Magicians and Illusionists Penn and Teller have a popular TV show on the Showtime channel called, ahem, “Bullshit”. In homage to their debunking mentor, James Randi, they take on a number of subjects they feel could use a little “clarity”.
Click image to watch the video
They recently (last Thursday night) took on Al Gore and carbon credits. The entire 30 minute show is available via the website VREEL (update You Tube has it now, VREEL started installing Zango a couple of days ago – a spyware)
Warning: more than a few obscenities are uttered in the show, but mostly for comic effect.
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I agree with David that the objective is control, not renewable energy. Case in point: the cancelation of the Integral Fast Reactor (Argonne National Lab) in 1994 by Bubba Clinton, with NRDC acting in a supporting role. IFR would have burned high-level nuclear waste – no mining required – to meet our electrical requirements for hundreds of years, and so it had to be canceled and swept under the rug.
As an electrical engineer, however, I’m not so quick to buy into the “collect in space and beam to earth” bit – it doesn’t seem practical or economical. For example, what would be the energy density of the beam? Wouldn’t it be something like a continuous gigantic lightning strike? Can you point to more information on this topic?
Pops,
This will get you started, and has references to take you farther~charles the moderator
Without downloading the magical media player for Penn and Teller’s performance, It would be interesting to know what some of their targets were.
All I presently know is what I read in the papers – carbon offset traders are a bunch of fairly ambitious (perhaps idealistic) young entrepreneurs crisscrossing the globe with a nearly intangible promise of reducing carbon footprints, or providing compensation for those whose oversized prints make them feel awkward about their own perambulations.
Where the money (let alone the moral authority) for these indulgences (or their traders) actually comes from is beyond me. The United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for offsets may be only one of several attempts to institutionalize these carbon offsets. The Guardian article below points out that the program, set in place by the Kyoto treaty, is riddled with fraud, to the tune of billions of pounds.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/26/climatechange.greenpolitics
The article quotes a Stanford University study which examined 3,000 chemical wind, gas or hydro projects that were currently applying for, or already receiving UN offset funding. The study said that most of those grants should be denied because, “they would be built anyway”. It says “It looks like between one and two thirds of all the total CDM offsets do not represent actual emission cuts.”
A “Wide Angle” program, “Burning Season” (PBS) recently followed a young Australian entrepreneur inventing himself as a carbon trader under the firm name ” Carbon Conservation”. Partnering with an NGO “Fauna and Flora International”, which apparently met some of his transportation costs, he proclaimed the intent of saving Indonesian rainforest prior to the Bali conferences, and to that end was shown jetting around the globe with promises of millions (sometimes billions) of dollars of profits in the market of carbon trading.
He visited several multi-million-dollar businesses, but interestingly, the agency that finally inked a deal with him was Merrill Lynch.
Under their arrangement, the trader, along with Fauna and Flora International will “…commit to delivering a huge reduction in deforestation across 750,000 hectares of tropical forest in Aceh’s Ulu Masen region (Indonesia)… The project will then be awarded carbon credits that will be sold on an exclusive basis to Merrill Lynch.”
http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2214613/merrill-lynch-throws-weight
This is the same institution which, along with Bear Stearns, helped perpetuate the subprime mortgage scandal, and a much attenuated U.S. economy in 2008. Can’t wait to see what they’ll do in this new, greener pasture.
Pops (12:11:57): As an electrical engineer, however, I’m not so quick to buy into the “collect in space and beam to earth” bit
Neither am I. Regardless of what the energy density really is, though, I’m sure the Greens would proclaim it harmful.
randomengineer, The problem isn’t cheap access. There are really only two ways to do this efficiently: 1) Use a big focused mirror or 2) collect and beam the energy using either a laser (probably would have to be a CO2 laser) or microwave.
In both solutions, the collection system would act like a solar sail making orbit maintenance problematic. Also, in both solutions, the energy density at the Earth will have to increase by a fairly large amount if the system is to be useful. Another interesting problem is keeping the spacecraft in constant view of the sun so that it will also work at night. It’s unlikely that the craft could remain out of the Earth’s shadow. A high elliptical orbit could minimize the “dark” time but would make pointing the power beam more difficult.
