Since we are watching the plight of the Thompsons in Australia over cow manure, this submission titled “Unsustainable cow manure” on sustainable energy sent to me by Paul Driessen seemed appropriate. I put solar on my own home and a school in my school district. Without “OPM”, they would not have been viable, so he has a point- Anthony
Sustainable, affordable, eco-friendly renewable energy, my eye
Paul Driessen
Seek a sustainable future! Wind, solar and biofuels will ensure an eco-friendly, climate-protecting, planet-saving, sustainable inheritance for our children. Or so we are told by activists and politicians intent on enacting new renewable energy standards, mandates and subsidies during a lame duck session. It may be useful to address some basic issues, before going further down the road to Renewable Utopia.
First, when exactly is something not sustainable? When known deposits (proven reserves) may be depleted in ten years? 50? 100? What if looming depletion results from government policies that forbid access to lands that might contain new deposits – as with US onshore and offshore prospects for oil, gas, coal, uranium, rare earth minerals and other vital resources?
Rising prices, new theories about mineral formation, and improved discovery and extraction technologies and techniques typically expand energy and mineral reserves – postponing depletion by years or decades, as in the case of oil and natural gas. But legislation, regulation, taxation and litigation prevent these processes from working properly, hasten depletion, and make “sustainability” an even more politicized, manipulated and meaningless concept.
Second, should the quest for mandated “sustainable” technologies be based on real, immediate threats – or will imaginary or exaggerated crises suffice? Dangerous manmade global cooling morphed into dangerous manmade global warming, then into “global climate disruption” – driven by computer models and disaster scenarios, doctored temperature data, manipulated peer reviews, and bogus claims about melting glaciers and rising sea levels. Shouldn’t policies that replace reliable, affordable energy with expensive, intermittent, land-intensive, subsidized sources be based on solid, replicable science?
Third, shouldn’t inconvenient sustainability issues be resolved before we proceed any further, by applying the same guidelines to renewable energy as courts, regulators and eco-activists apply to petroleum?
Most oil, gas, coal and uranium operations impact limited acreage for limited times – and affected areas must be restored to natural conditions when production ends. Effects on air and water quality, habitats and protected species are addressed through regulations, lease restrictions and fines. The operations generate vast amounts of affordable, reliable energy from relatively small tracts of land, and substantial revenues.
Wind turbines generate small amounts of expensive, unreliable electricity from gargantuan installations on thousands of acres. Turbines and their associated transmission lines dominate scenic vistas, disrupt habitats and migratory routes, affect water drainage patterns, impede crop dusting and other activities, and kill bats, raptors and other birds, including endangered species that would bring major fines if the corporate killers were oil or mining companies. And yet, wind operators receive exemptions from environmental review, biodiversity and endangered species laws that traditional energy companies must follow – on the ground that such rules would raise costs and delay construction of “eco-friendly” projects.
Kentucky’s Cardinal coal mine alone produces 75% of the Btu energy generated by all the wind turbines and solar panels in the USA, Power Hungry author Robert Bryce calculates. Unspoiled vistas, rural and maritime tranquility, and bald eagles will all be endangered if 20% wind power mandates are enacted.
The Palo Verde Nuclear Power Station near Phoenix generates nearly 900 times more electricity than Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base photovoltaic panels, on less land, for 1/15 the cost per kWh – and does it 90% of the time, versus 30% of the time for the Nellis array. Generating Palo Verde’s electrical output via Nellis technology would require solar arrays across an area ten times larger than Washington, DC.
Building enough photovoltaic arrays to power Los Angeles would mean blanketing thousands of square miles of desert habitat. Once built, solar and wind systems will be there just this side of forever, since there will be no energy production if we let them decay, after shutting down whatever hydrocarbon operations aren’t needed to fuel backup generators that keep wind and solar facilities operational.
Wind and solar power also mean there is a sudden demand for tons of rare earth elements that weren’t terribly important a decade ago. They exist in very low concentrations, require mining and milling massive amounts of rock and ore to get the needed minerals, and thus impose huge ecological impacts.
