanes.
Twaddle. For one thing climate activists are perfectly happy with hydroelectric power. Burning fossil carbon would be perfectly fine if you captured the CO2 and dumped it underground. The economics aren't great, but emergency back-up power doesn't have to be cheap - the current grid auction scheme is designed to let back-up generators get huge prices for their power on the rare occasions when it is needed, and that is a feature of the system, not a bug.
We do have the technology. It means having quite a bit of spare capacity, but some processes can be turned off fast, freeing up capacity to deal with processes that can't.
Twaddle. The problem isn't extracting fossil carbon (which isn't the only source of lubricating oil, which can also be grown, like natural rubber). The problem is burning it in a way that dumps CO2 into the atmosphere. the climate change denial lobby lies about this non-stop and has invented a class of demented climate change fanatics who don't seem to actually exist. When I quizzed Steve Pinker about this, he admitted that he'd never come across any, but his readers seemed to think that they exist.
The economics of backup power are that it must use as little capital as possible, even if that makes the marginal cost of generation high. Carbon capture seems likely to involve a high capital cost, so is unsuitable for backup power.
That makes no sense. The cost of capital is a factor in the profit from an operation. Maximizing profit is the ultimate goal. That includes both the marginal cost and the capital costs. If the business is regulated, the allowed profit may be based on the capital investment.
The cost of carbon capture is a factor, but there is cost associated with not capturing carbon. We simply ignore that cost presently. Eventually, it will catch up with us.
The fundamental point about back-up power is that it has to be there when you need it. Doing it with minimal capital cost would be nice, but it is secondary.
The mechanics of capturing a limited amount of CO2 don't necessarily involve a high capital cost. Pumping it into a natural cavern could be pretty cheap, if you could find one.
While I agree that wind turbines probably don't kill very many birds, the cat kill figures are somewhat suspect.
According to the RPSB, over spring and summer (the peak time), cats kill
27 million birds in the UK, a small fraction of the figure you state, which was, of course, worldwide.
From a recent newspaper report, even that figure may be wildly exaggerated. The stats were apparently extrapolated from a count carried out at one location - which was a farm, where the cats were not fed at all and HAD to live by hunting.
Further, it has been calculated that 2 out of 3 bird deaths are due to farm cats, feral cats and other unowned cats. Domestic cats are therefore likely to kill no more than 9 million birds in the UK (and probably far fewer, due to the distortion of the figures already mentioned).
Analysis of killed birds has shown that many are already injured or ill. A proportion are fledglings that failed to fly and would not survive anyway.
To be really usable as the main source of electricity, hydro electricity needs to be able to store water from one wet season to the next. This requires building big dams. The greenies will make a lot of noise if some beetle will drown due to building such dams. Forcing millions of people to move (as in China) might also be an issue.
To avoid building alternate power generation for unreliable renewables (such as wind and solar) huge electric transfer networks needs to be built. Building new high voltage lines is problematic in order to get the Right of Way for the pylons (NIMBY). Building the required connection requires underground cables and this requires HVDC cabling which is quite expensive not to mention using super conductive lines all across a continent.
The greenies object storing spent nuclear fuel underground stating that it is dangerous for 30,000 to 300,000 years. If CO2 is as dangerous as they claim, the CO2 will remain dangerous forever, not just 300,000 years :-).
Storing gaseous CO2 underground is risky, since if it escapes, it may kill people living above. CO2 can kill a lot of people as happened in East Africa when CO2 released from a lake killed whole villages.
If you can burn cleanly some carbon material into CO2, at least use the CO2 to grow plants with sun light to some useful plants, do not store the CO2 underground.
It has been done. Some country is more suitable. I grew up in Tasmania where hydroelectric generation currently provides 80% of the power sold. Wind=power accounts for most of the rest,
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These aren't "greenies". They are fanatical nature-lovers. There aren't many of them and they aren't influential.
Climate change denial propaganda loves lumping them in with the climate change activitists who are lot more rational and a lot more numerous.
Nobody has bothered to put in super-conducting lines anywhere. It is already feasible, but doesn't seem to make economic sense yet. Higher temperature superconductors do seem to be being developed\, so we may get there eventualy
We've already got a lot of them, and we won't have any trouble get the additional rights of way to put up those extra lines that may turn out to be necessary.
Spent nuclear fuel is mixture of fission products
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there are quite a few of them. Some of them are radioactive, with short half-lives and consequently very active. Others decay much more slowly and stay radioactive for longer.
CO2 isn't dangerous if it doesn't get into the atmosphere.
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Sticking it into an exhausted gas field isn't dangerous at all.
So don't store it under a lake.
The point about back generators is that you don't use them often. Dumping the CO2 into an underground cavern, then bleeding it out again into greenhouses to help plant growth - the Dutch do that quite a lot - is perfectly feasible. Wittering on about storing it forever is nuts.
Basalt absorbs CO2 and turns it into carbonates. If you pick your underground cavern carefully (or salt it with enough crushed basalt) you've got a perfectly fine longer term solutions (at least until a volcano erupts through your cavern and gets the carbonates hot enough to free the CO2.
Our internet provider at work is MonkeyBrains, all microwave. We have a dish on the roof aiming at another building a few blocks away, although they can do miles. We paid for 50+50 mbits and get about
400+400. To get fiber we would have had to pay to dig up the sidewalk for a couple of blocks.
A 100 Mbit microwave link pair costs under $100 now. A better longer range Gbit dish pair is about $200. That's astounding.
I like birds. I feed a bunch of them twice a day. They prefer Fritos to anything else we've tried; I'm sympathetic to that choice. I have one giantic raven and a one-legged blue jay that will fly and snatch a Frito out of my hand.
The tiny little Juncos clean up every spec of food off the deck
That the story the climate change denial propaganda machine feeds John Larkin, and he is gullible enough to swallow it.,
Invented by the climate change denial propaganda machine. They know they aren't going to persuade people who can think so they lay it on thick because the gullible twits they can influence won't notice how outrageous their nonsense is. <snip>
And the political power being marshalled here is nonsense for bird-brains.
Alan_m is trotting climate change denial propaganda which equates a rational desire not to screw up the plant by letting anthropogenic global warming get out of hand with a fanatical love of nature which is prepared to sacrifice millions of human lives to save some wren from extinction. I've never met any of these fanatical nature lovers, but every sucker for climate change denial propaganda seems to think that they exist. If you are gullible enough to fall for climate change denial propaganda, you are gullilble enough to believe pretty much anything.
One afternoon I came out and put some banana bread out. I barely had time to turn around and step away from it before a rabbit dashed out of cover and started in on it.
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