Laser transmission is easier to aim and the lower divergence increases the efficiencey. I’m assuming a CO2 laser would be used (if laser transmission is the choice) for continuous power transfer. Unfortunately, CO2 lasers emit infrared. Other colors could be used by allowing the system to use power bursts instead of continuous operation. Instantaneous power density would have to increase though.
Not the peak oil fantasy again. That thing has more lives than the hockey stick.
DAV,
A polar orbit with a precession equal to the earth’s orbital period would keep the satellite in the sun at all times.
The real problem though is trying to coordinate one or more satellites with stationary ground units. One way to solve this problem is to put the satellites in geosync orbit. However, the distance (23000?) miles makes the problem of targeting problematic, as well as the issue of beam spread.
Another way is to have multiple satellites and multiple ground stations. As the satellites orbit, they shift their beam from one ground station to another, as they come into range.
The greatest damage from climatism is diverting focus from the real and rapidly approaching challenge of Peak Oil with its critical need to develop alternative fuels or methods for transportation fuels.
Count me among those who thinks peak Oil is rubbish. I think we are so awash with oil we will have centuries’ worth by the time we simply walk away from it because something cheaper and more profitable has emerged.
Here’s how to figure it: Multiply “reserves” (which means immediately available” by 10 for the “reserve” number. Then multiply that number by 10 for “potential reserves” which is the actual amount that will actually be taken out. Then be sure you are lowballing it by at least a factor of two, probably more.
Peak Oil: Peek and ye shall find.
We’ve been running out of oil for at least 60 years. Eventually, we really will, and the alarmists will jump up and down screaming “See? See?”. We probably have run out of cheap oil. $120/bbl isn’t chump change.
Beaming energy down from space doesn’t make sense. To get only 1 GW, with a big antenna (10km x 20km), the energy density at the center is about 100x the federal standard for exposure. Assumes microwaves. Laser is worse, making light up there (10% at best) and converting it back down here, very inefficient. Requires an even bigger collector. In a Clarke orbit, with a really STRONG extension cord… (the DC resistance along 22,500 miles would kill that idea)
Others have commented on getting something that big up there and keeping it there (as did I several threads back) It didn’t make sense 30 years ago, still doesn’t. Solar power here on Earth makes a little more sense, works 8-10 hours during the day. That’s the time we need the most power, so it has a place. Wind is less predictable, may work as a supplement.
Couldn’t view P&T video, my ancient browser and security said “no”.
Having seen them many times on other mechanisms, I have no doubt the language was very blue and roll-on-the-floor funny. Ridicule may be a better response to AGW than logic. More folks can understand it.
Pops and Dav,
I heard they would be using microwaves, not lasers, to transmit the energy.
To the AGW propogandists: I’m sorry but you’ve only yourselves to blame for not allowing un- biased/evenly funded research science to run its course!
The Greens are Going Crazy
By Alan Caruba (07/27/08)
It’s hard to ignore the fact that the Greens are going crazy, not just in the United States, but around the world. They are increasingly frantic over the opposition being voiced against global warming, one of the greatest hoaxes in modern history.
The Greens have bet everything on global warming as the reason for giving up the use of long established sources of energy such as oil, coal and natural gas. The object has been to slow everything the modern world calls progress.
In India, a spokesman for that nation of one billion people has flatly refused to accept the global warming hoax. China shows no sign of yielding to the global warming lies. The greatest agricultural and mercantile economy to have ever existed, the United States of America continues to thwart its own growth by yielding to the lies.
Recently the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, said that “coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It’s global warming. It’s ruining our country. It’s ruining our world.”
No, what makes us sick is listening to such preposterous lies. A Rasmussen telephone survey taken after Sen. Reid’s absurd statement found that 52% of voters surveyed rejected his views about coal and oil, double the amount of those who agreed.
