Dear Dr. Hansen:
An old engineer’s dictum says “fast, cheap, good: pick two.” Unfortunately, and I’m sure completely contrary to your intention, your solution to global warming favors “cheap” over fast.
Energy efficiency, renewable energies, and a “smart grid” deserve first priority in our effort to reduce carbon emissions. With a rising carbon price, renewable energy can perhaps handle all of our needs. However, most experts believe that making such presumption probably would leave us in 25 years with still a large contingent of coal-fired power plants worldwide. Such a result would be disastrous for the planet, humanity, and nature.
Fourth generation nuclear power (4th GNP) and coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at present are the best candidates to provide large baseload nearly carbon-free power (in case renewable energies cannot do the entire job).
OK, this begs the question of why depending on efficiency, carbon negative forestry and agriculture, and renewables would leave us “in 25 years with still a large contingent of coal-fired power plants worldwide.”
We certainly have the physical capacity to build wind and solar generators that could provide all our power. Archer and Jacobson, perhaps the world’s leading experts on wind potential, estimate that wind energy at 80 meters in commercially developable sites alone could could supply [PDF] five times the world’s current energy demand. Note the emphasis: That is not five times world’s current electricity consumption, but five times total world energy consumption, including cars and factories and non-electric heating1. Similarly, solar thermal power plants of the type already running in U.S. deserts2 can provide the world’s entire energy needs [PDF] from less than 1 percent of total desert land3. Those are only two possibilities, albeit the ones with the biggest potential with today’s technology.
Is it power variability that worries experts? Jacobson and Archer have documented that connection via long distance transmission can reduce [PDF] that variability4. More to the point, data from that study show that much of that variability consists of reductions in available power of relatively short duration5 [PDF], which could be bridged by comparatively small amounts of storage in flow batteries or (in the case of solar thermal generation) via thermal storage. Keep about two thirds of existing hydro, and add as much additional geothermal electricity as makes sense with today’s technology. Add inexpensive, not overly efficient natural gas turbines for occasional use, providing less than 2 percent of total power, and you will end up with a reliable grid, with less than 2 percent of today’s emissions per kWh.
Is it cost that worries you? Without technical breakthroughs, and if we don’t count social costs, energy generated in this way is more expensive than today’s grid. But we also know that a great deal of today’s energy is thrown away. There are numerous cost-effective ways to get more GDP out of a kWh of energy. So if we combine efficiency improvements, the net total price of energy will be around what it is now. The average household may pay more per kWh for electricity, but the average electric bill won’t rise much, if at all.
Further, social benefits other than fighting climate chaos will more than make up for any difference. For example, greening commercial, retail, and some industrial buildings will improve productivity [PDF] and add huge amounts to our GDP6. Similarly, as we reduce air pollution from power plants, factories, and ground transport, we’ll receive tremendous additional value from improvements in public health. I’ve written extensively about policies that will enable us to implement this transition at minimal cost and capture some of the immediate social benefits to reduce immediate net costs below what we pay today.
None of this is technically iffy. Wind generators are manufactured and installed every day. Concentrating Solar Power farms using mirrors to concentrate energy and drive heat engines currently exist, and more are being built every day. Flow batteries and high temperature thermal storage are commercial products. Long distance HVDC transmission lines have been used all over the world for decades and are being built extensively in China today. The costs of all these technologies are well documented, as are costs for efficiency technologies.
As the world’s leading climate scientist, you know the patterns and parameters for available solar and wind energy can be estimated, with significant but known margins of error. If you look into it, I think you will find the social paybacks can also be documented rigorously. Because of such paybacks, I think you will find that phasing out emissions actually increases future GDP more than continuing to emit—even before climate effects are considered. And all this assumes no technical breakthroughs, which as we know is unduly pessimistic.
So why flounder about with fourth-generation nuclear power and “clean coal”? Yes, with sufficient effort we might be able to make breakthroughs in those fields in fewer than 30 years. But we might not, and even if we do, we have no idea what the cost will be. I’m not opposed to research in those areas, but to make such research one of four major planks in fighting global climate disruption seems like a bad choice.
Our primary focus must be implementing technology we already have. Even if major breakthroughs occur, it’s unlikely they will ever provide power as cheaply as dirty coal plants already built. As a safety valve, funding a speculative gamble seems like a poor choice. Breakthroughs or no, nothing will allow us to avoid doing the hard political work of investing large amounts of money to phase out emissions.
