The Environment

[piqaboo]

to which we can now add, sadly, Rivers Flashflood.

[Trumpetmaster]

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/0 ... ?hpt=hp_t2

Four of Iran's cities make this list.

[Haggis@wk]

[Giant Communist Robot]

GW is a complex issue. I don't think one can deny it has happened, but I don't feel sure people are to blame. And the consequences that are forecast clearly have a political agenda. Here's some things I wonder about: if polar caps melt somewhat, doesn't that additional water act as a further carbon sink? And that additional carbon should be good for growing plants; more food for a growing world population. If oceans and plants absorb the carbon, won't global warming stop?

Living on an island as I do (I can see Pearl Harbor from my front porch, so my elevation is not much), this issue may have practical considerations for me.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Our Finnish pilot is my witness for global warming. His house HAD a glacer visible from the back yard. It isn't there any more.

Seriously. Glacier. Gone.

[dai bread]

You don't have to go to Finland for that sort of thing. Your own Glacier National Park now has only one glacier visible from the road. I made sure to get a photo of it last year. Our glaciers are still with us, though they do seem to be in retreat at the moment.

[Shapley]

I believe they've been receding only for about 50,000 years. I learned long ago that, as ice gets thinner, it melts faster.

When the next ice age rolls around, there'll be more glaciers.

There used to be glaciers just North of my house, but that was way before my time.

[Haggis@wk]

TANSTAAFL

Minnesotans for Global Warming report that in the last 30 years, the United States has had 14,000 wind turbines abandoned. Apparently, once the subsidies and the wind run out, these 20-story high Cuisinarts are de-bladed and retired.

Dutch fall out of love with windmills.

“Faced with the need to cut its budget deficit, the Dutch government says offshore wind power is too expensive and that it cannot afford to subsidize the entire cost of 18 cents per kilowatt hour — some 4.5 billion euros last year.”

Drip, drip

[dai bread]

Wind power is a daft idea for something that requires continuity, as electricity generation does. Tides and deep-sea currents are far better. They just keep on rolling. You can have run-of-river turbines, too, if your river's big enough to have a strong permanent flow.

[Haggis@wk]

Wind power is a daft idea for something that requires continuity, as electricity generation does.

I've mentioned before that wind does absolutely nothing since coal based plants have to be on continuous standby to take up slake when the wind drops.

[Shapley]

We have three main sources of proven, continuous electricity: Fossil Fuels, Nuclear Power, and Hydroelectric Power. The environmentalists don't like any of them.

As Dai notes, there are avenues to explore: tidal energy and deep-sea currents being two of them. I'm not sure how the environmentalists feel about those. They probably don't like them, either. Fish-kills or something along that nature will be their excuse. Methinks they're really just anti-energy.

Of course, if you dig deep enough, the temperature of the Earth is hot enough to provide a steady supply of heat adequate to boil all the water you need to drive your turbines. We don't seem to have the ability to dig that deep, though. There are places on the Earth where the high heat in the center comes to the surface, but harnessing the power of volcanoes and geysers seems unopular. Looks to me as if the 'supervolcano' under Yellowstone could provide us with an ample source of heat to power the entire U.S., if someone could find a suitable method of tapping into it.

[dai bread]

I heard that people are working on ideas for tapping Yellowstone (and other such places) though the energy to be tapped is so vast, a mistake could be as catastrophic as anything nuclear. Is it possible to drill into a magma chamber and have the whole thing explode in your face? I don't know, though I would consider it possible, if not likely. Nobody is suggesting drilling into the volcanic field Auckland sits on, despite it being nothing like as big as Yellowstone.

Ordinary geothermal energy is tapped in several places, notably NZ, Italy and Iceland. We've found it has its limits. It is possible to cool the thermal field and/or dry it out. That happened in Rotorua, where every man and his dog had a private bore for home heating. The tourist attractions suffered, so a lot of the private bores were closed down, compulsorily and with much fuss and bother. The tourist atractions recovered.

Environmentalists don't like marine turbines either, Shap. There is a proposal to instal several in one of our harbours (Kaipara, if you want to Google it). There have been, and probably still are, strong protests. The excuse is filleted fish on the turbine blades, and I believe that was a problem in the early days of marine turbines, just as bird kill was (and still is as far as I know) with wind turbines. Marine turbine design has been changed over the years, and I'm not sure of the kill rate in the latest designs. I know it's much reduced.

Environmentalists want to be noticed. Publish or perish; protest because you can; and get your name in the paper. Facts are never allowed to get in the way.

[jamiebk]

There are places on the Earth where the high heat in the center comes to the surface, but harnessing the power of volcanoes and geysers seems unopular.

It's not unpopular at all in fact, we have a very extensive geo-thermal plant right here in Sonoma County that provides gobs of electric power and serves as a place to dump our tertiary treated waste water (what isn't being re-cycled for irrigation). This is actually replenishing the steam generation capability of the field and is being expanded. http://www.geysers.com/

Nevada has an abundant source of geo-thermal resources that are being tapped. They aslo have solar (a lot of sun there) and wind (a lot of that too).

