Copenhagen Climate Treaty

[Riverwind]

the trend is ever upward

Wrong. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/hadcr...through-august/

1.Since 2001 the least squares trends are -0.10 C/century, -0.90 C/century and -0.37 C/century for GISS, Hadley and NOAA respectively. The multimodel mean trends for AR4 runs forced with the A1B scenarios were +2.7 C/century and 2.4 C/century for models forced with and without volcanic aerosols respectively. These fall well outside the redcorrected ±95% confidence interval for the mean trend associated with the earth’s weather noise.

Translation - the climate models are wrong. They did not predict the cooling trend we are now in and the trend has gone on long enough to be statistically meaningful. RealClimate is a propoganda site that does whatever it can to mislead and distort the facts.

everything else has been eliminated, CO2 is the only smoking gun left...why do you insist on looking for the obscure when the cause right in front of you??

Climate is a chaotic non-linear system that can change state for no reason at all (look up random walk). The entire claim that there must be a "cause" for a 30 year warming trend rediculous to start with. Here is a peer reviewed paper lays out the thesis that it got warmer because "shit happens": http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/2007GL030288.pdf

IOW - you can't claim CO2 is a "smoking gun" if you can't establish that there was actually a murder.

and what is the cost of doing nothing and you're wrong? your grandchildren will not be impressed...if we're wrong we end up with a healthier environment, if we're right and do nothing? the cost is unimaginable...

Actually, CO2 regulations will hurt the environment we care about more than it will help because dollars that could be used for helpful action like cleaning up water pollution will be used in useless anti-CO2 projects. For example, we will need the oil sands oil no matter how much the environmentalists scream. The trouble is exploiting them is a pretty dirty affair that leaves behind a lost of toxic waste. A smart government that cared about the environment would be spending money and time on cleaning up this real pollution - instead then are spending billions trying to pump CO2 into the ground. No rational person can claim that the environment in Alberta will be better off because of the CO2 obsession. Similar examples abound.

You also ignore the very real harm that will be caused to people today by CO2 regulation. BC is already cutting health care in order to pay for CO2 emissions credits. Are you really prepared to sacrifice things like that today because of a hypothetical problem that may or may not exist?

[Riverwind]

Wind-bird deaths are minimal, domestic house cats are estimated to kill a billion birds per year, windmills are built in areas of high wind, future battery development will improve energy storage

High energy storage facilities have been the holy grail of electrical production for a century and billions have been invested trying to find a solution. The are not going to magically appear because some bureaucrat waves their magic wand and we cannot set government policy based on the assumption that technical innovation will occur on a certain schedule. Keep in mind that fusion power has been 30 years away for 50 years - the same goes with high energy storage facilities.

Hydro: still a clean option, better designs can improve river conservation

All of the rivers with the largest potential have already been exploited. The remaining potential capacity is tiny compared to our total energy needs.

Tidal: hasn't been built yet and you're predicting problems that haven't come up as yet

If you sit down with a calculator you can figure out that the potential energy from tidal is minimal compared to our needs and it needs to be backed up with some other power source because it is only available part of the time.

Solar: don't need to be built in deserts, every rooftop can become a solar collector

Solar power only works when the sun shines which limits it usefulness in northern winters. It is also not free because someone has to constantly clean the bird poop, dust and other crap that can seriously reduce the amount of power produced. Solar projects in the US have been delayed because they need a lot of water for cooling/cleaning.

Nuclear is the option we don't need, there are good reasons why governments are reluctant to build them...without fusion this is going nowhere...

Nuclear is the only viable option if a GHG emissions are a concern. The fact that so many environmentalists try to block nuclear demonstrates that they don't really believe the stories of the coming CO2 apocolyse. If environmentalists don't really believe CO2 is a problem then why should anyone else?

