Well, you see, if you suck energy out of the wind by tubines, it slows it down. The few we have now likely do not have a significant effect on weather patterns.
However, TANSTAAFL also applies, of course.
This always seems to be the assumption, but it’s not clear to me why it’s true. Wouldn’t more efficient energy use lead to more growth, at least long term? How does inefficient resource use benefit growth?
Making more fuel efficient automobiles would obviously hurt auto manufacturers and oil companies in the short run, but it would also result in cheaper shipping and transportation costs for all industries, and these savings go on year after year. Progress always shifts who is making the money, and the people it’s shifting away from always fight it. Ultimately it seems like the whole energy debate seems to boil down to whether or not progress is a good idea.
Perhaps it’s because energy-efficient development is only practical after a country already has put a lot of resources into energy-wasteful heavy capital formation. Or perhaps it’s just because energy-wasteful development requires less investment up front, an important consideration for a poor country. I dunno. But it is true China has a major problem with the Kyoto Protocol, because they think following it would retard their economic development. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_accord#Position_of_China
Suppose we humans have ignited a massive climatic change, and (as Gore wants us to believe) oth the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps melt off. This means that the seas will rise, and mankind will have to migrate away from the coasts. Will this also mean that fomerly dry areas (like the sahara and Gobi deserts ) might become moist and productive? Or will the newly enlarged oceans turn cold, and actually increase the deserts? I can certainly agree that global warming can be bad, but it might also benefit in some ways-europe grew tremendously in the warm period fromAD1000-1350. Of course, if you live in Bangladesh, global warming won’t be very nice.
Sigh.
DrDeth’s list misses “fuel switching” and conservation, both of which would be advanced by a carbon tax or a more complicated tradeable emissions program.
Coal puts out about 4 times as much CO2 as oil does, for the same BTUs. Natural gas is even less carbon intensive. All fossil fuels are not alike.
Methinks his list is driven more by ideology than by facts and tough-minded analysis. Which is a shame.
Well, of course the effects of large-scale climate change would hurt potential output in a big way. For example, If the Atlantic currents that warm northwestern Europe cease --as they have in the pre-historical past-- the world would be a lot poorer. Set that aside though.
More pollution control equipment - or shifts to more expensive fuel sources - raise the costs of producing a set amount of output: more machines (and R&D) are required and/or more labor.
Estimates say that perhaps 0.1% - 0.2% of real GDP growth might be sacrificed by a strong program to reduce emissions. That’s relative to a (conservative) long run GDP growth estimate of 2.5%. cite. Some industries would lose jobs, others would gain.
It would hit people’s wallets, but it would hardly be noticed in the growth figures. I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about a $2 increase in petrol prices or anything.
That’s a worst case scenario. More mainstream scenarios have sea level adjustments occurring over many years.
Sounds reasonable, but I’m not a climate scientist.
One cautionary note is in order. The costs of climate change will be an order of magnitude lower[sup]1[/sup] if humanity responds to it in a responsible and reasonable manner. For example, one would hope that intensifying shoreline destruction would lead the government to write-off wide areas, rather than indulging in half-assed and expensive rebuilding programs.
That is, adjustment should be subsidized as opposed to trying to recreate what once was.
Of course I’m thinking about the ongoing New Orleans fiasco. But I could also be referring to future efforts by midwestern farmers to apply for ever-larger disaster subsidies from Washington DC or Canada’s future difficulty in taking advantage of its newly fertile lands.
If we lack the ability to take some simple preventative measures, there’s no reason to believe that future adjustment policies will be handled in an adult-like manner.
[sup]1[/sup]hyperbole.
That’s simply not true! Even if we do assume for the moment that human influence has been minor (something I do not personally accept), why on earth do you claim that humans can do little or nothing about it?
In fact, we’re already doing something about it without even deliberately trying! Just tonight, PBS’ science show Nova aired a disturbing broadcast about Dimming the Sun that reveals that particulate air pollution is producing a vastly greater number of over-small water droplets in clouds which in turn reflect vast amounts of sunlight back into space, effectively cooling the planet. This cooling has had the effect of making the very real global warming (not just your ACC) falsely appear to be a less dangerous problem than it really is.
(Just for the record, the type of solar cooling that this documentary refers to is an extremely poor and unsafe way to try to mitigate global warming. See the link and follow through the sublinks to learn why).
But the belief that humans can do nothing about global climate change if it is caused largely or mostly by non-human factors is almost certainly unjustified.
I agree with you and with the several others who have made the same or similar points.
But I wish to add a further note: It is extremely foolish to demand “balance” from any single source of information, such as An Inconvenient Truth. All we can ask for is integrity and intellectual honesty.
A while ago on another board I posted a review and comments about the book Farewell to Eden: Coming to Terms With Mormonism and Science, a critique of the Mormon attempts to reconcile the LDS Church’s teachings and dogma with science. The book was attacked (as was I) for not presenting a “balanced” approach to the issue. As if no critique is “balanced” unless it actually argues both for and against every point of view! That’s just ridiculous.
Yep, debate is pointless. Er, um… Why exactly are you here in “Great Debates” again??
Since it’s that or lose far, far more, you bet your ass they will! Just wait till we lose Florida, bucko, and you’ll see all kinds of fat-ass Americans peddling bikes.
You don’t think it’s more than a bit extreme to throw out the cheap, sensationalist term “socialist”? And how do government taxes pay for changes to cars and power plants? You’re just spewing, perhaps?
