Power Supply Options 5

[owg]

Is there a place on Eng-Tips where power supply options for the Earth are discussed? It looks like nuclear will be out of favour for a few decades and it is hard to take wind and solar seriously as major reliable components of a supply mix. Natural gas seems to be in favour in spite of its generation of CO2.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[TGS4]

owg - the hypothesis is that CO2 is the driver. Unfortunately (for them), the data does not support said hypothesis. However, rather than letting the hypothesis die and having another one take its place (as is the norm in science), they have resorted to moving the goalposts.

See, if it's not CO2, then you can't control people via their energy usage - burning cheap fossil fuels. That won't do for the political overlords that have the "climate scientists[™]" working for them.

Real, truly independent scientists that study the climate acknowledge that humans have an impact: urban heat island effect, local heating of bodies of water near power plants (doesn't need to be fossil-fueled, either), and yes, even CO2. But the magnitude of the CO2-effect is small - certainly not enough to warrant spending Trillions of dollars. And the other effects are very localized - not enough to qualify as world-wide climate.

Which brings up another point. The whole terminology change to "climate change" is another sleight of hand trick. Of course they mean warming. But, from a geological perspective, the only constant in the climate is that it changes. Severely. And frequently. So, can we cause climate change? Possibly, but it has always changed without us, so can any scientist discern the human fingerprint in such a chaotic system? Unlikely with sufficient certainty to warrant us spending Trillions of dollars.

Oh, and if you wanted to, you could consider the entire human energy needs, assume that it is all eventually returned to heat energy, and compare that to the amount of energy we get from the big yellow ball in the sky. OK - here's the calc:
In 2008, worldwide energy usage was 474E18 J.
Total solar irradiance is 1361W/m^2. Divide that value by 4 (ratio of area of a circle vs surface area of a sphere). Total of 680.5 W/m^2.
Total surface area of the earth is 5.1E8 km^2, or 5.1e14m^2.
A standard year is 3.15569E7 seconds.
Multiply solar power by the surface area by the time, and you get 1.095E25J.

So, our energy needs are 474E18/1.095E25 - 4.378E-5 of what we get from the sun. So, nope, it's not the heat that we generate by our energy consumption.

 

[owg]

Thanks for the info. TGS4. I guess that second last minus sign was meant to be an = ?

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[rb1957]

TGS4 ... it's people like you what cause unrest ... how dare you think you can prove your position with math ? and what's this talk about a "big yellow ball in the sky" ... it's not there 1/2 the time, geeze.

besides, do you know how nice it is to have jollies every so often to nice interesting places at the taxpayers expense ?? ok, you have to put up with some senseless babble from some Really boring "scientists" but then, that's the time to recover from last night's rave ...

 

[TGS4]

owg - yup, that should be an equals sign.

rb1957 - right...math... who would have thought...

What we actually know about the climate could fill a bathtub. What we know that we don't know could fill a small lake. What we don't know that we don't know could fill an ocean.

 

[SnTMan]

What we don't know that we don't know could fill an ocean.

Whose level is rising of course

Regards,

Mike

 

[rb1957]

and the bathtub leaks into the lake, and the lake feeds the ocean. and there's very little back-flow in the system too.

 

[SWmechE]

Gotta agree with Moltenmetal, conservation should be the focus and building codes should be updated to reflect this; we expect everything else to constantly increase but for what limited (almost nil) experience I have with building codes we still seem to building garbage houses.

As for the whole CO2/climate change debate my opinion has been that I'm (and for the most part the general population) too ignorant to know what effects are truly human caused. What I do know though is that heavy metals and other chemical pollution have effects that are easy to see and measure... why don't we work on the low lying fruit and set up proper monitoring and legislation to decrease these?