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Windpower woes — 26 Comments

  1. A problem with these calculations is the use of the linear hypothesis of radiation exposure, which is essentially required to be used. It is like defining Pi by regulatory statute. We have a decent understanding of the effects of radiation at high levels for acute exposure but not for low for long exposures.

    For example if a population if 10000 people are exposed X amount of radiation are expected to develop 10 additional tumors, then the assumption is that if 10 million are exposed to X/1000, 10 additional tumors will occur. I heard one health physicist said this is like saying if you expected 1 death from 100 people jump off a 50 foot ledge, then you should see 1 death if 5000 people jumped of a 1 foot ledge.

    So fuzzy exposure numbers are multiplied by the population of say, Europe, and multiplying the average life expectancy, with the worse case being used by some groups; it is not surprising that big number that are all over the place arise.

  2. Outstanding post, neo. Fear of the unseen (nuclear radiation, CO2, trace amounts of mercury, pesticides, sun’s rays, space aliens, and much more) is a powerful tool for controlling large populations. Not quite what Huxley envisioned, but useful nonetheless. IMO, it’s all made easier as a result of inadequate scientific education coupled with some scientists who are willing tools in the cause.

  3. Good luck getting this one across. I’m chief power systems engineer for a large company, and despite knowing something about energy conversion, it holds little weight when debating the actual cost and output of “renewable” energy, with my fellow citizens who have no scientific background or education.
    The average person knows all about the sun, the wind, and the ocean, and the limitless source of cheap, free, and endless power they offer up to mankind –if only the profiteers and oil companies weren’t controlling things. They know nothing of how any of those things happen, or of the energy or cost or resources required to manufacture the things that provide the magic power.
    If the true costs and efficiencies of these things were honestly reported (like everything else), we could have an honest conversation about how energy is supplied. This country is blessed with enormous energy resources. No single one is enough to supply all our needs. Solar and wind have small roles, but various forms of nuclear can’t be excluded, if we are going to continue to exist as a modern culture. Some form of nuclear energy will need provide the bulk of it. One promising technology is Thorium. It’s radioactive, but it cannot be used to produce a bomb, and won’t cause a meltdown. There are obstacles, and being mildly radioactive, will no doubt be opposed by the same crowd that believes in unicorns and pixie dust.
    As long as our educational systems are graduating so many people with poor math and science skills, we will continue to be governed by idiots who serve themselves first, and an electorate that is largely ignorant, or lacking the basic skills to evaluate technology. A majority of our kids are growing up without any fundamental knowledge of phyisics, common sense, or the ability to intelligently evaluate things that affect our common welfare. And there are millions of older citizens in this boat too, but convincing them they are clueless has been in my experience, impossible.

  4. We now have huge amounts of NG, coal and oil. those should form the basis of our energy needs.

    Solar and wind don’t make sense except in some nitch uses. Neither is good base power, since it isn’t constant. neither is good peaking power, because it peaks when nature wants, not when we want. Neither is good backup power, for the same reason.

    Solar is great for pocket calculators, welders helmets, remote radio repeaters, and the odd off grid shack. Wind is great for powering boats and pumping water for livestock.

    Nukes make sense if we run out of cheap coal, oil and NG, or if we really think we need to cut carbon output.

  5. I’m chief power systems engineer for a large company, and despite knowing something about energy conversion, it holds little weight when debating the actual cost and output of “renewable” energy, with my fellow citizens who have no scientific background or education.

    My sympathies. Aggravating, isn’t it? I get the same thing re chemistry. All those years wasted, when all we had to do was watch a few segments of Nova.

  6. My favorite re power generation is people thinking that by using electric vehicles they’re not generating any greenhouse gases.

    No, they aren’t; the power plant is.

    But my very favorite one is the morons who think we can replace electrical power stations with batteries.

    Sure. Go with that.

  7. A problem with these calculations is the use of the linear hypothesis of radiation exposure, which is essentially required to be used.

    A common problem in the regulation of toxic (and especially carcinogenic) substances, I believe (“no safe threshold level”).

  8. One more comment. Driving through Palm Springs, which has a major wind power project, it struck me: windmils are … ugly.

    Sure, one at a time, they’re kind of artsy. But a whole plain full of them is ugly, much like (ironically) a petroleum refinery. They put me in mind of the mycelia of mold growing on a piece of bread.

  9. “The law of unintended consequences has not been suspended to accommodate good intentions.” That’s a great line, Neo – and one I’ll be borrowing.

  10. “I’m chief power systems engineer for a large company . . . .”

    I believe that it was this particular commenter to the essay neo cites (quoted by OB above) that also mentioned rising energy costs.

    He made the distinction between rising energy costs for consumers and industry but the word he used for rising business rates was “apocalyptic.”

    Obama has no knowledge of the fact that aluminum companies use vast amounts of electricity to extract aluminum from bauxite. Futhermore, most steel companies have switched from the old blast furnaces to basic oxygen furnaces which, if memory serves, are electrically run.

    Let’s see, apocalyptic power rates = shut down of aluminum prouction, shutdown of steel production . . . sounds like an Obamatopia to me.

