The government has a massive debt, and the Great Recession is still going strong, but this fool wants clean energy! It's time for the cheapest energy possible!
Posted on 07/22/2012 8:23:36 PM PDT by neverdem
YOU don’t have to be a climate scientist these days to know that the climate has problems. You just have to step outside.
The United States is now enduring its warmest year on record, and the 13 warmest years for the entire planet have all occurred since 1998, according to data that stretches back to 1880. No one day’s weather can be tied to global warming, of course, but more than a decade’s worth of changing weather surely can be, scientists say. Meanwhile, the country often seems to be moving further away from doing something about climate change, with the issue having all but fallen out of the national debate.
Behind the scenes, however, a somewhat different story is starting to emerge — one that offers reason for optimism to anyone worried about the planet. The world’s largest economies may now be in the process of creating a climate-change response that does not depend on the politically painful process of raising the price of dirty energy. The response is not guaranteed to work, given the scale of the problem. But the early successes have been notable.
Over the last several years, the governments of the United States, Europe and China have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on...
--snip--
Even natural gas, a hotly debated topic among climate experts, helps make the point. Thanks in part to earlier government investments, energy companies have been able to extract much more natural gas than once seemed possible. The use of natural gas to generate electricity — far from perfectly clean but less carbon-intensive than coal use — has jumped 25 percent since 2008, while prices have fallen more than 80 percent. Natural gas now generates as much electricity as coal in the United States, which would have been unthinkable not long ago...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The government has a massive debt, and the Great Recession is still going strong, but this fool wants clean energy! It's time for the cheapest energy possible!
We can’t even control the economy and this jughead wants to control the weather. What the hell are they teaching these morons in school these days?
I’m trying to keep up. I thought 1998 was the hottest year on record, and that we were cooling since then. Did I hear the MSM wrongly?
What most don’t understand about solar or wind derived energy is that there is no free lunch. If you remove energy from the environment to channel it elsewhere, it will change the climate also. For instance, taking capturning sunlight and turning it into electricity keeps it from warming the area it would have normally. This will can the local environment with other consequences. Changing wind patterns by slowing wind to capture its energy also affects the environmnet where it occurs. What will be the consequences?
No matter how you generate or reroute energy, it will have environmental impacts. How serious, I couldn’t begin to say.
Pure drivel. There is plenty of rain in the pacific NW. There is a stripe of drought in the middle of the country. There is excess rain in east Texas and up towards the NE from there. Did the wizards with their climate models predict this striping effect? Hell no. The weathermen can't predict this striping even with their much better models. Now some climate model wizards might point out that they can ignore initial conditions and make "projections" instead of predictions. The trouble is that none of their projections showed the current striping of precipitation across the U.S.
Then they insinuate that the striping comes from blocking which comes from low sea ice. There's an easy answer for that. The blocking pattern caused the highest sea ice in history around Alaska this past winter. Low sea ice caused high sea ice?? Gimme a break.
That example is not likely to cause any problems. The thermal storage of solar energy is far more affected by land use and natural factors. For example a parking lot would have a lot greater effect on the weather than an equivalent sized solar PV farm. Solar thermal might be a little different since it concentrates the heat, boils water and creates water vapor.
And Japan is having excessive rain and cold, while New Zealand is having an unseasonably cold winter.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc
I still want to know how they plan on fixing the climate and what happens if the go too far the other way. What happens if it gets too cold and Africa starts to freeze. What are their plans?
Give us money is not a solutions.
“For example a parking lot would have a lot greater effect on the weather than an equivalent sized solar PV farm.”
Good point and agreed. A “dark” parking lot would have a greater impact. I do think you understand my main point though. Anything we do to redirect energy or to generate it will affect the environment. As I said, there is no free lunch.
Ah... but there is a lot of lunch that is just thrown away. We need to learn to use that wasted energy better. There are new and untapped energy sources that we are on the verge of making practical.
Why not incorporate solar panels into the parking lot?
Make an asphalt that generates electricity from light, and pressure, and pave the heck out of the highways.
Put these along the highway, at the sides of overpasses, etc, and generate power from the passing vehicles.
They don't kill birds, they don't make a 'thump, thump, thump' noise, and they can be painted cool colors.
In the US 1934, 1921, and 1931 are in the top ten warmest years.
So, what was going on back then?
And why are the reported hottest years in the rest of the world all very recent but in the US, some of the record years are from long ago, such as the 20s, 30s, and 50s?
We are warming slower than the rest of the world??
Leave to the NYT to get it upside down. The earth has been cooling for the last 13 years not increasing temperatures.
Do the opposite of the NYT ans you will be right.
Global varming must be causing liebrals brain lobes to swell..
amazing how the nuclear industry which offers so many real long term jobs is so low.. it should be much higher.
You ain’t kidding...my golf season here in Seattle north has been a series of rain outs. It is almost end of July and it rained again today!
As for “MAN MADE” global warming, how did every ice age end?
You betcha it was ferocious global warming!
Then riddle me this, greenies, why is it that until about 100yrs ago, there were citrus groves as far north as southern GA? Now only a handful remain north of the Rat(Disney World, Orlando area). If there were any truth to this man-made global warming hysteria there would be palm trees growing in the Catskills by now. BTW, notice how it’s referred to as MAN-made instead of the more PC, gender neutral PERSON-made global warming? As if we’re too unsophisticated and ignernt to see though the transparent attempt at suble manipulation. But then again the massas are the asses.
Darn it! i meant MASSES! bleepin keyboard!
That new energy has to come from somewhere. Where?
Generating electricity from pressure due to passing vehicles MUST take energy from the vehicles. The road must be made slightly more flexible to generate electricity, which makes the road 'softer.' Everyone's gas mileage is slightly less. Net loss of energy.
Putting rotors along the highways uses the moving river of air generated by moving vehicles. When the air hits the rotors, it slows down. Cars run into this slower air and lose speed. Gas mileage for these cars is slightly less. Net loss of energy.
Sorry, no free lunch here. You are just stealing energy from the cars on the roads. And, since there is an energy conversion, some energy is lost. Hence the net loss of energy in both methods.
I can see the lawsuits now from people who crack up their cars watching the pretty psychedelic designs, or the ones who have seizures...:)
Heh, only kidding! (it made me think about the “Opti-Grab”!
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