What is troublesome, however, is that the same survey found the voters evenly divided on whether global warming exists or poses a threat. Fully 47% of those surveyed believe that human activity affects the climate. Both candidates for President are publicly committed to the global warming hoax by varying degrees.
Despite an intense, decades-long propaganda campaign, coupled with indoctrination in our nation’s schools, the truth is beginning to emerge.
In March, an international conference on climate change organized by The Heartland Institute brought together over 500 of the world’s leading climatologists, meteorologists, economists and others for three days of seminars and presentations that completely refuted the pronouncements of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and disputed the lies of Al Gore’s famed “documentary.”
As recently as July 8, the Space and Science Research Center held a news conference in which it stated that the warming that has occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850 was completely natural, i.e., had nothing to do with human or industrial activity.
More significantly, the Center went on record saying that, “After an exhaustive review of a substantial body of climate research, and in conjunction with the obvious and compelling new evidence that exists, it is time that the world community acknowledges that the Earth has begun the next climate change.” The current warming period is not only at an end, but a distinct cooling cycle has begun and will bring “predominantly colder global temperatures for many years into the future.”
Just how crazed has the environmental movement become? On July 7 it was announced that Argentine scientists have been strapping plastic tanks to the backs of cows to collect and measure how much methane gas they produce.
Methane, like carbon dioxide, is a minor component of the Earth’s atmosphere. Methane is also released from swamps, landfills and other sources. If it and CO2 played a significant role in determining the world’s climate, it would be a cause for concern, but it is the Sun that primarily drives the Earth’s climate cycles. Solar activity has gone quiet in recent years as fewer and fewer sunspots, magnetic storms, have been seen.
To maintain the global warming hoax, thousands of events and natural phenomena have been blamed on it. A recent example is the floods in America’s mid-West. The National Wildlife Federation released a statement on July 1 blaming global warming.
Climate experts at The Heartland Institute were quick to respond. Dr. Joseph D’Aleo, Executive Director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, said, “Alarmists have adopted the can’t-lose position that all extremes of weather—cold, warm, wet, or dry—are all due to global warming”, adding that, “The record snows, severe weather, and heavy rainfall have been the result of rapid cooling in the northern tier of the United States and Canada, not global warming.”
Early in July, Bret Stephens, writing in The Wall Street Journal, called global warming “a mass hysteria phenomenon”, noting that “NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world’s oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years…”
The global warming hoax has never been about the climate. It is about competing economic theories. “Socialism may have failed as an economic theory,” wrote Stephens, “but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism.”
The United States Senate refused to consider the UN Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change that requires massive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions based solely on the global warming hoax, but other nations did sign on. None have ever met their obligation to limit CO2 emissions, nor need they have bothered.
At the recent G8 conference an international agreement to cut CO2 emissions was given serious consideration despite the fact that the Earth is now a decade into a cooling cycle likely to last several decades or longer. The impact of this proposal on the lives of ordinary citizens will prove needlessly costly. Proposals in some nations for various taxes based on global warming are a form of fraud.
The sensible refusal by leaders in emerging economies such as China and India would make it impossible for any limitations on carbon emissions by Western nations to have any impact, even if such reductions had anything to do with the realities of the Earth’s climate.
The only thing that can be predicted with certainty is that the Greens will become increasingly unhinged and crazed by the failure of the global warming hoax.
These ice cap stories are never supported with figures, even claims, that a thermometer up there shows warming. If the thermometers showed warming, they’d tell you. If not, they won’t tell you, because that jars with the implicit claims about the ice.
“Gore’s enthusiasm for carbon trading”
Another site noted some of it may be because he buys “credits” for things like increasing power use at his home[s] from – yes – a company he owns.
Peak oil has nothing to do with what the Earth contains. It has to do with what the people of the Earth are willing to pay for fossil based energy sources. It is possible to extract proven/unproven reserves as well as find undiscovered reserves with current technology. The increasing expense of doing that is what is calculated into the idea of peak oil.