  11. Obama has no knowledge of the fact that aluminum companies use vast amounts of electricity to extract aluminum from bauxite.

    Aluminum plants used also to use electricity to keep the aluminum molten while conveying it through the plant, IIRC. One of the targets of the German saboteurs landed on Long Island during WWII was the electrical power to an aluminum plant, because a power outage would cause the aluminum to freeze, necessitating replacement of all the conduits throughout the plant, which would be down for months. No idea if this is still the case.

  12. Great post Neo, but I’m afraid it’s wasted breath. Like many of the other commentators have said, talking to most of these people using established science, and facts is nearly impossible. The only “reality” I’m afraid they will accept is when there are rolling blackouts and $0.75/kwH rates.

    “The law of unintended consequences has not been suspended to accommodate good intentions.” I disagree a bit here. It is not so much unintended consequences…. the consequences are easily predictable from basic thermodynamics. Or, as my favorite engineer, Montgomery Scott put it: “Cap’n.. I canna change the laws of physics!”

  13. Okay, every time this subject comes up, I always post this same thing. It’s not “mine” btw: I cribbed it out of the comments section of a blog years ago.

    But it’s the best thing I’ve ever read (from a commenter at Roger Simon a couple of years ago). It might be the most lucid yet simple-to-understand analysis around.

    (My apologies if a) I’ve posted it here before, or b) you’ve read it before elsewhere. And kudos, again, to “dirtyblueshirt”.)

    This doesn’t include a lot of math, but when it comes to energy, you’ve got to have some math lol.

    Here’s a number you need to keep in mind: 3 Terawatts. That’s about how much power we’re using in the country right now. If that were used for 100W incandescent bulbs you’d need 30 billion bulbs.

    There’s no way renewable energy is going to come close to that.

    That would require over 2 billion square meters of 100% efficient solar panels, that’s about the same area as all the land in Rhode Island (real solar panels are about 25% efficient so you’d need to pave Delaware’s land as well). And of course solar panels don’t do too well at night, so you’d need to at least double that area, that brings us to the land area of Hawaii, plus you’d need a way to store around 40 TWh’s which simply doesn’t exist. And all that ignores factors such as clouds, dirt, animals, etc.

    So what about wind? The most powerful wind turbine today is ~7 MW, so we’d need around 500,000 of them. They have a rotor diameter of 126m, so they’d have to be at least 65m apart. That means they’d take up 6 billion square meters, about the same as all of Delaware. I can’t imagine it would be good for anything flying. Now this is the peak power, so we’d have to factor in all the time that the wind isn’t blowing hard enough, or when it’s blowing too hard. Again we need a storage system for mind-boggling amounts of energy. Also, has anyone looked at the climatological effects of taking 3TW of convective energy out of the atmosphere?

    Both solar and wind suffer from a fatal flaw: They can’t be controlled. Grid operators can’t dial supply up (we can somewhat do down) to meet demand, and when you’re talking about the electric grid either you balance it or it balances itself…usually in some exciting manner.

    Hydro’s pretty much tapped out in the country, not to mention ecomentalists flip their shit whenever someone mentions building dams. Same thing with geothermal, unless we want to start drilling in Yellowstone.

    Nuclear could do it, but whenever you mention it the ecomentalists set a record in going from zero to stupid.

    That leaves fossil fuels. There’s nothing else. Especially when it comes to moving stuff. We have nothing that comes close to the power density of hydrocarbons when it comes to mobile applications, and hydrocarbons are the only energy source that’s suitable for mobile applications. Everything else (e.g. hydrogen and ethanol) are just ways to make electricity mobile.

    Steven den Beste posted something similar about power generation during the early Bush years, in a discussion about the Kyoto Accords. NOTE: The link doesn’t always work. You can surf to it using his archives, and go to 2002, 06 and look for Kyoto (near the bottom of the page …and yeah, it’s worth a read).

    I’d also add the Jerry Pournelle pretty much nailed the problem (capacity), in the mid-to-late 1970’s. Even though it’s old, you could do far worse than read his book A Step Farther Out …it remains inspiring, not too dated, and very, very sad (from our 2012 perspective).

  14. Dr. Manuel Cereijo, an electrical engineering professor, wrote a very good op-ed piece in 2011 about the problems of solar/wind power and the safety of nuclear power particularly in Florida, which has minimal seismic activity. I remember in particular he discussed the inherent loss of electricidad through power lines when energy was traveling from remote areas. Wind and solar tended to be in remote areas. (Who wants that in their back yard? Certainly not the Kennedys, remember?)

    I have used his article in class when we discuss technological and environmental issues because it is clear and concise enough for second-language learners to understand. I think that is what is needed to reach the general population btw.

    As an aside, I always found that most people like explaining their field to people outside it. One of my happiest experiences was living in a house with a bunch of engineers – electrical, aerospace, etc. If they were a little sleepy at breakfast, I could wake them right up by saying, “I don’t understand why, when so-and-so is walking around upstairs, it creates a ripple effect around the light fixture down here.”