[wyly]

Wrong. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/hadcr...through-august/

Translation - the climate models are wrong. They did not predict the cooling trend we are now in and the trend has gone on long enough to be statistically meaningful. RealClimate is a propoganda site that does whatever it can to mislead and distort the facts.

Blackboard does exactly what deniers are acussed of "cherry picking" facts "oh look last month wasn't as cold the same month in 98"...because 98 was a strong el Nino year, an anomolly...if tomorrow is a record cold day in your backyard that becomes absolute proof of cooling but then conveniently forgetting record warmer days are far out numbering cool ones....can't prove a long term trend deniers look for the shortest trend even a single data point to back up their delusions...Blackboards credentials????none to be found it's a personal blog site, RealClimate's use real scientists real data not cherry picked for convenience...

show me a legitmate site that's background can be verified not some blog by a girl named Lucia who posts poetry and pictures of her cat...oh that's just so professional...

Climate is a chaotic non-linear system that can change state for no reason at all (look up random walk). The entire claim that there must be a "cause" for a 30 year warming trend rediculous to start with. Here is a peer reviewed paper lays out the thesis that it got warmer because "shit happens": http://www.uwm.edu/~aatsonis/2007GL030288.pdf

I read it and it does no such thing....they claim warming and cooling are normal cycles SURPRISE!!! that has never been a secret, deniers think that's incredible discovery...the study quoted also claims that their findings are superimposed on AGW, which is what what climatologist have been saying all along...any AGW is added to natural causes such as an el Nino, solar cycles, Milankovich etc...

IOW - you can't claim CO2 is a "smoking gun" if you can't establish that there was actually a murder.

now you are trying to rewrite scientific fact...for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction....

-CO2 is a GHG-FACT

-CO2 can take centuries to cycle out of the atmosphere-FACT

-you cannot avoid changing the properties of a mixture(atmosphere) if you change the percentage ratio of it's content-FACT

-adding CO2 to the atmosphere faster than it can cycle out must change the properties of the atmosphere-FACT

-more CO2 a GHG must raise the temp of the atmosphere it is scientifically impossible for it to do anything else-FACT

-since CO2 is leading temperature at this time means it is driving temp-FACT

-all effects of CO2 driven temperature increases are added to any natural climatic changes-FACT

You also ignore the very real harm that will be caused to people today by CO2 regulation. BC is already cutting health care in order to pay for CO2 emissions credits. Are you really prepared to sacrifice things like that today because of a hypothetical problem that may or may not exist?

are you really willing to risk a plantary ecological collapse based on info acquired on the blog of a crazy cat lady with no credentials...

[wyly]

High energy storage facilities have been the holy grail of electrical production for a century and billions have been invested trying to find a solution. The are not going to magically appear because some bureaucrat waves their magic wand and we cannot set government policy based on the assumption that technical innovation will occur on a certain schedule. Keep in mind that fusion power has been 30 years away for 50 years - the same goes with high energy storage facilities.

battery technology has made enormous improvements, it has nothing to do with bureacrats that's the result of industry...nuclear a dead end,industry has already realized that so move on, it's a waste of time and money...

All of the rivers with the largest potential have already been exploited. The remaining potential capacity is tiny compared to our total energy needs.

not even close to full development, there was never a need to continue new developments...

If you sit down with a calculator you can figure out that the potential energy from tidal is minimal compared to our needs and it needs to be backed up with some other power source because it is only available part of the time.

ya somehow I don't think you have the ability to figure that out with a calculator...Tidal power has enormous unlimited potential, any gains would added to other sources, power can be transffered to where it is needed and we use much less at night.

Solar power only works when the sun shines which limits it usefulness in northern winters. It is also not free because someone has to constantly clean the bird poop, dust and other crap that can seriously reduce the amount of power produced. Solar projects in the US have been delayed because they need a lot of water for cooling/cleaning.

everything has upkeep costs, nothing works according to you, no technology can ever be improved so why even bother trying maybe we should move back into caves

Nuclear is the only viable option if a GHG emissions are a concern. The fact that so many environmentalists try to block nuclear demonstrates that they don't really believe the stories of the coming CO2 apocolyse. If environmentalists don't really believe CO2 is a problem then why should anyone else?

you can have all the wet dreams about nuclear energy you want, other than the companies that build the plants no one wants it...until some scientists come up with a workable fusion plant this is never going to go anywhere...