It seems odd to try to find a technology that will persuade the Chinese to stop burning coal. The Chinese have already advocated for a path to global emission reductions. They want rich nations, who are responsible for most historical emissions and still have the highest per capita emissions, to pay a substantial amount toward the cost of a green path for poor and developing nations. They suggest around $300 billion annually. That’s about a third of the current U.S. military budget, to be paid by all rich nations combined, to all poor and developing nations combined. (Thus the U.S. share would be substantially less than $300 billion annually.)
But of course, it is not just China you are worried about.
You’ve probably noticed that nobody is shutting down coal plants. You probably worry that shutting down coal isn’t technically feasible, and moreover that what we could do with current technology is not politically feasible.
But what is necessary is also politically feasible if a movement advocates for it. Put in place public investments to encourage key infrastructure: smart grids, long distance transmission, storage, electric cars, and efficiency improvements in buildings. Put in place regulations that encourage efficiency and a transition to renewable energy. Yes, put in place a refundable carbon tax. Ultimately, negotiate a deal whereby rich nations pay poor ones to lower their emissions.
Yeah, this is politically difficult. But so is any path to seriously tackling climate chaos. And unlike end-of-tailpipe solutions—which we don’t currently have in any case—an efficiency-and-renewables scenario offers a bigger GDP than business as usual, even before global warming costs are considered. Positive externalities more than make up for the costs.
When it comes to research, sure, put some into nuclear and decarbonization of emission streams. The latter will likely be necessary even when our economy reaches near-zero emissions, if only to transition to carbon negativity.
But don’t forget there are research investments with nearer short-term payoffs. Various techniques for making less expensive and simpler concentrators could lower the cost of solar thermal tremendously. Various means of lowering the cost of solar thermal storage from $35 per thermal kWh equivalent to $10 or $15 can be implemented in the short term. Similarly, adiabatic compressed air storage has tremendous long-term potential, as do other methods of electricity storage. There are a number of methods of improving blades, gearing, and control for wind generators, and the long-term potential for flying wind generators.
Please don’t drain all the money for improving renewables into fourth-generation nuclear power and “clean coal.”
Maybe we will get power too cheap to meter some day, either in nuclear form or from various breakthroughs in renewable energy and storage. But I’d hate to have the survival of our civilization depend on that when technologies available today lower emissions at a reasonable cost, certainly at a cost much less than the destruction of unmitigated climate chaos.
Kyoto and other attempts to phase out emissions have failed not because the technological barriers are too high, but because emissions reduction is fundamentally an infrastructure problem that has to be tackled via public investment and regulation—the way infrastructure always is. We did not get railroads, highways, airports, water ports, electric lines, sewer systems, clean drinking water, or the internet through “price signals.” None of these would have happened without public investment, some in the form of grants of land and right of ways, some in direct public ownership. None would have happened without regulations that created an environment friendly to technologies we wanted to encourage.
Getting price signals right can complement investment and regulation. Such a three-pronged policy approach can move us to zero and even negative emissions at the speed you advocate. But the public investment portion has to be sufficiently large, and the regulations sufficiently stringent, before pricing will be effective.
When investment, regulation, and pricing are in place, research and development can serve as reinforcement—not as a safety net that tries to bypass politics.
——-
Footnotes:
1 Cristina L. Archer and Mark Z. Jacobson, “Evaluation of Global Wind Power,”. Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres 110, no. D12 30 Jun 2005, American Geophysical Union, 20-Jan-2008 http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/2004jd005462.pdf, D12110 DOI:10.1029/2004JD005462.
2 The Plant | Nevada Solar One, http://www.nevadasolarone.net/the-plant, accessed 04 Jan 2009.
3 Dr. Gerhard Knies, “A Brief Overview on Global Energy, Water and Carrying Capacity Perspectives,” Clean Power From the Deserts: The DESERTEC Concept for Energy, Water and Climate Security, ed. Club of Rome, Oct 2008), 3rd Edition. Oct 2008. Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation 04/Jan/2009 http://www.trec-eumena.org/downloads/articles/trec_white_paper_highres.pdf.
4 Cristina L. Archer and Mark Z. Jacobson, “Supplying Baseload Power and Reducing Transmission Requirements by Interconnecting Wind Farms,”. JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY 46, no. 11 Nov 2007: 1701-17, American Meteorological Society, 18/Jan/2008 http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/aj07_jamc.pdf.
