Slashdot Mirror
Will Wind Power Change Earth's Climate?
lommer writes "The Globe and Mail is currently running an article on a recent wind power study. A group of Canadian and American scientists has modelled the effects of introducing massive amounts of wind farms into North America and have come up with surprising results. While still having only 1/5th the impact of fossil fuels, wind power will still adjust the earth's climate with the equatorial regions warmed while the arctic grows colder. Could this be a boon for the nuclear lobby, or is this just further evidence for a diversified power-generating system?"
Wow! so we can affect temperature by building wind farms.
Just hope they will build a lot of these north of my town so we can stop that freezing north wind.
You think wind farms (which are, after all, designed to let most of the wind pass) are going to have more effect than cities full of blocky buildings?
I think not.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. There's a finite quantity of it in this universe, and it's not changing. Of course, Planet Earth is constantly gaining energy on a daily basis thanks to the generosity of The Sun.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that any form of energy capture, no matter how you do it is going to take energy out of the environment and that as a result changes the environment. I'm pretty sure if we had massive solar panels all over the place, that'd effect the temperature by taking sunlight that would have heated the ground and diverting it. There's no free source of energy, you've gotta take it from somewhere!
From what I understand of Global Warming, the arctic getting warmer is a problem. According to the article these non-polluting wind farms would make the arctic colder...Bonus!
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
Why is it that people are so scared of nuclear plants, i would find global climate change to be a lot worse than the ever reducing risk of a nuclear accident. I'd rather have a few square miles potentially ruined than a certain change to the global system.
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
"Could this be a boon for the nuclear lobby, or is this just further evidence for a diversified power-generating system?"
Yes and yes. Of all the alternative power sources wind is just about the least practical for large scale explotation. Use the right system in the right place.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Does someone out there really expect wind power to become the major supplier (more than fossil fuels and nuclear) of Earth's energy? Is anyone out there really that naive?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
...I was amazed by:
- how big it was (huge!)
- how noisy it was (I sort of thought it'd be silent; not sure why...)
- how still the air was immediately below it, even though the windmill itself was turning at a moderate rate
Quite an amazing piece of gear; if you ever get the chance to get up close to one, take it.
...that any man-made alteration of the ecosystem is necessarily bad?
Seriously. OK, so a few species will go extinct. But who's to say that some species won't flourish as a result. The ecosystem will be different, but it won't necessarily be worse. The ecosystem will adapt.
I think it's safe to say that the poisons introduced by fossil fuel burning have a net negative effect. But wind farms? I mean, solve the bird blender problem and what's the harm otherwise?
I also wonder what effect huge solar farms would have on the ecosystem. Extracting energy from sunlight that would normally heat the crust of the earth might also have an interesting impact. But again, I don't think we should automatically assume that change is bad.
So does this mean the United States is going to start invading windy countries?
Be quick about it, OK? OH, and when you kill yourself, do it in a forest by yourself so that you can be converted into plant material with the minimum of impact.
We can't get all of that last fifth of the 5 fifths -- though you worthless schmuck should do your part ASAP and stop ruining the environment with each extra breath or moment that you block the wind.
Thanks!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
would it help if they make the turbines spin the other way?
I've heard numerous times that for the same power output, a nuclear reactor generates less radioactive material than, say, a coal fired plant. The problem is that the nuclear waste is in a big chunk, and must be stored somewhere. My question is, why not pulverize said nuclear waste and pump it into the atmosphere? At worst, we'd be doing slightly better than coal plants right? And we'd have solved the waste storage problem... right? I'm sure there's something I'm missing (other than the obvious: that's just insidiously stupid).
How can this possibly be good news for nuclear energy? A nuclear reactor produces huge amounts of heat - hence the huge, highly visible cooling towers. This point generally gets ignored, since people are far more concerned with other side effects of nuclear power - but any unbiased study of the total global side effect of each kind of energy generation is going to show wind ranking far above nuclear.
I have yet to see a 'magic bullet' in terms of generating electrical power. There just isn't one yet. Every single kind of power generation has problems involved with it.
