The Answer to Climate Change Is Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power

[PamW]

18. The above DELUSIONS are all in your head...

First, I'm not ANGRY; I just don't like to see good science ignored.

Your last paragraph demonstrates your poor logic and conclusions. Yes - I do work at Livermore; but Livermore is NOT reliant on the commercial nuclear industry. The Lawrence Livermore National Lab is NOT funded by the nuclear industry. LLNL is a national defense lab, and therefore is totally funded by the US Congress, and nothing that happens in / to the commercial nuclear industry affects LLNL. So you know what you can do with the INAPT and NON-APPLICABLE Upton Sinclair quote.

As for my career, I spent 5 years working for Dr. Charles Till at Argonne National Lab, after which I joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Beyond that I can't say anything because all my work is CLASSIFIED. ( I've done some pretty IMPORTANT work; I just wish I could tell you about it. )

The above poster like so many other non-scientist "environmentalists" MISUNDERSTANDS the NAS, and so a little remedial elementary school arithmetic lesson is in order.

Many people throw around percentage whilly-nilly and make inapt comparisons. Percentages are fractions. When you have X%; one has to be mindful of X% of WHAT. We can demonstrate the elementary school level ERROR above with the following analogy.

Suppose there is an election and candidate Joe gets as the sum total of the votes, 60% of his city's votes.

Since 60% is greater than 50%; then candidate Joe gets the office? Right? NOT necessarily!!!

Suppose Joe's city comprises one-quarter of the population of the State; and the office Joe is running for is Governor?

As a percentage of the State, Joe's vote total is 15%.

That's the essence of the ERROR the above poster makes.

The quote by the NAS is that renewables can be at most 20% of a stand alone grid.

The above poster gave us renewable percentage for European countries. That's analogous to giving the percentage of the city above.

The NAS statement is based on the percentage of a stand alone grid which is analogous to State-based percentage above.

The European grid is BIGGER than the European countries.

The above poster ERRED in not converting to a common denominator. Don't they teach common denominators in any elementary school arithmetic classes anymore?

So counter to the MISINFORMATION that the above poster MISTAKENLY calls "REALITY"; the European wind turbines are NOT driving a stand-alone grid as per the NAS. They are a small part and <20% of the much larger European grid.

What's amusing is that someone with the lack of mathematical alacrity demonstrated above, would, upon finding his results at variance with those of the National Academy of Science, would assume that he "refuted" something by the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Sciences consists of our best and smartest scientists, and to think that a non-scientist environmentalist could somehow refute the National Academy of Science is not just MANIFESTLY IMPLAUSIBLE but it is downright LAUGHABLE.

The above poster tosses terms like "distributed grid" and "load balancing" around whilly-nilly. However, the above poster and I both know full well that the above poster has NO credentials in electrical engineering?

Do you have a degree in electrical engineering, and if so, from what University?

What the above poster fails to understand that even if we "firm" power from renewables with natural gas that is not quite carbon-free; we STILL exceed our carbon targets. From the California Energy Study of a few years ago:

If electric generation is predominantly intermittent renewable power, using natural gas to firm the power would likely result in greenhouse gas emissions that would alone would exceed the 2050 target for the entire economy. Thus, development of a high percentage of intermittent resources would require concomitant development of zero-emisions load balancing (ZELB) to about these emissions and maintain system reliability. ZELB might be achieved with a combination of energy storage devices and smart-grid technology.

The report hypothesises relief by ZELB technology; but where do we have energy storage technologies that can comprise a large percentage of the grid capacity? The only technology that even approaches is pumped-storage hydro, and that is a relatively small percentage of our grid capacity due to lack of sites.

Additionally:

Rise in renewable energy will require more use of fossil fuels

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/09/local/la-me-unreliable-power-20121210\

The issue of intermittency and the fact that renewables are "non-dispatchable" ( meaning we don't have a throttle to control ) is why the leading climate scientists, as well as other scientists; state that renewables such as solar and wind are "NOT SCALABLE. Just because you can generate at the few megawatt level, doesn't mean the technology scales to the gigawatt levels our loads demand.

That is why the climate scientists made the following call:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scientists/index.html

So much for the above MISINFORMATION and elementary school level arithmetic MISTAKES.

The good thing about science is that it is true, whether or not you believe in it.

PamW