"I've learned that there is no magic bullet for reducing our dependence on oil and emissions of greenhouse gases -- and politicians who call for one are usually just trying to avoid asking for sacrifice today."

Correct. There is now also NO WAY to stop using fossil fuels for food cultivation and distribution.

If you learn nothing else, study the graph here (click to zoom). You now know more about the production of energy in the USA, and the general principles of energy production worldwide, than the bulk of Americans.

If you learn nothing else, study the graph here (click to zoom).

Interesting (and well-drawn) graph, Rad. Very Tufte-esque.

You might like Edwin Tufte's book about displaying quantitative information in a way that conveys information to the viewer.

That is irrelevant when talking about Climate Change Rad. Yes fire is hot. No the earth is not a closed system. Waste heat is such a small fraction of the energy we are discussing you are essentially talking about a rounding error.

But you keep harping on that rounding error. It seems to be your hobby.

The New Deal was built on a false reading of the causes of the Depression.

Government policies of the New Deal strangled the nascent economic recovery and actually prolonged the Great Depression.

Roosevelt believed that the free market, through stock speculation and the stock market crash of 1929, caused the Great Depression. So, he put in place policies that would hamstring the free-wheeling marketplace - like wage and price controls, agricultural subsidies, labor regulation. While some of his policies did increase consumer confidence, others cost the consumer serious money.

AOC's Green New Deal also threatens to misread the causes of the problems it purports to fix. Like its namesake, the GND will strangle the economy, increase government power, and prolong misery, all in the name of relieving it and "saving" us from ourselves.

The fundamental problem with AOC’s dream (aside from costing more than the combined annual world GDP) is that renewables won’t supply the energy needed. See the following article by a committed environmentalist (who ended up mugged by reality and the laws of physics and chemistry):

https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/

And, he’s relying of California’s experience with renewables.

He now advocates nuclear (please, thank him for being part of the NIMBLY crowd that prevented using the Yucca Mountain disposal site for spent fuel rods - which, unfortunately, may make nuclear unfeasible, unless we find some 3d world country where we can dump our rad waste).

While fossil fuels have their drawbacks, they are still much better than the giant bird choppers and giant mirrors that blind airplane pilots, which is what AOC proposes. (And, while AOC didn’t talk about it, in addition to cows farting, so do dogs and cats, including little Chinese Crested pups. They may be cute, but they still pass gas, and so under the GND, they’ve got to go).

"Waste heat is such a small fraction of the energy we are discussing you are essentially talking about a rounding error."

Wow.

Not only do you know nothing whatsoever about power generation, you didn't even read the link for the dumbed-down explanation. You've tried the argument about Earth not being a closed system, which is your "tell": it doesn't have to be.

Check the graphic for the term, "rejected heat". Note the percentage it represents in each category. Note that it represents 59.1% of all heat.

Do over. Your grade to this point is zero.

> mirrors that blind airplane pilots

If you make a daytime flight in a window seat within 200 miles of Ivanpah, you won't forget the view.

The birds that fall tragically from the beams are said to be "sandwich-ready": Fully-cooked.

I prefer the nickname "Green Leap Forward". I'm reading Yang Jisheng's "Tombstone", a history of the socialist-induced great famine that killed 36 million Chinese.

The totalitarian claims that we need to mobilize all of society to a political cause, that no cost is too great to achieve a political goal, that those who resist The Cause threaten the rest of humanity. . . it all sounds suspiciously familiar.

I've noticed that most articles call Ivanpah a "solar" project. MoneyWatch correctly identifies it as a "solar thermal" project. There's a difference.

Anybody with more knowledge or expertise feel free to chime in on what I'm about to lay down. I think I've got it [mostly] right.

Most energy plants operate on steam. Something has to be used to produce heat to boil water and create steam: gas, coal, nuclear fission, reflected sunlight, etc. The steam turns the turbine which, in turn, turns the generator to produce electricity. The wind turns the turbine in wind plants, falling water turns the turbine in hydroelectric plants, and so on. But most power plants use steam created by boiling water.

Using boiling water allows for the plant to accommodate varying demands - a boiler can be turned up or down to adjust output to meet demand.

Plants like Ivanpah use mirrors, not solar panels, to reflect sunlight onto a tower and boil water to produce steam - to turn a turbine. It's more a conventional power plant than a solar plant.

Solar panels use photovoltaic cells to turn sunlight into electricity. This is still very inefficient right now. The number of photovoltaic cells required to produce a large amount of electricity is enormous. That such an array could power a large or even medium city is, for now, a pipe dream.