[Shapley]

I say they are 'unpopular' only because there seems to be so few of them.

No, granted, volcanoes are found only in certain parts of the country, and those parts of the country tend to be unpopulated, so it could simply be a matter of geography. Still, we can transmit electricity over great distances, so harnessing the power of volcanoes does not require building cities near the caldera.

It's also unpopular with environmentalists, who would reject the idea of building a steam-generation plant atop Old Faithful or Hot Sulfur Springs. They would also object to tapping steam away from Old Faithful to divert it to a plant some distance away. ; )

[jamiebk]

I say they are 'unpopular' only because there seems to be so few of them.

No, granted, volcanoes are found only in certain parts of the country, and those parts of the country tend to be unpopulated, so it could simply be a matter of geography. Still, we can transmit electricity over great distances, so harnessing the power of volcanoes does not require building cities near the caldera.

It's also unpopular with environmentalists, who would reject the idea of building a steam-generation plant atop Old Faithful or Hot Sulfur Springs. They would also object to tapping steam away from Old Faithful to divert it to a plant some distance away. ; )

There is really no need to tap resources in our scenic national parks for this. There are plenty of geo-thermal resources to go around. Transmission could be an issue with long lines, but these are not as invasive or have destructive consequences like oil and gas lines.

[Haggis@wk]

There are places on the Earth where the high heat in the center comes to the surface, but harnessing the power of volcanoes and geysers seems unopular.

It's not unpopular at all in fact, we have a very extensive geo-thermal plant right here in Sonoma County that provides gobs of electric power and serves as a place to dump our tertiary treated waste water (what isn't being re-cycled for irrigation). This is actually replenishing the steam generation capability of the field and is being expanded. http://www.geysers.com/

Nevada has an abundant source of geo-thermal resources that are being tapped. They aslo have solar (a lot of sun there) and wind (a lot of that too).

I'm with Shapley on this one. ANY energy source is suspect to environmentalists AltaRock Energy Shuts Down California Geothermal Project

The United States Energy Department, concerned about earthquake risk, will impose new safeguards on geothermal energy projects that drill deep into the Earth’s crust.
The new policy is being instituted after a project in California that used the new technology was shut down by technical problems and encountered community opposition, federal documents indicate.

Source: New York Times

Can you seriously think of any reasonable energy source these people would like? I can’t

[Giant Communist Robot]

I'm not sure how to say this...the evidence for global warming is in the weather, and weather is known as a chaotic system. What kind of models are these scientists using that predict chaos? Surely they must be taking this into account?

[jamiebk]

There are places on the Earth where the high heat in the center comes to the surface, but harnessing the power of volcanoes and geysers seems unopular.

It's not unpopular at all in fact, we have a very extensive geo-thermal plant right here in Sonoma County that provides gobs of electric power and serves as a place to dump our tertiary treated waste water (what isn't being re-cycled for irrigation). This is actually replenishing the steam generation capability of the field and is being expanded. http://www.geysers.com/

Nevada has an abundant source of geo-thermal resources that are being tapped. They aslo have solar (a lot of sun there) and wind (a lot of that too).

I'm with Shapley on this one. ANY energy source is suspect to environmentalists AltaRock Energy Shuts Down California Geothermal Project

The United States Energy Department, concerned about earthquake risk, will impose new safeguards on geothermal energy projects that drill deep into the Earth’s crust.
The new policy is being instituted after a project in California that used the new technology was shut down by technical problems and encountered community opposition, federal documents indicate.

Source: New York Times

Can you seriously think of any reasonable energy source these people would like? I can’t

It is a fact that the geothermal project at the Geysers in Sonoma county is responsible for hundreds..maybe thousands of micro-quakes. Typically they range from Mag. 1 - 3 or so. If you look on the USGS earthquake map you can see them quite clearly. Whether they pose any real catastrophic risk is unknown. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ ... 23-39.html

[dai bread]

Interesting . As far as I know, our geothermal extractions don't cause earthquakes. However, they do cause subsidence, and a marae had to be shifted as a consequence, before the adjacent river flooded it. If I remember rightly, that was before re-injection techniques were polished to their present degree, so subsidence may no longer be a problem.

[BigJon]

I'm not sure how to say this...the evidence for global warming is in the weather, and weather is known as a chaotic system. What kind of models are these scientists using that predict chaos? Surely they must be taking this into account?

In a former life, I used to model chaotic systems, (metal casting) I could make the results be anything I wanted them to be by tweaking a few system parameters. Until I got to the point where I could compare my results to real world results, then any BS parameters would show up. Unfortunately, there is only one climate and it is not repeatable, or even particularly measurable. I strongly believe the CAGW advocates to be cooking the books in pursuit of a political goal, as evidenced by the first set, and the new round, of climategate emails to be released