[wyly]

No but that's because I don't want to go to Russia and what you posted says that people can live there. Even if it wasn't true and the place was still radioactive shitty soviet reactors that were held together by duct tape and built when the Russian couldn't figure out tractors have no bearing on today's reactors.

the post siad people are not supposed to live there, they ignore the safety limits of exposure...the reactor did not because of design faults, it meltdown because of human error, safety regulations were ignored...

Tech that's 10 years off isn't to useful now and wind mill use a shit load of space something the enviro's hate.

evrything is ten years off, how long does it atke to build a nuclear plant after the years of design work...blame the enviro's for everything has become the standard copout, environmeantals are'nt stooping anything they only pointing flaws that need to addressed to avoid replacing one problem with another...which waste s money..and we have a lot of space for windmills...

How exactly? In order to build a hydro plant you have to dam a river how can you design it differently?

the hydro plant itself can become more efficent requiring smaller dams ...design improvemnts are ongoing all over the world to lessen the impact of dams on fish allowing easier migration, reducing their environmental damage

They were trying to build some in England and they've been put on hold for exactly that reason.

and we have one installed in the bay of Fundy, it's ongoing research to test it's effect on marine biology the idea will work...

There goes the power industry. Oh well. You do realize that setting it up that way would be horribly inefficient right?

no such thing, power companies love the idea and are encouraging it, they plan to buy surplus power from the homeowners...

Nuclear energy produces more energy per kilogram of fuel than any other source of power it make oil look like nothing and oil makes most other energy sources look like crap. Government don't build them because people are idiots and are afraid of all but non-exsistent threats.

horribly expensive, huge potential dangers, no one wants them...end of story...

Are you going to deal with what I said about storage? what about the amount of people who die from conventional power plants compared to nuclear plants?

no one wants to store spent nuclear fuel, and that ends that...deaths, irrelevant no one wants coal fired plants either...

[Riverwind]

Blackboard does exactly what deniers are acussed of "cherry picking" facts

The first rule of numerical models is you must validate them by comparing their predictions to future data. Hindcasts mean nothing. The Jan 1, 2001 happens to be the date when the latest set of model runs from the IPCC started which means it is the only date that can be used for comparing reality to the model predictions - no other date is appropriate because it includes information that the modellers already knew about when they published their predictions. That is why her results are able the show that the models are most likely wrong.

show me a legitmate site that's background can be verified not some blog by a girl named Lucia who posts poetry and pictures of her cat...oh that's just so professional...

She is nuclear engineer with years of experience using numerical models for fluid systems. She has been encouraged by praticing climate scientists to contribute to the peer reviewed literature and has submitted two papers with collaborates that are practicing climate scientists.

Here is what Roger Pieke Sr says about her:

http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009...the-blackboard/

We look forward to the appearance of Lucia’s outstanding evaluations of the IPCC model skill in the peer reviewed literature, and will report on Climate Science when it does.

High praise from someone with a publication record like Pielke's. Her analysis is good enough that Gavin from RC has posted comments on her blog - he would not do that unless he felt there was substance.

Bottom line, you are wasting time with ad homs. You can ignore her analysis if you like but you would be no different from a three year old plugging his ears screaming "i cant hear you"....

I read it and it does no such thing....they claim warming and cooling are normal cycles SURPRISE!!!

The point of the paper is the natural cycles are much larger than the current observed warming which means it is impossible to claim that the current warming was caused by CO2. Sure CO2 contributed something but we don't know how much or if it was significant.

