![Shanghai-Gaia-Solar-Co-Ltd-[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/shanghai-gaia-solar-co-ltd-1.jpg?quality=83)
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
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richardscourtney,
1) re: owners
Everyone who lives under laws that dictate what you can and can’t put into your body is essentially the property of the lawmakers. Everyone who elects rulers to make rules, but who isn’t given the opportunity to vote on the rules, is essentially the property of the rule makers. I’m not going to pretend that I live in a free and democratic system, just because I grew up with those empty words beaten into my brain every day by the system. End of political rant.
2) re: evidence
In my first comment, I asked if there were any tree rings in coal. No answer.
In my second comment, I pointed to a tertiary biology text that describes the alleged steps required to convert forests into coal, including burial under marine sediments and transubstantiation of the semi-preserved organic detritus into coal by heat and pressure. I asked how much heat and pressure is required to convert peat into coal so that I can reproduce the theory. I asked where the energy comes from.
Again, no answer.
After my third comment, when I suggested that people bel;ieve the just-so faith-based story of fossil fuels, including coal, you got upset and essentially said,
“I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes. I can identify the source forest from a piece of coal. Trust me. Have faith. That’s science!”
But faith & trust & belief are the stuff of religion, not of science.
i) I want to see the evidence (words aren’t evidence) of biological origin, and
ii) I want to know how to reproduce coal from peat, i.e., what temperature and pressure do I need?
Surely that’s not asking too much.
The Chinese are building Coal stations in vast numbers. So they are getting the cheap energy and we are getting, well, er, higher bills every year.
Khwarizmi says:
February 12, 2014 at 6:48 pm
“2) re: evidence
In my first comment, I asked if there were any tree rings in coal. No answer.”
Then apparently you asked the wrong person that question …… because iffen you had asked me I would have told you …. “YES”, …. noninfrequently one can find “tree rings” in coal.
And I can prove that fact to you ….. but you will have to come here to see it.
That “proof” is a 12”-14” section of a petrified tree stump that my neighbor extracted from a coal seam when he was working on a “strip-mining” job several years ago. Me thinks the “tree rings” are plainly visible in that fossil.
And ps, most of the coal deposits in the Appalachian Mountains was not formed via vast primitive forests of hardwood trees, ….. but via vast primitive forests comprised mostly of giant lycopods, ferns, and seed ferns. And here is a good web site for your reading pleasure on the subject of coal formation, to wit:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Khwarizmi:
I am replying to your post at February 12, 2014 at 6:48 pm which is here and is in reply to my post at February 12, 2014 at 12:33 pm which refuted your untrue and ridiculous post at February 12, 2014 at 11:55 am which says in total
My reply said in total
Your reply I am answering is a silly diatribe.
Nobody owns me, but you say you think you are “owned” because among other things
Perhaps your view is distorted by the effects on brain function induced by what you “put into your body”?
You say you expect a complete list of evidence for coalification. I stated the evidence, I stated I have personally seen the evidence, and I have quoted what I wrote in this post.
You can check the evidence for yourself by looking at a polished section of coal using a reflectance optical microscope. And I commend this link as being a good introduction to coalification
http://www.uky.edu/KGS/coal/coalform.htm
Richard
And ps ……………
Khwarizmi says:
February 12, 2014 at 6:48 pm
“I asked how much heat and pressure is required to convert peat into coal so that I can reproduce the theory. I asked where the energy comes from..”
————–
Now I can’t even make a reasonable guess at an answer to that question ….. because I don’t have a clue as to how high the Appalachian Mountains actually were in past eons ….. and one would have to know that to calculate the amount of pressure being applied to that layer(s) of biomass waste of plant foliage. And regardless of what that amount of pressure was, …. I guarantee you that it was sufficient enough to generate the “heat” energy if any was required for the formation of coal.
Hi Viv, if you like coal so much then you can go to live in China and breathe in all the lovely air pollution. It seems that you must have a financial bias for coal and you are young and naive enough to think it is clean. What a joke it is that you think that the coal-smoke is a gift of Gaia, when it is really the greed of man who wants his bank balance to go higher and higher!