Wind -- Mentioned in article, provides a place for raptors to perch, allowing them to expend much less energy when hunting for prey, which decimates rodent populations (bad thing? depends on who you ask...) Also has been known to kill birds in the rotors. Plus rather complex and expensive engineering problems in generating the power to begin with as well.
Hydroelectric -- Trouble with fish populations, sediment issues, changes some local ecosystems. Removes hiking areas from lobbyists, prompting them to protect their recreation in the name of environmental protection (google 'drain Lake Powell.') But it's more straightforward to generate power than wind.
Coal -- Cheap, mature technology -- becoming MUCH cleaner than it has historically been. Lots of coal. Still quite polluting.
Oil -- Mature, relatively cheap -- also becoming more efficient, but still quite polluting, oil prices skyrocketing.
Biomass -- Uses biological sources (plant matter, leaves, food scraps, paper, etc.) to generate power -- less polluting than many think, since the 'fuel' used releases the same carbon into the atmosphere anyway (often within a few weeks/months) -- it just accelerates the process. Still, it's not the most optimal of solutions, and there are always valid concerns about toxic chemicals being released from burning garbage.
Natural Gas -- Cheap, cleaner than oil or coal, can be placed near suburban areas with few complaints (My job is next door to one, and I don't even hear it). Prices going up, limited fuel.
Nuclear Fission -- Can be very cheap, very little airborne pollution. Becoming very mature. Also has nuclear waste, public paranoia, U.S. refusal to reprocess used nuclear fuel that is 98% unburned -- they just 'dispose' of it. No new power-generating reactor has been built in the US in my lifetime. Although I hate to admit it, I personally think it may be something we'll have to rely on until well after I'm dead. Hopefully it'll buy time to get Fusion to a more practical state.
Nuclear Fusion -- Still experimental/unable to generate useful power, hopefully clean. Depending on the type of fusion, can be anywhere from near zero radiation (and radioactive waste) to levels (both instantaneous, and in terms of high-level waste) that have the same problems as fission.
Solar -- Woefully inefficient, one of the most expensive methods of generating electricity, although prices are dropping.
Geothermal -- I've heard this is (or has been) a maintenance nightmare, and is only practical in certain geological locations anyway.
Cold 'Fusion' -- not really sure if it belongs here, but there are still question marks about where the 'excess energy' generated is coming from. It simply sounds too good to be true - clean, safe power? I want to believe...
There are other types -- but I still haven't heard of the magic bullet. The best thing we can do as a society is strive for the highest efficiency in electrical use -- from generation to transmission to expenditure. Turn off those lights when you're not in the room (and, even if you are in the room if they aren't necessary...)
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Their model is obviously not right. Maybe somebody slept through the class where they said, "If your program's output doesn't match common sense, it's probably your program that's wrong."
We occupy less than a third of the Earth's surface.
Windmills are maybe 100 meters high. The Earth's atmosphere is over 1000 times that thick (though it is, of course, thinner as you go up).
A windmill doesn't keep air from flowing even at the surface, it just slows it and disturbs it a little. Kind of like a tree. Are trees bad, too?
There is just no way we could build enough windmills to affect the Earth's climate.
Even if you could affect climate that way, who knows what other factors would show up to change the result? And that's ignoring the Earth's been getting warmer lately. Or has it? I can't keep up.
Taking energy out of the air doesn't destroy the energy - it just moves it. It'll get released into the atmosphere as heat somewhere else, eventually.
sigs, as if you care.
1. Walk to Taco Bell.
2. Buy 2 bean burritos.
3. Walk home.
4. Wait 8-16 hours.
5. Energy in the form of gas.
6. Sell gas to power company.
Repeat steps 1-6.
"Energy cannot be created nor destroyed" is the First law of themodynamics and can be credited to James Prescott Joule and Hermann von Helmholtz NOT Newton. He wrote the laws of motion!
Anyway this is nothing to do with the amount of energy in the system is to do with how the energy within the system is distributed, the wind fans increase the mixing of air levels (Turbulance). This has little affect during the day (apparently) but in the night results in warming air from higher up being mixed in.
James
Renewable sources such as wind or solar energy may disturb what happens in the atmosphere one way or another (cooler here, warmer there..), but they don't upset the overall energy balance. Energy that would have gone directly into heating the atmosphere, is channeled through our widescreen TVs and electric vehicles first, where it ultimately converts to heat that is re-radiated back to the universe.