-all effects of CO2 driven temperature increases are added to any natural climatic changes-FACT

So what? The issue is how much the temperature goes up - not whether it goes up. If CO2 doubles and the temp only rose 0.1 degC we could safely ignore CO2 completely. All of the catastrophic scenarios come from climate models that attempt to estimate the magnitude of the temperature changes. These models are crude approximations of the real world that really on guesses for many critical input parameters like aerosols. They do not model the physics of clouds at all yet we know the behavoir of clouds could completely cancel out the CO2 effect. Only an idiot would make trillion dollar policy decisions based on the output these models. Unfortunately, the world is filled with idiots.

Bottom line is we don't have a clue how much warming is likely to occur but we do know that numerous peer reviewed studies have identified factors other than CO2 which contribute to the warming but have been ignored by the IPCC. Once these factors are added in the real effect of CO2 becomes less which means the future warming will be less. More importantly, the REAL DATA being collected now strongly indicates that the models have left something out and the CO2 effect is not as strong as they claim.

Edited October 9, 2009 by Riverwind

[Riverwind]

battery technology has made enormous improvements, it has nothing to do with bureacrats that's the result of industry

Batteries for cars are different from high energy storage for electrical generation. Intermittent power sources like wind, sun and tide will be uneconomic until we have some way to store the excess power until it is needed.

ya somehow I don't think you have the ability to figure that out with a calculator...Tidal power has enormous unlimited potential, any gains would added to other sources, power can be transffered to where it is needed and we use much less at night.

The trouble with our policy discussions is there are too many clueless people insisting that the laws of energy can be repealed to suit their utopian fantasies. I have bad news for you: renewable sources are too disfuse to be exploited economically at a large scale and no amount of government regulation is going to change that.

Here is a detailed and realistic analysis of rewewable energy: http://www.withouthotair.com/Synopsis.html

A couple notes about the report:

1) His analysis suggests that it might be possible to live with entirely on renewables if we ignore the cost of building and maintaining the huge infrastructure required.

2) Building and maintaining infrastructure would require a huge portion of the productive capacity of our society be devoted to it which will squeeze "non essential" activities like growing food.

The first half gives two clear conclusions. First, for any renewable facility

to make an appreciable contribution – a contribution at all comparable

to our current consumption – it has to be country-sized. To provide one

quarter of our current energy consumption by growing energy crops, for

example, would require 75% of Britain to be covered with biomass plantations.

To provide 4% of our current energy consumption from wave

power would require 500 km of Atlantic coastline to be completely filled

with wave farms.

Someone who wants to live on renewable energy, but

expects the infrastructure associated with that renewable not to be large or

intrusive, is deluding himself.

Second, if economic constraints and public objections are set aside, it would

be possible for the average European energy consumption of 125 kWh/d

per person to be provided from these country-sized renewable sources.

The two hugest contributors would be photovoltaic panels, which, covering

5% or 10% of the country, would provide 50 kWh/d per person;

and offshore wind farms, which, filling a sea-area twice the size of Wales,

would provide another 50 kWh/d per person on average.

Such an immense panelling of the countryside and filling of British

seas with wind machines (having a capacity five times greater than all the

wind turbines in the world today) may be possible according to the laws

of physics, but would the public accept and pay for such extreme arrangements?

If we answer no, we are forced to conclude that current consumption

will never be met by British renewables. We require either a radical reduction

in consumption, or significant additional sources of energy – or, of course,

both.

You can scream as much as you want but the math does not work out. Renewables cannot meet our needs at an acceptable cost. If GHGs are really a concern then we need nuclear. If you, like other activists, oppose nuclear then you obviously do not believe that CO2 is a problem which means you should be fine if we do nothing.

[wyly]

The first rule of numerical models is you must validate them by comparing their predictions to future data. Hindcasts mean nothing. The Jan 1, 2001 happens to be the date when the latest set of model runs from the IPCC started which means it is the only date that can be used for comparing reality to the model predictions - no other date is appropriate because it includes information that the modellers already knew about when they published their predictions. That is why her results are able the show that the models are most likely wrong.

