The Glade 4.0

And all these comparisons between green energy and fossil fuels are pointless without a quantifiable measure of their environmental impact. You can say green energy has "toxic byproducts," but if those are produced in quantities that are 0.1% of what come from fossil fuels, then it's completely irrelevant and all you're doing is confounding the discussion with useless talking points.

So... where's the quantification?

As for the solar panels thing, Coro is using it to point out the failure to grasp very basic thermodynamics, not making a claim regarding quantities. The fact that people don't grasp things like Conservation of Energy when talking about global... warming is telling.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's not an argument I'm interested in pursuing. But it's not really a novel topic, I'm sure you can find lots of research on it out there.

No, people don't generally refer to hydro electric as green, unless they are misinformed. Hydro-electric is out - existing facilities are still being used, and new facilities are done IF the intent of the reservoir is water supply (if you have the dam anyway, might as well get some power out of it).

As for the environmental impacts, the impact concerns are watershed-wide. There may be individual groups concerned about the valley itself, but impact assessments are on the watershed. Reduced discharges downstream, stability of the sediment-starved channel below the dam, flooding (of course), temperature changes within the river (impacts to aquatic life), invasive species, migratory blockages, economic changes on the region, migratory impacts on waterfowl, impacts to flight patterns (birds and planes don't mix), destruction of wetlands resulting from a sediment starved system downstream, destruction of riparian wetlands/cropland/etc due to less frequent inundation of floodplains, and on and on and on.

Yes, great project from what I know.

A fraction of a percent is all we're talking about anyway - co2 levels have changed from around 350 ppm in the early 60's to about 396 ppm today.

A change of 44 parts per million is what's got folks panties in a bunch. Supposedly whatever fraction of a percent that effect has isn't immeasurable.

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In time, this too shall pass.

a) Assuming your numbers were acrurate, that's a 13% increase in CO2.

b) your numbers don't match the data found here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dio ... atmosphere, which is actually closer to 25% increase. (from below 320ppm in 1960 to 400 ppm average in 2013.)


You're deliberately confusing percent of the total with percent increase.

To use another analogy, the lethal concentration of Hydrogen Cyanide given here: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/74908.html is somewhere between 7 and 26 ppm.

A change of 25 ppm from 5ppm to 30ppm is only a 'few hundredths of a percent' of the total (the way you're using the difference) but a 500% increase in total Hydrogen Cyanide, and the difference between "not fatal" and "Definitely Fatal"

TheRiov:

You're misreading Taskiss's post.Taskiss is pointing out that if such a small change in the total parts per million of our atmosphere is so hypothetically destructive to all life, then the same holds true for the toxic biproducts of solar cell or wind turbine production, or even the secondary and tertiary effects on local ecology from so-called green power sources.

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I hope that's not what he's saying. Pollutants do not act the same, carry the same toxicity, react the same, or have the same limited reagents in whatever chemical process you are worried about. Further, comparing pollutants that require direct contact for toxicity to compounds that create indirect impacts like global warming would be silly.

I said nothing about pollutants - read the post I was responding to and you'll see that it was about surface area and the heat absorption consequences of solar power plants, where the small change was discounted simply because it was a small change.

Since atmospheric heat absorption consequences of a change in 44 millionths or so of the total composition of the earth's atmosphere is the issue in the first place, I'm thinking your knee jerked prematurely.

Less, even, when you think about it. co2 is only 1/3 carbon, and the carbon is being cast as the boogeyman in this scenario.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Fairly certain making borosilicate glass isn't carbon neutral. Likewise, heavy metal emissions from the reactive components of solar panels don't help either. There are all sorts of problems to these processes, but the point remains the same: if such small changes cause these disastrous global problems, then we shouldn't be contributing to them in the name of green energy. Moreover, TheRiov was STILL misreading his post.

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My only point is that we need to be careful in comparisons of pollutants, or even the same pollutant in different locations or processes. For example, carbon is not a problem; what is a problem (potentially) is its form, location, and its chemical neighborhood. Heavy metals don't have the same concerns as CO2. What's more hazardous to the environment, a pound of carbon or a pound of lead? Unanswerable.



which is why i hate the term "green". in general, focus should be on converting non-point sources of pollution to point sources (1,000 tons of CO2 from a plant is better than 1,000 tons of CO2 from a million cars), and consolidating pollutants (dog **** in the landfill instead of dog **** on lawns).