In the words of Bob Dylan: “It’s a hard rain gonna fall”
Re spaceborne power, those of you who are detractors and/or “I don’t know” types seem to have missed my point. The spectre of Peak Oil is a political tool, and one that is limited solely to the current era. When cheap space access is achieved, there WILL be spaceborne power, period. The timeline is what’s in question. That’s it.
The technical requirements for doing spaceborne power have been known since at least the 70’s, which was the last time this was seriously investigated and plans were drawn up. Even at that time the big hurdle was cheap space access, which was, by not such a strange coincidence, one of the things that NASA was promising with Shuttle.
Cheap space access looks like a problem that will be solved by a Rutan type, not NASA, but this ought to be something solved within 2 decades following the advent of commercial suborbital flights. The point is that Peak Oil is a scary bogey-man whose ability to frighten doesn’t extend much beyond perhaps 20 years.
Here is great classification of people:
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=232401
My conclusion from this article: activist = stupid active person
David Hagen,
Your argument about peak oil is persuasive, but it does not even have to be correct to consider looking for alternative sources of energy, essential. You can look at the recent economic dislocations from high gas prices to recognize the tremendous economic and strategic vulnerability caused by reliance on crude oil as a major energy source. Admittedly, OPEC controlling the majority of supplies, coupled with our near suicidal political idiocy of limiting drilling in locations most likely to yield new supplies does not help, but there are no obvious new sources for cheap and readily available crude oil. Putting it very simply, our fossil fuel – not just crude oil -reserves are unlikely to last more than an additional 300 years. This, together with about 100 years of past usage gives us a total of about 400 years of availability for fossil fuel.( Put your own +/- number on it, the accuracy matters relatively little.) Assuming 400 million years of geological time that it took to accumulate these reserves, our one year of fossil fuel usage took about a million years to accumulate. Obviously, the long term numbers do not look promising. Our most promising long term source of energy is the sun, the source of energy for food, wood for construction and fuel and the ultimate source of fossil fuel, hydroelectric and wind power.
There are two problems with solar power, one is cost – which is relatively quickly being solved by improving technology and rising conventional energy costs- and the other one is lack of continuous availability. The second one is a problem mostly in the context of fitting in as a supplier to the electric grid.
We could look at the example provided by biological world which uses chemical storage to overcome the lack of continuous availability of sunlight. We could use electrolysis to generate H2 from solar energy and use the Hydrogen not only as a storeable form of energy, but also as a feedstock to manufacture synthetic liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons.
David L. Hagen and others: search for “Solar Power Satellites”. Also Peter Glaser who invented the concept and Gerry O’Neill.
While I would love to see it, along with the moon miners, mass drivers on the moon(it’s cheaper to build the SPS in Geosync with lunar materials)and regular trips to low earth orbit along with a new constellation in the night sky, “the Powerline”, the “killer beams from outer space” meme will prevent it.
There has been a lot of work done on the concept and there don’t appear to be any show stoppers. The microwave intensity is quite low, the rectenna farms are way cheaper than solar cells and deliver power 24/7. And you get a robust, wonderful space program.
The IFR is probably less effort though.
Tom Klein,
I doubt anyone will worry too much about fossil fuels only lasting 300 years.
Biological use of solar energy is extremely inefficient, less than 1%. Batteries aren’t going to get lots better as we undertstand the electrochemistry quite well.
Nuclear fission can provide the human race with energy for hundreds or years if done right(you don’t throw away 99% of the energy by doing a “once through” cycle in your reactors) and there is still the possibility that the Bussard Fusion reactor(search for Polywell) will work, in which case it is all over for energy shortages and Doc Bussard’s name will shine through the centuries. And it will power wonderful spaceships.
Mike,
Yes, the IFR “is” less effort. There was a prototype running at Argonne-West. When it was canceled, the shutdown costs were approximately equal to the cost to complete the project, meaning the shutdown was not financially motivated. I am personally acquainted with a high-ranking member of the IFR team who told me there were some pretty strong undercurrents associated with the cancelation, as in “keep your mouth shut about IFR if you want to continue your career.” I’m not going beyond that, as anything else I might add would be speculation.
The IFR was the logical next step in reactor development with many advantages beyond reactors currently in use. The reactor core was incapable of melt-down because it employed a metallic fuel rod whose thermal expansion shut off the reaction, thus preventing thermal runaway. The facility was a sealed facility, meaning no transport of materials to or from the facility for the life of the plant. There was never any separation of plutonium from the hot fuel mix, as the on-site reprocessing used electro-refining to formulate new fuel rods from the old.
And, of course, it had the benefit of using “spent” fuel rods for fuel, converting high-level nuclear waste to low-level nuclear waste. Instead of spending billions of dollars to figure out how to store spent fuel rods, we could have shipped them to IFR plants to meet our (USA) electrical needs for hundreds of years.
The bottom line is that any viable alternative to fossil fuels will be demonized by the enviros. Green IS the new red.
Evan Jones et al. on Peak Oil
The issue is rapid depletion of “CHEAP LIGHT OIL”
NOT
Total hydrocarbons.
US conventional oil production peaked in 1970. We are now importing some 65%. We have “plenty” of oil shale – why is no one falling over themselves to get it?
Yes there are “trillions” of barrels of “hydrocarbon resources” out there – problem is that you now have to take bitumen (aka “tar”) and convert it to gasoline. Extraction and conversion capital costs alone are now running $100,000/bbl/day.
So to replace 100 million bbl/day ONLY requires $10 trillion.
Moreover that has to be done within the next two decades to not have any decline in the rate of growth.
Sure beaming solar power has been proposed. The issue is not electricity but transportation fuels. Are you willing to pay far higher than current petroleum costs for transportation?
We need some 10,000 new systems each producing 10,000 bbl/day over the next two decades. i.e, about 3 per day. Look at Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI). Considering the rate at which NASA launches rockets, 3 per day is not practical or cost effective versus other options.
Rather than flippantly dismissing “Peak Oil”, may I encourage you to read through those links and start grappling with the statistics and models. Its the rate of transition that determines the price and the economy. At the present rate of inaction, the USA is spending $1 trillion per year on oil, with some $700 billion going overseas. i.e. the US is rapidly exchanging the company store for a “joy ride.” The EU is not far behind.
It is your future at stake.
For those wondering about Al Gore, I beleive he holds a very large percentage share of a Carbon trading Company. When he buys credits, he’s buying them from himself. Keep that in mind.
Anthony.
Just had a look at your site counter. I reckon the only thing being driven up by CO2 hot air, is your site hits.
That’s what the Global temperature graph should look like.
Thanks for your work.
REPLY: Thank you. Getting hits is not my mission, getting the word out on issues with data integrity and unsupportable news stories is.
@MarkW (13:35:24) :
I’ve been saying geosynch but I really am thinking geostationary — they aren’t the same thing. The latter only work in equatorial orbits.
The problem is not so much to keep the satellite in sunlight but to do so and remain visible to the ground. Only an equatorial (well, near-equatorial) orbit can accomplish this. The basic problem is that there aren’t many orbits (I’m hedging here — I believe there are none) that would allow a satellite to remain in sunlight and also be visible from the Earth’s night side. The moon is visible all night but it, too, sometimes enters the Earth’s umbra. Note that the moon isn’t visible 24/7 anyway so lunar orbit won’t work either. Multiple spacecraft perhaps would.
Multiple ground stations and a sun-synch orbit might be the only real answer. Until there’s a global power grid, a solar power spacecraft would only be usable about 12 hours per day (on the average) at any given station.
Bill (14:04:48) : I heard they would be using microwaves, not lasers, to transmit the energy.
Yes, microwave is the baseline concept. One of the problems with microwave though is being able to concentrate the beam so that the entire visible hemisphere isn’t being irradiated. Far easier to do it with light.
One additional advantage with light is that the atmosphere is mostly transparent to it. If the beam is tight enough, the laser wouldn’t not be visible outside of the target area.
Environmentalists will howl no matter what though. It’s the environmental impact statement that will forever kill solar power satellites. At least until some catastrophic need arises.