For those of you who care the research paper can be found at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0406930101v1.pdf
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
And another thing... I can't speak for any militant environmentalists you might be thinking of, but the reason I'm an environmentalist is to maintain our way of life.
I like having electricity to run my computer, a car I can drive across the country in, a hospital with fancy chemicals and plastics. However I believe it is utterly foolish to continue using the sources for these things that we are at the rate that we are and expect that we can maintain our way of life forever. Refusing to change our way of life at all is a sure way to ensure that we lose it entirely.
The enemies of Democracy are
From TFA: "...have turbines that spin at 400 kilometres an hour..."
These guys are magic. Measuring an angular velocity in linear units.
Is it just me or is there something about journalists where, in technical articles, they have to put in gratuitous meaningless figures for no reason? Maybe it's to prove that they understand the subject.
Irrelevance be damned!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
The problem is that there are far too many people who claim to be environmentalists, but in fact are entirely ignorant of the facts. It's a mob mentality where they attain power by spewing their opinions in a large group, believing that repitition can make something true.
It isn't a problem with environmentalists -- not real ones, anyway. It's a problem with people use the environment to push their own personal agenda -- like promoting their personal choice in recreation (hiking is a good example), by 'preserving' public land using a definition that only allows human use in the form of hiking, with no other way to access the area, or recreate in it (even horseback riding is verboten). This, of course, doesn't go well with the rest of the voting public that prefers to recreate in other ways, and often paints a negative image of environmentalism in general.
Real environmentalists look at the facts and are willing to say that it's better to go with a less damaging source of power, than it is to stonewall for decades demanding a perfect source of power, forcing us to use the current/old massively polluting methods. (The damage there is already done, goes the mantra of the stonewall crowd.)
Honestly, the faux environmentalists seem more like religious fanatacists: The similarities are striking - they use their cause (environment or diety/dogma) to support their (frequently narrow) worldview, often in disagreement with non-fanatics of the same group. This allows the fanatics to strike down any kind of disagreement (even facts) with impunity, and en masse. The result is the same to those of us who at least attempt to reason: It gives the group (either environmentalism or religion) an undeserved and unfair black eye.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Global warming is a global problem, so everyone needs to help fight the problem, espcially the country that contains approx 2% of the world's population but emits a quarter of the word's CO2 emissions...
The US is by far the highest emissions per capita, and its worse in that the US doesn't even do much of its own manufacturing....(imports far exceed exports)
Global warming will affect everyone, and the costs of not acting will be far greater than the cost of implimenting the protocol- that's why every other country is still going ahead with the plan, even without US participation. Yes, even Russia agreed to the plan, with the terrible shape its economy is in, because it knows the costs of not acting will be greater.
And the fact that the economy will be hurt is BS- the underlying assumption in economics is that our living standards are proportional to number of goods/services we produce- But what about air quality? pollution? clean water? moderate temperatures? None of those are accounted for in our economic models, so a naive economist would say destroying those for greater manufacturing output would improve our living standards, when in reality it would do the exact oposite.
And considering that cutting greenhouse gasses will require substantial investments in technology by companies all around the world, and the fact that the US is a global leader in research and development, it stands to gain much more from developing and marketing these technologies than it stands to lose from job cuts at the oil companies and SUV manufacturers.
NO, silly! You attach it to the handlebars of your bicycle.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I want to like blimps, but the Hindenburg shows just how bad an accident could get.
I want to like space travel, but the Columbia shuttle incident shows just how bad an accident could get.
I want to like sex, but AIDS shows just how bad an accident could get.
I mean, seriously, are you honestly trying to make this sort of argument? In the development of any technology or process, mistakes are made, and they are learned from. Are you under the impression that there's never been a fatal accident at a coal-based power plant, in the history of their development? Are you under the impression that there have never been accidents with dams? With the development of air travel? Space travel?
Here's a news flash for you: production of energy, at its most basic level, involves the harnessing of an exothermic -- or at least exergonic -- reaction, either chemical or nuclear, at some level or another. This essentially means that if you are dealing with large amounts of energy all concentrated in one place, there always remains the distinct possibility that it could all blow up in your face.