If mountaintop removal to extract high quality coal at reduced risk to miners is unacceptable and unsustainable – how is it eco-friendly and sustainable to clear-cut mountain vistas for wind turbines? Blanket thousands of square miles with habitat-suffocating solar panels? Or remove mountains of rock to mine low-grade rare earth mineral deposits for solar panel films, hybrid batteries and turbine magnets?
Since any undiscovered US rare earth deposits are likely locked up in wilderness and other restricted land use areas, virtually no exploration or development will take place here. We will thus be dependent on foreign suppliers, like China, which are using them in their own manufacturing operations – and selling us finished wind turbines, solar panels and hybrid car batteries. The United States will thus be dependent on foreign suppliers for renewable energy, just as we rely on foreign countries for oil and uranium.
To claim any of this is ecologically or economically sustainable strains credulity.
Green jobs will mostly be overseas, subsidized by US tax and energy dollars – other people’s money (OPM). Indeed, Americans have already spent over $20 billion in stimulus money on “green” energy projects. However, 80% of the funding for some of them went to China, India, South Korea and Spain, and three-fourth of the turbines for eleven US wind projects were made overseas. This is intolerable, indefensible and unsustainable. But it gets worse.
Denver’s Nature and Science Museum used $720,000 in stimulus money to install photovoltaic panels and reduce its electricity bills by 20 percent. The panels may last 25 years, whereas it will take 110 years to save enough on those bills to pay for the panels – and by then four more sets of panels will be needed.
As to biofuels, the US Navy recently waxed ecstatic over its success with camellia-based eco-fuel in fighter jets. But the PC biofuel costs $67.50 per gallon, versus $5.00 per gallon for commercial jet fuel.
To meet the 36-billion-gallons-a-year-by-2022 federal ethanol diktat, we would have to grow corn on cropland and wildlife habitat the size of Georgia, to get 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol – plus switchgrass on farmlands and habitats the size of South Carolina, to produce 21 billion gallons of “advanced biofuel.” By contrast, we could produce 670 billion gallons of oil from frozen tundra equal to 1/20 of Washington, DC, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge weren’t off limits.
OPM-subsidized ethanol also means a few corn growers and ethanol refiners make hefty profits. But chicken and beef producers, manufacturers that need corn syrup, and families of all stripes get pounded by soaring costs, to generate a fuel that gets one-third less mileage per tank than gasoline.
Hydrocarbons fueled the most amazing and sustained progress in human history. Rejecting further progress – in the name of sustainability or climate protection – requires solid evidence that we face catastrophes if we don’t switch to “sustainable” alternatives. Computer-generated disaster scenarios and bald assertions by Al Gore, Harry Reid, John Holdren and President Obama just don’t make the grade.
We need to improve energy efficiency and conserve resources. Science and technology will continue the great strides we have made in that regard. Politically motivated mandates will impose huge costs for few benefits. Sustainability claims will simply redistribute smaller shares of a shrinking economic pie.
“Renewable” energy subsidies may sustain the jobs of lobbyists, activists, politicians, bureaucrats and politically connected companies. But they will kill millions of other people’s jobs.
Let’s be sure to remind our elected officials of this along their campaign trails – and on November 2.
GM says
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where a tiny minority understands something of such impact for everyone that drastic action by everyone is required in order to preent a catastrophe, that drastic action is taken.
Unquote
Thank God that evolution has taken care of that. If not we would still be living in caves or shortly to return to them.
Dont worry GM, its clear that you will not be part of the solution but rest assured you will share the benefits.
Well said Paul!
Sooner or later, energy derived from nuclear fusion, in one form or another will become available. No doubt it will be hideously expensive to begin with, and may take years of private investment to come to fruition. However, as soon as any new commodity becomes popular, the government of the day steps in with with its own demands for regulation and, of course taxation.
Let us hope that said governments cease pandering to those “sustainable”, erratically sustained energy sources which are now causing such a colossal financial burden, and instead invest in the future; a step, however that no politician likes to take if longer than a few years.
