rfbrw said:
Therein lies the debate. Just about any industrial facility is an eyesore. I'd rank a power plant much more appealing than an offshore oil platform, or a refinery, or a chemical processing plant.
20 windmills look nice. 450 would cover the area of the entire town that our "little" nuke plant is built next to.
I won't bash wind power, but in its current stage of development, it isn't the answer to energy problems, just one very small part.
I think in reality we will see a new generation of nuke plants spring up to meet the immediate demands of the near future. They will bridge the gap to the follow on design that will also produce massive amounts of hydrogen to facilitate fuel cell powered vehicles and such of the future. That'll be a few decades from now...
ghudnub said:
Once you get passed the oil companies and their lobbying money, fuel cell electric cars will be the future, at least for America....or a reasonable facsimile thereof. The most efficient way to produce the hydrogen and oxygen used in those fuel cells is with electricity. This will drive the demand for electric power 100 fold or more. Modern nuclear facilities are certainly an option when considering the environmental impacts of combustion of fuels in general, to generate this much electric power. If you could harness the power of ocean currents, it could posibly provide this much energy. BUT ocean current are the primary drive to the climate of the entire earth.
That subject is rather complicated...
I am not against nuclear power because of the potential yield of energy available therein. It is a technology that our forefathers could never have dreamed of. However, it can certainly be very dangerous if not respected properly.Change gears in debate (2nd to 3rd)
I figure it's about time to get Sy riled up for at least a page or two. 2nd Law! 2nd Law!
http://www.tilleyfoundation.com/
Any comments, anyone?
I figure it's about time to get Sy riled up for at least a page or two. 2nd Law! 2nd Law!
http://www.tilleyfoundation.com/
Any comments, anyone?
one thing that is foundamentally flawed about the wind mills that i haven't seen mentioned in this thead is that unreliability: wind comes and goes and people need electricity whenever they need it.
so you cannot have wind power as a large portion of your electricity supply. the same applies to solar power and hydro (to a lesser extent).
Nuclear power on the other hand doesn't handle peaks well so it should be the stable of any power supply, with the peaks handled by maybe gas turbines.
so you cannot have wind power as a large portion of your electricity supply. the same applies to solar power and hydro (to a lesser extent).
Nuclear power on the other hand doesn't handle peaks well so it should be the stable of any power supply, with the peaks handled by maybe gas turbines.
ghudnub said:
water vapor accounts for over 90% of the planet's greenhouse effect.
CO2? less than 5%. <20% of that is due to human activities.
any interesting side effect of this is that if we were to eliminate all human-generated co2 (like stop farting), we will have reduced global greenhouse effect by 1%.
tlf9999 said:
So what I'm hearing (without doing a whole lot of research, the number I saw for human contribution to CO2 was <3%) is why give a hoot about our everyday emissions? What we need to do is outlaw evaporation. Those durn oceans are going to be the death of us all? Maybe global warming is all hype? Maybe it's all part of a natural cycle?
My curiosity is peaked. I'm off to read some internet hype about global warming
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=65
After reading this, I'm sure about one thing...
I don't know WHAT to believe.
I know that the water vapor emissions from a power plant are miniscule compared with evaporation of lakes and oceans.
The article seems to focus on CO2 as the culprit, the thing to be controlled. It also says that water vapor is the largest contibution to greenhouse gas.
It says that there has been a cooling trend the last 18 years?
The global temperature may have risen .45C over the last century.
I'm starting to think that my car may contribute to smog, to dirty air, but probably not to global warming?
After reading this, I'm sure about one thing...
I don't know WHAT to believe.
I know that the water vapor emissions from a power plant are miniscule compared with evaporation of lakes and oceans.
The article seems to focus on CO2 as the culprit, the thing to be controlled. It also says that water vapor is the largest contibution to greenhouse gas.
It says that there has been a cooling trend the last 18 years?
The global temperature may have risen .45C over the last century.
I'm starting to think that my car may contribute to smog, to dirty air, but probably not to global warming?
ghudnub said:
I think there is pretty solid evidence that global warming is real.
What isn't clear is what contributed to it. Our observable history on this is just too short to conclusively say one way or the other. Some suggested that the planet goes through cycles - given the number of ice ages we have had it makes tons of sense to me.
Either way, it is pretty clear to me that cutting co2 emission isn't going to have that much impact on greenhouse effect. If it did, it would indicate that the planet is extremely sensitive to co2 whose content on earth has changed drastically in the past, without much impact on the environment.
tlf9999 said:
Hydro is pretty consistent here in BC....
Scientists haven't yet figured out if man is causing global warming or whether we are just accelerating a natural trend (there is certainly evidence that the planet has warmed up over the short term -- last 100 years).
Believed to be one of the large contributors to greenhouse gas is methane from cows. We should all stop eating beef & quit drinking milk.
Water vapor. All the water vapor generated by man is a spit in the bucket (well not even that much -- maybe if the bucket is a big oil storage tank). Those big white fluffy things in the skys -- water vapour!! Believe it or not.
dave
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