This is true of every single energy production method that actually generates large amounts of energy in a small space. Wind and solar aren't dangerous because the amount of energy generated per square foot is very small; and this is exactly what makes them (at this point in time) unworkable solutions for large scale energy production.
For everything else, you're dealing with potentially explosive, volatile (but hopefully controlled) chemical or nuclear reactions. That's how you get the energy out of them. (Fusion may be an exception).
However, despite the fact that your car runs by constantly harnessing the energy produced by an exploding gasoline/air mixture, it itself doesn't explode. Why is this? Engineering. See, despite the fact that gasoline is volatile (less so now than fuels used in the past, when combustion engines were first being developed) we have figured out how to stabilize engines running on them. They don't blow up in your face. But I'm willing to bet you that when people were first messing around with driving pistons by explosive force, someone got hurt. It was inevitable. It's part of the process.
Look, no one likes accidents, but the Chernobyl thing is silly to bring up. In terms of design, it's like comparing modern cars to Pintos, and concluding that every car will behave that way in an accident -- but Chernobyl, like the Pinto, was flawed from an engineering perspective, not from a technology perspective. When the Pinto was recalled, people didn't say, "Man, this automobile technology is bunk, let's never use it again, and use pogosticks for transportation from now on", they said, "Damn, Ford sure fucked up the design of that car. Let's never design cars like that again."
Throw in the word nuclear, and suddenly, everyone is saying, "Yeah, Chernobyl was poorly designed, and to boot, the operators were running it in a deliberately unsafe manner, and there was an accident; so let's stop the development of nuclear energy completely, and just use our radioactive reserves to build weapons of mass destruction instead." I mean, WHAT?
If someone had suggested that same idea wrt to automobile technology right after the Pinto incident, people would have rightly thought he was looney. But if it's nu-cu-lar, well, darn! I guess that logic makes perfect sense!
Nevermind that current reactor designs are completely different from Chernobyl's, and that the same accident would not be possible again, even if they tried.
Yeah, let's just kill the most promising means of producing renewable, clean energy because, during early development of the engineering principles needed to control such a powerful reaction, an accident occured. Let's wax lyrical about wind, solar, hydro and geothermal power solutions solving all our problems when a) they don't scale b) are prohibitively expensive and c) have problems
The problem with "free" is that there is no free lunch. The problem with Thermonuclear fusion is that it is producing HEAT. Even used to produce electricity, the end result (at my computer or light bulb or whatever) is HEAT.
That HEAT changes the environment, because it is a net addition of energy. The earth must dissipate that energy (presumably the atmosphere losing heat into space) or the environment will still be changing.
Hmm... maybe we could use wind turbines to remove some of this energy from the air?
Ballparked the numbers from Google; they should be reasonably accurate. Oil is a very powerful medium to transport energy.
..that is JUST to replace oil consumption ..and that's JUST for the USA alone ..and that assumes an optimistic 50% productivity ..and that assumes 100% energy transfer like oil provides - you'd probably have 50% transfer loss on top of the above - how's 12,000,000 500kW windmills sound? ..and that assumes 0 growth in USA oil production
Oil alone;
MBPD = million barrels per day
Average US consumption of oil per day: ~22MBPD
World Consumption: ~85-90MBPD
Energy in a barrel of oil: ~6.1e9 J
1kWh = 3.61e6 Joules.
Doing some numbers: 1 barrel of oil ~1700kWh
1700kWh/barrel x 22e6 barrels/day x 365day/year =
1.37e13 kWh - Yes, that's 10^13
How many windmills is that?
Let's assume medium-sized windmills for an average - 500kW units. Those are some big honking windmills, but not impractical.
How much energy will one of those provide assuming a 50% cycle (a little on the high end, but hey, let's be optimists) over the course of a year?
500kW x 24h/day x 365d x 0.5 = 2.2e6kWh
1.37e13kWh / 2.2e6 kWh = ~6,234,000 windmills. That's six MILLION windmills.
In short.. fusion, hot or cold, or someone better find out how to extract energy from the quantum vacuum (e.g. casimir effect) or we're all fu.. er, finished.
