Oh Lord, there be idiots at Stanford

solutions_projectFrom Stanford University , along with actor/activist Mark Ruffalo, and “Gasland” movie fabricator Josh Fox. I’m amazed the university would allow themselves to get used by these clowns. The website they are pushing actually doesn’t offer any solutions, but asks you to “Join the Movement”

Stanford scientist to unveil 50-state plan to transform US to renewable energy

Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues recently developed detailed plans to transform the energy infrastructure of New York, California and Washington states from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable resources by 2050. On Feb. 15, Jacobson presented a new roadmap to renewable energy for all 50 states at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago.

The online interactive roadmap is tailored to maximize the resource potential of each state. Hovering a cursor over California, for example, reveals that the Golden State can meet virtually all of its power demands (transportation, electricity, heating, etc.) in 2050 by switching to a clean technology portfolio that is 55 percent solar, 35 percent wind (on- and offshore), 5 percent geothermal and 4 percent hydroelectric.

“The new roadmap is designed to provide each state a first step toward a renewable future,” said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. “It provides all of the basic information, such as how many wind turbines and solar panels would be needed to power each state, how much land area would be required, what would be the cost and cost savings, how many jobs would be created, how much pollution-related mortality and global-warming emissions would be avoided.”

The 50-state roadmap will be launched this week on the website of The Solutions Project, a national outreach effort led by Jacobson, actor Mark Ruffalo (co-star of The Avengers), film director Josh Fox and others to raise public awareness about switching to clean energy produced entirely by wind, water and sunlight. Also on Feb. 15, Solutions Project member Leilani Munter, a professional racecar driver, will publicize the 50-state plan at a Daytona National Speedway racing event in Daytona, Fla., in which she will be participating.

“Global warming, air pollution and energy insecurity are three of the most significant problems facing the world today, said Jacobson, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and Precourt Institute for Energy. “Unfortunately, scientific results are often glossed over. The Solutions Project was born with the vision of combining science with business, policy, and public outreach through social media and cultural leaders – often artists and entertainers who can get the information out – to study and simultaneously address these global challenges.”

###

Jacobson delivered his AAAS talk on Saturday, Feb. 15, at 1:30 p.m. CT, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, Columbus Hall CD, as part of a symposium entitled, “Is it possible to reduce 80% of greenhouse gas emissions from energy by 2050?”

Relevant URLs:

Jacobson Lab

https://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/

The Solutions Project

http://thesolutionsproject.org/

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David
February 17, 2014 5:08 am

Its really simple you cover the globe in solar panels and Obama mandates with his pen and phone that the sun to shine all day. See easy peezy.

Txomin
February 17, 2014 5:08 am

Ruffalo is another fellow that is 97% full of… chocolate.
Speaking of which, another of his kind crossed my path today. After delivering her “green speech”, she paused to allow me to agree with her. I took the opportunity to politely ask her to tell me what a molecule is, as defined in any chemistry book. It turns out she did not know and that she found my question offensive.

Dudley Horscroft
February 17, 2014 5:09 am

Does John Kerry come from Stanford? This is a letter i have sent a short time ago to our national newspaper, “The Australian”.
“Dear Sir
“Paul Murray Live” has just broadcast a clip of John Kerry telling Indonesia that “if sea level rises one metre, Chicago will be under water”. According to Wikipaedia, Chicago is on the shores of Lake Michigan which is at an elevation of 176 metres. To put Chicago underwater will require a sea level rise of 177 metres. Is John Kerry for real? His arithmetic seems to be as bad as most other warmist/alarmists.
Regards
Dudley Horscroft”
I note “More Soylent Green” stated: “The road to Utopia doesn’t have any trucks because nobody knows how to transport large amounts of goods overland without fossil fuels. It could be done of course, just at a tremendous price. The road to Utopia is also lined with endless fields of wind turbines as wind farms consistently produce roughly 1/6 of their rated capacity. That factor, along with the energy density of wind farms, means huge swaths of land must be used.”
Trolley trucks have been used at various times – two overhead wires, trolley poles, and an electric motor on the truck, all same like trolley buses. Using hydro or wind power. Not certain if the price would be tremendous or not.
Did not Warren Buffoon – or some such person – bring out a plan a few years ago to have wind farms fill the United States in a belt about 200 miles wide to the east of the Rockies?

Steve Keohane
February 17, 2014 5:29 am

Dudley Horscroft says: February 17, 2014 at 5:09 am
I think it was T. Boone Pickens (sp?) who proposed that windmill madness.
As has been pointed out above, without energy storage that does not exist, this future model can’t go down the road.