Since when are people in those countries “undereducated”? Especially when compared to our fellow Americans, who are generally the dumb-dumbs of the first world? Furthermore, as I understand it, those countries will be harder hit than the USA by global climate change. They’ll probably change before we will!
Why the hell not? On what possible basis can you be stating these absurd notions upon?
I’m not convinced of that.
Blowhards who base their beliefs on feelings rather than peer-reviewed science will fervently exclaim that unusual climactic changes follow from wholly natural causes. Those with less emotional dispositions may be interested in viewing the Online Glacier Photograph Database. It shows pairs of glacier photographs taken 60-100 years apart.
Furthermore, I’m not convinced that extreme lifestyle changes would be necessary. The market is pretty good at adjusting to scarce resources given sufficient time and the proper incentives.
As Gore wants us to believe? You meant nearly every competent climate scientist in the world there, right?
Climate change is too complex to be reduced to a single factor, of course, but the climate change we’ve already seen (not just from CO2 increases) has drastically reduced rainfall in various parts of the world (such as near the Sahara) and that trend will almost certainly continue, resulting in increasingly draught and famine.
I had only suspected you were a hack for these pseudo-scientific demagogues. Thank you, DrDeth, for explaining your motivation in defending them.
Um, that’s actually a quote off of the CEI website ambushed.
Oh, if only burning strawmen could be harnessed for energy! You’d be a 21st century hero!
The oil/energy companies and their disciples loooove to set up this type of false dilemma where people must choose between living comfortably and living responsibly. “You can’t live greener! Why, that means selling your car, moving to a commune, and wearing bracken and moss! The greenies want your children to have to do their schoolwork by firefly-light!! They want you to follow WICCA!!!”
There’s a great quote in the movie that applies here. It’s something like, “people have a tendency to go from denial immediately to despair, without ever stopping on the way to solve the problem.”
From one who’s actually (gasp!) seen the movie that’s being debated here, I can tell you that as sobering as the manifold facts presented are, by the end of the film – especially if you stay through the brilliant credits – you leave not hopeless or depressed, but full of vigor and initiative. You want to take responsibility for your actions, make small but noticeable changes in your personal choices. The film offers dozens of simple, meaningful methods of reducing your carbon footprint and cutting down on consumption. During the credits, they list a plethora of ideas on how to make an impact on larger society as a whole. Things like changing lightbulbs, leaving your car at home sometimes … nothing that will have you questioning whether you live in the 21st or 18th century!
To the OP: just go see the film. It’s enjoyable, understandable, moving, thought-provoking, and even funny. (Hilarious clip from Futurama in there. )
Been enjoying those CEI television commercials, have you? Lots of things are good in small doses, but dangerous if you get too much.
Please don’t confuse the official Green Party platform with the beliefs of all conservationists and environmentally-friendly people.
Thousands per year? You wouldn’t happen to have a cite for that, would you?
Point 1: All of the power sources you listed are capable of powering electric cars. I’m not sure what you mean by “indirectly,” but you can plug the charger for an electric car into the output of a solar collector system.
Point 2: Hybrids aren’t the future. They’re a stop-gap. Hybrids still use gasoline. You can’t charge them from your solar collectors at home. Hybrids don’t and can’t generate “effectively zero pollutants.” Electric cars can.
It’s not necessarily an unrealistic estimate. The wind energy facility at Altamont Pass in California is estimated to kill about 900 to 1300 raptors per year.
Note, however, that:
a. Altamont Pass has, according to the factsheet on that site, the most raptor kills of any wind facility in the world (due to poor design and placement in a major raptor migration corridor);
b. the kill estimates aren’t just for “hawks and eagles” but include all other raptors such as owls;
c. the raptor kills are not just from direct impacts (aka “turbine strike”) but from other, non-turbine-specific causes too, such as electrocution and poisoning (due to rodent control efforts). Other types of power plants also have problems with bird electrocutions, and other types of industry also have problems with bird poisonings.
So, the bottom line is that yes, wind energy plants do kill hawks and eagles, but so do other types of power plants and other types of industries.
Bear in mind also that some other types of power plants also kill birds by degrading the air quality with emitted pollutants, which wind turbines don’t do. (And of course, that isn’t counting the results of destruction of bird habitats by related activities like mountaintop-removal mining to get at the coal which is burned in those power plants.)
So all in all, given that the average bird mortality due to turbine strike is estimated (.doc) to be about 1–2 birds per turbine per year, wind farms on the whole are not a serious wildlife threat. Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful where we put them, and try to mitigate their most significant impacts. But arguing against wind energy on the grounds that it’s bad for birds, without comparing it to the effects of other forms of energy generation on bird mortality, is disingenuous.
Do you have numbers for the total world energy requirements (assuming all-wind) vs. total potential energy actually inherent in wind? I’m willing to bet the one’s a tiny fraction of the other, and therefore would have minimal affect on anything other than localised scale.
In fact, since wind turbines will be taking energy out of the atmosphere, it could be argued (very simplistically, but it is there in the wikipedia article on wind power) that they’d mitigate the effects of gloabal warming. So everyone wins. Yay!
The treaty merely being a promise to reduce emissions somehow, of course. This could be acheived by switching to carbon-neutral power sources, as you yourself advocate.
We could also, in addition, risk economic doomsday by such unthinkable strategies as not heating and lighting empty buildings and turning the TV off standby.
Has it occurred to you that anything that slows down the growth of China’s economy might also damage America’s economy? They are such a major trading partner of ours, after all.
No. No one knows exactly how much massive use of wind energy would effect the climate. Which is exactly my point.