From 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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I suggest the good professor request a two to five year sabbatical and spend that time living totally off grid to test out his theories. He can have solar, wind and microhydro to power, no fossil fuel, his cabin and vehicle. I doubt he would last a year.
Re: Storage …
Several commenters have correctly mentioned the requirement for some sort of energy storage if the world is to rely solely on WWS — Wind, Water and Solar. A paper that Jacobson et al reference is, “Cost-minimized combinations of wind power, solar power and electrochemical storage, powering the grid up to 99.9% of the time” which is, of course, paywalled. However the abstract makes it clear that storage is required.
http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-84868524340&origin=inward&txGid=C7F7B8E7C65825D15FFFFCED61EB63A9.WeLimyRvBMk2ky9SFKc8Q%3a2
I think that we’re quite a few years away from safe and reliable electrochemical storage on the scale envisioned by Jacobson.
Readers might be interested in this paper by Jacobson and others …
Response to comment on paper examining the feasibility of changing New York state’s energy infrastructure to one derived from wind, water, and sunlight
http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NYSWWSRespComm.pdf
Stanford has allowed Ehrlich and his gang to fester there for nearly 50 years, spewing untruths, fear, and failed predeictions.
I wonder why?
Gail Combs says: February 17, 2014 at 7:54 am
I would think the sound generated by windmills would be detrimental to bat’s navigation system, as well as the hazardous blades themselves. Do the bats that survive a close encounter suffer permanent hearing loss?
And yet it was a Stanford study that reported solar panels wouldn’t even break even until 2020.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2303968/The-worlds-solar-power-wont-save-ANY-energy-2020.html
Went to them, took a very, very brief look at that modern-day version of the Cliff Notes, the Infographic.
Now, I’ve lived in both Pennsylvania and New Mexico and I went to simply see what their generation matrix was supposed to be ideal. Pennsylvania: around 72% solar, 15% wind; New Mexico: 23% Solar, 50% wind.
Wait a second. New Mexico, where weather is sunny 200+ days a year, has a lower solar part of the mix compared to Pennsylvania, which has…right, around 60 days of sunny weather a year.
Seriously? That’s not a list of energy solutions based on comparative advantages of each state, but one that looks like something completely different. Ye gods of the copyright headings…
@markstoval
You aren’t being singled out.
The wordpress spam filter often triggers on word combinations, it may simply be your writing style. Unfortunately, they don’t give out the formula for obvious reasons.
One thing that will trigger it for certain is having too many links. 3 or more is a typical spam signature.
“Climateismydj has either no clue about power engineering, or he does know about it but has no problem with millions of Americans suffering under the green regime.”
Nice to see I’m reduced to a binary either/or argument. Can’t I be both? 🙂
By the way, I noticed the author himself “…promote[s] the idea of energy savings and alternate energy generation” in his About page, so this article seems at odds with his ideals. Odd, don’t you think?
It’s doable, that is if you don’t mind taking the resultant population of humanity going down to a couple million (and I’m sure they have ideas on who will be the survivors…) Hail the Overlords.
Harold Ambler said in part February 17, 2014 at 4:42 am
“…..Jacobson will be publishing a paper shortly maintaining that vast offshore wind farms of the kind he blithely proposes for the entire East Coast will make hurricanes significantly less dangerous.”
Wow! Harold – do you have any idea how Jacobson did his calculations? My “back of the envelope” suggests that an offshore wind farm, even on the scale he envisions, running at full nameplate capacity, might extract 0.3% of the kinetic energy of the winds of a respectable hurricane (assuming the turbines were not quickly sent to the depths). That would hardly have a calming effect – but can someone else run a few numbers. I must be missing something?
Lots of good comments here. For example, Claude Harvey commented:
The Standford geniuses might want to study up on fundamental power system requirements. Four percent “spinning reserve” won’t come close to cutting it. I recommend they either crack a book on the concept of “power system dispatch” or keep their meddlesome hands off the life blood of our economic body.
The scary thing is that this really stupid idea gets an imprimatur of legitimacy from the Stanford name. But it is still a really bad idea. This gives an idea of the power of ‘groupthink’, where the majority of Stanford profs would surely oppose this stupid idea in private, in public they don’t dare to utter a peep of protest. Even those with tenure are scared to speak out.
Of all the ‘alternative’ power sources, windmills are probably the least efficient, not to mention the ugliest and most permanent blight on the landscape.
Can you imagine the howls of protest if George W. Bush had originally proposed windmills? But now with the name Stanford appended, everything is A-OK. So let’s build lots of windmills! Forward!
So,,,,,,, when should we expect Google rolling blackouts?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101417698
Yet, while google spends billions on supposed clean energy, they have many dirty habits being exposed. One recent example.
http://safegov.org/2014/1/31/google-admits-data-mining-student-emails-in-its-free-education-apps
Have any who read this blog post actually gone into your google account settings and turned off that of which tracks everything you do and the locations from which you did it? That includes your phone, tablet, and PC.
Did you ever notice a “do not track” option in your browser?