Editor
February 17, 2014 5:30 am

Ah, from the Woods Institute at Stanford. It’s nice to see that there are some constants in the world. (That’s where Steven Schneider was based, also up and coming stars like Noah Diffenbaugh.)
I gave a talk Saturday on Wind Power in NH. Just to meet our 13% renewable goal by 2025, we’d need over 2,000 2 MW turbines at a 30% capacity factor. We don’t have that much ridgeline to fill up! For the 40%, that’s over 6,000 turbine. If you assume a 2 mile exclusion area, say 3 square miles, that’s 18,000 square miles, Wikipedia says we have only 9,300 in the whole state.
These guys say NH can get 40% of our power from on shore wind and another 20% from offshore wine – hey guys, our coastline is 18 miles long.
This is not going to happen.
I don’t know how much publicity this is going to get, but I think all the US readers should review the fantasy for their state and and be ready to share it with anyone who will listen.

Bill Marsh
Editor
February 17, 2014 5:38 am

” Such a WWS infrastructure reduces world power demand by 30% ”
I’m not clear on how exactly switching to solar, solar thermal, wind, tidal/ ‘wave devices’ (which do not currently exist but we’re going to build and install 720,000 of them in the next 15 years) is going to reduce demand by 30%.
“and electrolytic hydrogen for all purposes.” They just throw that little caveat out there without explaining how we’re going to produce it, how much of it we’ll need, and what ‘devices’ (and how many) are going to use it. They also don’t explain how we’re going to develop the engines that use it in 15 years.

DirkH
February 17, 2014 5:41 am

Ric Werme says:
February 17, 2014 at 5:30 am
“Ah, from the Woods Institute at Stanford. It’s nice to see that there are some constants in the world. (That’s where Steven Schneider was based, also up and coming stars like Noah Diffenbaugh.)”
Ah, that brings us full circle back to Holdren (and Mead, for added fun). And the Ehrlichs.
1975 `Endangered Atmosphere’
Conference: Where the
Global Warming Hoax Was Born
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/sci_techs/3423init_warming_hoax.html

Bill Marsh
Editor
February 17, 2014 5:44 am

They also appear to be assuming that a 5MW Wind turbine will deliver 5MW of power continuously. I believe the Europeans are finding that wind turbines generate less than 20% of their rated capacity, so a 5MW wind turbine can be expected to deliver 1 MW of power, thus, to meet the required demand we’ll need to deploy 19,000,000 5MW wind turbines (mostly off shore as there are some engineering challenges yet to be overcome with land based wind turbines of that size).
Wonder how we’re going to deal with an essentially birdless future given that the existing wind turbines in the US kill 2 million birds annually. Imagine how many birds will die when 19,000,000 wind turbines are churning.

richardscourtney
February 17, 2014 5:47 am

dccowboy:
At February 17, 2014 at 5:38 am you say

“and electrolytic hydrogen for all purposes.” They just throw that little caveat out there without explaining how we’re going to produce it, how much of it we’ll need, and what ‘devices’ (and how many) are going to use it. They also don’t explain how we’re going to develop the engines that use it in 15 years.

Released hydrogen spontaneously combusts explosively. And avoiding hydrogen leaks is very difficult.
I suggest their campus should be made to adopt “electrolytic hydrogen for all purposes”. Indeed, all transport should be powered on the campus using hydrogen as the fuel (cars crash). This would ensure their suggestion is a bomb (and everybody else would benefit).
Richard

Vince Causey
February 17, 2014 5:57 am

“California, for example, reveals that the Golden State can meet virtually all of its power demands (transportation, electricity, heating, etc.) in 2050 by switching to a clean technology portfolio that is 55 percent solar, 35 percent wind (on- and offshore), 5 percent geothermal and 4 percent hydroelectric.”
Let me know how that works out (yawn).

February 17, 2014 6:00 am

To add to the inefficiency of wind turbines, there are times when the wind is blowing (or is blowing too hard) and the grid does not want the energy because it would increase the grid’s AC frequency.
“In Region 3, the primary goal is to regulate generator speed at rated by shedding extra
aerodynamic power…”
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/54605.pdf

