[XCSSA] Man Made Global Warming Consensus A Farce?

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

> Well, not really. Wind power is unreliable, it can't meet the  
> spikes in demand that exist as people use electricity. The only  
> plants that can come online quick enough to supply those spikes are  
> natural gas plants. Those aren't terribly efficient. If we really  
> wanted to provide a substantial amount of cheap power, we'd build  
> nuclear plants. Nuclear plants are safe, terribly efficient, and  
> produce huge amounts of power.

I said "renewable energy" now specificially "wind".  AFAIK,  
"renewable" energy could meet all our energy needs, without including  
Nuclear energy.

Sure wind itself is very intermittent and does not match our demand  
curve.  However, it is complementary to solar energy, which pretty  
well tracks our demand curve but provides nothing at night.  And then  
there are very steady sources such as geothermal and wave energy.

What would work is to combine energy from all these sources over a  
large geographic area.  Then add energy storage systems and demand  
management.  Energy storage is obviously a key, and better methods of  
energy storage are being developed, such as Vanadium Flow batteries  
which are currently being developed in 10 MWHr capacities, and no  
reason they couldn't be scaled up to GWHr capacities.  And then  
there's also good old "pumped water" energy storage systems, which  
have been used for a long time (though not on the scale that might be  
required in future).  Use surplus energy to pump water up, then let  
it run down through turbines when energy is needed.

All this costs lots of money, but so does nuclear, and nuclear has  
unsolved problems (long term waste storage) and will, before too  
long, require reprocessing (which increases risk of material ending  
up in terrorist hands) and ultimately "breeder" reactors (which have  
proven to be a very complicated and dangerous technology...typically  
sodium cooling is used...the few that exist, none in the USA, are  
mostly offline).

One great idea is the use of grid-managed plug-in-hybrid or electric  
vehicles.  We will need large amounts of battery storage using  
appropriate technology (such as Lithium Ion) for future vehicles  
anyway, so why not let the grid "borrow" energy from that storage  
when it wouldn't be a problem and then pay back when there is surplus  
juice.  As incentive, if you allow such "borrowing" your electric  
rate could be much lower.  Motive power from electricity runs at the  
equivalent to $1/gallon gasoline anyway.

Similarly, water pumping and aluminum refining require lots of energy  
but can operate on as-surplus-power-is-available basis.  This has  
also been done for a long time.  Also we now have primitive demand  
management with utility-controlled-thermostats.  In Baltimore, you  
can get a hefty discount on your electric rates if you install one.   
Here the situation is a bit different (we have more surplus capacity)  
and CPS only gives you a free thermostat and installation...hardly  
worth the effort IMO, besides I didn't like their thermostat.  (I  
just got a Honeywell VisionPro IAQ thermostat, far better than what  
CPS gives you.  It cost $475 installed.  It's better because it's not  
just energy saving but better humidity control, etc., and it's just  
way cool.  It's a little touchscreen computer with temp and humidity  
sensors running your HVAC system.)

So you build "nominal" capacity quite a bit larger than you would  
need with fossil sources, and dole out any intermittent surpluses for  
storage to be used later or water pumping etc.

Sooner or later we will need to do all this anyway.  Oil will become  
unusable for energy in this century (if not the next 30 years) simply  
because the price will be too high or the energy-return-on-energy- 
investment will be too low.  Oil will still be available for chemical  
uses for which EROEI doesn't matter or perhaps specialized uses such  
as jet fuel.  Coal will hit a similar situation either in this  
century or the next.  Nuclear as it is now would only be useful about  
as long as oil, though with reprocessing and eventually breeders it  
*could* last longer.  But why do that, when for about the same cost  
we could build renewable systems now which will be useful forever,  
are far safer, etc.

The sooner we do this, the easier it is because we now still have  
lots of oil energy which is handy for large scale construction.  As  
time goes on, it will become more difficult.

This cannot be done overnight anyway, and as we build more renewable  
we will figure out how to do it better.  Right now, we get so little  
energy from wind (even in Texas, the nation's leader in wind power)  
that it can simply be put online with no concern about its  
intermittancy.  It simply displaces fossil use on the grid.  But when  
it gets above 20%, that becomes an issue, you begin to have larger  
surpluses than you can use at off hours.  For solar, intermittancy is  
even less of a problem.

And further, if you believe in global warming, as most climatologists  
do, then there is an additional reason to get building large scale  
renewable energy now as much as possible.

Charles