She is nuclear engineer with years of experience using numerical models for fluid systems. She has been encouraged by praticing climate scientists to contribute to the peer reviewed literature and has submitted two papers with collaborates that are practicing climate scientists.

Here is what Roger Pieke Sr says about her:

http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009...the-blackboard/

High praise from someone with a publication record like Pielke's. Her analysis is good enough that Gavin from RC has posted comments on her blog - he would not do that unless he felt there was substance.

Bottom line, you are wasting time with ad homs. You can ignore her analysis if you like but you would be no different from a three year old plugging his ears screaming "i cant hear you"....

bottom line is you still haven't identified the crazy cat lady and reading the link again no where does she say AGW isn't happening, nowhere does she say there is long term cooling trend...once again it's a short term trend, the graph has two a longer one from 1990 and the other from 2001, long term 1990 says it is going up, the 1998 anomoly will scew that upwards somewhat but it will be offset longterm by the 2008 anomoly...you can pick any dip in the data after 1990 and make a cooling trend fit the denier hypothesis but that's cherry picking results...climate is not a straight lines upward and downward, variations are normal, the long term trend is still up...we are leaving an cool la Nina period and as the link says we are now entering an el Nino period, temps will rise in '09 and '10...

The point of the paper is the natural cycles are much larger than the current observed warming which means it is impossible to claim that the current warming was caused by CO2. Sure CO2 contributed something but we don't know how much or if it was significant.

So what? The issue is how much the temperature goes up - not whether it goes up. If CO2 doubles and the temp only rose 0.1 degC we could safely ignore CO2 completely. All of the catastrophic scenarios come from climate models that attempt to estimate the magnitude of the temperature changes. These models are crude approximations of the real world that really on guesses for many critical input parameters like aerosols. They do not model the physics of clouds at all yet we know the behavoir of clouds could completely cancel out the CO2 effect. Only an idiot would make trillion dollar policy decisions based on the output these models. Unfortunately, the world is filled with idiots.

Bottom line is we don't have a clue how much warming is likely to occur but we do know that numerous peer reviewed studies have identified factors other than CO2 which contribute to the warming but have been ignored by the IPCC. Once these factors are added in the real effect of CO2 becomes less which means the future warming will be less. More importantly, the REAL DATA being collected now strongly indicates that the models have left something out and the CO2 effect is not as strong as they claim.

bottom line is no one is going to gamble the environment on the a single paper that doesn't have any firm conclusions and still accepts AGW, and we have only your assurances that the any damage will be minimal...CO2 is a GHG. it will raise temps and raised temps will cause damage...

[Riverwind]

bottom line is you still haven't identified the crazy cat lady and reading the link again no where does she say AGW isn't happening, nowhere does she say there is long term cooling trend.

Where did I say anything about a long term cooling trend? I said we are currently cooling. The choice of start date for my claim is not cherry picked but based on when the IPCC model projections started. Also, all of the analysis are clearly laid out on her blog. It does not make a difference whether you think she carries a "climotologist badge". The only thing that matters is whether the analysis is correct or not. You ad hom attacks are pathetic attempt to avoid dealing with facts that show that the AGW activists are likely exagerrating the problem.

But the point you seem to have trouble grasping is the is issue is NOT whether CO2 causes warming. The issue is HOW MUCH warming is likely to cause. If the expected amount of warming is low then there is no need for us to do anything about CO2.

The analysis she provided demonstrates that the models are overpredicting the amount of warming. We don't know why they are doing that but there are numerous other mechanisms that affect climate and they could easily play a larger role than the climate models currently assume.

bottom line is no one is going to gamble the environment on the a single paper that doesn't have any firm conclusions and still accepts AGW

I getting tired of this psuedo-religious gobbi-gook. "Accepting AGW" is a meaningless phrase. The only question we care about is how much warming CO2 will cause and a lot of people and a lot of papers suggest that CO2 has less an effect that claimed by the IPCC. People can "Accept AGW" and still believe the IPCC is wrong.

