Posts Tagged by fossil fuels
Getting Smarter About Renewable Energy
| May 4, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
A reader asked for my opinion on this article in RealClearScience, a well-written and innocuous primer on renewable energy.
The premise: “keep pushing, but push smarter” is hard to argue with. I’m reminded of people who caution “Be careful!” when someone trips or bumps his head. Read More
Do Threats to Our Natural Environment Pose a Clear and Present Danger?
| May 3, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
Frequent commenter Larry Lemmert writes:
Have you ever heard the term “clear and present danger”? … When the danger rises to an indisputable level that affects the wellbeing of everyone, we will become united and save the planet.
Larry: I’ve read dozens of your posts here, and I can see that you obviously have a keen intellect. So, given all this, you don’t think there’s a “clear and present danger” associated with the issues that surround our continued dependence on fossil fuels? Read More
PBS’s “Electric Nation”
| May 1, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
The PBS special “Electric Nation” is a reasonably fair-minded and certainly non-hysterical treatment of the various modes of how we in the U.S. generate electricity. Personally, had I written the show, I would have been quite a bit more hysterical, emphasizing the utter insanity of our business-as-usual approach to fossil fuels and our failure to form a workable energy policy, even in the face of:
• Global climate change
• Ocean acidification
• Peak oil
• Empowering terrorist and other anti-American regimes
• Escalating rates of lung disease
Yet they were good enough to quote Thomas Edison’s famous simile regarding our shortsightedness when it comes to energy:
“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy–sun, wind and tide.”
Do Wind Turbines Contribute To Global Warming?
| April 30, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Wind Energy |
A reader sent me this article in Scientific American that suggests the possibility that wind turbines contribute to global warming and requested my response.
It seems to me that the first commenter nailed it: “the article also seems to forget warmist theory discounts the concept of local climate having any affect on the globe, only the average global temperature matters.” Moreover, let’s do a bit of math here. Could the waste heat produced by a wind-driven generator offset the benefit derived from not burning that amount of coal? Forget about the negative effects of mining and transporting the coal, and think of the thermodynamics in the coal plant itself, where you have waste heat from both the burning of the coal and the generation of electricity.
Also keep in mind that climate change is only one of half a dozen reasons to migrate away from fossil fuels.
Overall, this sounds silly. But apparently, Scientific American isn’t held in the esteem I thought it was; those comments really shredded them.
There’s So Much To Like About Aeroponics
| April 25, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Sustainability |
The more I learn about aeroponics (growing fruit and vegetables in a mist of air, water, and minerals), the more I like. Of course, when you look at a piece of plastic with an electrical cord attached to it, you think immediately we’re trading in one set of resource hogs for another. I.e., we’re reducing certain ecologic and financial costs:
• the water for irrigation
• the fossil fuel resources to plant, harvest, process, and transport
• the chemicals necessary to fertilize
• the toxins necessary to kill an ever-evolving set of weeds and insect pests
But, we’re using plastic that comes from petroleum, and we’re using electricity, almost half of which comes from coal.
True, there is no such thing as a free lunch; everything comes with a certain environmental impact. Yet, here we have a method of growing produce that’s many hundreds of times cleaner that farming as it appears on Earth in the 21st Century. The pump in the tower pictured here is rated at 17 Watts, and it’s shut off most of the time; it consumes about a kilowatt-hour of electricity a week. Moreover, future versions of the tower will be made of bioplastic.
At the same time, aeroponics hands you a product that is far higher in nutritional value than what you’re buying through agribusiness. It’s organic – and it’s at your doorstep.
Humanity Faces Crisis: A Quick Analysis
| April 19, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
Scientists tell us that the threat of climate change (not to mention the other issues associated with the depletion of natural resources in the face of population growth) is the most important event facing mankind in the entire history of humanity. That’s quite a thought, when you reflect on it. After 10,000 years of our living in organized society, we’ve come to the point at which our ability to limit the damage we’re doing to our environment over the next few decades will mean the difference between our success and failure as a species. Read More
You’ll Never See Another Nuclear Power Plant Commissioned in the US
| April 14, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Nuclear |
Frequent commenter/author Frank Eggers writes on my piece on subsidies for nuclear:
Nuclear power has been demonstrated to be far safer than fossil fuel power. Coal plants cause health problems that, while severe, are difficult to pinpoint because generally they simply greatly increase the health problems which would exist anyway whereas nuclear accidents, though infrequent, have a more concentrated and obvious effect.
Frank: I’m not one of the hysterical anti-nuke people who grossly over-estimates the danger. Having said that: Read More
Video: Renewable Energy’s Strengths and Weaknesses
| March 22, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Science |
Here’s another in our series of short introductory videos, in which I discuss renewable energy generally, including its strengths and weaknesses. We ALL want clean, abundant, inexpensive energy — and renewables hold the potential to take us there. But as much as we like this concept generally, there are issues; there are costs that need to be understood. It’s fine to be an advocate, but it’s even better to wrap your wits around as many of the issues as possible: technological, economical, and political.
Michael Klare: Why High Gas Prices Are Here To Stay
| March 14, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
I refer frequently to the writings of Professor Michael Klare, documentarian at Amherst, as I find him so lucid and so on-target in his analysis of the macro issues on energy that we face here in the 21st Century. Here, in his piece Why High Gas Prices Are Here To Stay, he notes the difference between what the oil propagandists say (“the world is awash in oil”), and the truth: the world still contains plenty of oil, but very little “easy” oil. It’s getting harder to get to, it’s becoming harder to extract and refine, and the risks to the environment are growing with each passing year. And who’s absorbing these costs? Look in the mirror.
Summary of Oil Production and Consumption
| March 12, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
My colleague Fritz Maffry just sent me this summary of oil production and consumption that I thought readers might find interesting.
