Green Tech. Energy replacements. Do you have the answer?

Question

Many in the global warming camp warn daily that we must make changes now. That we must cut carbon emissions by 60, 70 and even some say 80% by 2050

http://april.stepitup2007.org/article.php?id=29

They mask this under the words, “its’ only 2 percent reduction per year.

So lets be honest ok? By 2010 just 2 years, what do we have to replace the 4% reduction in gas, oil or coal That is ready our ONLY source of electric power generation?

By 2015 we are now up to almost 15 % less elec being produced by coal, all the while power consumption has been increasing. What do we have and where will it is placed, with the fighting already taking place over the placement wind turbines, etc.

Please don’t waste anyone’s time talking solar. You could cover the whole southwest of the US with solar panels and still not have enough production to replace 3 percent let alone 15 pecent

So what are these green 'supper ideals', as well as where will they be built in order to reduce the emissions while at the same time Not sending us back 500 years or even worse. 500 years ago people where allowed to heat their homes and cook their food with coal or wood, you propose stopping that all together.

Answer 1

It is a lie ... The earth recycles many things naturaly.

Do u understand the water cycle ..

Do U understand how plants take in CO2 and give us oxygen.

There is another cycle that most dont know about . When the plants recycle the CO2 it gives the O2 but keeps the C for food. When the plant leaves die ,they wash down the river to the delta where it breaks down into oil & gas.

Answer 2

Yes nuclear is an option, former loudmouth Patrick Moore even admits it now.

Answer 3

Dear I believe,

You are most likely listening to activists rather than scientists or inventors. The job of the activist is to get people involved and excited about a particular cause. It is then up to the individual to research the issue further and seek out the more specific information offered by the scientists, engineers, city planners, sociologists, etc.

Think of it like the military. The same person who gives out free kooshballs at a high school career fair to get you to enlist is not the same person who formulated detailed battle plans, or invents new tanks and ships.

I really enjoy the website ecogeek.org and alot of it's affiliated sited (Envirowonk, carectomy, envirovore ) because the entirety of the content is solution based rather than just going on and on about the problems. They are also practical, technological, large scale solutions, rather than just telling people to wash with vinegar and change out light bulbs.

My point is, solutions are out there that are practical and will enable the shift towards sustainability that is needed regardless of global warming if we are to continue as a species.

Answer 4

Nuclear.

Answer 5

You are incorrect about solar.

Just flat out completely totally wrong.

Don't take my word for it. Dust out the cobwebs. The answers are all right there if you are willing to listen.

edit:

I’m going to take the long way here, thanks for asking.

In the first case we need to cut demand. Not to sacrifice or do with less, but to create less waste and be more productive. Other advanced nations use less energy per capita than we do. I read one study that showed we could get by on 1/10th the energy use per capita with no diminishment of lifestyle. Notice I didn’t say no change in lifestyle, we will have to change. But we can still have things like individual auto transportation when needed, just that it will likely be in two seat electric cars. There is so much low hanging fruit in the conservation area it boggles the mind. We could easily, with existing technology, a government carrot/stick economic program (tax incentives, etc.), and no lifestyle changes whatsoever, cut energy use in the US in half in 10 years. The economic competitiveness advantages would be huge. I did it myself. I retrofitted my house and cut oil use by 2/3 (energy use by half) using simple techniques. $8000, most of the cost was a new heater and new windows. I traded an 18 mpg car for a 36 mpg car (which I recently got 40.5mpg in city driving using hypermiling techniques). No incremental cost as I had to replace the car anyway.

Along with retrofitting a house to use less energy, they can be retrofitted to use local renewable energy. One of the most exciting technologies to come along in a while is the ground source heat pump. They use a heat pump (high temp refrigeration) to pull or put energy into a ground loop. They use ½ the energy of a conventional system, are quiet, reliable and long lasting. In a conventional heat pump the outdoor unit with the compressor really gets beat up trying to dump heat on a 90F day, and of course, they can’t really pull heat from sub-freezing air. The ground source solves both these problems because the ground temp is a constant ~55F (depending on your locale).