5 Willet Kempton and Amardeep Dhanju, “Electric Vehicles with V2G Storage for Large-Scale Wind Power,”. Windtech International Mar 2006, (accessed 27 Dec 2004) <http://www.udel.edu/V2G/docs/KemptonDhanju06-V2G-Wind.pdf>. Figure 2. (Note: the graph is based on unpublished data from Archer and Jacobson’s studies.)
6 Mark Palmer and Alicia Mariscal, Green Buildings and Worker Productivity: A Review of the Literature, Aug 2001). Aug 2001. San Francisco Department of the Environment
Gregory H. Kats, Green Building Costs and Financial Benefits. October 2003. Massachusetts Technology Collaborative State Development Agency for Renewable Energy and the Innovation Economy., .p6. http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/News/News477.pdf, accessed 12/29/2008.
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Comments
View as Threaded
stevenearlsalmony Posted 12:29 am
07 Jan 2009
There is good work to be done and you can provide the "voices" and the leadership to do it. Please go forward and then keep going.......with all deliberate speed.
Thanks,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1 ...
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Charles Komanoff Posted 12:34 am
07 Jan 2009
How can you say that Jim Hansen's global-warming solution favors cheap over fast when one of its three pillars is a hefty carbon tax?
(BTW, wouldn't "revenue-neutral" be a clearer adjective for Hansen's carbon tax than your "refundable," which confusingly carries the implication that individuals' carbon tax dividends would be pegged to their carbon consumption? As you know, the carbon tax dividends (not rebates or refunds) that Hansen advocates would be pro rata -- all U.S. residents would receive the same dividend, regardless of their carbon footprint.)
-- Charles
Charles
http://www.komanoff.net
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amazingdrx Posted 1:39 am
07 Jan 2009
Carbon tax? Try passing a "new tax" in a recession/depression. Hoover did it, why not try it again?
Ever hear of the term "Hoovervilles"?
Subsidy diversion is the key to pricing carbon and boosting GHG-free energy and conservation alternatives. Take corporate welfare away from fossil, nuclear, and agribiz (over 50 billion per year) and divert it to direct payments for home, farm, and business solar, wind, farm/waste biogas,and ground source heasting/cooling.
The loss of subsidies will cause fossil and nuclear industries to raise prices, thus taxing carbon, without a "new tax".
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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mwildfire Posted 1:58 am
07 Jan 2009
I would love to see Dr Hansen respond to this piece.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:10 am
07 Jan 2009
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Ted Nace Posted 2:32 am
07 Jan 2009
One addition: An "oldest first" schedule for shutting down the existing fleet of power plants.
Help build CoalSwarm-- a shared informational resource on coal and alternatives to coal.
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GRLCowan Posted 2:33 am
07 Jan 2009
--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:37 am
07 Jan 2009
By the way, there is no way taxes are going to be raised in the next two years. They're not even going to raise taxes on the very wealthy, that is, the Bush tax cuts, which is a no-brainer. The reasoning behind not revoking those cuts escapes me, except that maybe Obama is tip-toeing around the Republicans, which would not surprise me, in which case, again, there is no way he will try to push new taxes on the Republicans.
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:06 am
07 Jan 2009
In the middle of the great depression, how did we pay for World War II?
http://greyfalcon.net/debt2.png
Also, since we're only talking about 2% of one year's GDP to finance everything.
If something like that were to pull us out of our current depression a few years sooner than what would otherwise happen.
How much is that kickstart to our GDP growth worth?
-David Ahlport
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archigeek Posted 3:07 am
07 Jan 2009
The mellotron is your friend.
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:13 am
07 Jan 2009
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2006/03/bush-v-reagan-on-si ...
http://greyfalcon.net/doonsbury.png
(Or Bush for that matter)
-David Ahlport
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:28 am
07 Jan 2009
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:43 am
07 Jan 2009
And for the Iraq war.
And for this current economic crisis.
-David Ahlport
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:46 am
07 Jan 2009
_
Last I checked, there's such a huge demand for Treasury Bills right now, that they are trading at a NEGATIVE interest rate.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/09/treasury-bills-t ...
-David Ahlport
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amazingdrx Posted 4:03 am
07 Jan 2009
What about that? Are other currencies in danger of becoming ruble-like? Are they all?
What if this global scamming ties every national currency to bad paper? I think it has.
With subsidy diversion, no new taxes, no new inflation, no new electronic derivatives. And no new debt and currency devaluation.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:13 am
07 Jan 2009
Tops, we're looking at 3 billion a year diverted away from Coal.
http://greyfalcon.net/subs.png
Which of course, you wouldn't even get that much, because the "clean coal" people would freak out, and spend a few million on ad campaigns against that.
-David Ahlport
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:31 am
07 Jan 2009
In World War 2, the put out "War Bonds".
Nowadays, we put out "Treasury Bonds".
Notice how WWII hardly even registers on the CPI
http://www.economics-charts.com/images/cpi-1913.png
_
Not to mention, at least with Green Energy.
You aren't just throwing money down a rat hole. (i.e. War)
You're actually getting a return on investment on infrastructure (i.e. Increased federal revenues), and investment in new technologies, and a strong foothold on a new global economic sector.
_
Taking out a loan, to buy capital, to then get a return on investment from that capital, is business 101.
-David Ahlport
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:43 am
07 Jan 2009
Inflation would probably be regressive...
http://ezinearticles.com/?Inflation-and-Social-Security-- ...
-David Ahlport
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Gar Lipow Posted 4:52 am
07 Jan 2009
"How can you say that Jim Hansen's global-warming solution favors cheap over fast when one of its three pillars is a hefty carbon tax?"
You will note my use of the phrase "I'm sure completely contrary to your intention" However, I'm afraid looking for "cheap" is the only conclusion I can come to from his including this 4th plank. Safety valve? If you really want an R&D safety valve, you won't concentrate on just two technologies. Nobody can guarantee that a particular R&D project will succeed, especially when there is a time limit and success includes cost constraints. If you are seeking protection against technical failure in R&D you will advocate a diversity in approaches. What concentrating R&D on these particular technologies offers is a chance (I think a really slim one) of finding cheap replacements for fossil fuel that are non-disruptive of existing infrastructure. But elevating this to a key plank in a plan to fighting global warming on grounds that known means are uncertain is offers a devastating weapon do delayers, deniers, and do-littlers. They can argue that even Hansen says that results from taking action on global warming are uncertain and that we should do little or nothing now, make large investments in R&D, and eventually come up with a more certain and cheaper solution. That is the opposite of Hansen's intention, but it is an obvious conclusion to draw from his elevating R&D to a fundamental plank of comparable importance to implementating things we already know how to do.
Incidentally, I chose the term "refundable" quite carefully. Doesn't mean I'm right, but here is the logic: I don't like "revenue neutral carbon tax" because even if you know what a carbon tax is, if you haven't already heard a description of the proposal it won't tell you what it is. It also has no framing power, does nothing to sell the concept. Tax & Dividend, like Cap & Dividend meets the latter but still does not describe the system to someone who does not already understand it. In fact is is a bit misleading, because dividend usually implies a reward for ownership. Tax & Rebate would convey what is going on pretty well, because rebates tend to be fixed amounts, but manufacturers rebates are pains in the ass, and often scams, so the framing is awful. And given that we already have the word "tax", you need decent framing for the rest of the description. "Tax & Refund" coveys most of what people need to know. And you can then point out that is an equal distribution, not related to individual carbon consumption. Maybe we could say "Tax and Equal Refund", getting another positive term in there. At any rate that is the reasoning behind my use of the term "refund".
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:02 am
07 Jan 2009
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:11 am
07 Jan 2009
-David Ahlport
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:41 am
07 Jan 2009
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:24 am
07 Jan 2009
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/20 ...
http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2008/12/18/10192/710?sho ...
http://www.grist.org/pdf/AbruptClimateChange2003.pdf
World War II, well that was important.
It had a guy with a mustache, doing bad things!
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0702-26.htm
But clearly this isn't anywhere near as important.
Because clearly nobody's going to die from a little heat, right?
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/effects-of-global ...
This is merely just supposed to be a bureaucratic gesture to satisfy those hippies and employ a bunch of corrupt scientists, right?
And worse comes to worst, we got 50-100 years to deal with it, right?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0914-01.htm
No big deal, huh?
-David Ahlport
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Charles Komanoff Posted 6:40 am
07 Jan 2009
Charles
http://www.komanoff.net
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BILL HANNAHAN Posted 6:58 am
07 Jan 2009
Now that the hard work is done, just a few details left.
1...Detailed design.
2...Detailed reliability study.
3...Detailed cost estimate.
4...Detailed construction schedule.
5...Actual construction.
We need a plan that does not have failure as an option, and will automatically select the best solution even if most of us are wrong.
1...Implement a $100 billion / year R&D budget that pushes all technologies as hard and fast as possible. $100 billion / year is not much to solve the two biggest problems faced by 6.5 billion people, energy and climate change. The economic return for getting it right will be many orders of magnitude larger.
2...Build demonstration plants of every technology as it becomes possible. If the first one fails, build improved models until the technology is proven to be useful or not.
3...Publish all the data.
4...Eliminate all subsidies. Note that R&D and subsidies are two completely different things. With R&D there is always the potential for a dramatic breakthrough that will change everything. Not so with subsidies.
5...Include all external costs for all technologies.
6...Allow the cost of energy to rise or fall to its real value on a totally level field.
7...Allow a well informed private sector of individuals and corporations to select the best technology for mass production.
This process will produce the best possible solution. If Gar's plan is best, it will result from this process.
Things Everybody Should Know About Energy
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:05 am
07 Jan 2009
So yeah, a safety valve kinda does undercut pretty much all carbon pricing models.
-David Ahlport
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Gar Lipow Posted 8:54 am
07 Jan 2009
If a refundable carbon tax works well the carbon price will be only thing expensive about it. People pay more for energy and energy intensive goods, but they have more in their pocket to pay the difference. And the only people it hurts energy intensive industries that have to stay energy intensive and have to get their energy from fossil fuels, or who (like the automobile indusry) are reluctant to make the capital investment needed to switch to less energy intensive products. Basically the core carbon consituency. It is hard to win, but if you win it AND IT WORKS (a critical caveat) then very soon it becomes politically much easier to keep. If, as I suspect, the technology needed to replace greenhouse intensive technology is comparable in price to BAU, and various positive externalities make up any difference, then even from a macro-economic viewpoint it is cheap to free.
What focusing on just two fairly high risk R&D programs can hope to accomplish is come up with a technolical end run around all these politics in case we fail with the first plan. It is trying to find a second cheap solution in case the first cheap solution fails. But if we really want a safety valve rather than just desperately flailing for a low cost alternative then we should pursue a diverse research program rather than focusing on rather iffy alternatives.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:21 am
08 Jan 2009
Normally, pumping money into the economy leads to inflation as eventual overheating occurs. With all that play money somewhere in the system too, will this happen much more quickly?
Could we see assets squirreled away buy the scammers reappearing to reinvest in a new boom, pushing another buble up again and threatening to erode the currency? it's somethinmg that re-regulatyion might address. Madoff is sending million dollar checks and jewelry packahes out to friends and family now.
He made off with it right under his "house arrest" guards, hehey.
And yet new harsher bankruptcy laws, pushed by credit card lobbyists, have families begging for mercy from the system.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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colonos Posted 10:35 am
21 Jan 2009
"Toward a Just and Sustainable Solar Energy Industry" has recently been published, which seems useful in this conext:
In January 2009, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) released their report documenting and analyzing the environmental and health hazards of solar panel systems in a supposed "win-win" solution to global warming. Read the report for more information about the health and safety concerns as well as recommendations for building a just and sustainable solar energy industry.
http://www.etoxics.org/site/PageServer?pagename=svtc_publ ...
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Pangolin Posted 2:41 pm
21 Jan 2009
We "print money" every day to produce total waste in the form of war machinery. The energy return on all of this is zero or negative since any real calculation of the energy costs of middle east oil would have to include the GHG impact of burning it. The entire world is behaving like a farmer spending his seed money on booze and cheap floozies. Fine until the harvest fails and the mortgage comes due.
Forget money. It's a bogus concept in this context.
Windmills produce more power for general use than they require to build. Concentrating solar thermal plants produce more power than they require to build. Many, many times more power. Societies that learn this lesson will prosper and those that ignore it will fail. The funny paper that we manage that power exchange with is less important than the energy slope equations.
What happened to the $350 billions given to the banks? Nobody knows and you can't find out. What happened to the trillions waste in Iraq? It produced nothing of productive value. Huge amounts of men, materials and equipment were destroyed to no account. The educations of millions of people devalued to zero.
Yet we can't find funds for solar panels that will produce power for 30+ years. Come again?
As long as we are committed to thinking in terms of money and we can't see the energy returns of our behavior we will continue to fail. Failure is the status quo; the default.
Put the Carbon Back
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Gar Lipow Posted 3:41 pm
21 Jan 2009
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amazingdrx Posted 11:50 pm
21 Jan 2009
Separating toxic doping elements from silicon and other metals can be done effectively and inexpensively if high temperature solar furnace energy is on tap.
There isn't much discussion of projects like this, instead we hear endless "clean" coal, nuclear, and fuel farming debates. No wonder our representatives keep backing the wrong technology choices.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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