Here is another which shows that the way temperature averages are measured lead to an overestimate of the trend:

http://climatesci.org/2009/08/13/new-paper...ach-et-al-2009/

The implication of this paper is CO2 is less significant that thought. It is my opinion that the CO2-is-the-only-factor thinking is wrong. There are many factors at work and we do not understand them. This means we cannot know how much warming is coming but we do have real data that suggests the rate of warming is slower than what the models predict. This means it is difficult to justify expensive policies to solve a problem that might not exist.

Edited October 9, 2009 by Riverwind

[Guest TrueMetis]

the post siad people are not supposed to live there, they ignore the safety limits of exposure...the reactor did not because of design faults, it meltdown because of human error, safety regulations were ignored...

Yet people do live there. If the reactor had had decent safety procautions and had been built properly it wouldn't have failed at all.

evrything is ten years off, how long does it atke to build a nuclear plant after the years of design work...blame the enviro's for everything has become the standard copout, environmeantals are'nt stooping anything they only pointing flaws that need to addressed to avoid replacing one problem with another...which waste s money..and we have a lot of space for windmills...

well aparently

the latest generation of windmills, using the most modern technologies and construction materials (see photo below), are almost 100 meters in diameter, and stretch to the sky, higher than a 40 stories high building (about half the size of the Eiffel tower). Such a windmill will produce about 1 MW of power when the wind is blowing at a high speed of 10 m/s.

It would require 1500 such giant windmills, assuming that the wind is always blowing at full capacity, to produce as much energy as one nuclear reactor of 1500 MW (only a few meters wide and high).

That's alot of space needed for windmills places we could use for things like... food.

Source

the hydro plant itself can become more efficent requiring smaller dams ...design improvemnts are ongoing all over the world to lessen the impact of dams on fish allowing easier migration, reducing their environmental damage

But your still damning rivers and reduceing isn't eliminating.

and we have one installed in the bay of Fundy, it's ongoing research to test it's effect on marine biology the idea will work...

Wonder how long it will take to be OK'd if it's ok'd that is.

no such thing, power companies love the idea and are encouraging it, they plan to buy surplus power from the homeowners...

why the fuck would anyone connect to the power lines if they had solar panels. Most people would just tell power companies to fuck off.

horribly expensive, huge potential dangers, no one wants them...end of story...

Considering we haven't build one in years we can't say how expensive it would be now, Everything has potential dangers the LHC has the potential to destroy the earth it's all about whether the pro's outweigh the cons in the case of nuclear they do, very few people are informed enough for their opinons to count, not close to the end of the story in fact there has been a huge increase in interest in nucler energy in recent years.

no one wants to store spent nuclear fuel, and that ends that...deaths, irrelevant no one wants coal fired plants either...

Except for Yucca big storage place there or soon to be at least. That a statistically worthless amount of people have died because of nuclear plants in irrelevant? I thought it destroyed your nuclear plants are dangerous argument.

[wyly]

Yet people do live there. If the reactor had had decent safety procautions and had been built properly it wouldn't have failed at all.

it had decent safety precautions, Sr Engineer on duty overrode all safety procedures against the protests over Jr engineers, the meltdown was human error...

That's a lot of space needed for windmills places we could use for things like... food.

Source

I've been to northern europe, very high density, agricultural land is at a premium and lots of turbines, if it wasn't efficient source of power they wouldn't use it and farming goes on around the turbines with no issues...Calgary's C-train runs on Wind Power which draws a bit more power than a washing machine... 4% of Alberta's power now comes from wind turbines and this will rise...

