These Solar Researchers Don't Even TRY To Pretend They're Interested In A Fossil Fuel Phaseout.

[NNadir]

Unremarked by fundamentalist anti-nukes on this website, dangerous fossil fuel waste is a serious problem that kills people seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, one hundred years per century.

These are the same anti-nukes who rather obsessed by imagining that so called "nuclear waste" is a problem, even though there is NOT ONE fundie anti-nuke who can demonstrate a single instance of someone being injured by the storage of thousands of reactor years of used reactor fuel that generated energy at an exajoule scale for more than 3 decades.

Of course, the number of anti-nukes who call for the shutting of dangerous fossil fuel plants is zero, even though there is no permanent repository for its waste, even though its waste is waste for which there is no use on scale, even though said waste kills continuously and leaches everywhere uncontrollably.

In fact, I have shown repeatedly that several famous anti-nukes, including Amory Lovins, Gerhard Schroeder, and the German "Green" Joschka Fischer, all receive huge paychecks from, you guessed it, dangerous fossil fuel companies.

The "Bait and Switch" used by all anti-nukes is of course, before they cause more coal, gas, and petroleum to be burned, is that they are really for so called "renewable energy" even though after 50 years of such talk, all of the renewable energy forms of energy combined do not produce as much http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html">primary energy as nuclear energy, which is what the anti-nukes rail against while setting an entirely different standard for the dangerous fossil fuel industry, which they ignore with happy horseshit.

I have shown elsewhere, citing a paper by Denholm (currently a researcher at NREL) in Environ. Sci. Technol. (Environ. Sci. Technol2005, 39, 1903-1911) in a work I called http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/24/104058/80">A Comparison of the Environmental Cost of "Baseload" Wind and Nuclear Power how the wind industry in order to address its incredibly poor reliability, intends to burn dangerous natural gas and dump the waste in the favorite dump, Earth's atmosphere.

It is well known that many of the paltry few solar thermal plants that have operated in Southern California, the Luz plants that drove Luz, um, bankrupt, continue to operate with a dangerous natural gas "assist," again dumping the dangerous fossil fuel waste in the favorite dump, Earth's atmosphere.

All that said, I have no objection to government funded research into solar thermal plants, the awful toxic explosion and therminol fire at Solar One in Twenty-Nine Palms not withstanding.

Even though it is now 33 years after Amory Lovins confidently and blithely predicted that suburban homes would "soon" be powered with fused (or molten) salt tanks heated during daylight hours with a rube goldberg set of mirrors (and maybe a little smoke), the fact is that I read solar energy papers all the time, and actually find them useful.

Why? Not because I expect some dumb fundie to acknowledge that the "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" that dumb fundies are always HYPING in connection with renewable energy, actually involve minimum wage guys running around with windex and paper towel to wipe dust off of mirrors for the minimum wage.

No the reason I enjoy solar thermal energy papers is that they often contain actual valuable scientific research into high temperature systems. That is useful to all scientists interested in energy, not just guys working at NREL in order to validate the fantasies of people who don't know much.

As such, I often find myself reading "solar hydrogen" papers in the Int. J. of Hydrogen Energy, a journal that is more or less on my regular reading list, and which I sometimes stumble across when doing other things.

Today I was studying certain properties of so called "super-alloys" when I came across such a paper today, unsurprisingly from two Qatari and (more surprisingly) one Isreali solar researcher, in the same journal. Here's the abstract: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V3F-4V4KC62-1&_user=10&_coverDate=01%2F31%2F2009&_alid=995326419&_rdoc=2&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=5729&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=18&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e8410ad392d228e7321f75aafe869454">International Journal of Hydrogen Energy Volume 34, Issue 2, January 2009, Pages 710-720

Although the paper is filled with all sorts of window dressing about how someday somewhere, this solar thermal system could involve carbon sequestration, there are zero industrial scale (which would be billions of tons per year) carbon sequestration dumps being built, zero funded, zero sited, and zero proposed plants.

Nevertheless, we are now hearing about how solar "could" be used to help sequester dangerous fossil fuels.

For the record, unlike a dumb fundie anti-nuke playing a shell game, I want dangerous fossil fuels banned. I oppose all use of all dangerous fossil fuels on the grounds that no one has a solution for the observed problems of dangerous fossil fuel war, dangerous fossil fuel terrorism, dangerous fossil fuel accidents, or dangerous fossil fuel waste dumping.

Have a nice day.

[Arctic Dave]

1. You really know to make a guy feel bad for providing a product.

Hurry up and put us out of business.

[kristopher]

3. It is a matter of priorities...

No technology allows the complete elimination of all fossil fuels with the flip of a switch. If the moronic idea that all our climate change resources were to be devoted to nuclear were to prevail, the consequence would be a dramatic LONG TERM INCREASE in consumption of natural gas. Since a great deal of our installed generating capacity is used to meet the occasional peak highs of demand (ex: the extra a/c units on 100+ days and times like that) and since building nuclear plants to meet this type of demand is economic INSANITY, then it is inevitable that most of that peak generation would shift not from coal operating as 'spinning reserve' to nuclear but from coal operating as spinning reserve to natural gas. While that would be an improvement in CO2e emissions over the current situation, it would come with the eventual high cost of nuclear externalities. Not only are those external costs as close to a permanent condition as can be found but since we would have spent all our limited funds building overpriced nuclear facilities, we would have neglected the investment in the advanced biofuels that could eventually replace natural gas in a renewable, carbon-free energy infrastructure.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[kristopher]

2. Who really cares what you *claim* to want?

IF you wanted fossil fuel use to cease, you wouldn't continuously make bullshit accusations against the technologies best positioned to actually accomplish the task. All you REALLY want is to pad your wallet by trying to convince uninformed people that there is finally a justification for blind public acceptance of the problems associated with nuclear energy. No serious researcher in the field of carbon management agrees with your prescription. In fact, the ONLY place where our opinion prevails is in the bowels of nuclear industry trade organizations like the Nuclear Energy Institute.

http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c
Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[kristopher]

4. Your subject line

...is an interesting look at your thinking.
"These Solar Researchers Don't Even TRY To Pretend They're Interested In A Fossil Fuel Phaseout.

You routinely PRETEND that you are interested in phasing out fossil fuels when, in fact, the policies you advocate have zero chance of accomplishing that goal. Meanwhile you work assiduously to undermine the renewable technologies that all carbon management experts agree are the doable path to a new, sustainable, carbon-free energy infrastructure.

Your headline should thus be read as surprise that "these solar researchers" would be so foolish as to fail to do something that you consider as natural as breathing...

[comtec]

5. this guy is a big nuke supporter

so naturally he hates all other non-polluting forms of energy... especially solar.

[madokie]

6. I'm afraid it goes a lot deeper than that

From reading the screeds he writes I feel safe in saying he is a fraud, a wanta' be and/or a has been, nothing more. There's definitely some serious issues going on there

[HamdenRice]

7. ROFLMAO! Once again, it's time for the Nnadir Comedy Minute!

[jpak]

8. Stupid Alert!!11 Stupid Alert!!111 AhhOOOOoooogaaah!!111

:rofl:

[jpak]

9. Must... un.... rec.... co.... mend....

:rofl: