This is mind blowing ignorance on the part of Al Gore. Gore in an 11/12/09 interview on NBC’s tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, speaking on geothermal energy, champion of slide show science, can’t even get the temperature of earth’s mantle right, claiming “several million degrees” at “2 kilometers or so down”. Oh, and the “crust of the earth is hot” too.
Temperature of the sun’s corona: 1–2 million kelvin
Temperature of the sun’s photosphere: 6,000 kelvin
Temperature of the Earths mantle, more than “2 kilometers or so down”: between 500 °C to 900 °C (773 to 1173 kelvin)
Watching Gore make a complete scientific idiot of himself on national TV: priceless
Don’t believe me? Watch the video from NBC below:
For a faster presentation, without a pre-viewing commercial, here is the same video on YouTube
Oh…and here is a graph of the vertical temperature profile with drilling depth:
And here is the temperature profile of the Earth’s crust, mantle, and core:
Source: Electropaedia (Mpower UK) page on geothermal energy
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Patrick Davis (03:56:18) to “dutch (03:31:27) :
“Are you suggesting WWI and WWII were all about energy? You should read up on your history. Were the Nazis and Stalin at war with people over energy?”
Yes, pretty much.
Reply: Time for the debate over WW I and II causes to stop. Don’t make me come down there Tor. ~ charles the moderator
Tor Hansson (18:28:14),
Churchill called WWI & WWII the second thirty years’ war. Germany lost no territory to its enemies in WWI, and controlled plenty of land outside its borders at the Armistice. Had Germany been treated with moderation, rather than being fined six billion gold marks, proposed by a vindictive France [an amount far beyond Germany’s ability to pay, and which led directly to the Weimar Republic inflation], it is much less likely that the German populace would have been so easily fired up and desirous of revenge.
But after being treated so shabbily by countries that were as responsible for the war as Germany, Hitler was easily able to rally the population to follow him.
And don’t even get me started on President Wilson.
“Reply: Time for the debate over WW I and II causes to stop. Don’t make me come down there Tor. ~ charles the moderator”
Reminds me of a Faulty Towers episode but, seeing Al talk about science is so much more funnier. John Cleese and Connie Booth would be proud.
Al Gore should learn some basic science “not next year, this year” –
What is most troubling here is not simply that he does not have any idea of the Earth’s interior temperature. Rather, it is that that he knows so little about temperature that he thinks solid rocks (or even liquid rocks) could possibly exist at temperatures of “millions of degrees”. He should know that temperatures like that would vapourise matter as we know it, even at the high pressures encountered underground. Perhaps he meant to say “thousands” of degrees, but I have not heard that he corrected the error and I doubt it.
John Game
Barry Foster
“I like the idea of nuclear power, but can someone who advocates it tell me that if a terrorist crashes a plane into a nuclear power station there will not be a release of radiation? No, I thought not.”
I can.
Back in the 1980s, I used to work for the UK’s sole constructor of nuclear plant – then called National Nuclear Corporation. I worked on the designs for the Heysham and Torness AGRs.
As part of that, I spent several months firing steel rods, simulating the main spindle of a jet engine from an F4 fighter into concrete walls of the same design of those for the emergency services buildings serving the plants. Commercial jet engines lack a single end-to end spindle.
There were four such buildings, one at each corner of the plant, separated by several hundred metres from each other. Any one operating could shut down the entire plant safely. The pressure vessels, (or in a PWR, the containment) were several times the thickness of these walls.
We used the rod because, in terms of it’s ability to penetrate a structure, it was the biggest problem of all. The main structure of an aircraft is lightweight aluminium, and it crumples on impact, wasting most of its kinetic energy.
The rod didn’t penetrate. The only slight issue was something called “spalling” where chips of concrete would be expelled from the inner surface of the wall. But they hadn’t much energy, and were easily contained.
So, for your case to work, a terrorist would have to steal four fighter jets, and crash them accurately onto four well separated buidlings; and then still wouldn’t compromise plant operations.
That comment is pretty typical of the more “know nothing” strand of the anti-nuclear movement. Just because you can imagine a scenario doesn’t mean that it can’t be engineered against. Nuclear plant is NOT built like the WTC – a lightweight structure, lacking redundancy it it’s construction.
Oh, and don’t mix up spending on plant construction with R&D. I know people at the Cambourne School of Mines who worked on the “Hot Dry Rock” geothermal scheme that you seem to think offered potential. It dies for a very good reason.
Hot rock is plastic. After you’ve drilled the boreholes, and cracked the rock between them to give you a means of generating steam, guess what?
The cracks close fairly rapidly. Unless you pump down water at such pressure that you’re spending as much energy on pumping as you get from the steam coming up. Which rather destroys the point, you’d agree…..
“Also, water is not necessarily used to condense the turbine exhaust, but can be via air-cooled exchangers. ”
only at the cost of huge reductions in efficiency.
Keith Minto (18:14:50) :
Geothermal is a risky investment and hasn’t seen the same kind of subsidies thrown at it as with Solar and Wind.
Requiring closed systems increases upfront costs and scares off private money. Of course, if His Emminence, The Algore, is hawking it, I am pretty sure there is serious public money or tax incentives in the pipe.
There are certainly some innovative things being done in geothermal and there is great potential. I hate to throw the baby out with the bathwater just because The Algore is involved in it now. Hey, I like the idea of Global Warming, but I find myself cheering for cooling trends out of spite.
People, give the illustrious Nobel Laureate some respect!
He was OBVIOUSLY using the Gore Scale, which he invented on the spot, where 1 kelvin = 1000 gores.
Not coincidentally, that same ratio times negative one also measures the relative contributions to the world of science between William Thomson and Al Gore.
What geothermal has going for it is that it is continous whereas windmills, tidal etc are intermittent (though at least with tidal the intermittency is predictable). This makes it as useful as nuclear & if Gore’s opinion about temperature gradient were sane then it would probably be cheaper too.
This is a very well thought through and explained argument refuting what you claim to be nonsense. The guy was on a chat show, why not throw up a clip of an actor claiming his/her movie to be the ‘best they’ve ever made’ equally ridiculous hyperbole. This thread would be made better if we could somehow work in a photoshopped version with Frank Gore answering the questions.
Feargy
http://anactorslife.wordpress.com
ATD. I would love to believe you – seriously I would. But I am old enough to have heard, “Oh that can’t possibly happen” so many times, my friend, so, so many times.
Gore is an idiot and so are the liberal loons that actually are dumb enough to believe anything this loon says.
ATD. I would love to believe you – seriously I would. But I am old enough to have heard, “Oh that can’t possibly happen” so many times, my friend, so, so many times.
That doesn’t work Barry. The “precautionary principle”, essentially going ahead with nothing that cannot be proven to be 100% safe is a recipe for complete economic and technological stagnation. You’ve essentially set up a strawman “Oh, I’ve heard THAT before”, that no logic, much less an aircraft, can penetrate.
In you fevered imagination, engineers can crash all manner of objects into the wall of a containment vessel and it still isn’t enough for what “might” happen.
Well Sparky, it is a statistical certainty that the earth will be struck with a large meteor, and the Yellowstone caldera will erupt*, so you might as well stop living because we can’t say “that can’t possibly happen”.
*of course the time scales on these happening are likely so distant that to worry yourself is useless.
Tom, all I’m saying is that I don’t believe that a plane crashing into a nuclear power station WOULDN’T release radiation. That’s all I’m saying for crying out loud! Personally, I don’t think that belief is unreasonable! For that reason (if I were so empowered) I would not be going down the nuclear route. A release of radiation would be such a disaster that I don’t think nuclear merits consideration. Even though I am firmly in the sceptic-AGW house, I still think we should be generating electricity though geothermal, solar and tide. I also have no problem with burning gas to generate electricity – or even coal if it has filters.
Try and be nice Tom.
ATD, re nuclear power plants and aircraft impacts:
The NRC recently made a new regulation that any new nuclear power plants (but not existing ones) must withstand an impact from a large commercial aircraft. Not just the reactor, but also the cooling systems, and spent fuel storage.
The spent fuel storage areas are the weak link, with respect to release of deadly radioactive substances.
Keith Minto,
Yes, there are constraints. But there are also new plants in the planning and development stages, with leases from MMS (minerals and mining service). Some new plants are in development near the Salton Sea in California. Part of the problem is power transmission lines.
Tom, all I’m saying is that I don’t believe that a plane crashing into a nuclear power station WOULDN’T release radiation. That’s all I’m saying for crying out loud! Personally, I don’t think that belief is unreasonable!
Even though you’ve been given links to show that not only has the scenario been considered, it has even been TESTED FOR.
Hey, you can believe all you want, but it doesn’t make it fact. And unfortunately, it is easy to scare other ill-informed people to believe as you do, just by trotting out the “radiation” bogey man. Which is why we are stuck listening to Gore tell us how to generate energy instead of looking at the decades of safe, reliable use of nuclear power.
Mr Green Genes (11:01:54) :
Spot on! I am of that age.
BTW to all Brits out there fed up to the back teeth with lying, cheating, self-promoting, self-eneriching, venal, mendacious, British politicians/scientists/econstalinists, etc., who smile on both faces, I watched my son’s dvd of “V for Vendetta” the other day, oh how refreshing, especially the last 10 minutes of the film IMHO. I wonder if the politicians were actually inside when it went up?
Tom, I didn’t say it was fact, it’s just my opinion that a fully-laden 747 crashing into a nuclear power station at so many hundreds of miles an hour may release radiation. As I said, I simply don’t believe it’s worth the risk…it isn’t! We are stuck with Gore’s rubbish because people like you believe what they’re told…like you believing that an accident releasing radiation couldn’t happen. Like the incident in 2002 when a radiotherapy source was transported from Leeds to Sellafield with defective shielding. The shielding had a gap on the underside. No, Tom, I mean that could never happen, could it, after all the safety training? Jeez!
Tom, accidents – including nuclear ones – that “could never happen” DO! Time you wised up, my friend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents
I get to listen to the Goracle keynote address at SuperComputing 2009. I wonder if I should ask any inconvenient questions.
Tom, you may want to stop commenting:
“All reactors are designed to withstand impact by a light plane. Experts say it is unclear whether a larger modern jet loaded with fuel, deliberately flown at high speed, could break open the reactor vessel. The resultant fire could, however, cause enough damage to allow radioactive material into the air.”
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/onofre/cnn2001a.htm
Someone earlier, maybe you, commented on the fact that a plane is lightweight aluminium and couldn’t penetrate much. I saw the steel beams that the plane went straight through on the World Trade Center, did you?
Barry Foster:
Plane crash into concrete at 500 MPH: click
Smokey, with all due respect, that wall was not stationary. Note carefully the video at around 25 to 28 seconds – the wall moved with the impact.
The vulnerable part of the existing nuclear plants is the spent fuel storage area.
Million is the new Thousands…
As I said, I simply don’t believe it’s worth the risk…it isn’t! We are stuck with Gore’s rubbish because people like you believe what they’re told…like you believing that an accident releasing radiation couldn’t happen.
No, I believe the facts. And the facts are that there are hundreds of nuclear reactors fuctioning perfectly well, and have been for decades. New reactor designs, such as the pebble bed and others, are to be built to an even greater safety standard. But YOU don’t want nuclear power because of a “feeling”.
Have all the feelings you want, but leave the rest of the world out of it.
“All reactors are designed to withstand impact by a light plane. Experts say it is unclear whether a larger modern jet loaded with fuel, deliberately flown at high speed, could break open the reactor vessel. The resultant fire could, however, cause enough damage to allow radioactive material into the air.”
BTW, if your “proof” has to use the word “could” more than once in a sentence, it really doesn’t prove anything.