Solar thermal (hot water collector on your roof) really got a bad rap. As with any of these systems, if they are not engineered correctly and installed correctly they will underperform and fail. Rather than have a national commitment to work out these bugs, form national associations and certification authorities, it was allowed to wither on the vine and die. Or was killed by Reagan, depending on your political persuasion. All existing technologies have gone thru a lifecycle to the point where they are now simple and reliable. Many many people have died (and still die) from carbon monoxide poisoning. The units themselves have redundant safeguards to the hilt, but if it’s installed wrong or gets defeated by the homeowner, bad things can happen. My favorite is that after central plumbing and sewerage was first installed, the buildings would blow up from sewer gas. So somebody invented the drain trap.

Solar photovolatic is growing by leaps and bounds today. We need to get on the stick or we will get left behind on this one. Google German solar pv program or something like that. They are attacting world wide attention. In cloudy Europe!

This is just the stuff I know about and have personal experience with. There are many existing, in place, working today, examples of a local systems designed to produce some fraction of the energy on site, and to deal with some fraction of household waste on site.

So with a combination of demand side management and on-site produced energy, we could, I think, easily (technically easy that is) get to a 50% reduction in grid demand.

I just read about the guy with the algae to oil plan. These little bugs are well known, some up to 50% by weight lipids (vegetable oil). In what I think is a prime example of the myopic view of some of our government agencies, algae was deemed to be far too problematic for any mass production to be viable. Why did they think this? Well, they were basing the assumptions on pond production. Large open ponds. The land area and water necessary would be enormous and there is no way to stop contamination with competing strains of non-productive algae. Well, in hindsight, duh, of course that won’t work. This guy is going to grow vertically in greenhouses in hanging serpentine plastic channels. Brilliant. The current estimate is like 9000gal per acre per year. This guy says he is going for 100,000gal /acre/year. The lowly, God forbid don’t mention it, hemp plant can do I think 1000gal/acre on marginally productive land and hardly any energy input other than pressing the oil out of the seeds. What’s ethanol, 450gal/acre and as much energy input to create the ethanol as you get out of it. Yeah. Ethanol is a complete boondoggle.

Nuclear is a touchy issue. I’m personally for it if it were to be managed correctly, but it never will be so therefore I’m against it in its current form. Without going into technical details, we could use failsafe reactor design along with reprocessing of fuel into an extended fuel cycle. In this scenario, the existing uranium reserves and reactor waste could provide all our electricity for 10,000 years. Mind boggling but true. Of course, there are all sorts of problems to be overcome, not the least of which is security, before this could happen. What is happening here is a problem with the human perception of risk. Nobody wants the nuclear infrastructure facilities in their back yard. But nobody considers that millions of tons of mercury go into the environment every year from coal, and that we all suffer for it, it’s just a statistic on the cancer death chart.

Well, enough of the commentary. With demand side management, local production of energy, and national plan of solar, (rational) nuclear and (rational) biofuels, we could be completely and forever divorced from imported energy and fossil fuels entirely by 2050. And make the greenhouse emission cut targets too.

How to pay for it is another matter. As a society we make choices all the time about how to spend our tax money. It just becomes a change in priority.

How would it feel to tell them they can charge whatever they want for oil, doesn’t really matter?

Here is a plan from Scientific American to produce “69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050” (for 400 billion in current dollars). And this isn’t the first or only one of these plans. There are plans afoot in Europe to place concentrating solar collector plants in the Northern Sahara and feed Europe via long distance DC transmission.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-so...

Answer 6

You are simply incorrect about solar power.  Read the links below and learn something.

As illustrated in the second link, solar in the American southwest could not only provide more than 3% of the US energy needs (as you claim), but 100%.  Of course, the problem is that solar power isn't available 24/7, 365 days/year, but the point is it can certainly meet a huge chunk of our energy consumption.