pat
February 17, 2014 6:08 am

Dudley Horscroft –
does Flannery come from Stanford, we could ask. the CAGW propaganda is so relentless, there is no doubt it is driving the public crazy at this point:
18 Feb: Australian: Brian Williams: Expect more deadly heatwaves in Queensland, scientists say
Heatwaves like much of Queensland has been recording this year are already hotter, longer, more frequent and occurring earlier in the season.
Over the past 100 years heatwaves have caused more deaths than any other natural hazard.
The CSIRO and Weather Bureau have found that since 1950 the annual number of record days across Australia has more than doubled and maximum and minimum temperatures have increased by 0.9 per cent.
A Climate Council report released on Monday says this shows that the frequency of record hot days are now more than three times the frequency of record cold days.
It’s even worse down south, with hot weather in Adelaide, Melbourne and Canberra having already reached levels predicted under warming scenarios for 2030…
Chief councillor Tim Flannery said that climate change had made heatwaves worse over the past 60 years.
“In a stable climate that would not be happening,” Professor Flannery said.
Transport, electricity services, wildlife and the Great Barrier Reef are all affected by heatwaves.
“We see another impact of heatwaves in … an extended bushfire season,” Professor Flannery said…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/expect-more-deadly-heatwaves-in-queensland-scientists-say/story-e6frg6n6-1226829885095
btw Cosier of the AAE/Turney expedition (Cosier was on the Aurora Australis) is back in business:
17 Feb: SMH: Colin Cosier: The old Wilkes Base in Antarctica is now a toxic waste dump
The toxic dump left over from an era when rubbish was turfed out onto the ice is a 45-year-old problem requiring millions of dollars and a decade-long commitment to clean up.
But the Australian Antarctic Division’s program leader in charge of human impacts research, Martin Riddle, said while there was broad agreement on a need to clean up Wilkes there was no plan or money to do it…
Dr Riddle said the cost of a clean-up would be high. “The main challenges are financial and competing pressures for resources and logistics – the opportunity cost. It will require a 10-year commitment to get the job done,” he said…
Colin Cosier and Nicky Phillips travelled as part of the Australian Antarctic Division’s media program.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-old-wilkes-base-in-antarctica-is-now-a-toxic-waste-dump-20140216-32tuz.html

BruceC
February 17, 2014 6:09 am

And just how much CO2 (climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction…..John Kerry) will be produced to manufacture said wind and solar farms? Not to mention the production of all the concrete that will have to used for the foundations (concrete production being one of the highest CO2 emitters).

February 17, 2014 6:12 am

“Hovering a cursor over California, for example, reveals that the Golden State can meet virtually all of its power demands (transportation, electricity, heating, etc.) in 2050 by switching to a clean technology portfolio that is 55 percent solar, 35 percent wind (on- and offshore), 5 percent geothermal and 4 percent hydroelectric.”
Uh, so on an overcast cloudy day with hardly any wind, the 5 percent geothermal and 4 percent hydroelectric will be able to produce 100% of California’s power!
While I don’t quite understand that math: 5% + 4% = 100%, it does make me question the need for all of that solar and wind production.

Tom J
February 17, 2014 6:21 am

So, their charming, blue skied bulletin says, “The World Can Transition to 100% Clean, Renewable Energy Starting Today”.
I’ve got a great idea. Let’s let Stanford transition to 100% clean, renewable energy – Today.

Gail Combs
February 17, 2014 6:23 am

My suggestion is that California should lead the way by example. Close the borders and remove ALL trade and immigration with other states. No water or electric in or out. Let the Eco-Nuts lead by example.
Of course this idiocy from Stanford is not suprizing:
The words of Obama’s Science Czar, John Holdren ( Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1970) along with Paul Ehlrich (Stanford University Bing Professor of Population Studies, ) and Anne Ehlrich(associate director of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.)

Resources must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries. This effort must be largely political, especially with regard to our overexploitation of world resources, but the campaign should be strongly supplemented by legal and boycott action against polluters and others whose activities damage the environment. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential, if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.”
~ Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (1973)

The UN Agenda 21 sustainability model (Transit Village) also calls for restricting the population to that which can be supported by food grown within a 100 mile radius (called a ‘food shed’).
Cornell University (New York) is doing Foodshed Mapping. “This instrument is the product of a larger USDA CSREES funded project entitled “Mapping local food systems potential in New York State.” “