  15. Occam – annoying enough I’ve learned to just change the subject and offer them another beer.
    Physicsguy — ignorance of the laws of physics doesn’t preclude being president. Plus Harvard law professors are used to changing laws they don’t like.
    I’m not sure, but I think it was the Nobel Prize Energy Secretary, or a colleague, who proposed painting the roofs of all residential homes in the US white, to reflect sunlight back to the bad place it came from, in order to reduce global warming. With a wizard like this running the show, it’s no wonder we can’t have a serious energy policy.
    Unless there’s a quantum leap in solar panel techology, it’s a supplemental solution for local, small demand appliances.
    Wind is solar energy, and less dependable. Batteries used for grid stabilzation are unbelievably expensive. They have places where they are working as backup power, but they cost several hundreds of millions, and cover several football fields. These can power very small towns for a few hours. Not exactly an answer for 300 million people.
    I get that research needs to be done to make that quantum leap, (if there is one to make), but subsidizing marginal solutions isn’t the way to do it. There’s no motivation to produce anything useful if the only way to compete with other technologies, imperfect as they might be, is to rig the game.
    Our country is literally swimming in energy resources, and we are held hostage by a political class who are perpetually occupied with birth control pills and abortions, who have no time for trivial matters like national energy policy.
    It’s exasperating to watch a country debate “energy dependancy”, when it’s entirely self inflicted, and pertuated by public ignorance and political self interest by mostly one party.

  16. Any production resource which cannot be reasonably decoupled from its environment will be unsuitable as a primary energy source.

    There is also the matter of environmental and human hazards that arise with recovery of the exotic materials required for the function of so-called “green” energy technology. The Chinese will not forever absorb the consequences of well-intentioned energy policies. And, in the case of windmills, there are several hundred thousands birds and bats which annually meet their mortal end as they fail to run the gauntlet. They can hardly be considered “green.”

    The only viable alternative which could be considered as a primary energy source is nuclear technology. Unfortunately, many people have an irrational fear and misunderstanding of nuclear processes, and there are certain political, commercial, and non-profit interests which have an incentive to preserve that emotion and ignorance.

  17. Occam — annoying enough I’ve learned to just change the subject and offer them another beer.

    Same here, although I usually am the one having another beer. Let the morons buy their own, I say.

    I’m OK with this approach unless confronted with an earnest, sanctimonious ignoramus bleating complete nonsense derived from some half-understood mangling of the topic written by someone who himself only half-understood it. I call this the “Nova effect.”

  18. Sad thing is that over time there ARE places that can benefit from the kinds of tech green latched onto as theirs. but there is no way that even photovoltaics are worth it IF you do a full end to end accounting to note how much energy it takes to make them, what their decline is, and lots of other things having to do with the fact that outside is dirty…

    but sadly… there ARE things that would work as offsets, and would not need to be subsidized. they are not huge and fancy, but they have their place…

    with all that cash misappropriated, Obama has been the worst on entrepreneurial outputs at 1/4 the others… not to mention other economically engineered things (with socially engineered things) and so on

  19. Courts Not Scientists Sneaked Greenhouse Gas Sham into Law

    Even though neither U.S. presidential candidate is talking up man-made global warming behind the scenes courts are hard at work making laws based on controversial greenhouse gas science.

    An undemocratic, largely unseen shift in American law is now taking place. You would never know it from the media facade but 2012 has witnessed an inexorable Big Green legal juggernaut driving across America. Judges not voters are at the wheel and by stealthy maneuvering we are being steamrollered by secret government diktat rather than electoral preference. It is happening away from the public political barometer because the mainstream media focuses voter minds on believing the race for the Whitehouse is all about the grassroots economy.

    http://johnosullivan.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/courts-not-scientists-thrust-greenhouse-gas-science-into-law/

  20. “I heard one health physicist said this is like saying if you expected 1 death from 100 people jump off a 50 foot ledge, then you should see 1 death if 5000 people jumped of a 1 foot ledge.”

    As someone who spent 26 years as a lead rad safety tech in a nuke power plant, I agree with this analogy. Our concept of risk versus benefit is wildly skewed towards risk aversion. 90+% of our safety standards (radiation, chemical, etc.) fall into this category. Fear of what one can not see but only imagined is a handy tool for bureaucrats.

  21. Democrats could care less about a sound energy plan. They just want to unionize and control the huge industry so they can launder money for democrat politics through it.

  22. ““The designation of the affected population as “victims” rather than “survivors” has led them to perceive themselves as helpless, weak and lacking control over their future. ”

    Michael Crichton called these people victimized by an agenda driven media” information invalids” way back in 2005. People sickened by bad information.

  23. Occam’s Beard: Rush Limbaugh calls electric cars “Coal Powered cars”…lol….not sure if he came up with that name or someone else did.

  24. “Fantasists” re German energy is the correct label.

    Germany is slowly committing national suicide.

    They don’t have babies, and they will not have any reliable manufacturing after 2022 (just another ten years!) due to self-imposed power constraints.

    I just hope I live long enough to see it, despite the IPAB of Obamacare. Which makes me realize once again that the loss of the election to Obama will securely head us down the same road as Germany.

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