[lbo-talk] catastrophy II

[Wojtek S]

[WS:] Gar's postings were extremely helpful, and I did not need much
convincing because for me almost anything looks better than fossils.
My only reservation is that a radical change in energy production
along the lines outlined by Gar may be feasible form a technological
point of view, but the behavioral/social/political changes it requires
is a very different story.  It would require enormous changes in the
life styles, such as switching from automobile to some form of
transit, a redesign how we build and heat our homes, different way we
design our cities, a very different way of cultivating land, or a
different mode of long distance travel.

Of course nobody knows for sure how this will play out, but if Jared
Diamond (_Collapse_) is right, such changes are very difficult to
implement even in societies facing extinction.  But in any case, I
think that main obstacle is not technological or even economic, but
behavioral/political.

Wojtek

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Dissenting Wren
<dissentingwren at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well, you've convinced me at least.  The political impediments are immense, but
> I think your case is impeccable.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Gar Lipow <gar.lipow at gmail.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Thu, March 17, 2011 12:16:39 AM
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] catastrophy II
>
> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 9:38 PM, Gar Lipow <gar.lipow at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If you have the natural gas. Natural gas is a great shaping source.
>> Complementary to nukes, coal, renewables alike. Not exactly  low
>> carbon though. (Conventional is lower than coal. But conventional
>> natural gas reserves are running out. Frakking aside from being
>> horrible environmentally, leaks methane and cause GHG emissions
>> comparable to coal. Shale gas leaks methane and is environmentally
>> destructive. Shipping LNG or CNG overseas is can lead to accidents and
>> regardless leaks methane. Methane is a far worse GHG than CO2.
>>
>> Lets do a risk comparison. Do nothing keep using fossil fuels,
>> catastrophe. Try a nuclear path. Expensive, same risk of being aborted
>> by poltiics, same risk of running out of money. Same risk of plain old
>> not working, cause nuclear is lousy for peaking and demand response -
>> two things you need even in the absence of renewables.  Or a renewable
>> path. It is not certain disaster like sticking with fossil fuels. Once
>> started I'd say the risk of it failing for various reasons is lower
>> than with nuclear. And you don't have all the freaking nuclear
>> disasters, which I consider worth something.
>>
>> Barry  Commoner advocated switching immediately to natural gas and
>> efficiency with a slow transition to solar back in the 70s when we had
>> plenty of natural gas. If he had been listened to then, we would have
>> had a no risk option.
>>
>> We don't have that. We have no low risk options. A renewable path
>> (which is not a particularly soft energy path) is the lowest remaining
>> risk. Also some of the mineral shortages: they are assuming one hell
>> of a lot of electric cars. If we move to electric trains that would
>> save some of the minerals. We do have substitutes when it comes to
>> building wind generators. We can replace some of the fancy rotor that
>> use rare earths with slighly less efficient ones that use iron.  At
>> least Jacobson and Delucchi base their proposals almost entirely on
>> existing tech. Hansen wants to gamble on tech for which commercial
>> prototypes have not been demonstrated. The equivalent would be for J &
>> D to have based their proposal on flying energy generators.
>
>
> Let me expand that. I don't think the risk is that high. The people
> who are telling Hansen it won't work are utility executives. Not only
> interested parties but not necessarily technical experts. Hansen is
> taking the word of self-interested people are in turn taking the word
> of other people.  One reason I'm pretty confident is that at least one
> study matched hour by hour demand over a three month period with hour
> by hour potential wind and solar supply, and assumed a small amount of
> storage and found an 85% match even in the single state of North
> Carolina.
>
> Blackburn, John. 2010. Matching Utility Loads with Solar and Wind
> Power in North Carolina: Dealing with Intermittent Electricity
> Sources. Takoma Park, Maryland: Institute for Energy and Environmental
> Research.  http://www.ieer.org/reports/NC-Wind-Solar.pdf.
>
> If you add hydro and geothermal, that already brings the match to 90%.
> Extend this long distance to include stronger wind zones, fiercer sun
> zones, and you can see why I'm pretty confident that  we can match
> supply and demand.
>
> Also 100 trillion dollars is a scary number. But that is over the
> course of 40 years. so 2.5 trillion a year. Until you compare it to
> what we spend on energy now worldwide.  The difference is perhaps a
> third of world military spending, perhaps less because I'm running out
> of energy to continue this.
>
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