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Guest essay by Viv Forbes
There is a massive problem with photo-voltaic solar power. Modern cities and industries require power 24/7 but solar panels can only deliver significant energy from 9am to 3pm on a clear day – a maximum of 25% of the time. Even within this time, energy production peaks at midday and falls off steeply on either side.
Science has yet to develop a solar storage battery suitable for grid power. It must be sufficiently large, cheap and efficient to hold the solar power generated during the short solar maximum so it can be used later, when peak demand usually occurs. This process requires that much of the solar energy produced in peak times would have to be devoted to recharging the massive battery.
A linked hydro plant would work in certain limited locations, but the same people advocating solar power are opposed to dam building for hydro power.
But Planet Earth has already solved this problem. For millions of years Earth has use photosynthesis to store solar energy via in wood and plant material then converted this to long-term storage in the form of coal.
Coal is nature’s answer to solar energy storage and in a wonderful bit of synergy, the process of recovering the energy releases back to the atmosphere the building blocks of life – water vapour and carbon dioxide. These are again converted back by solar energy into more plants/wood/coal. And the whole process does a bit towards postponing the next ice age and returning Earth to that warm, moist, verdant, life-filled environment that existed when the coals were formed.
Coal is a gift from Gaia – the 100% natural, clean, green and sustainable answer to Solar Energy Storage!
Viv Forbes,
Rosewood Qld Australia
http://carbon-sense.com
“OmegaPaladin says:
February 11, 2014 at 1:14 pm
It’s sad that environmentalism has basically become Climate Change, because it sold itself out and lost its moral authority. There are plenty of problems with coal, such as SOx and NOx emissions, carbon MONoxide, particulates, heavy metals, and even some radioactive emissions. Burning coal is not a clean process. Environmentalists used to talk about those problems, but no longer.”
Maybe Omega, that is simply because in the 1970s-1990s we here in the US pretty much reduced all of those problems down to an insignficant level such that they are no longer much of a concern.
I grew up less than 8 miles from a huge Coal fired plant in MO and the air quality was great.
Maybe an explorer in the microscopic realm, perhaps as it relates to the many ‘-oscopies’:
arthr- : related to a joint
colono- : related to large intestine colon
gastr- : related to stomach
hepat- : related to the liver
hyster- : related to the uterus
lapar- : related to the abdominal cavity
lobo- : related to a lobe (of the brain or lungs)
mammo- and masto-: related to the breast
nephro- : related to the kidney
orchid- : related to the testicle
thoraco- : related to the chest
.
Okay, but mortality rate from carbon dioxide pollution, mistakenly and misleadingly referred to as carbon pollution is zero. This is why labelling it as “pollutant” was a blunder.
EPA’s inclusion of “Worsening smog (also called ground-level ozone pollution)” among the “health effects of carbon pollution” is particularly funny, since carbon dioxide does not have such an effect. Carbon monoxide has in the presence of sunlight and water, but that’s a lethal poison anyway.
It is kinda embarrassing for the U.S. of A. to have a government agency that employs scientifically illiterate folks to do “science” and publish their crap at the agency’s website, which is supposed to be an authoritative source.
If coal is a 19th century technology I would hate to think what wind power is.
Mr. Forbes, Sir, I would call that process SUSTAINABLE thankyou!
asybot says:
February 11, 2014 at 3:44 pm
I have to say I have never seen a tail pipe kill anyone. But people in cars…
@ur momisugly David L. Hagen re: your post today at 10:25 am: Great wisdom beautifully and economically written.
Admiringly,
Janice
Another thing about this Coal energy causing premature death. It does not include the benefits in the calculations. How many years does having access to an abundant source of cheap energy add to ones life? I’d say if we compare the 1800s to the 1900s we’ve added about 20 yrs. Sure, maybe if there were no negatives to coal what-so-ever…. maybe the life expectancy would have increased to 22yrs instead of 20, but an additional 20 is very very nice to have. How many more people will die early because they can’t afford to heat their house in winter?… or cool it during the summer? How many will not be able to eat well because so much of their income is spent on energy and what will that do to life quality and expectancy? None of those considerations are ever taken into account in these studies.
A Tribute to All the Brave and Hardworking Coalminers — of Scotland
and Poland and America and Chile and all over the world —
Who Singlehandedly Brought Us from the Equal Misery of Serfdom
to the Blessings (albeit unequally shared) of Capitalism
(where the socialists are not sabotaging it)
–and who, until nuclear can take over, still do…
(with a wave of the hand to Winston Churchill)
“Sixteen Tons” — Tennessee Ernie Ford
Thank you.
Hmmm … sounds suspiciously like ‘outcome-based science’ …
.
.
Outcome-based education (OBE) – a student-centered learning methods that focus on empirically measuring student performance (the “outcome”) where the focus has changed from the content being taught to the student’s performance almost exclusively.
.
–coal-fired plants cost the U.S. $62 billion per year in environmental and health costs.
Without coal in all probability you would be dead as we would have never exited the pre industrial age, where people lived in feces, with no running water, and the average life span was 35 years.
Read a little history why don’t you.
Viv,
You are just far too smart.
But how did Australia get all its coal, when nothing will grow there ??
George
Very good and salient point; probably lost on those with a narrow, myopic, blindered/blinkered view of the world though. Not everyone has as liberal an education to see the overall benefits through the dust kicked up by a vocal, vociferous, though few-in-number, and misguided ‘opposition’.
.
I wonder what the death rate was from falling out of fig trees trying to get free clean green renewable energy in the good old days before fire ?