But your still damning rivers and reduceing isn't eliminating.

minimize the damage, the nature of the river changes but it will still be a viable ecosystem which is the goal, sustainable green energy, in a perfect world we wouldn't need dams but that's not reality...do what we can with the least amount of damage...

Wonder how long it will take to be OK'd if it's ok'd that is.

first tests are studying the effect of frequency of the turbines on marine life, blade design can be altered until a suitable one is found...there is no question of the enormous power potential but it has to be eco friendly...

why the fuck would anyone connect to the power lines if they had solar panels. Most people would just tell power companies to fuck off.

money...power companies are financing some schemes renting the solar panels to consumers to make them financially attainable(they can buy their own if they have money), while the customers are away from their homes during the day the unused surplus power is purchased by the power company from the homeowners...that's a good deal...

Considering we haven't build one in years we can't say how expensive it would be now, Everything has potential dangers the LHC has the potential to destroy the earth it's all about whether the pro's outweigh the cons in the case of nuclear they do, very few people are informed enough for their opinons to count, not close to the end of the story in fact there has been a huge increase in interest in nucler energy in recent years.

they haven't gotten any cheaper, many billions each, Alberta is considering a nuclear generator it's not a preferred choice but it may the only option...nuclear power is an absolute last resort and I personally doubt we'll need them as technology in other areas is advancing quickly...with luck in 20-30 yrs they may longer even be considered...

Except for Yucca big storage place there or soon to be at least. That a statistically worthless amount of people have died because of nuclear plants in irrelevant? I thought it destroyed your nuclear plants are dangerous argument

they are dangerous and long term consequences half-life of the different spent range from seconds to many millions of years, are we creating a problem for future generations putting them underground, can we ever be 100% sure...

[Guest TrueMetis]

it had decent safety precautions, Sr Engineer on duty overrode all safety procedures against the protests over Jr engineers, the meltdown was human error...

A decent reator is built with safety procautions that can't be overridden and how stupid do you think that they guys they put in charge of reactors here are?

I've been to northern europe, very high density, agricultural land is at a premium and lots of turbines, if it wasn't efficient source of power they wouldn't use it and farming goes on around the turbines with no issues...Calgary's C-train runs on Wind Power which draws a bit more power than a washing machine... 4% of Alberta's power now comes from wind turbines and this will rise...

Not as effiecent as nuclear, 1 Reactor= 1500 windmills and that it can power a washing machine isn't that impressive.

minimize the damage, the nature of the river changes but it will still be a viable ecosystem which is the goal, sustainable green energy, in a perfect world we wouldn't need dams but that's not reality...do what we can with the least amount of damage...

We can't come close to predicting how an ecosystem will react. When they build the train through the Rockies they just dumped the rocks into the river and blocked it. It decimated the salmon population. Eventually steps were put in to help the salmon get upriver but the population never got close to what it used to be. That's what your risking. I should also point out that it destroyed the live of the natives living there to.

first tests are studying the effect of frequency of the turbines on marine life, blade design can be altered until a suitable one is found...there is no question of the enormous power potential but it has to be eco friendly...

Define "eco friendly" there are a lot of enviro's who are against it. For all you know there will be no way to do it without serverly altering the marine life there, will you still support it then?

money...power companies are financing some schemes renting the solar panels to consumers to make them financially attainable(they can buy their own if they have money), while the customers are away from their homes during the day the unused surplus power is purchased by the power company from the homeowners...that's a good deal...

What happens if everyone does this? then everyone is selling but no ones buying.

they haven't gotten any cheaper, many billions each, Alberta is considering a nuclear generator it's not a preferred choice but it may the only option...nuclear power is an absolute last resort and I personally doubt we'll need them as technology in other areas is advancing quickly...with luck in 20-30 yrs they may longer even be considered...

Nuclear has been the most efficient source of energy since its invention until fusion works you will never get something with the same potential.

they are dangerous and long term consequences half-life of the different spent range from seconds to many millions of years, are we creating a problem for future generations putting them underground, can we ever be 100% sure...