The Mapping Local Food Systems Project was initiated to better understand the capacity for New York State to supply its own food needs. To this end, the goal of this research has been to develop models for evaluating the food production potential of the state’s agricultural land relative to the food needs of its population…
What is a “foodshed”?
Though it may be unfamiliar, the term “foodshed” was used almost 80 years ago in a book entitled How Great Cities Are Fed (Hedden, 1929) to describe the flow of food from producer to consumer. Seven decades later, the term was used to describe a food system that connected local producers with local consumers (Kloppenburg et al., 1996). In this project, the general definition of a foodshed is a geographic area that supplies a population center with food. However, the Mapping Local Food Systems Project focused specifically on potential local foodsheds, areas of nearby land that could theoretically provide part or all of a city’s food needs (Peters, 2007).
The Mapping Local Food Systems Project analyzed the potential for the state’s agricultural land to meet the food needs of its population. The project did not investigate the actual sources of food for New York State population centers.… [More Models {:>) ]
* Food production and food needs are expressed in a unit called a Human Nutritional Equivalent (HNE). An HNE is a quantity of food that meets the nutritional requirements for one person for one year….
* The foodshed of each population center is divided into two portions, cropland and grassland, based on the type of land required to produce the foods needed. This differentiation allows the model to account for limitations in land use that may be imposed by the underlying soils or that are recommended to protect the land from erosion.
http://css.cals.cornell.edu/cals/css/extension/foodshed-mapping.cfm#foodshed

Gail Combs
February 17, 2014 6:25 am

One of the questions, at least in my mind is when did the USA take a U-turn from encouraging a good economy and why. I think we can pin point it to the early 1970s.
The seventies is when we saw the start of major red tape designed to strangle the economy: EPA (1970) OSHA (1971) Equal Rights Amendment (1972) for example. At that time (1970) the labor force in manufacturing was 24%, in farming 4.6% Over 30% of labor was directly involved in building real wealth. By the last Census manufacturing was less than 9%, and farming ~1% (GDP only tracks the exchange of money and not building of wealth BTW)
SEE: Federal regulations have lowered real GDP growth by 2% per year since 1949 and made America 72% poorer — (wwwDOT) aei-ideas.org/2013/06/federal-regulations-have-lowered-gdp-growth-by-2-per-year/
The UN Earth Summit in 1972 is when Maurice Strong invited activists to go home and raise He!! thereby shifting political power from the adults to easily manipulated spoiled teenagers.
Elaine Dewar wrote in Toronto’s Saturday Night magazine:

It is instructive to read Strong’s 1972 Stockholm speech and compare it with the issues of Earth Summit 1992. Strong warned urgently about global warming, the devastation of forests, the loss of biodiversity, polluted oceans, the population time bomb. Then as now, he invited to the conference the brand-new environmental NGOs [non-governmental organizations]: he gave them money to come; they were invited to raise he!! at home. After Stockholm, environment issues became part of the administrative framework in Canada, the U.S., Britain, and Europe.

How everr the really interesting document is the 1974 CIA report:
“A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems”
http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf

Pg 7
In 1972 the Intelligence Community was faced with two issues concerning climatology:
* No methodologies available to alert policymakers of adverse climatic change
* No tools to assess the economic and political impact of such a change.
“… Since 1972 the grain crisis has intensified…. Since 1969 the storage of grain has decreased from 600 million metric tons to less than 100 million metric tons – a 30 day supply… many governments have gone to great lengths to hide their agricultural predicaments from other countries as well as from their own people…
pg 9
The archaeologists and climatotologists document a rather grim history… There is considerable evidence that these empires may not have been undone by barbarian invaders but by climatic change…. has tied several of these declines to specific global cool periods, major and minor, that affected global atmospheric circulation and brought wave upon wave of drought to formerly rich agricultural lands.
Refugees from these collapsing civilizations were often able to migrate to better lands… This would be of little comfort however,… The world is too densely populated and politically divided to accommodate mass migration.
Page 18 talks of coming glaciation.
Scientists are confident that unless man is able to effectively modify the climate, the northern regions… will again be covered with 100 to 200 feet of ice and snow. That this will occur within the nexy 2,500 years they are quite positive; that it may occur sooner is open to speculation.
page 22 states:
The climate of the 1800s was far less favorable for agriculture in most areas of the world. In the United States during that century, the midwest grain-producing areas were cooler and wetter and snow lines of the Russian steppes lasted for longer periods of time. More extended periods of drought were noted in the areas of the Soviet Union now known as the new lands. More extensive monsoon failures were common around the world, affecting in particular China, the Philippines and the Indian Subcontinent.
The Wisconsin analysis questions whether a return to these climate conditions could support a population that has grown from 1.1 billion in 1850 to 3.75 billion in 1970. The Wisconsin group predicted that the climate could not support the world’s population since technology offers no immediate solution. Further world grain reserves currently amount to less than one month; thus any delay in supplies implies mass starvation. They also contended that new crop strains could not be developed over night… Moreover they observed that agriculture would become even more energy dependent in a world of declining resources.
Holdren and the other Malthusians from Stanford University are not alone. The US government has been behind then since BEFORE the book Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions (1973) was published. The book just echoed the real thoughts of the US government of that time.

