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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Re: Jon Jewett (15:27:21)
To add to Jack’s list:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
http://pathstoknowledge.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/the-interior-of-the-earth-is-several-millions-of-degrees-al-gore
Gore’s mistake on The Core temperature will mean that 2012 is happening! This “mistake” of Gore’s is likely the result of his stated strategic tactic to exaggerate the facts regardless of how much he distorts them! This is Priceless Gore indeed!
What’s new in geothermal power development?
AUSTRALIA
“As reported from Australia, “Geodynamics Ltd. (GDY.AU) (recently) said progress on its geothermal energy demonstration plant in South Australia state could be delayed until well into next year after an investigation into an explosion at one of its wells uncovered operational deficiencies.”
GERMANY (and America and Switzerland)
“LANDAU IN DER PFALZ, Germany — Government officials here are reviewing the safety of a geothermal energy project that scientists say set off an earthquake in mid-August…
– – – –
In the United States, the Energy Department is scrutinizing a project in Northern California run by AltaRock Energy to determine if it is safe. (The project was shut down by the company last month because of crippling technical problems.) Another project, in Basel, Switzerland, was shut down after it generated earthquakes in 2006 and 2007 and is awaiting the decision of a panel of experts about whether it can resume.”
Elsewhere(s) in GERMANY
“Residents near Dortmund were evacuated this week after the ground collapsed around a geothermal heat pump, while in another German town, almost 190 buildings have now been damaged by a geothermal project gone awry.”
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4473382,00.html
Sorry, but I would like to wait for the technology to be a bit more reliable, thank you, before installing it anywhere near me. Come to think of it, I wonder how far below Cent.Florida we would have to drill to reach bedrock?
Being in the business of drilling geothermals, we are starting to see declines in output, after 5-6 years.
Combine this with the aforementioned pollution, earth quake generation, difficult and expensive drilling, its not the panacea hoped for.
“Temperature of the Earths mantle, more than “2 kilometers or so down”: between 500 °C to 900 °C (773 to 1173 kelvin)”
The earth mantle is 2 km down??? Ah, priceless Gorism!
The only problem is that he advises Obama and has made presentations to congress as their adviser. Obama and congress believe the stories. Lisa Jackson has bought one of the stories and is acting on it. One or two million here or there then you end up with a current 10.2% unemployed and trillions of debt to boot. While bad energy policy based on bad science is the focus of Obama’s congress.
So Thats what melting the ice caps. Al, you’r are so smart.
I don’t think it’s right to call Al Gore stupid. Call him intellectually lazy and sloppy, and you go a long ways towards explaining “An Inconvenient Truth” and his venture into carbon offsets. Funny, it’s the charge that was usually leveled at W, who seems to be far more thorough in his alternative energy pursuits.
I believe Iceland is using quite a bit of geothermal energy. In their case I think they use steam and hot water directly for a number of purposes: electricity (steam turbine), direct heating, and so on.
If the MSM decides to look into this, which they likely won’t, it will be the death knell for the former VP.
How can you win a Nobel Prize for pushing complex science and be so ignorant about basic geology?
How can you come on a nationwide TV show and talk about geothermal, and not know the temperatures?
How can you not know that drilling equipment can’t withstand temperatures of a couple of million degrees?
I’m very shocked at Gore’s ignorance. But I will be just as shocked if the media ignore this. And I’m pretty jaded, as are most of us on this blog, it seems to me.
…well, Mr. Al Gore is right. Such a drillbit turns around 360° to fulfill one complete turn. So quite a lot of million ‘degress’ are necessary to drill down 2 km.
You guys should listen much more accurately when St. Gore preaches to you disbelievers
;-))
link to geothermal in Iceland, here:
http://www.energy.rochester.edu/is/reyk/
He shouldn’t be talking about things he knows nothing about.
All he has done now is add to the great list of urban myths he has already created and a bunch of green people are going to be quoting “35,000 years of geothermal heat only 2 kms down – but the oil companies keep stopping it.”
We will all be using geothermal energy as soon as someone can figure out a way to make it work. But there are lots of things that are just impossible and geothermal beyond a few uses could easily turn out to be one of those.
I have to wonder. How much pollution is Al Gore producing just to get his face out everywhere and say “The earth has a fever, we are at fault, now pay up (and just ignore that I will be rich for life when you do).”?
Apparently, in the Gore-utopia only a special few will be able to travel great distances without any penalty.
I like the water that turns to steam at millions of degrees.
I think horrible Al has hit the nail on the head, cunning if not intelligent. Folk are waking up to the climate scam so let’s move on… and there are energy issues that deserve airing…
Perhaps it is just the way attached advertising works, but I was first shown a clip of a Disney film of The Muppets cooking flambe that had to be extinguished with a CO2 fire extinguisher? Is that humorous or what?
Well to be fair to the man (why not) he did say “the interior of the earth is extremely hot; several million degrees.”
“Interior of the earth” to me does not mean anywhaer out side of the mantle; so his use of that term is consistent with (lovely turn of phrase) with Conan Obrien saying “the coreof the earth”.
But Gore did say that several km down there are these extremely hot rocks. Well that is certainly true where you have magma pools under volcanoes.