..don't panic
There is something wrong with this study.
/1000th of the total kinetic energy of the total heat exchange at most
The lower kilometer or so of the atmosphere is called the planetary boundary layer (PBL). It is not really modeled well in numerical atmospheric models, but is typically treated as a friction layer (i.e., given a single coefficient of friction). It is very hard to get these "lumped" coefficients of friction right - for example, they tend to be too low over mountain ranges.
The equator to pole temperature exchange occurs in the 20 km or so of the troposphere ABOVE the PBL. The PBL is barely involved, and is frequently ignored entirely in numerical models. Vertically averaged and spatially averaged, the pole to temperature heat exchange causes a wind of about 10 meters per second (in the 20 km of the troposphere above the PBL). To first order the PBL is decoupled to this and doesn't move at all (mean wind speeds of a few meters / second at most).
So how in the heck are even a forest of wind farms in the PBL (basically all of them except for any on mountain tops will be in the PBL) significantly slow down the heat exchange up in the troposphere when
- they hardly interact with it and
- the PBL has about 1
This doesn't pass the back of the envelope smell test; it's no wonder that they had such a hard time passing peer review.
We already knew that hydro-electric generators have this effect on water ecology. It only makes sense that wind would do something similar above ground.
... but nothing stops the production of nasty spent fuel and we've proven over and over that stuff along those lines will leech into the environment at least a little no matter what we do.
... as was pointed out today on a local NPR station when talking about Colorado's new requirement that energy sellers must produce 10% from renewable sources by 2015. They pointed out that 4% of the total must come from solar and are balking because wind and hydro are so much cheaper. Yes, cheaper for -them- but still more expensive to everything in the long-run.
But this being a push for the Nuclear lobby? No thanks. No, I'm not a conspiracy nut who refuses to acknowledge that a properly run fision plant built to modern specs can be run safely
Until Nuclear -fusion- is possible here on Earth, or unless someone figures out that solar panels will cool the Sun, I think I'll take my fusion energy from the sky.
Yes, Solar is more expensive
Of course, I will gladly watch wind and hydro generators replace "clean coal" (that damned coughing eagle!) and hold back fision lobbies, as pointed out wind is still more friendly by far than those sources. But in the end the only good solutions are going to be solar, fusion and if the Sim folks are right, Helium3.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Nuclear energy is an interesting science experiment, but a bad commercial energy source.
1. Its too expensive, the last plant to come on line in the eighties in the US, generated electricity a cost higher than solar power of the same era (the luz plant). After around $3 trillion in R&D funding, subsidies, loan guarantees, insurance no fault legislation, etc nuclear power is STILL a commercial failure only to exist out of the "goodness" of governments around the world.
2. Smart engineers know Murphy always wins. Its not IF there's going to be a serious accident (there have been many already), its WHEN. Reliability and safety only comes in nines - no such thing a 100% perfect.
3. Nuclear proliferation. The nuclear power industry is the only other major user and generator of nuclear materials other than nuclear weapons. You eliminate nuclear power and nuclear proliferation is easily controlled. Remember it only takes 5lbs of plutonium or 25lbs uranium to make a bomb. Once you've got the material, the bomb itself is literally garage science.
4. Compared to alternative energy (solar, wind, geothermal, wave, etc.), it's less commercially viable with far more risks. Nuclear power only wins on one account: energy density. And yet, outside of a nuclear submarine, this isn't an advantage! Transmitting power is twice the operation costs and ten times the capital cost compared to the generation of that power. Small decentralized power souces such a solar, photovoltaics, wind, etc is far cheaper overall.
5. Large monolithic power plants take years to build, the investment makes no sense without government subsidies if you have to wait 5 years just to begin to make some income, and 15 years to breakeven. Modular power technologies that are built on an assembly lines, such as photovoltaics generate returns within days.
I could go on here, but I think you get the point. Nuclear energy is a fun science experiment, but commercially we should cut our losses and run.
Solar power is after all fusion power already done for us, at a safe distance, and transmitted free nearly equally around the world with sufficient energy density to suit the worlds needs for millennia to come.
Interpretation for computer guys:
Nuclear power: old complex clunky mainframe, prone to bugs.