BruceC
February 17, 2014 6:27 am

Tom J at 6:21am;
I’ve got a great idea. Let’s let Stanford transition to 100% clean, renewable energy – Today.
I wonder what ExxonMobil and Schlumberger Limited would say to that request?

rogerknights
February 17, 2014 6:28 am

Those guys sound like they’ve come out of a time-warp from a dozen years ago, when renewables hadn’t been put to the test in Spain and elsewhere.

ferdberple
February 17, 2014 6:29 am

Such a WWS infrastructure reduces world power demand by 30%
===========
when you have daily power failures, demand is reduced.

techgm
February 17, 2014 6:30 am

“The Solutions Project was born with the vision of combining science with business, policy, and public outreach….”
There’s that word “policy.” In Newspeak, policy = government = seizure & coercion.
One wonders if Stanford has joined the ranks of institutions that used to be serious.

Gail Combs
February 17, 2014 6:31 am

ARGHHhhh I forgot to close the blockquote!
February 17, 2014 at 6:23 am (comment is awaiting moderation.) Is a companion to my above comment and discusses the book Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions

ferdberple
February 17, 2014 6:42 am

Bill_W says:
February 17, 2014 at 5:01 am
I wonder if his amazing system includes the cost of backup power supplies.
============
Kalifornia has already solved this problem. When there is no wind or solar, they import power from surrounding states. They don’t need spinning reserves. They rely on everyone else to provide them. In this way no CO2 is produced in Kalifornia. Instead, Kalifornia exports their CO2 production to other states.
Since this model has worked in Kalifornia, Stanford concludes that it will work equally well in the surrounding states as well.

Speed
February 17, 2014 6:50 am

There is some progress in producing and using hydrogen in the real world …

TOKYO, Japan, March 27, 2012 – Honda Motor Co., Ltd. unveiled a Solar Hydrogen Station on the grounds of the Saitama Prefectural Office. The initiative is part of the Electric Vehicle Testing Program for Honda’s next-generation personal mobility products with Saitama Prefecture, in which Honda, Iwatani and Saitama Prefecture collaborate to build. In a further initiative, Honda has equipped the FCX Clarity fuel cell electric vehicle with an outlet to function as a 9kW power source. Since the FCX Clarity uses a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to produce power with zero CO2 emissions, with its new outlet, the vehicle will be able to serve as a zero-emission mobile electric generator.
This is the first installation in Japan of a total system to produce, store and dispense hydrogen with ZERO CO2 emissions. A high pressure water electrolysis system, uniquely developed by Honda, produces hydrogen. With no mechanical compressor, the system is nearly silent and highly energy efficient. Using Solar and grid power, the system is capable of producing 1.5kg of hydrogen within 24 hours which enables an FCX Clarity to run approximately 150km or 90 miles. Honda aims to further develop the system to offer clean energy sources for the home in the future.

http://world.honda.com/news/2012/4120327Solar-Hydrogen-Station/index.html
It is important for Jacobson and his colleagues to draw the line and show the money between this kind of very early technology demonstrator and converting the world from fossil fuel to carbon-free energy in the next 36 years. Not a demonstration project but large volumes of product in the hands and daily use of everyone in the world. Lets look at another complex technology project, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Announced in January 2003, it made its first flight in December 2009 and entered service in October 2011. That’s almost nine years just getting started.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787
Jacobson is writing science fiction with very little science.

Gail Combs
February 17, 2014 6:53 am

Jimbo says: February 17, 2014 at 2:11 am
If the economics stacked up it would have been adopted a looooooong time ago….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is for darn sure!
The Eco-Nuts act as if this is all BRAND NEW technology and therefore subject to Moore’s Law (It is finally breaking down.) However Wind and Solar are really mature technology. Wind has been around for thousands of years and solar cells from 1954. Heck I can remember guys I knew who were working in the field or selling solar cells in the early seventies.
However Richard Courtney is the one who summed it up very nicely on the The Levelized Cost of Electric Generation thread.

All energy is free….
Collecting energy and concentrating it in a form to do useful work has costs.
Nature has collected energy and concentrated it in fossil fuels and radioactive materials.
The high energy density in fossil fuels and radioactive materials means that it is easy to get a lot of useful energy by obtaining and using them because nature has done most of the energy collection for us. It is much more expensive to do the collection for ourselves….

That is why Solar and Wind will never work for an industrialized civilization. It is why the infant American industries in the 1700s and 1800s located on rivers and used water power (or coal) and not windmills.
I wish these idiots would stop trying to ki!! us.