Not BS folks………
According to the popular hypothesis (fossil fuels) we could get more oil & coal by just burying all the plants & animals. If we want to see a better future, we need to get those bulldozers rolling right away.
From the left’s point of view, the hard push for “renewables” was a huge success in Germany. They now have the highest electricity rates in Europe, and power is a luxury item:
http://www.american.com/archive/2014/february/germanys-energy-goals-backfire
Google gets tax credits, not tax deductions, for those projects, right? Every dollar they spend on those projects is removed from their taxable income. They are just playing a smart game of taking advantage of the tax code and investing in their pet projects and other causes.
Everybody should be clamoring for real tax reform — corporate and personal. Just give a low, flat tax to corporations — with clean rules and regulations on what is deductible — and you’ll see the Laffer curve effect on taxes collected. Better yet, since corporations don’t pay taxes, they collect them, eliminate the corporate income tax altogether.
The combination of arrogance and ignorance in science and in politics.
An absolutely devastating mix.
“It’s doable, that is if you don’t mind taking the resultant population of humanity going down to a couple million”
For the Greens, that’s a feature, not a bug. Of course, they seem to think they’ll be the ones in control, and won’t end up in the cooking pot when the starving masses realize there’s nothing else to eat.
Stark Dickflüssig:
At February 17, 2014 at 9:21 am you write
Your post raises the interesting issue of the differences between conjecture, hypothesis and theory. These concepts are
Conjecture
an opinion or idea formed without proof or sufficient evidence.
Hypothesis
A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.
Theory
A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is often stated to be a theory but is only a conjecture.
You use the word hypothesis to describe the formation of fossil fuels. The formation is a theory which is successfully used to predict likely locations of fossil fuels. However, the processes of the formation take geological ages so there is no point in doing as you suggest by burying biota as a method to harvest fossil fuels.
Richard
“The plans will stabilize energy prices,”
Yes at much higher levels, high enough to impoverish each of these 50 states!
“create jobs,” Yes for these four guys!
“minimize air pollution,” except for the stench of rotting birds and bats!
“and begin to eliminate global warming.” Which has apparently eliminated itself in the last 17 years!
There are some smart people at Stanford, and then there are these fellows…
Universities today are very different from 30-40 years ago. Stanford in particular is heavily into “executive courses”. Basically they have expensive real estate in their classrooms. Why just teach a few classes per day in them, also use them at night for working professionals for better utilization of capital. I noticed this when I started seeing resumes that mentioned Stanford or Harvard, but it was the executive courses program, not the 4-year university program.
The other aspect of Stanford in particular is that it is heavily tied into the venture capital organizations in their backyard. Everyone knows about the startups in silicon valley. Part of that is because the organizations that fund startups is right there.
This is why I believe there is a heavy emphasis for academics not just to get funding for their research but also translate their projects into a startup. Years ago, I foolishly reply that I would not join a startup trying to build a product that I that was inherently stupid with no long term viability. I was told by someone (who since then has become much wealthier than I) that this did not matter. It was only necessary to get VC funding, take the company public (or get bought out) and then cash out soon after. Only was only necessary to create the image of being the next big thing for that period of time. Live and Learn.
Gail Combs says:
February 17, 2014 at 6:53 am
“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.”
Moore-type Laws only work in information technologies. There are variants for microchips, harddisks, DNA analysis; they all successfully predict exponential decay of cost per computing unit. In DNA analysis, cost per base pair analysed.
Wind and Solar are largely not information technologies. If they can be turned into information technologies, a Moore-type Law can be exploited.
The cost reductions we have seen so far in Wind and Solar are caused by
a) the experience curve – for Solar, every doubling of units delivered makes unit costs 20% cheaper. This factor is market specific.
b) traditional energy efficiency improvements in the production process. Using less chemicals etc.
At the moment, no Moore-type law can be expected in wind or solar. Similarly, not in batteries or electric cars or other electricity storage system. Small improvements yes; exponential increase no.
I’m all for clean, cheap, renewable energy. However, such a thing is like wishing for your own personal leprechaun that brings pots of gold to your house every morning so you don’t have to drag yourself off to work.
But to be fair, they only stipulate clean and renewable and make no mention of cost. And that’s the rub, that clean and renewable does not imply cheap as most folk probably gloss over: it’s going to cost.
“But to be fair, they only stipulate clean and renewable and make no mention of cost.”
Under Communism, everything is free, Comrade.
MarkG says:
February 17, 2014 at 9:57 am
“But to be fair, they only stipulate clean and renewable and make no mention of cost.”
Under Communism, everything is free, Comrade.
******
Except time.
markstoval says: @ur momisugly February 17, 2014 at 7:05 am
…. What is it? Seriously, I am beginning to think my name is on a list someplace.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
WordPress here and elsewhere hates me too. You get kicked into the snowbank
This is the list of the things I think might put you in Moderation Purgatory:
1. If you have more than 2 links.
2. Use forbidden words.
3. Comment is too long.
4. Took too long to write in the comment window.