Solar power: wireless handheld with worldwide networking
TANSTAAFL (There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch).
The results of this research doesn't surprise me in the least. I agree that the actual results may be a bit different, but the general result is almost a no-brainer.
For the most part, winds are convection currents -- generated by the difference in temperature and humidity between different spots in the world -- but heat is the serious driver in this. As an overall results, physics will call for an equalization of states -- this means cooling the equator and heating the poles.
Windmills bleed off some of the kinetic energy from this process, as such, they're almost guaranteed to slow the process of pumping heat from the equator to the poles.
This is, however, probably a good thing, because other studies have concluded that the arctic will be (and has been) more affected by global warming than the temperate and tropical regions, so slowing the process would actually help to cut back some of the side effects of global warming, and possibly help to protect the polar ice caps (and thus moderate the resulting ocean level rise).
It's not a question if projects like this on a large scale would affect the weather. The answer to that is a no-brainer (yes). The question is how, and (probably more importantly) how we could most beneficially manage the resulting side-effects.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Iceland gets a 100% of their electricity from geothermal. The issue isn't maintainence it's the fact that there are few places on the globe where it is consistent and accessable. Hawaii is another place that has similar conditions and it gets power from geothermal. Everyone wants a magic bullet solution. The answer isn't one source but many different each where it applies best. In California the energy department admitted the best solution to the short term power shortages was solar. It works best at peak hours, can be installed locally so there is no line loss and areas with shortages can be directly addressed. Nothing was been done to encourage more solar. Instead they dropped the polution standards so they could reopen dirtier power plants. Few want to factor in line loss when they talk about solar. A substantial amount of the "cheap" power is lost before it ever gets to the customers. Also no one likes to factor in the secondary costs which most alternative sources lack. If power companies were forced to pay for their own clean up on "cheap" sources like nuclear they would be insanely expensive. By definaition the clean up costs are incalculable for nuclear because no one has ever perminately cleaned up a single mess. All they have done is moved the contamination and or waste to another temporary site. Imagine cleaning up all the contaminated soil and ground water? This is from a few decades of recieving a small percentage of our power from nuclear. Not to mention about thirty thousand nuclear weapons. Tens of billions of dollars have already been spent of the public's money to clean up nuclear, coal and oil messes the power companies left. If you factor in those legitimate costs alternation sources start looking attractive. This is ignoring another secondary cost, health care. What are the costs of air polution, cancer and mercury poisioning alone?
As to biomass there's a pilot plant that is nonpoluting that turns waste from a chicken processing plant into fuel oil. It does release carbon dixiode when burned but it's renewable and gets ride of a waste that was contaminating the environment and turns it into something needed. I'd even consider coal in the short term if they were forced to use scrubbers to remove polutants and a method could be found for removing the bulk of the carbon dixoide. The sad thing is most of the antipolution equipment adds only a few percent to the costs but the companies view that as profits lost so they have lobbyist attack the bills. There's really only one problem here. Every other issue is tied to it, corporate greed.
Not according to wind's growth rate.
The obstacles are surmountable.
Think about it - A power station burns coal to produce electricity which is leaked as heat over power lines to your house where you run your stereo / computers / appliances(heaters!) / etc. Global temps rise and produce super storms...
.931 and it takes 334 kiloJoules per kg to melt it, so one cubic meter weighing 931 kg absorbs 310954 kiloJoules, or 86 kilowatt-hours, upon melting. Approximately 2.6*10^14 kWh of heat energy would be required to melt the quantities of sea-ice that disappeared over the past 30 years.
Your hair dryer doesn't produce enough thermal pollution to affect the weather and produce storms. But the CO2 from the coal that was burned to power your hair dryer interferes with the ground's radiation of IR into space. For every BTU of power extracted from coal to produce electricity for your hair dryer, x BTUs will be trapped in the Earth's atmosphere by the CO2 that was released from burning that coal. To calculate a good lower limit on x you can compute how many kilowatt-hours of energy would be required to, say, account for the melting of the 1,000,000 square km of sea-ice that disappeared over the past 30 years (a figure from an article on the wires today), and divide by the actual kilowatt-hours that have been generated from burning carbon over the same 30 year period.
