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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Did he say that steam from the heat is “used to turn turbans”?!
He’s already figured out, apparently, how to use geothermal energy to subsidize the Saudis. A forward thinker!
The Nobel committe must be so proud.
philincalifornia (18:49:39) :
Zeke the Sneak (17:03:13) :
I like the water that turns to steam at millions of degrees.
—————–
……. and Biden’s Arctic ice that evaporates.
It’s a Vice-President thing !!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1,000 votes away from this vp.
Or, one heartbeat away from a vice president at all times. After him, Nancy Pelosi, if I am correct.
A thought or two on the various “green” technologies:
Since I got active in politics about 6 years ago, I have met a bunch of politicians. The Executive Director of a very conservative congressman asked me about coal integrated combined cycle with CO2 sequestration.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_gasification_combined_cycle
My first thought without doing any research was: “If it was a slam-dunk, they wouldn’t be begging for tax payer dollars.” There has to be something wrong or they would be putting their own money into it and getting filthy rich.
I was strictly in steam plant operations, but my WAG is: It probably work but……it will cost perhaps 50% more to build the plant, 50% more to operate/maintain it, and fuel consumption will be 30% higher as it will take that much of the energy in the fuel to run the process.
I suspect that is true of most all of the green technologies. They are only viable in special circumstances or unless the government transfers money from fools to slickie boys (a term I learned in the Far East) wanting to get rich on green technology.
As for geothermal. Yes, it will work in certain specific cases. However, the steam from a geothermal source can not be used directly in a turbine: it carries too many chemicals. So, you need to use the steam/hot water for space heating, or use an indirect heat exchanger to create steam for a turbine or use some type of Sterling Cycle engine. And even so, you will have maintenance problems with the chemicals in the steam and I suspect that even stainless steel will stress crack if not corrode. Maybe 70-30 CuNi alloy would work; if anyone out there knows, please advise.
A 1,000 mWe Sterling Cycle engine would be a sight to behold! As a retired steamboat engineer, I would drive 3,000 miles just to marvel at the sight of one in opertion!
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
PS
A final rhetorical question:
The Goracle has made over $100 million on this scam and I’ve read that he may be the first “Green Billionaire”. So, a question for all of you (and I) that have made disparaging remarks about Al: ” Who is the fool, Al or me?”
Well it just goes to show that earth is venus in blue jeans, a walking talking work of art. It isn’t that hot and it isn’t co2.
crosspatch (19:26:54) :
Last time I looked Gore’s book was in the 70’s on Amazon’s list.
It’s fallen to #90. Which shows you how much attention people are paying to Al Gore.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/ref=pd_ts_pg_4?ie=UTF8&pg=4
Abethe abethe abethy… That’s all folks!
“Jon Jewett (20:51:51) :
The Goracle has made over $100 million on this scam and I’ve read that he may be the first “Green Billionaire”. So, a question for all of you (and I) that have made disparaging remarks about Al: ” Who is the fool, Al or me?”
Actually, Gore and his family fortunes are largely derived from oil (Oxy), amoung other things. But stands, as already suggested, to make much much more than that with carbon taxes.
Re: DaveE (20:03:47) :
There have been numerous proposals, from sideways ejecting seats with rocket packs to gain height, to jettisoning of rotors prior to ejection.
—
Russian Ka-50 and South African Rooivalk both have ejector seats I think, both losing the rotors pre-launch. ISTR some mention of downward firing ejector seats being thought about, but for low-flying aircraft that seems… risky.
Anyway, this geothermal malarky is dangerous. Remove heat, core contracts and we risk 2012-style delamination or no sleep due to big lump rattling around under the crust. Won’t someone think of our grandchildren?
(presumably this also means Al Gore Inc is investing in geothermal, in which case I hope he’s done better due diligence than this interview shows. Or maybe it’s just a pump & dump advertorial, in which case perhaps the SEC should take a look.)
Do you know, during our primaries many thought that electing Mr. President Barack Obama and his Esteemed Vice President Joe Biden, would punish the conservatives so severely that there would be a return to Constitutional principles?
Now they will pack the courts, pack the Doe the nea the department of everything with
M—ists.
Truly a man on a money making mission……When will the people of today wake up and realise the difference between SPIN and FACT.
The man can not and will not give a respond to a reasonable question unless he is asked it in a prepared controlled environment.
1,000,000,000 degree, riiiighhht…
So Gore rattled off the wrong number on a TV talk show. Not a very big deal. we need laughs. And he may actually believe it. Who knows?
Geothermal isn’t a mystery. It has worked well a few places with the right geology. And failed at others. At most places getting to adequate heat is expensive. And you need a lot of relatively pure water, or expensive dry cooling, or a substitute fluid for a closed loop system.
