wind

Vaclav Smil, Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba in Canada: The human craving for novelty is insatiable, and in a small matter you can meet it in no time at all, particularly when Moore’s Law can help you. It took a single decade to come up with entirely new mobile phones. But you just can’t replicate that pace of adoption with techniques that form the structure of modern civilization—growing food, extracting energy, producing bulk materials, or providing transport on mass scales.

Jon Boone, environmentalist, naturalist, bird and nature artist, wind energy expert: QUESTIONS • Why did the Dutch stop using their windmills to grind their grain and pump water to reclaim their land from the sea--as soon as the steam engine was invented? • Why are sailing vessels used almost entirely for recreation today, rather than for commercial purposes? • What is the difference between energy and power? • Why must electricity supply be matched to demand at all times? • What are the implications for wind technology given that any power generated is a function of the cube of the wind speed along a narrow range of wind velocities (that is, a wind turbine doesn't begin to work until the wind speeds hits 9-mph and maxes out when the wind speeds hit around 34-mph)? • Why has steady, controllable, precision power been the basis of modern life?

Igor Pioro and Pavel Kirilov - This excellent summary to the largest electric generating facilities by technology type: coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, oil, and renewables is available at:

http://www.formatex.info/energymaterialsbook/book/783-795.pdf

Holger Douglas: Der Stromverbraucher muss für jenen »grünen« Strom zahlen, der gar nicht erzeugt wird, weil in die Netze wirklich nichts mehr passt oderweil noch keine Leitungen gebaut sind, um den Strom abzutransportieren. Doch den Betreibern sind 20 Jahre Einnahmen garantiert - ob sie Strom liefern oder nicht. [The electricity consumer must pay for electricity produced by wind turbines no matter if it is produced or not, can not be used, or is produced, but there are no transmission lines to deliver to customers. Environmental extremist law at its worst.]

This letter is about an issue that is close to my heart, one of life and death for millions in developing parts of the world. It is about energy poverty.

The antithesis to energy poverty is energy security and freedom. You know this. It is precisely why you tweeted on this matter during recent oil and gas shortages. Despite being the maker of the world’s most successful electric vehicles, you pointed out that constraining fossil fuel supplies will hurt people and economies.

James Conca, scientist in the field of earth and environmental sciences. Contributor to Forbes: Most people have heard of something called externalities, costs not factored into the price. An energy’s deathprint is a rarely-discussed externality. The deathprint is the number of people killed per kWh produced. There is debate on the absolute numbers, but no one debates on the relative ranking from most dangerous to least. It is notable that in media and legislative discussions, the only time death is mentioned is for nuclear, ironic since it has the lowest deathprint of any source.

James Conca, science writer for Forbes on energy, Thomas Hafera, consulting engineer: Twenty-one prominent scientists issued a sharp critique to one of their own. Mark Jacobson of Stanford said America could easily become 100% renewable by mid-century, but refused to acknowledge sound scientific principles in his research and address major errors pointed out by the scientific community. Jacobson’s claim is at complete odds with serious analyses and assessments, including those performed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the International Energy Agency, and most of academia.

Michael Shellenberger, Environmental Progress: If the Democrats’ $2 trillion climate proposal passes into law, a lot of very powerful people stand to make a lot of money, from winning tender for industrial projects such as building wind turbines and transmission lines all the way to the outright cash payments that we saw during Obama’s green stimulus. If the US keeps closing nuclear plants and fails to build new ones, we will cede our ability to compete with the Russians and Chinese in building new nuclear plants which will undermine national security, and good industrial jobs at home. The threat posed by America’s illiberal, nuclear-building rivals will, like the crisis facing renewables, continue to grow, regardless of whether Democrats succeed in shutting me up.