We can only live in hope!
Chris
Don Shaw,
Thanks for the info on ExxonMobil. The internet seems to breed false stories, some of which have a grain of truth (or not) and can be attributed to someone trying to pile dirt on someone else. I read many things that I wonder about but do not have the time to look into. About five times this year I have thought “that’s got to be false” and with a little searching soon find the truth. And there is the connection – I had the same thought when I first heard the CAGW (CO2) Story.
The most recent thing (not related to this thread) was a picture and story of big horn sheep feeding on the face of a dam in Wyoming. But they were not big horns, it wasn’t Wyoming, and it wasn’t in the US. However, it is now everywhere. This type of story is harder to explain. Why take a true and interesting thing, twist it so it is false, and send it around the world. Where is the payoff?”
GM says: September 21, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Where did I say that I can induce anyone to do anything? I didn’t neither I have any hope it is possible. and that’s the problem (and the source of any over bitterness you may sense in my writings.——— Which I am perfectly aware of, but I will keep saying it as it is in the vain hope of changing some minds, as hopeless as it is. That’s the best I can do. That’s why I post here and I don’t post much on blogs that share my views.
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Well GM I feel sorry for you. Truly. Because you have burdened yourself with a monstrous problem that is mainly in your own mind and one that you can’t possibly solve – and you know, because you say so, that you can’t influence anyone. You should really stop flagellating yourself this way. It would be better to go to the movies and think about something that you can actually do – like a bit of gardening.
Mic
Message for GM
I worked in the Oil Business for 40 years, built really things cheaply and on time, represented them at th UN, Wrote laws, So please dont tell me about peak Oil. Its a myth and the story is an open book for YOU to read. Nothing I can teach you nor have an inclination to do.
You clearly have a drum to beat, so beat it, it will not fix anything but instead will just make a noise
Yup, looks like plains to me: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tehachapi_wind_farm_3.jpg
James Sexton, it’s “etc” not “ect”
ROTFL, did you really just say that??
There are no piles of dead birds under the wind chargers. MAYBE in some strange siting in a mountain pass you might get that, but not around here. We have this thing called the power grid, and these things called wires. They transmit power from point A to point B. I don’t know if we need to build more wind chargers when reactors are a far better deal, but I don’t see the point in tearing the ones we have down. Some ingenious new ways of making use of their electricity are being thought up – such as for fertilizer production. They aren’t all that suitable for baseline power (though they are -nearly- always running in this part of the world)
There have been so many clueless challenges to what I said, that I conclude many are from cities and far away from the heartland. I thought you people wanted leaner beef, higher protein mash rather with some of the starch removed is a move in that direction. What a strange list of states to plant corn in. How about Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Missouri (or parts thereof on the edges. Stop growing it? And raise what? To sell where? A farmer can sell two crops in the midwest: corn and soybeans. Unless they live close to say a Green Giant facility, that is it, or be driven off the land to pay off property taxes.
Kum, much of the conservation reserve acres are on highly erodable, less productive land, or in riparian filter zones. Minnesota uses about 6% of its corn crop to make ethanol. If we are making 14 billion gallons (your figures) and 15 billion is the cut-off, well, how do you figure that? You grow switchgrass on what would otherwise have been corn acres. There are advantages to it.
Cellulosic ethanol is presently being produced from corn in Iowa. Not sure why cutting down forests for methanol is better than continuing to raise corn.
Murray, there really is no evidence for peak oil. The proven untapped reserves could cover our needs for the next 500 years.
With the Clinton and now Obama administrations converting vast tracts of land to non-use -because- of the petroleum found under them, and the drilling bans, of -course- production has flat-lined. But that is a political artifact, not a geological necessity.
Americans used to be free. That is why they like a healthy amount of space. Rats in cages aren’t a model we prefer to emulate. Even so our cities are so crowded that the pathologies observed in overcrowded rats plague our inner cities. If you like Europe so much, go live there. Don’t tell us we need to change to suit your fancy.