So assume the ice is 3m thick: 3,000 cubic km of ice is 3*10^12 cubic meters of ice. The density of ice is
That was the numerator. Now for the denominator. How many kilowatt-hours have been obtained from generating CO2 over the past 30 years? You could gather data from all countries regarding vehicle emissions, electricity usage, etc. But there is a direct way to calculate it: use the increase in atmospheric CO2 that occurred between 1970 and 2000. The concentration increased from 330 ppm to 370 ppm, a net change of 40 ppm. (Pre-industrial was 280 ppm.) Atmospheric pressure is 10 tons per square meter. There are 4.4*10^14 square meters on the earth, so the atmosphere weighs 4.4*10^15 tons, 0.04% of which is new CO2, or 1.76*10^11 tons. Since 1 ton of carbon produces 3.7 tons of CO2, 4.76*10^10 tons of this is carbon. You get about one kilowatt-hour of energy from burning one pound of coal. That would mean about 10^14 kilowatt-hours have been gotten from fossil fuels in the past 30 years, uncorrected for CO2 sinks like the Amazon which are estimated to be absorbing about 25% of our yearly output.
THEREFORE x is at least 2.7 from melting Arctic sea ice alone. If we are to make the reasonable assumption that the ice's sudden disappearance over my lifetime has something to do with CO2 being one-third more abundant than it used to be when I was a kid, it means that if you burn enough coal to melt one pound of ice, 2.7 pounds of Arctic sea-ice will disappear as a result. If we took all the coal, oil, and natural gas that's been burned since 1970 and did nothing with it except melt ice, we would have melted only 40% as much ice as this. And that's just in one place. This lower limit calculation only considered the Arctic sea-ice in today's wire story. But the rest of the planet- continents, oceans, land ice in Greenland - warms up too. The true ratio may be in the hundreds or thousands. And this is a figure only covering excess heat observed over the past 30 years. The CO2 will take time to dissipate, causing the ratio to rise even if we stopped all CO2 production today.
The problem is obviously not direct thermal pollution. Over just a few decades a liter of CO2 will retain much more thermal energy from the sun than we got out of it when we burned it. This should also put our windmill problems into some perspective.
The authors looked at what would happen if a significant percentage of the earth's surface was covered with wind farms; most advocates of alternative energy sources propose a diverse mix of different renewable energy sources. And, yes, it would have an effect. Probably, an effect not very different from the effect of having lots of forests.
Unlike greenhouse gas emissions, the effect is immediately reversible (CO2 stays in the atmosphere for centuries, but wind farms could be stopped or removed), and it mostly counteracts the consequences of the greenhouse effect (e.g., it creates arctic cooling).
The author himself states that he thinks that this is unquestionably preferable to greenhouse gases--he called it a "no brainer", actually.
Yes, even Russia agreed to the plan, with the terrible shape its economy is in, because it knows the costs of not acting will be greater.
n /articles/A464 16-2004May21.html
Let's get our facts straight here. They agreed to it once they got the nod from the EU that if they did support it, then they'd get entry into the WTO. So it really is all about the money for them. Oh, and just for your reference (no registration required)...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy
Just another day in Paradise
Nonsense. Its widely accepted that externalities (any economic activity which affects someone other than the buyers/sellers involved - such as all of the things you list) make economies work less efficiently and produce less good outcomes. This is a fundamental part of welfare economics - even part of something called the 'First Theorem of Welfare Economics' - and is something any economist should have learnt about.
It's politicians, the media and the general non-economist public who thing of GDP and output as being the one true measure of economic success. In fact, one of the first things many who study any economics at all will learn is just how bad GDP is as a measure of economic welfare. It's not even a particularly great measure of how many goods and services we each get to consume. Just how many people here do you think even know what it measures?
If anything there's a great deal of economic theory to support things like tradeable emissions quotas and taxes on energy and petroleum. And not just because of global climate changes either - there are plenty of more local reason like health problems and the degradation of the urban environments that many live in.
Disclaimer: I'm Off Grid and loosely affiliated with an Alternative Energy Resource Site (btw, we could use some help !)
Also, I have designed and constructed a 2.4 KW Windmill
MP3 Search Engine