The short term shit is dangerous sure, but the long term stuff is fairly harmless. Name the last person to die because of nuclear waste bet it was a long time ago.

As for future generations what if we figure out a way to make nuclear waste completly harmless, hell there are already ways to half the amount of time it takes to decay or to re-enrich it so that it can be used more than once. In 20-30 years we may have it figured out so let's start building nuclear. Your agruement that the technology is coming works for both sides and of course we can never be 100% sure if that's your criteria for stuff then we can never do anything, we may not be a 100% sure but Nuclear reactors have gotten so safe that it's so unlikley a reactor will fail it's not even worth thinking about.

Edited October 10, 2009 by TrueMetis

[Riverwind]

As for future generations what if we figure out a way to make nuclear waste completly harmless, hell there are already ways to half the amount of time it takes to decay or to re-enrich it so that it can be used more than once.

Thorium power is already here and offers a low or no waste alternative.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/pri...lear?page=0%2C0

If we want it to be part of the future we should be planning the plants today. But we can't do that because of the masses of misinformed luddites like wyly.

[Wild Bill]

why the fuck would anyone connect to the power lines if they had solar panels. Most people would just tell power companies to fuck off.

It's always the details, TM! There's a very good reason why people want to stay connected to the power lines, and an equally good reason why they should not!

First off, the thing about off-grid power generation like wind or solar is that it is far more expensive to build an installation large enough to always deliver what you need at any given time than it is to build a smaller one with a big battery storage facility that will store the power while you aren't using it, building up enough of a capacity to easily handle any peak loads like a stove or washing machine.

Many American states allow systems that let a homeowner use the grid as that battery! With a meter being able to run both ways, you get charged for any excess you take from the grid and you get credit for what you send back when you aren't using much. You have the potential to dramatically lower your overall bill or even make a profit!

Ontario has implemented what many of us call "a Liberal solution". That's defined as one that "doesn't have to work as long as we can say we've got one!"

The reason I say that is that officially, homeowners are told that they can do the same thing. In fact, they are given a much higher rate on what they feed the grid compared to what they get charged for taking, as an incentive to put wind and solar systems on their homes. Dalton has made announcements and had his picture taken many times.

The catch is what happens if you actually try to do it! First off, you get caught up in a bureaucratic, Kafkasque maze with Ontario Power Generation Corp over inspections and standards of your equipment. You are forced to spend so much money that it pushes your payback for your investment out for decades longer than it had first appeared!

A personal friend of mine went through this here in Hamilton. There was a very good article recently in the local paper of a couple who had done this two years ago and to this date they have not received a dime in rebate for their extra power from the 'system'! They freely admitted in the article that if they had have known what they were in for at the start they would never have bothered!

There just isn't a mechanism in Ontario to use the grid for your storage. Only officially but not in reality.

That means that you have no practical choice but to pay for a large battery storage bank. This means deep discharge rated batteries. Scrounging old car batteries doesn't work 'cuz they are damaged if you drain them too deeply. Marine batteries aren't a bad choice. Still, they aren't cheap and you need a lot of them. If you want to run your electric stove and refrigerator at the same time 4 of them might give you a total of 1 hour's supply. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. A practical number of batteries might be more like 25-30!

if you google up sites about off-grid power you'll see that for the average homeowner on a city lot there's not much in choices available. Unless you're so rich that you really don't care about the money and can afford to just want to 'be green!' the only guys making anything work are the technically inclined tinkerers, who scrounge up used tow motor batteries and build everything themselves. They train their families to unplug the coffee pot when they want to turn the TV on. They also all seem to live in warmer places. I never see much of anything about guys doing it here in cold Canada!

This is why I've always resented countries like Spain, Venezuela and Portugal calling us Canadians "energy pigs" at Kyoto conferences and the like. Easy for them to say as they pick oranges off trees in their backyards, in January!