Point sources and consolidation makes pollution easier to reduce, and easier to remediate. So how does that factor in? Batteries in landfills vs. diffusion of CO2 in the atmosphere?

Arathain:

We're not exactly comparing pollutants; we're talking about the scale of the change and the significance of the relative impact. I don't disagree with anything you've said.

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As Riov pointed out, scale of change and relative impact, for even the same pollutant, are entirely dependent on the surrounding circumstances.

Except, Amanar wanted to contend that scale and impact were likely irrelevant.

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Be happy, you aren't in Atlanta at the moment. Reports here are that the entire city is all but shut down by the freeze.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Well aware what's going on in Atlanta ... there were flurries, with no sticking snow, as far south as Thomasville by some reports.

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I expected you would be aware Professor. Not everyone is, and as usual, lack of preparation or the normal need for it, is a great deal of the problem.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

If you guys can't tell the difference between a fraction of a percent and 13%, then I can't help you.

Also, the fraction of a percent thing was just the simplest, most direct counter to Coro's argument. There's so many things wrong with it that it's ridiculous you guys are even entertaining the idea. But I'll humor you for a moment.

Thermal radiation is absorbed by solar panels (or any form of solar power production really) and converted into electricity, which eventually dissipates into heat. In reality, not all of it will dissipate into heat in the short term, but it doesn't really matter.

Fossil fuels are burned to produce heat, which is used to produce electricity. This electricity goes on to do the same things that electricity from solar power does, including the same amount of energy being dissipated into heat. However, there's also heat lost to the atmosphere in the initial generation of electricity. This is energy that would have otherwise been locked away in molecular bonds beneath the earth. Thus, the heat produced by the burning of fossil fuels for electricity is necessarily greater than the heat produced by solar power.

In summation: Burning fossil fuels = FIRE = HOT! = makes things warmer = global warming. QED. Definitive proof. Thank you.

What's next? Can we discuss how we should all wear white clothes, to help reflect the maximum amount of radiation back into space? Or maybe we can try to find ways to convert thermal energy into other forms of energy. If we use some solar powered dump trucks to haul a bunch of rocks to the top of Mt. Everest, we can convert a lot of thermal energy to potential energy! That will surely cool the planet down.

While I don't think it adds up to anything substantial, I think you're forgetting that most of the energy absorbed by solar panels would have been radiated back into space if the solar panels weren't there.

With that said, Solar Panels are actually one of the few ways of getting MORE energy on Earth. Burning fossil fuels merely uses up natural energy batteries that Earth built up over a few hundred million years, but they're borrowed time. Wind generation uses energy that the earth acquired from the sun only a few hours, days or weeks before. Geothermal energy and Hydroelectric power also uses solar energy, although it was deposited here long earlier (weeks or months in the case of hydroelectric power, and billions of years in the case of Geothermal.) Tidal harnesses are neat, as they find a way to utilize the energy transferred to us from the orbit of the moon, but that's still energy that gets to earth and stays a while anyway. Only solar power traps energy that would otherwise have found its way back into space and be lost to us forever (most of it, anyway). As such, I rather like it, in principle.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Right, so solar panels should only be installed on otherwise dark surfaces. Legislation needed!

I did, in saying there is an equivalent amount of heat produced by fossil fuels. It's not that they don't warm the planet, it's that they necessarily do less. Now I was kind of assuming the heat lost to inefficiency in the solar panels would radiate back out into space just the same as any other object on earth that's heated from the sun's rays, which may not be the case, but it seems likely.

Anyway, I agree that solar power is cool because it's harnessing energy that we would otherwise lose, but on the grand scale it doesn't amount to a whole lot. On the other hand, consider photosynthesis. That's like solar power on a massive scale, and it's also absorbing energy that would otherwise be lost. Plus it converts it directly to a stable chemical form. So I think wood-fuel is up there with solar in that regard, you just need to sustainably harvest it.

Also, geothermal energy is mostly coming from the Earth itself (radioactive decay and leftover energy from its formation), not the sun. In that sense it's the least sustainable form of energy, along with nuclear.

Edit: On the other hand, coal also comes from wood and organic matter...

So does Oil.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Thoughts on this? Emphasis mine.

http://www.energypost.eu/exclusive-repo ... uels-ever/