Da in Deutschland der Ausstieg aus der Kernenergie beschlossen ist und auch von der Möglichkeit der CO2 – Abscheidung aus den Rauchgasen mit anschließender Verwendung als Rohstoff in der Chemie oder Speicherung im Untergrund, beispielsweise in erschöpften Erdgaslagern oder Ölfeldern kein Gebrauch gemacht werden soll, bleiben nur die Nutzung von Sonne und Wind zur Stromerzeugung um die durch zukünftigen Verzicht auf Kohle, Öl, Gas und Atom auftretenden Versorgungslücken beim Strom zu schließen. Denn Wasserkraft, Biogas etc. können keine nennenswerten zusätzlichen Strommengen liefern.

Da es sinnlos ist Strom zu produzieren, der wegen fehlender Leitungen nicht zum Verbraucher gelangt, müssen in einem 2. Schritt die Stromnetze im erforderlichen Maß ausgebaut werden. Erst wenn diese beiden Voraussetzungen erfüllt sind kann mit dem Ausbau der Solardächer und Windenergieanlagen sinnvoll fortgefahren werden. Diese grundlegenden Erkenntnisse sucht man in der gegenwärtigen öffentlichen Diskussion zur Zukunft der Stromversorgung leider vergeblich.

Climate cultists reckon the wholesale environmental destruction wreaked by the wind and solar industries is all for the good of planet. It’s an argument that holds all the logic of amputating an entire leg to prevent a septic toe from doing any further damage, when a dose of penicillin would do the trick. .. .. “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The infamous Vietnam era quotation may or may not have been uttered by an anonymous US Army major. It may have been misquoted, revised, apocryphal or invented. But it quickly morphed into an anti-war mantra that reflected the frustrations many felt.

Tim Ball, environmental consultant and former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg: Ontario, a Province in Canada, a country with almost unlimited energy resources and the same population as California, has exorbitantly high electricity bills. So high, that people march in protest. How did this happen? It is hard to believe, but it is primarily the result of deliberate energy policies recommended by the UN to world leaders.

Norman Rogers, Physicist. Contributor to Powerline, Board Member: CO2 Coalition, National Association of Scholars, Policy Advisor: Heartland Institute, Member: American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society: It is easy to tell when an energy source is “dumb”–i.e. inefficient, unreliable and expensive. Smart energy sources like coal, nuclear, hydroelectric and natural gas, exist because they satisfy a permanent demand for cheap and reliable energy. Dumb energy sources exist because government has put its thumb on the scale in the form of subsidies and mandates. Dumb energy will cause disastrous collapse of the modern world, even walk-in conquests by enemies.

Marita Noon, Advocate for sound energy policies and factual science, not computer models, based evaluation of CO2 from fossil fuels: On April 22, 2016 in a high-level celebration at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the Paris Climate Agreement of December, 2015 will officially be signed. Thirty days after its signing, the agreement will take effect—committing countries to establishing individual targets for emission reductions. Bureaucratically administered mandates, taxes, and special interest subsidies will drive family incomes down by thousands of dollars per year, drive up energy costs, and eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs. All of these costs would be incurred to achieve only trivial and theoretical impacts on global warming.

Before climate science became politicised, warm periods were referred to by scientists as “climate optima” because, for almost all species on Earth, warmer is better than colder. The most dramatic advances in civilization took place during the last four warm periods—including our own. The advancement of science, technology and the arts have been directly linked to warmer weather.

Michel Gay: Les dommages collatéraux de l’intermittence des énergies renouvelables (éoliennes et panneaux photovoltaïques) dans le système électrique européen sont dénoncés par l’Académie des Sciences dans un rapport de janvier 2015. Cette institution souligne le manque de réalisme des objectifs de la loi de transition énergétique. Elle craint également que cette politique soit contre-productive.

José Maldifassi Pohlhammer, Ph.D., máster en Ingenieria Nuclear del Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), profesor de la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez en Viña del Mar, Chile: Este artículo analiza cuáles serían los efectos a nivel global de una política tendiente a desmantelar las centrales nucleares existentes y a prohibir la construcción de futuros reactores para generar electricidad.