Last edited Sat Jul 9, 2016, 05:20 PM - Edit history (1)
On this planet in the last ten years, we spent two trillion dollars on so called "renewable energy" in the form of of wind and solar energy and they don't produce 5 of the 570 exajoules of energy that humanity requires.
Two trillion bucks...got it?
Now, I'm sure I'll hear some stupid evocation of a "straw man" in noting this - a claim often raised as the refuge of poor thinkers who start out whining about Fukushima, for instance - but two billion people on this planet lack basic sanitation. Just for reference, what would have saved more lives, sinking two trillion bucks into infrastructure that works only when the weather co-operates, and relies in its practical entirety on dangerous natural gas when the weather doesn't cooperate, or spending two trillion bucks on basic sanitation for those who lack it?
Yeah...yeah...yeah...yeah...I know..."straw man." The money spent - "squandered" is a far better term - on so called "renewable energy" has nothing to do with two billion people lacking even primitive sanitation."
Despite this insipid claim of a "straw man," actually it does. Producing items that are barely productive, impoverishes everyone, inasmuch as the planet has a limited supply of many elements in the periodic table, and the way they are used will affect not only people living now - but all future generations. When non-productive efforts soak up resources, that eliminates resources that might be better utilized everywhere. No matter how much insipid "strawman" rhetoric I hear on this topic, I am resolutely convinced that this is very much the case.
The problem you face in musing (while providing very little real information), about energy, about which you are expressing considerable ignorance despite your claim to have read science books, is energy to mass density. There are zero fuels on this planet that have the same energy to mass density as uranium and thorium. So called "renewable energy" with the exception, perhaps of the hydroelectric plants that have destroyed almost all of the planet's major river systems, has far lower energy to mass ratios than nuclear energy, in fact, far less than dangerous fossil fuels. This is the main reason that so called "renewable energy" is a technical, economic, and environmental failure.
I have long argued, by the way, that enrichment facilities are undesirable and unnecessary, and have demonstrated, that were it not for stupidity, the uranium and thorium already mined, used intelligently, would eliminate the need to mine anything, including gas, oil and coal, for the entire lifetimes of anyone born in the next ten years. The latter element, thorium, is a waste product of the horrible lanthanide mining and refining processes that are the (ignored) reality of so called "renewable energy" in the form of magnets for wind turbines.
I have advanced this argument, supplying, unlike you, references to the primary scientific literature, albeit only a minuscule subset of the references in that literature which exist: Current World Energy Demand, Ethical World Energy Demand, Depleted Uranium and the Centuries to Come. Included in the calculations therein, is an estimate of the amount of actinides that would be required to support a human being who lived to 100 years old, and lived at a continuous average power consumption of 5000 watts, about double the per capita consumption for the average human being right now, albeit half of what Americans consume.
It comes to about 100 grams, or one gram per year per lifetime.
I also showed that the uranium already mined is sufficient to meet all of humanity's energy needs for centuries.
I have also shown that uranium is inexhaustible: Sustaining the Wind Part 3 – Is Uranium Exhaustible?
So, um, would you like to provide some information showing that nuclear fuel processing is a significant contributor to the seven million people who die each year from air pollution, or are you just making stuff up?
It's very clear that you know very little, next to nothing, about nuclear technology.
You also apparently know almost nothing about so called "renewable energy" technology.
There are many reports, thousands of reports, in the scientific literature on this topic, which brings into question whether the term "renewable energy" is in fact, an oxymoron.
Your claim about "lots of fossil fuels" being required to be refine uranium is nonsensical in the extreme, particularly when one considers the requirements for aluminum, steel, and exotic metals - increasing rare and toxic - required to make stupid wind turbines and useless solar cells, all of which will become landfill within 20 to 30 years of manufacture, much if it being a form of the entirely intractable problem on this planet.
There are many reports, thousands of reports, in the scientific literature on this topic, which brings into question whether the term "renewable energy" is in fact, an oxymoron.
I covered this topic - again with a sampling of only a tiny subset of this literature as references, probably less than 70 combined (to the primary scientific literature) - elsewhere:
Sustaining the Wind Part 1 – Is So Called “Renewable Energy” the Same as “Sustainable Energy?”
Sustaining the Wind Part 2 – Indium and Beyond…
The so called "renewable energy" industry hasn't worked; it isn't working; and it won't work, the latter statement being true because there's very little "renewable" about it. In addition, the extremely low energy to mass ratio, along with its requirement to be diffuse and distributed will make it, and are making it despite its tremendous failure written in the planetary atmosphere, an environmental nightmare that will cause great damage to all future generations.
You are right about one thing, however. You will never convince me that so called "renewable energy" is, will be, or can be a significant tool in fighting climate change. I just checked the size of my "E&E" "Environment and Energy" sub-directory on my computer, a sub-directory of my "s" or science directory. It consists 35,369 files, many of which are downloaded technical books in electronic format, but with the majority being scientific papers in PDF format. They are organized in 2,225 folders totaling 49GB. (They do not include topics like engineering, chemistry, materials science, physics, medicine, astrophysics, biology and math, although the collections on these topics do inform my views on energy and the environment.)
This collection is thirty years of work, thirty years beginning with Chernobyl, and leading up to the present day. It was about 20 years into this process that I changed my mind about so called "renewable energy" - as I fact checked the insipid commentaries of anti-nuke advocates of this expensive, toxic and failed technology. I decided it was a bad idea. (I was for so called "renewable energy" before I was against it. cf: I offer a crazy energy idea about which I've fantasized: The Salton Sea.)
If you think it is easy to change one's mind about an idea that's insanely popular, if stupid, think again. I am often disliked, attacked, and criticized for my objection to a pop fantasy that is, in my view, merely a tool for avoiding the problem, the problem being that the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere are now running higher than 3.5 ppm per year. Again, we're spending two trillion bucks a decade on so called "renewable energy" and this problem is getting worse, not better.
It is therefore very, very, very, very unlikely, to the point of impossibility that my mind is about to be changed on this topic by a blog post, particularly one that I know to be nonsense based on my thirty years of work and a very deep understanding of these issues.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend, Dude.
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