Also by definition, or at least in practice, solar cells are dispersed. If anything, they are less vulnerable to attack than power plants. As for an asteroid hitting, well, if it’s big enough to block the sun, we’ll have bigger problems than the lack of juice from solar panels.
Just don’t tell Tim Flannery, he’s too busy consuming masses of carbon and making more false claims: http://pindanpost.com/2014/02/12/correcting-false-claims/
“george e. smith says:
February 11, 2014 at 5:31 pm
Viv,
You are just far too smart.
But how did Australia get all its coal, when nothing will grow there ??
George”
———————————————————
Ever heard of “Plate tectonics”?
Look up theory of “Plate tectonics” and think real hard!
You don’t have to be “just far to smart” to understand how that coal got there under Australia and where Australia was located when the coal was deposited beneath it.
You can get by without “batteries” if you store the solar energy as heat.
Here is a solar plant that can provide power 24 hours per day.
http://phys.org/news/2011-07-gemasolar-solar-thermal-power-hours.html
jai mitchell says:
February 11, 2014 at 1:20 pm
yes, actually, air pollution DOES cause early mortality in human beings! (shocking I know!!!!)
In 2012, there were over 34,000 fatalities in the US from auto accidents. These deaths are certified, real people who died solely because they were in a vehicle at the time of a collision. There is no question that the cause of death was due to traveling in a moving vehicle involved in an accident. Still, no one is suggesting that we need to ban all motor vehicles because, sometimes, people die in them. The reason is that the benefits of motor vehicles far outweigh the costs. People who have lost loved ones in car accidents almost always drive to the funeral. The same is true for bathtubs. People really die in them, but no one wants to have them outlawed.
Fossil fuels are similar, but not exactly the same, because no one actually dies solely from air pollution, and realistically, no individual death can be attributed to air pollution. Even if we could make such an attribution, we would still burn fossil fuels to produce cheap energy, so we could take hot showers before driving to our 95 year old grandfathers funeral, who might have lived another two months if it wasn’t for all the air pollution he breathed over 9 decades…maybe. While there, we may reminisce about his great-grandfather, who died in his 40’s, primarily because they didn’t have all the benefits of technology and cheap energy back in the 1800’s.
In other words, Jai, your rants about evil coal and air pollution are really just stupid.
CJ, your comment has made it clear that it is time to hear from an expert on solar power.
Solar Cells and Other Fairy Tales
Ozzie Zehner* at Berkley U., March 7, 2012
*Zehner’s bio (… Kettering University (BS -Engineering with honors) and The University of Amsterdam (MS/Drs – Science and Technology Studies with honors… ) is here: http://www.greenillusions.org/author-bio/
CJ says:
February 11, 2014 at 6:52 pm
“You can get by without “batteries” if you store the solar energy as heat.
Here is a solar plant that can provide power 24 hours per day.
http://phys.org/news/2011-07-gemasolar-solar-thermal-power-hours.html”
Well that is cool, but a liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) would take up a fraction of the space, work 24/7 regardless of weather or latitude, generate a hotter temperature, be cheaper and probably last longer, requiring far less maintenance and man-power to run it. It could run quietly and safely in a city where the energy is most needed, reducing the electricity lost in long transmission lines.
All those mirrors and 450′ tower look really impressive, but when the salesman pulls up with a LFTR on the back of pick up truck (slight exaggeration) that can do the same thing, only better…the whole complex will look pretty foolish, like a hundred dollar cigarette lighter that works almost as well as a match.
@ur momisugly Jim Clarke — and your response to CJ is even better. GO, LFTR! Nice post, Mr. Clarke.
It is estimated that China has dumped $450 BILLION into their solar/wind industries in the form of low-interest bank loans to solar start ups.
Many of these Chinese solar start ups have already gone bankrupt and many more are on the brink. Accordingly, a huge portion of China’s $450 billion in government-backed solar/wind industry loans will be written off….
A $billion here, a $billion there….pretty soon you’re talking real money….
My favorite example of alternative wind/solar not being viable is the RENIXX chart (index of all major wind/solar companies):
http://www.renewable-energy-industry.com/stocks/renixx_history.php?changeLang=en_GB
In 2013, RENIXX experienced a bit of a dead-cat bounce after losing 90% of its value from its peak in 2008, but the overall trend is still dismal and will not recover longterm.
Obama’s unicorn and fairy-dust alt-en programs started without Congressional approval through Executive Orders is comical, because he can’t pay for anything without money…from…Congress…and it looks like his party will lose their Senate majority in the November mid-terms and they’ll lose even more seats in the House, where they lost their majority in 2010…
I thought I read a week or two ago that a gas-fueled power station in Australia said it will switch to coal because it’s cheaper. (And of course coal is doing very well in India and China.)
There’s a private company called Proterro (note spelling) that claims to have a process for making sugar for a nickel a pound, about 1/3 the cost of natural sugar. It’s in the process of building a large production facility in Florida.
On a related issue, the entire “fossil fuel is evil” mantra will soon be moot anyway once the Thorium Age officially starts next year, when China’s first test Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) is switched on.
China will be building 100’s of nuclear plants over the next 40 years because they’re the cheapest, cleanest and most efficient method of producing power, and China has 10’s of thousands of years of Thorium reserves easily accessible.
Western countries will be forced to quickly follow China’s lead in building LFTRs or risk economic suicide. There will already be a second wave of production moving to China once their LFTR program starts producing energy at 1/2 the cost of coal/natural gas…. The size of the second wave depends on how quickly Western countries start building LFTRs…