Peak water? Say what? At what rate is water being cracked to hydrogen and oxygen in such a way that it cannot be burned back into existence? Is matter-energy being destroyed in your Malthusian dystopia? Have you ever looked at a globe???
Did you work as petroleum geologist or as an account, manager, lawyer, or something of the sort? Because if you did, you will be the first petroleum geologist I have ever heard of that claims that there can be no such thing as peak oil. If that’s the case you have a lot of explaining to do regarding where is the oil that will make sure there is no Peak Oil going to come from, why wells dry up and fields deplete and why oil has peaked in so many places in the world and continues to do so in the present. I am waiting for your explanations…
Hey! Guys! Give GM a break he is working with a few bricks short of a load. Kind of like that “Big Bang” theory. pg
@Grey Lensman says:
September 21, 2010 at 8:51 pm
“…Believe it or not, Big Nasty Oil has just the technology needed to drill very efficient and effective geothermal wells….”
Actually, geothermal is difficult. It’s hard to find both a source of heat and of sufficient heated water to produce more than a few megawatts at a crack. Wells may be dry, or run dry, or cool quickly, or start to plug due to chemical deposits, and on and on. I’m not sure that Big Oil is much, or even any, invested in geothermal energy now. We were, back in the ’70s and ’80s, but like I said, geothermal is difficult. It will provide electrical energy here and there, and serve to heat houses or provide healing spas, but it is not a panacea.
There is nothing like oil, coal, gas and nuclear to provide huge, controllable and dependable quantities of electrical and mobile energy. The sooner we get back to basics, the better. We’ve squandered many years catering to ever more restrictive environmentalism directed at us by fools like GM, losing jobs here while sending megabucks to squalid despots in Saudi and Venezuela and Iran (actually, more of our $ go to Canada and Mexico, but our demand keeps the prices up for SA and all the rest), who repay us by trying to kill us. Maybe that’s the objective of GM’s demented vision – kill as many of us a possible so that we don’t overcome the – what was it? – grazing capacity of dear old Gaia.
The sooner we frog-march these “illuminati” out of our universities and governments and media or wherever else they lurk, the sooner we can get back to being a country that makes things, and knows how to solve problems, and has a dream for the present and for the future generations.
GM
What is your purpose here?
I have no explaining to do, I have said what I said and meant it. If you dispute that, thats your problem not mine. There are loads of tools for you to research.
I am afraid your facile comments leave me cold, they reek of “we know best fpr you, do as we say”
It is clear that you have no idea how big this planet is, how much energy keeps it spinning at 900 mph, how even bigger the solar system is and through which the earth runs at 26,000 mph and where the energy comes from to maintain that.
Ignoring how big the universe is.
Thats why we are human, we interact with the likes of you and solve problems.
If you focus on problems you will never fix them, you need to concentrate on solutions.
Sorry about the errors and double “post” above, seems wordpress does not like my keyboard.
For the record
I really hate the way the “green” movement is being used and hijacked to support nuclear power. Unbelievable in my book really. Whilst understanding the principles and benefits of nuclear power, I dont believe we need it or really want it. Same with abiotic oil, we dont really need it.
Biofuels come in for a lot of stick but they can be really nice. For example just using 30% of the land set aside as unproductive in New Zealand since 1998, would be sufficient to grow all there liquid fuel needs. This will provide both employment and environmental gains cutting out imports of liquid fuels and reducing abiotic oil use.
Dont ask for a link, thats my own calculations from data readily available.
We also have the technology now, to increase crop yields, reduce fertiliser use and biocide use and with the plus that it is organic. No such thing as a “food crisis” what is real is the manufactured alarm and manipulation of fake markets. But that can be fixed even easier.
We also need to look at hydrokinetic power generation, it is really simple and inline power generation from water flows. You can even use sewage flows for that.
We have so many positive options, it never ceases to amaze me that people find such a need to fight and argue.
For good news just look at the partial restoration of the Aral Sea and the massive replanting of the Himalayan foot hills. With effort almost anything can be achieved.
God bless you GM, Try and divert your energy into achieving real goals.
