They are expensive and have a limited lifespan. Once one of them wears out, the cost to replace it at a non-subsidised price will be much greater than it originally cost. Whether or not that will make economic sense when the time comes, I can’t say, but that’s the gist of the concern.
The similarity isn’t the pollutant; it’s the economic impracticality of doing much beyond rhetoric.
The real problem is the horrific environmental damage. his includes:
[ol]
[li]Prevention or handicapping of fish spawning;[/li][li]Massive evaporation, and thus waste, particularly in hot, arid areas such as Glen Canyon and Israel;[/li][li]Flooding of inhabited towns and villages; and[/li][li]Destruction of architectural sites.[/li][/ol]
Certainly not a panacea.
Probably the best is natural gas from fracking, but the “hair-shirt” crowd doesn’t like it.
Full version or above post.
The real problem is the horrific environmental damage. his includes:
[ol]
[li]Prevention or handicapping of fish spawning;[/li][li]Massive evaporation, and thus waste, particularly in hot, arid areas such as Glen Canyon and Israel;[/li][li]Flooding of inhabited towns and villages; and[/li][li]Destruction of architectural sites.[/li][/ol]
Certainly not a panacea.
Probably the best is natural gas from fracking, but the “hair-shirt” crowd doesn’t like it. See generally:
[QUOTE=[watchwolf49]
(http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/member.php?u=87693)]Conservation in not mentioned. At some point, we have to start using far less energy than what the ten-percent are currently using. If we all used half as much energy, we’d have half as much pollution, half as much CO2 emissions. This starts with turning off your A/C, recycling as much garbage as we can and wide-spread mass transit.
[/QUOTE]
This is an example of a “hair-shirt” solution. Cutting off AC is not going to go over well on a 92 degree (in NYC) day like today. Or yesterday’s 97 or the day before’s 96. As far as mass transit goes it works fine in NYC. Not so much in Denver, where you have o drive to even get to the light rail and there’s little available parking. Basically the trains are rattling around half-empty and less than 25% of the costs are paid at the faibox.
“The best” what?
Depends what you’re comparing to, I guess. In any case, it’s temporary. What will we do after natural gas?
Well said … we’ll have to transition to non-fossil fuels someday … let’s get the technology worked out now so we can conserve the fossil fuels … they are actually quite useful in many other ways besides burning.
We dropped the direct subsidies to our wind farms a year and a half ago, they have to compete in the open market now and so far so good, but it’s still early. We’ve also enacted laws that indirectly subsidize these alternatives by phasing out coal fired electricity, and it will be outlawed in just 14 years.
The Columbia River Gorge is almost always windy, and if not we’ve obscene amounts of hydro-power. Yeah, BIG profit from selling to California …
For the record, burning natural gas emits carbon dioxide … it produces a bit more electric power per ton of carbon pollution, but it’s still part of the problem, not the long-term solution in any sense of the word.
92ºF is nothing … humans have endured for a couple hundred thousand years without A/C … if you want that luxury, fine, but you pay for it … just suggesting it’s cheaper to splash your face and neck with water like they do in the Congo, where it’s hotter and muggier than even Atlanta …
[QUOTE=Watchwolf 49]
92ºF is nothing … humans have endured for a couple hundred thousand years without A/C … if you want that luxury, fine, but you pay for it … just suggesting it’s cheaper to splash your face and neck with water like they do in the Congo, where it’s hotter and muggier than even Atlanta …
[/QUOTE]
People don’t get much work done in the Congo. Working in an office setting in New York City in those temperatures is a different matter.
The OP would have had a stronger case 4 years ago. I linked to a chart showing the substantial reductions in solar power costs during that period. Solar power has been dropping in price for decades: today it’s finally cheaper than nuclear as long as it is a small share of the total. After a certain point though, you have to manage its intermittent output. For the time being properly regulated natural gas can fill that gap.
David Roberts is Vox’s go-to guy for energy and environment issues. As he points out, the next energy transition might happen surprisingly quickly as it’s tied in many ways to advances in computing power. (Then again, if virtual reality devices successfully enable construction projects to remain on time and under budget by making mistakes more obvious that could be a game changer for nuclear as well.) Understandably, forecasters have consistently underestimated renewables. Today big solar is growing explosively largely due to collapsing prices. All that said, we need to invest more in (boring) electricity infrastructure and somehow deal with storage/big grid issue.
I still support R&D directed at 4th generation nuclear power. Because we don’t know for sure how the technologies will play out, it makes sense to have a diversified energy portfolio. For the moment nuclear looks like a white elephant, but things could change in 10-50 years.
So, you are citing two examples where specific anti-pollution measures did not produce a desirable result, and concluding that nothing can ever be done about any type of pollution?
Ontario Power Generation operates only two nuclear power plants, Darlington and Pickering, which have four and eight reactors, respectively. Bruce is a private interest with eight reactors but at least two are offline.
But the prices and cost overruns have been happening long after the last reactor was constructed. Again, much of the recent bungling is specifically green energy.
Ontario is paying people 70-80 cents a Kw/h to produce solar and wind electricity, selling it to Ontario ratepayers for 8-18 cents, and selling excess to other jurisdictions for half that. It’s a comedy of economic errors.
In the Congo they take siestas after lunch to avoid the worst heat. At least they did when I lived there.
There is no energy shortage, there is only a lack of effective and efficient storage and delivery.
I envision one day being able to “bottle” the energy of lightning!!
Its all about Storage and Delivery.
Renewables have downsides… but isn’t fossil fule itself a downside? Seems like NOT doing anything is worse than just saying “nope, it has a downside” and then not doing anything at all.
I want to jump on about conservation.
Kansas City added a huge indoor stadium which they called “green”. I guess because of lighting and low flow toilets. But you know the cost of air conditioning, trying to cool down a massive indoor stadium in 90 degree heat, is going to be HUGE.
They also added the “Power and Light” district. Well what power and light does not require electricity?
Face it. People want air conditioned spaces. That’s homes, places of entertainment, and work places. And the more people we add, the more that is needed.
We will never be able to add enough windmills or solar panels to cover this.
how useful this opinion, very deeply analytical.
Nitpick, but windmills aren’t the same thing as wind turbines.
How did you conclude that? You haven’t shown any analysis indicating that we cannot use windmills and solar panels to power air conditioning for everyone.
So I live in Texas and the majority of my electrical costs per year go toward A/C, which means usage is highest on hot cloudless July & August days. We currently have approx 20 coal fired plants here in Texas producing approx 1300MW each, 26,000MW total. If each of our 5 million detached homes installed 20x200watt solar panels (20x200Wx5million = 20,000 MW) we would almost match their capacity. With a few solar panels scattered about factory/school/apt roofs, we could remove all coal fired plants in Texas. Provide a base with natural gas plants and supplement with wind and we’d be a long way there to reducing our carbon footprint. Distribute the loads and make the grid more resilient.
Yes, hydro and wind both have an environmental impact. This is a meaningless statement, because everything has an environmental impact. But the environmental impacts from both hydro and wind are both far lower than from coal or even natural gas, and hydro, at least, has a host of other advantages as well (notably, it’s very cheap, and it’s very easy to ramp up and down to match demand).
And the fact that wind and solar are both intermittent is far from being a “hidden drawback”. It’s a drawback, sure, but it’s one that everyone knows about, and which we already plan for ways to mitigate. Some of that mitigation is even really easy: For instance, take that air conditioning. The same times and places when you need the most power for air conditioning are the times when you’re producing the most solar power. There, that’s two different variability problems solved at once.
There’s also about 18,000 MW of wind generation capacity installed.
http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_installed_capacity.asp