Gore Refuses to take Personal Energy Ethics Pledge

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Flubber


While that helps, do you think that say the manfacture and transporation and construction of a windmill causes zero emissions? Do you nthink there would currently be enough alternative energy sources to meet the needs of everyone?

I sincerely doubt it. So if someone pays for alternative energy it likely doesn't change the fact that for every unit of energy they use, a unit of energy is generated using hydrocarbons somewhere in the system.

Energy use isn't the only issue, but there was one crackpot idea out a few years ago which illustrates your point well. After one of General Dynamics' merger-driven layoffs, a group of laid off applied physics types tried to promote gyroscope power, using large gyroscopes to extract the earth's rotational energy. The concept works in the abstract, and the physics are sound. Efficiency is another issue, though. They calculated that if you placed the gyroscope at the equator to maximize the earth's rotational speed (and ignore that nobody at the equator needs much electricity), you could generate about 10 kilowatts ("for free" ) with a gyroscope weighing about 80 US tons. If you look at the entire manufacturing process from ore extraction, smelting, metallurgy, precision machining, transport and erection, the energy consumption for that much metal would be equal to the output of the device for several decades. Needless to say, these clowns never found any investors.

When you get to windmills and conventional generation technology, though, the total energy input to create the system is a pretty small percentage of the lifetime output. Coal fired power plants are the most "efficient" in that sense -

Total energy consumed from extraction to erection / net lifetime energy production

but wind turbines are significantly less than conventional aeroderivative combustion turbine peaking plants on that criteria. Although the wind farm has lots of small separate generators and generator windings, plus controls, the main parts of it are fairly energy efficient in production compared to their total lifetime.

The aeroderivative peaking plant not only has a lot of precision machined parts in the turbine, but a fairly high plant complexity in terms of pumps, air and gas compressors, piping, water treatment, etc. It's still a small percentage overall, but wind and biomass technologies are more efficient in that sense than the average portfolio of fossil generators. Solar is another issue, especially photovoltaics. There the big environmental negative is the toxicity of the photovoltaic materials themselves, rather than the energy budget for manufacture.

I don't necessarily think that Gore's energy usage is that bad BUT I do think that a preacher of a message should at least look at his usage and acknowledge that reductions in usage is the VERY best method to reduce emissions

It really isn't, though - without allowing for significant adverse socioeconomic impacts, reduction in usage could maybe allow for about a 10-20% reduction in electric energy use. Most of that would not be achieved from casual reduction (e.g. less air conditioning/lighting), but from engineered efficiency and technology improvements, i.e. commercial/industrial capital projects and technological progress in emission producing machinery.

Current commercially proven alternative energy technologies can probably penetrate as much as 30-35% of the generating portfolio other than nuke/hydro, (I'm excluding those because they're non greenhouse emitters, but have their own separate environmental and operational issues.), depending on relative costs of generation. Carbon trading/offsets/penalties is one way to level the cost playing field between fossil and non-fossil alternatives.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Flubber
But whats obvious?? In the 70s there was a consensus around global cooling.

A large part of which was based (correctly) on both man-made and natural particulate emissions. The human contribution to particulates has been addressed fairly well in the last 20-30 years in most of the developed world.

The huge difference between the 70's and now is that back then, both data gathering and analysis were in their relative infancy, in terms of satellite and extraplanetary data and in computational modeling theory and capacity. Look at the differences in aviation between 1930 and 1960, for example. How about atomic theory between 1921 and 1951?

Scientists reaching different conclusions now than they did three decades ago on this subject really has no bearing on the validity of the current conclusions.

Ocean tempertures off of North America has shown some rapid changes both up and down and the scientists frankly don't know what they mean and lack the historical data to assess the commonality of such events

I'm not a global warming jihadist by any means. There are obviously multiple natural cycles on local and global levels, as well as human input, but the totality of the trends, rather than isolated details that don't fit the overall pattern, are what is most important here.

[Jaakko]

Originally posted by Flubber



But whats obvious?? In the 70s there was a consensus around global cooling.

Ocean tempertures off of North America has shown some rapid changes both up and down and the scientists frankly don't know what they mean and lack the historical data to assess the commonality of such events

The Newsweek article where you most likely got your consensus idea regarding global cooling in the '70s, was not based on any peer-reviewed work.