While we are poking at alt energy, this is actual operating experience of a Physicist in the suburb adjoining ours. The Australian Governement has been subsidising solar electricity roof top panels as expalined in the article. The payback is so poor that the whole scheme is a scandal. The article appeared as a letter in “The Skeptic”, Sept 2010.
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Sun%20shines%20Bright%20Skeptic.doc
GM:
You sound like someone who sees evolution as a progressive process towards some more sophisticated and “advanced” outcome, If that’s the case, you have zero understanding of evolution….
Well, GM, this does seem to be the case in regard to Human Evolution and in regard to Evolution in general having now produced a thinking being that even wants to understand – and also especially in an “understanding-its-place” way – its own Creator, the Universe, right?
But now you apparently want to stop it? Or, again, jump right over its ongoing process to an allegedly improved solution, but one which operates via certifiably evil means which have already led only to enslavement or to at least a generally increased misery?
Try this, GM: recall the more vulgar definition of “insanity”. Then simply ask yourself why you blame others for not acknowledging your own [completely baseless] “superiority”.
On the bright side, though, perhaps you might want to sue your Head Start style Education or maybe somehow take it out on the Post Normal Science Propagandists who have apparently succeeded in enlisting you [snip]?
At a negative EROEI, it will be sufficient for absolutely nothing. Not to mention the soil destruction that will result from that and the general environmental devastation
So what exactly are going to be the environmental gain given that you just suggested converting another 30% of whatever (semi)wilderness was left into feeding lot for more humans?
Here, in a nutshell, is how I understand the origin of major scientific hoaxes that are being propagated by the establishment, and the crucial “double-edged” role that these hoaxes are playing in our society.
The powers that be, whoever they are, want to keep their power as long as possible, and to strengthen their position. To do so, they need to keep most of the population in a gullible and malleable mental state, to make people ignorant while pretending to educate them, to let people earn just as much as necessary to survive but not as much as would allow them to stop and think — while pretending to take care of them.
In the past, the Church played a central role in this all-important process of mind-weakening (brainwashing, indoctrination, call it as you like). Old major religions are becoming obsolete (because they so obviously contradict everybody’s everyday experience), and there is a need for new mechanisms that would keep the population in check. Our masters are seeking new effective ways to instill ignorance, fear, and guilt: best tickets to the “sustainable” power since times immemorial.
Violence alone is insufficient; furthermore, it provokes resistance. No, they need ideological smoke and mirrors, to breed slaves who are convinced that they are free, slaves who believe that they have voluntarily chosen the balderdash they have been indoctrinated with.
Establishment (government and other influential parties deriving their wealth from government contracts and legislation) largely controls and finances scientific, educational, and media institutions. Naturally, these institutions become actively involved in indoctrination and brainwashing necessary to maintain the effective control.
Science is becoming the new Church, and academic institutions are its temples. They work out hoaxes that satisfy the needs of establishment: Peak Oil theory, AGW theory, Big Bang theory (a necessary bridge between old and new religions), many other propaganda grooves. Governments and government-dependent industries play an old game of “good cop vs. bad cop,” blaming each other but working together behind the scenes.
The “opposition” is using the same big lies to it’s own advantage. By pointing at the prevailing lies, revealing them and discrediting them, clever operators, such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Glenn Beck, are creating a very credible criticism of the establishment. Having built their reputations upon this solid basis of criticism, having acquired a sufficient following by exploiting the truth, what do they do? They sell their followers a positive program, which is a stale brew of old lies with the twist of this or that lemon, depending on circumstances.
This way, these “critics” are still a part of the establishment, a part of the same big lie. They fulfill the most important function, a task given to them by the same establishment that they apparently criticize, absorbing and subverting the discontent fraction of the population, those who started to think but had not enough time and not enough information to think it through. I think both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck realize very well that they are nothing but safety valves in the iron hands of the puppet masters.