As to the core of the earth, evidently the temperature is not well known, but I have read estimates of 5,000 to 10,000 Kelvin. You are not going to get anywhere near there; but it is useful to know that the ultimate driving temperature is in that range.
As to the practicality of geothermal; well it is done commerically in several countries one of which is New Zealand at Wairakei.
I can remember well when they started the very first experimental drilling at Wairakei. They were drilling very close to the main hiway (Great South Road), and once they had a well drilled, with a pipe, they let the steam just exhaust into the air, for several years, just to see how stable the supply was.
That created a problem, since the whole surrounding terrain was volcanic pumice rocks, and the steam was both very wet, and also laden with pumice dust. As a result, the land all around the well, including the hiway, and trees, got coated in a heavy layer of pumice ash; which has a tendency to set up like concrete. So there were a lot of complaints from passing motorists; getting all that crap all over their cars.
So the engineers came up with a solution; build a great big steel funnel, with a 90 degree bend in it, so they could direct the steam horizontally and away from the road. So they welded up this monstrous steel elbow, out of steel several inches thick, with a flange on it to attach it to the bore pipe.
Came the great day to shut off the white monster; so they lowered the elbow down over the well, and of course once they got close enough they had to hold it down, since the momentum transferred to it by the curving steam was horrendous. Once they got it down on the pipe, then of course they could bolt it in place; problem solved.
And they very nearly did get it bolted in place; but before they completed the installation the pumice laden steam/water jet, cut a hole clean through the steel, and the whole thing just shot up in the air again.
Somehow; they have solved that problem, and Wairakei is now a functional operation; and yes it still is right by the main hiway; and it is sent through a lot of horizontal piping; apparently quite safely.
Gore also said “several” km down, and that to me means more than two, so at least three.
Despite all the pedantry here; the statement is still inane, and demonstrative of the fact that the guy simply hasn’t even bothered to learn some of the fundamentals.
I would guess that sites that are potentially good for geothermal energy (high grade energy), are likely to be earthquake active.
Wairakei, is right in the middle of the biggest volcanic active zone in New Zealand; so far so good.
Let me take a shot at predicting his defense: If each geothermal site has a working temperature of 500 °C, if you build 4,000 sites, then you’ll have 2,000,000 °C.
Hey, it worked when, as VP, he defended taxing millionaires by increasing taxes on incomes as low as $200,000 because in 5 years that would be a million dollars, then it ought to work here, ’cause it’s the same science: arithmetic.
“”” Bill (15:22:31) :
Give the guy a break. After all, he did invent the internet. “””
Yeah but his invention of screen doors for Nuclear Submarines seems a lot more useful; along with his invention of ejection seats for helicopters.
The Russian Kola Peninsula super deep drill hole to 12.2 km depth was stopped due to higher than expected temperatures at this depth and location, 180 °C (356 °F) instead of expected 100 °C (212 °F). Drilling was stopped in 1992 so it’s not as if this is new info. The drill bits could not handle the temperature and stresses.
There is extensive literature on the limitations of geothermal.
In the Goreacle’s defence (to a degree – no pun intended) he had changed to talking about the core, so he was not saying it was 1 meeeellion degrees 2kms down. That being said, it is nowhere near 1 meeellion degrees anywhere in the earth’s core unless I have missed some significant scientific finding.
Anywho, I thought the massive study done by MIT on geothermal would be of interest:
http://geothermal.inel.gov/publications/future_of_geothermal_energy.pdf
Wet geothermal is easy, if you don’t mind reducing geyser activity in the area a bit… the dry rocks geothermal is the trickier one to implement (what we would need to engineer in Australia). We are working on it…
I have no idea of the orders of magnitude, but I would assume that the heat would have to be harvested from different areas to allow the heat spots to recupperate. Whether that takes 10, 100, 1,000 or 1,000,000 years is a complete unknown to me. The K/U/Th decay can’t be generating a huge amount of heat or it WOULD be a meeellion degrees down there.
In Western Australia (WA) we recently released a large amount of land for geothermal exploration – there is a fair bit of interest out there. Also, one doesn’t have to go down 2-5kms for the heat to be useful… heat exchangers and low heat applications can utilise sub-100C rock heat adequately … whether it is economic versus say gas-fired electricity or not is another issue altogether… we have a fair bit of gas in WA 😀
He lies with such sincerity…
yonason, and other skeptics on geothermal:
Geothermal has produced, and very reliably, 12 to 13,000 GWhrs per year in California for at least the past decade, representing approximately 4 percent of all power sold in the state.
source: http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html
I feel I’ve dropped 2,000,000 IQ points just watching this , thanx a lot!
Brent in Calgary
Geothermal and lawyers don’t mix is my guess. Imagine an earthquake that can be blamed on removing heat from the crust. Sounds plausible to me.
Lucy,
The day Al Gore has a good idea is the day you should think twice. Even assuming the man has good intentions don’t forget that he has been used as a tool for great evil at the least.
Let his influence wane and give the man no credit. His credibility should be shot for the rest of his life even if he said the sky was normally blue.
Why on earth should anyone ever listen to Al Gore again? Forgive him sure but trust him? Never in this life again, I say! Let him be content to be a rich disgrace. There are many poor ones.