Climate Change, 'Greenhouse' effects, Environment, etc part III

Different reputable studies using different methodologies arrive at different numbers, but they all show that solar PV is cleaner, including the CO2 used to manufacture the panels.

So glad you read and understood your link ...

I did. You didn't.

I see nobody has made a comment about nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) that I brought up earlier.

So from the Wiki for nitrogen trifluoride greenhouse gas.

Applications

Today nitrogen trifluoride is predominantly employed in the cleaning of the PECVD chambers in the high volume production of liquid crystal displays and silicon-based thin film solar cells.

Greenhouse gas

NF3 is a greenhouse gas, with a global warming potential (GWP) 17,200 times greater than that of CO2 when compared over a 100 year period

I think we have a very long way to go before alternative power becomes really viable.

Batteries are really horrible things, either filled with strong acid or alkalides, and made of metals we would rather not use. And they don't have a long life.

Charging and discharging batteries is at best only 70% efficient in both directions. Use them roughly by fast charging and/or discharging quickly causes overheating and decrease of life. They also do not like to be cold either. How well does your car start with a three year old battery on a winters morning in Michigan?

Voltaic cells also need chemicals that are either dangerous or in short supply or both. They have only just got past the point were they generate more power over their lifetime than it took to produce them, and then only when used in reasonably sunny places.

Wind power is usually generated miles from where it is needed. Quite often when they produce most of their power we don't need it, like at night.
In the UK we have had news items where the controllers have had to tell the wind power farms in Scotland to switch off because they are supplying too much power, and then had to compensate them with £millions.

When we do need their power because of bad weather etc. they get turned off because the wind is too strong.
They are also not as efficient as they would have you believe, because although they can produce the power quoted in isolation where frequency is not too important. But as soon as they are connected to the grid keeping the frequency absolutely correct and in phase is the most important thing, by a long way.

used in production also does NOT necessarily mean released unchanged into the atmosphere.

... Unfortunately yet more unfortunate, the time when enough obvious disasters have enraged enough people to force a positive and rapid shift in policies is likely to be rather too late to avoid continued expensive calamities...

Just one comparison: The estimated costs of recent severe weather events likely could fund us all going all green now and all with merely the presently available technology...

... BTW, there IS no 'greenhouse effect'. The minor effect, if any, of what man is doing today is swamped by what the planet has been doing on it's own for millions of years, and we are not going to sway it one way or the other by one iota. It's just politics and the transfer of MONEY.

It would seem some of you think I am not a supporter of green technologies. I can assure you that I am.

But I do not think it is yet time to start a headlong rush into solar panels. If you read the Bloomberg report I linked, that doesn't also.

The Chinese where anything goes, including unsafe use of toxic chemicals, have virtually closed down all production of solar cells in the US and EU. Where there might have been some chance of clean energy producing them.

China, and I did some work on contact for Joy Mining, is using coal at an enormous rate. From its own unsafe mines and buying as much as it can from Australia. Joy Mining is talking of opening a second mining equipment factory in China.

So my thoughts are unless you install them in the SW of the US, southerm Europe or similar sunny places don't expect to to see the energy gains they say are possible, and they are not as green as you are lead to believe.

The climate has been getting warmer since 1850 when the little ice age ended,

whether man has had an impact or not. So arguing whether or not man did this is

e relevant. The question is should we do something about it now? The simplest

solution would be to make clouds to reflect sun light before it hits the ground

and is re emitted as infrared or heat energy. In the short term this is

problematic in that the largest super computers would have to be 100 to 1000

times larger to begin to be large enough to do weather prediction without

changing the models with artificial clouds. So we almost can fix it if we have

to just not yet.

solar only work close to its end use and only if you can afford significant

loss, so for a home yes for a major industry not yet.

As for wind power for us to extract the level of power the us uses and will

use you would have to put up so many of them that, that this would effect weather were it could be done,which is by no means every were.

As to tidal and wave power there is enough to meat the needs of the US but only

if deployed on a massive scale then we are back to changing the environment and

weather.

Nuclear only makes since because we have already do most of the work and we

have a huge waste problem. The best number have been able to get for this is

about 7 million metric tons now and projected to be 14 to 20 million by 2020

Phase three nuclear the kind we know in the US was primarily designed to

enrich plutonium for bomb's and only use's up about 2% of the power in the fuel

rod's. Phase 4 reactors extract an additional 97.7% and in the process convert

almost all of the nasty long lived radioactive to either fuel or short lived

one's. bear in mind the current plan is to store high level waste a yucca

mountain at 750 degree's for a minimum of 20,000 years without leaking.

the waste from phase 4 would be no more radioactive at the end of 200 year's,

than uranium our and would generate almost no heat. Then maybe yucca mountain

makes since.






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Too many opinions and crackpot plans, not enough facts and not one reliable source.

In the time I have been on this planet the two main scenarios for its end have been "Global Warming" and "Nuclear Winter". The latter being caused by either an actual nuclear war or a super volcano blowing its top with atmospheric particles produced blocking the sunlight from the Earth's surface producing massive global cooling.

Therefore, if the technology could be developed there is no reason why artificial clouds could not be used to control global temperature. What has to be considered using this method is the effect it would have on solar farms. A massive band of artificial clouds would cut their output considerably.

My own feelings on the matter of "alternative energy" is that wind and solar are just "feel good" solutions suitable only for small scale power production. At 10 acres per Megawatt, the physical size of solar power stations becomes an environmental issue in itself. Wind farms sound good but the turbines can only operate over a limited range of wind speeds. No wind equals no output and at wind speeds of more than 40kph they have to be shut down so the turbines do not spin themselves to destruction.

I used to work on the Eyre Peninsular at the bottom of South Australia. Down there, just about every suitable mountain top has a wind farm on it. Yet every time I drove past one, at most, only one or two of the turbines would be operating. These windfarms had cost millions of dollars to construct, the owners were government subsidised, yet almost no use was being made of them. Why ?

In the 1960's there was a Science Fiction story published called "The Subways of Kazoo". In this story it was found that a dead civilisation had produced power by building wind farms where the generators used a bow string that vibrated in the wind to drive a piezo crystal. Maybe this is an option that could be explored ?

I believe in "Alternative Energy" but I feel that the present concentration on wind and solar is counter productive. They have their uses but are not the answer.

T.A.