Emotionally unstable people are being absorbed and manipulated using the same lies (as in the case of green extremists) or the same criticism of lies with a false “way out” (as in the case of ultraconservatives and fundamentalists of all kinds, antisemitic nutcases blaming “Zionists” for all evils possible and impossible, etc.).
Cultural phenomena (music, art, literature) are also subverted to serve the New Church of Politically Correct Science. Spontaneous self-expression is methodically suppressed, natural talent is persecuted and “silenced out,” everything is bureaucratized and commercialized, the very notion of beauty and harmony is perverted to the most absurd relativistic extent where ugliness, talentless mediocrity and sickness become desired qualities.
When everything in people’s minds is relativistically mixed up and turned on its head, when people are totally disoriented and misinformed morally, economically and politically, they will trust anything that is being told frequently enough and loudly enough, and they will do what they are told to do, believing that they are doing the “right thing.” They become as imbecilic and obedient as cows following the biggest and loudest bull.
Make more than half of this disoriented population dependent on government hand-outs by multiple taxation and “redistribution” (legalized armed robbery under the direct threat of violence, property expropriation, and imprisonment), and they will continually support you by voting for you.
Et voila! Democracy? Tyranny? What’s the difference?
That is exactly what our masters want, and that is what they get.
[Reply: Prohibited words. I’m not going to waste time rewriting ~ ctm]
[Reply: Prohibited words. I’m not going to waste time rewriting ~ ctm]
GM says:
September 21, 2010 at 7:54 pm
before this happens at the scale needed, agriculture will have long collapsed due to depletion of […] phosphorus reserves.
Come on, get real. Crustal abundance of phosporus is 0.1% (by weight). Would you please calculate mass of crust and divide it by 1000? There is five times more of the stuff on Earth than carbon.
This peak-anything is a fine marketing hype to push prices up and harvest huge profits while postponing reinvestment, but it’s just that. I only hope we have not passed peak common sense yet.
Excellent post Anthony. To my mind sustainability is the farmer who grows under glass, uses bio waste in a digester to generate methane which is used to heat his greenhouse and the CO2 produced is piped into the greenhouse to increase cropping. Many farmers here in the UK do this and make a good profit from the extra crop.
One big fat middle finger for you. I wrote a 200+word post which had those words once or twice there, you deleted the whole thing because it was too inconvenient for you… Nice way to hide what you don’t want to be seen, thank you very much…
Reply: They were rather central to your point. To just snip the words without a rewrite would be to allow them implicitly. Seriously, stop whining and learn to write like a gentleman. ~ ctm
Well, precisely because I can’t rewrite it without using those words at least once, I am basically not allowed to make that point here. Which is hardly a proper way to handle things in a society that supposedly values free speech so much…
Reply: All you are saying is that you don’t know how to make the same point in a respectful discourse, i.e. without resorting to demonization. I could do it easily, but I’m not going to do it for you. ~ ctm
Sadly to add to my lack of writing and typing skills, it seems we have to add GMs lack of reading skills.
Just where did I mention soil destruction. Do you not know what organic means. The technology that I speak of not only repairs soils but builds it at demand rates utilizing plants, yes bio plants not industrial plants. Sadly Banks and investors are not interested, they want to know whats in it for them. So we go about ourselves. Its simple, we succeed or we fail but at least we try.
You also do not seem to grasp what set aside land is, its wasteland not virgin pristine habitat and fun jungle.
One of the key elements of Man Made Global warmists shill demands is the denail of mankind’s innate ability to solve problems and to inculcate a terminal guilt complex over which they will lord it. Well their time is past.
Sorry to the Mods for causing so much grief, thanks to those that can see what I am trying to say.
Alexander Feht
A fine and lucid analysis. They throw up straw-men for them to be burnt to the glee of the misdirected.
Fertilisers, who needs them, Current technology of course but that has reached its limit. What I am seeing happening is that a group of very fine and clever people are reverse engineering the industrial revolution, in an unexpected way. They are using simple physics and plant chemistry to convert, say simple grasses into factories of mass manufacture. The products could be soil or erosion repair kits or protein builders.
In the light of this, comments such as those made by GM tend to leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth.