Solarspike’s Recent Comments

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  The unfortunate economic truth

   "Investment in building energy efficiency...would save consumers $8.46 billion in energy bills annually"
  And that is exactly why the big money wants investments in big central energy projects and NOT efficiency. Where is the money to be made in NOT buying more energy? Big energy projects are about obligating the rate payer to energy bills not saving money. If people wake up to this fact there will be no more coal/nuclear power plants. Everyone will put up their own solar panels and quit paying for someone else to make their energy for them. Solar energy - free deliveries daily On Solving climate change can save billions, boost the economy, and create jobs posted 1 year, 7 months ago 5 Responses

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  DoE budget

  Just a comment on DoE. I have know several of the top people at DoE and if I had the choice of DoE or the mafia to make decissions on the future of the planet I wouldn't choose DoE.
  The annual budget is in the area of $20 billion. Of that $19 billion goes to nuclear weapons, nuclear waste and nuclear power. One year of that budget towards RE and we could quit having this discussion. It is not only feasible to shift to a renewable energy/energy efficient near zero carbon energy society but once we have done so we will wonder why we waited so long. Quit talking and get on with it.On We've run out of time to wait for an unknown techno-fix to save us posted 1 year, 7 months ago 11 Responses

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  scale of existing energy infrastructure

  In the US we use 10kW per capita continuous - about twice the rest of the world's modern industrial societies like Germany or Japan.
     There are about 1 million megawatts of power plant capacity in the US - mostly coal powered.
     At present rate of PV production it would take over 1000 years to replace this power plant capacity with solar PV. It would cost the price of three coal power plants to increase PV production to bring that thousand years down to under ten. (The Federal government cannot agree that this is something that should be supported and is willing to kill $20 billion in potential investment in Renewable Energy by not renewing policies supporting RE.)
     There is ten times the power plant capacity under the hood of vehicles in the US - operating  at something less than 10% efficiency and totally overpowered for the job of providing personal mobility. EVs are 90+% efficient.
     Can we decide that protecting the livability of the planet is worth the small sacrifice to cut our energy consumption by say 50%?
     Can we agree to give up our sense of entitlement to go 0 to 60 in ten seconds and drive all day with hardly a stop?
     Can we power such a reduced energy use society with renewable energy?
  We could. Will we? Extremely doubtful.On The implicit assumption in Pielke Jr.'s Nature commentary posted 1 year, 7 months ago 38 Responses

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  Nuke revival

  I was thrown out of a pro nuke panel discussion at the University of Colorado last month for offering the moral arguments against nuclear power.

  If you want to know how much "progress" is being made in the nuclear power revival just check out the headlines http://www.energy-daily.com/Civil_Nuclear_Energy.html

  I count thirty countries with plans for developing new nuclear power plants. Last month when Bush was in Turkey he said the proliferation issues had be solved.

  http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0328/p07s03-woam.html

  FARC acquired uranium, says Colombia
  Sixty six pounds of uranium was for a 'dirty bomb,'

  I guess maybe his statement was a little premature.

  "No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large
  amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make safe
  and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for
  historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a
  transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more
  serious than any crime ever perpetrated by man. The idea that a
  civilization could sustain itself on the basis of such a transgression
  is an ethical, spiritual and metaphysical monstrosity. It means
  conducting the economic affairs of man as if people really did not
  matter at all."
  E. F. Schumacher Small is Beautiful 1973

  It is a sad and unfortunate thing that we as a society are even having
  this discussion. Nuclear power, along with its even more evil
  joined-at-the-hip twin, nuclear weapons, are exhibit #1 in the reasons
  why our species doesn't even deserve to exist on this planet (and may
  not for much longer if we don't wake up).
   There is a failure of responsibility not just for the morally
  challenged nuclear advocates (this is giving them the benefit of the
  doubt that they are not actually intent on the evil that is the likely
  result of their work) who are still proposing this insanity but for
  the institutes of higher education who do not provide scientists with
  any education in values, morals and ethics. By simply turning these
  highly educated people loose on the world to create without conscience
  is unacceptable and dangerous in the extreme. A society lives by it's
  values and the educational institutions are failing society. When will
  this change?
   It seems that scientists often fall into thinking that if an idea
  does not violate the laws of physics, and that we can do the
  engineering to create it, and we have government tax money (so even
  the economics don't have to work), that such an idea should be
  pursued. They seem incapable of questioning assumptions much less of
  understanding the ethics and morality of their work. Simply because
  they have learned some tricks of physics they never seem to wonder if
  these concepts might violate the laws of nature or the laws of any
  higher metaphysical reality.
   Many very well educated people are apparently not smart enough to
  act in their own best interests. Advocates of any nonrenewable
  environmentally destructive thermal power plant technology, either
  coal or nuclear, have failed to question the basic assumptions of our
  energy hungry society. Does it make any sense to go on up the ever
  increasing energy use curve at any cost?  The answer for those who
  cannot tell the difference between right and wrong is "Of course it
  does not."
   Nuclear advocates such as Patrick Moore seem to flaunt their
  inability to understand ethics by readily providing disinformation,
  illogical arguments and outright lies in support of their cause. In
  Mr. Moore's well known article Going Nuclear: A Green Makes the Case
  he states that only  56 people died from the Chernobyl melt down. He
  fails to mention the 50,000 children who are dying of thyroid cancer
  from the radiation released by that nuclear disaster.
   We need not pursue dangerous and destructive technologies to meet
  our energy needs. There is 15,000 times more renewable energy resource
  available than the amount of energy we presently use every day.
  Renewable energy technology is available to harvest this clean energy
  and safely meet all our needs and at less cost.On Déjà nuke posted 1 year, 7 months ago 11 Responses

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  coal is still in business

  Hate to be a pessimist and I love the trend but we won't be reading coal's obituary until there is renewable energy to replace existing energy use and energy growth world wide. In the US there is 600,000 megawatts of power plant capacity most of it coal fired. At present growth rate of renewable energy it will take hundreds of years to reach that capacity. We don't have the time.
  We are at 10 kW and 20 tons of CO2 per capita in the US and we need to get to 1/2 ton world wide. We will need better energy policy to achieve a 95% reduction in carbon based energy use. Feed-in Tariffs are the policy. http://onlinepact.org/
  The 2007 Energy Act was a disaster for mankind.
  And King Coal is still what we are relying on for our most important energy, electricity. Coal got the majority of new US energy subsidies not renewable energy. Nuclear always get 95% of DoE's budget.
  http://www.celsias.com/2008/02/20/china-to-open-a-nazi-fu ...

  http://www.celsias.com/2008/02/17/king-coal-looks-to-expo ...On Another bad week for coal posted 1 year, 9 months ago 7 Responses