Sam Cougar,
That “proof” is a 12”-14” section of a petrified tree stump that my neighbor extracted from a coal seam
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So, the coal converted the tree into stone?
You can’t burn stone.
=========
petrify
verb (used with object), petrified, petrifying.
1.to convert into stone or a stony substance.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/petrified
=======
Check out my website under my pseudonym — it’s recommended by Martin Hovland.
rude Richard said:
This is the quality of evidence on the website linked by Richard:
http://www.uky.edu/KGS/coal/images/densospo.gif
I’ve seen better evidence for Jesus in a photo of an ice-cream stain on concrete.
Sarovara Prem (@SaroPrem):
Your silly post at February 13, 2014 at 7:04 am says in total
Please try to think before making such ridiculous posts!
Air pollution in Beijing is similar to how it was in London in the 1950s and for the same reason. High sulphur coal was used as domestic fuel in fireplaces and updraft stoves. London was then commonly called ‘The Smoke’ and its severe smog events were known as ‘Pea Soupers’. All British cities were similar.
The problem was solved by the Clean Air Acts. Clean solid fuels (e.g. coke) replaced dirty coal and downdraft stoves were invented which consume their own smoke. China will solve its pollution problem in the same way that we did: i.e. by becoming sufficiently rich to afford the pollution controls everyone wants because nobody wants to suffer the pollution.
The invention of the steam engine enabled the great energy intensity of fossil fuels – notably coal – to be utilised to do work. This freed humanity from the constraints of wind power, solar power, and the power of the muscles of animals and slaves.
Presumably your ancestors owned the slaves whose desire for freedom you call “greed”!
Richard
Khwarizmi:
re your post at February 13, 2014 at 12:48 pm.
You are perfectly free to believe the Moon is made of green cheese or that coal is not fossilised plant material. But please stop polluting WUWT with your daft notions.
I told you, I ran a lab. which conducted maceral analysis: I can identify individual plant parts in coals!
And you deny that coal is petrified plant material because according to you stones don’t burn. Coal is a range of stones which burn.
Richard
Khwarizmi says:
February 13, 2014 at 12:48 pm
“So, the coal converted the tree into stone?
You can’t burn stone.”
—————–
And you can’t think with a box of stones, either.
RichardSCourtney,
And you deny that coal is petrified plant material
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
If, by “petrified”, you mean the definition I actually quoted, then I am guilty for sure.
I hope you are guilty too…
Or did you really want us to pretend that Sam Cougar’s “petrified wood” was comprised of flammable coal?
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ambiguity
But I already told you that a bunch of words ipse dixit isn’t evidence.
If you don’t have any high-definition photos, and you don’t think it’s necessary to state the sufficient temperature and pressure regime required to convert peat to coal per theory (so that people may try to falsify or confirm the conversion step in the theory), then I’m not interested in anything further you might have to say on the matter. Thanks.
Khwarizmi:
re your silly post at February 13, 2014 at 6:56 pm.
I have repeatedly told you the “evidence” and how you can observe it for yourself.
Your refusal to consider the evidence leads me to assume you are some sort of Creationist seeking to refute evidence which denies your superstitious beliefs.
Richard
Khwarizmi says:
February 13, 2014 at 6:56 pm
“Or did you really want us to pretend that Sam Cougar’s “petrified wood” was comprised of flammable coal? https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ambiguity ”
——————————
Best you practice what you preach, to wit:
“A logical fallacy is, fundamentally, an error in logic. This means that an argument that uses one certainly doesn’t hold if you’re using logic and reason as your source of decision making ”
Because you are not employing logical reasoning or intelligent deductions when you discredit coal as being a petrified substance …. after I offered you factual evidence of a “petrified tree stump” being found embedded in a seam of coal.
And I say that because it would have been nigh onto impossible for the above two (2) items to have formed independently of one another.
And thus I agree with you, …. you should “run n’ hide” from any further discussion.