Like acrobatics at the circus, if it was easy everyone could be performing.
An MIT study this year said it is a good alternate for the US. But I am always cautious about studies not involving field trials.
The proper role for DOE in geothermal power generation is to fund several serious and independent trials by experienced engineering firms and accept the outcomes – good or bad.
And read Jon, aka Steamboat Jack @20:51:51 in case you overlooked that.
For now, many already use a form of geothermal, the ground sink heat pump. More effective cooling in summer and heating in winter. My brother in Kansas lives over a rather shallow water table and his ground sink heat pump is astonishingly effective.
I am a American living in Leyte, Philippines. Our electricity is produced by geothermal energy and is old technology here.
George E. Smith (17:10:04) : Well to be fair to the man (why not) he did say “the interior of the earth is extremely hot; several million degrees.”… 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… I would guess that sites that are potentially good for geothermal energy (high grade energy), are likely to be earthquake active…
More precisely it has to be above a high temperature geothermal field, where you have high temperature, high pressure steam available underground, at well above 100 C. You cant just drill anywhere 2,000 meters down as Gore was suggesting and get steam to run a turbine!
As for the interior of the Earth being at millions of degrees maybe Gore knows better. After all the Earth does have a fever.
PS the Magma pools dont have to be under volcanoes (active ones that is) Auckland is sitting atop large magma pools.
Drill bits that can survive two million degrees of heat and steam that powers “turbans”.
Thats Sikhs taken care of but what about the rest of us?
Oh, and it is time for this old saw to make the rounds again:
‘World has only ten years to control global warming, warns Met Office – UK Telegraph – November 15, 2009.
In a retail shopping centre in Southampton, in England, is an incongruous corrugated iron building. It is a geothermal power station, dating, I think, from 1928. Amazing metallurgy they had then, not to melt. But is it safe, with all those shoppers threatened with several million degree rocks?
I am grateful for the outcome of this survey among members of the American Meteorological Society.
http://www.alabamawx.com/?p=24574
Here in Iceland we have only 200 – 300°C in 2000 meter holes for powering our geothermal plants. Perhaps Mr. Gore is willing to teach us how to do better 🙂
Now that British courts have declared AGW a religion, I’d like to make sure we all recognise it as such, no more calling them a crazy cult, they are a respectable religious faith like any other, with saints and prophets, miracles and deluge myths. Please spread this:
Our Nobel Father Al
Who art flying the heavens
Smokey be thy business jet flames.
Thy Carbon Exchange come,
Thy Inconvenient Truth be done,
In the UN as it is in Copenhagen
Sell us this day, our daily carbon credits
and forgive us our emissions,
as we forgive those who emit against us.
And lead us not, into nuclear temptation,
but deliver us from denier evil, Almen
You may go forth and spread the Lords prayer amongst the heathens, in hopes it inspires them to come to the One True Faith, the Church of Global Warming.
Gore isn’t just clueless about science. He doesn’t seem to have a clue what’s going on. Nowadays we say ‘It’s the economy stupid’ but what we get is blah blah from the Climate Bore in Chief. Well, it is the economy stupid, Al.
‘At some point, American workers will rebel. US unemployment is already 17.5pc under the broad “U6” gauge followed by Barack Obama. Realty Track said that 332,000 properties were foreclosed in October alone. More Americans have lost their homes this year than during the entire decade of the Great Depression. A backlog of 7m homes is awaiting likely seizure by lenders. If you are not paying attention to this political time-bomb, perhaps you should.’
A prayer for those Americans who have lost there jobs and homes. From the 23rd Psalm circa 1929. Et tu Democrats?
Hoover is my shepherd
I am in want
He maketh me to lie down on park benches
He leadeth me by still factories
He restoreth my doubt in the Republican party
Yeah though I walk through the valley of soup kitchens
I am hungry
Surely poverty and hard times will follow me
All the days of the Republican administration
And I will live in a rented house forever.
Maybe I’m wrong, but millions of degrees, under pressure, would trigger spontaneous nuclear fusion, vaporizing Al, Conan, and the planet in about a nanosecond.
Petitio principii? Didn’t someone then ask, “how sure are you in that case, seeing that heat rises (well it used to in the olden days), with the ocean heat rising out of control & the atmosphere sizzling, the polar caps melting, polar bears & penguins frying, that all this “unprecedented” global warming is not natural?” Unless of course the “inner subterrainian greenhouse” from all that carbon locked up in the rocks prevents it from getting through to the surface.
Being such a technically minded guy, didn’t Gore recently advise NASA that their new space rocket, at peak thrust on lift off would cause the engine to develop transverse thrust in the epicyclic torque condenser units resulting in both cordwangling of the falangy & excessive fibrilation of the phased flux converter? Or is it just me?