Until green advocates come up with better photovoltaic cells or something that can reliably turn a turbine - in any weather or part of the country - boiling water will remain our best and most reliable means of producing electricity.

"Check the graphic for the term, "rejected heat". Note the percentage it represents in each category. Note that it represents 59.1% of all heat.

Do over. Your grade to this point is zero."

Yes. Correct. 59.1% is right. But it is still under 0.00001% of the energy we are discussing when the topic of 'climate change' comes up. It is a rounding error. 100% of human generation is also a rounding error so 59.1% is too. Your's is the zero grade.

Yes fire is hot. And there are hotter fires than you are willing to account for.

You are correct Conan. While there are more efficient working fluids than water it is hard to beat the price and environmental safety of it.

For commercially available solar panels you are looking at 15-20% efficient. There are lab versions that are 30-40% efficient. And maybe higher. I haven't really kept up with it.

But efficiency isn't really the issue with pvc. As you mention when the sun isn't shining (night time, clouds, etc) 100% of zero is still zero. Unfortunately we still don't have much for grid scale energy storage. All electricity produced must be immediately consumed. You can't keep a bucket of electrons around for a rainy day.

Friedman and Cortez are talking about very different approaches. He wants an array of concentrated investments, she wants a totalitarian state that will enforce all of her childish lifestyle fetishes.

The birds that fall tragically from the beams are said to be "sandwich-ready": Fully-cooked. ~ Crid at March 2, 2019 8:33 AM

Flying insects are attracted to the heat reflecting off the mirrors. Birds chase the insects and get fried.

Kill enough of the birds and you have an abundance of insects with a dearth of predators to control the insect population. That won't end well.

Have we learned nothing from the mongoose in Hawaii or the pythons in the Everglades? Don't mess with population balances.

> The number of photovoltaic
> cells required

I read somewhere today that all that hardware is a nightmare for disposal.

I had no idea about the insects!

By 'nightmare' I meant chemically hazardous waste.

When I was a kid, the toys and gewgaws that could turn light into electricity seemed SO COOL.

Also, I thought by now we'd have flying cars and ennobling television.

Also, I thought by now we'd have flying cars and ennobling television.

Crid at March 2, 2019 1:59 PM

Well “I Claudius”. was on PBS in the 70’s. Can’t think of anything as good since. Maybe Rumpole.

On another note, reactor design has come a long way since the 50’s. Take a look at what happened when Europe decided they had to standardize cell phones for a lesson in government over regulation. Sticking with a fifties designed nuclear power station would be almost as bad as not building them at all.

You are right Crid, the PVs are quite toxic to dispose. One of the big reasons a lot of the PV manufacturing moved to China was the lax environmental regs. Both construction and cleanup involve some pretty nasty chemicals. That's one of the reasons solar-thermal is nicer than photovoltaic. No nasty chemicals. Just lots of mirrors, motors, and plastic tubes of water.

That's one of the reasons solar-thermal is nicer than photovoltaic. No nasty chemicals. Just lots of mirrors, motors, and plastic tubes of water. ~ Ben at March 2, 2019 6:34 PM

And dead birds. And a destroyed ecosystem.

Can't we just take the Endless War budget and throw it at the nuclear fusion containment problem and solve it already?

A few trillion oughta get us over the goal line.

AOC has never had an original thought in her life.

That's almost certainly true. But like all young people, she thinks she's discovered human emotions.

And therefore, she has oh-so-much to teach us. The most telling word in this famous tweet is "ambition." She doesn't even want to know about modest, unobtrusive, independently-pursued solutions to our common concerns. She wantsta lead and be adored.

I only said it was nicer Conan. Not that is was perfect. Yep you get the cooked birds. But you don't get the toxic marshes filled with carcinogenic compounds. Both destroy ecosystems simply because they take a lot of space to generate any significant power.

As for you Gog, nope. We don't need more money. We need that one smart guy who has the aha moment. And money doesn't seem to help there. Otherwise we would have already gotten over that goal line.

But like all young people, she thinks she's discovered human emotions. ~ Crid at March 3, 2019 1:55 AM

There's a reason Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman had the anti-Christ in Good Omens be a 12-year-old boy. Who else but a pre-teen could feel injustice so acutely? Who else but a pre-teen could, if he had the power, think it rational to destroy the world in order to remake it?

Youth brings emotions, but maturity brings perspective. The solution to an injustice is not another injustice.

"Friedman and Cortez are talking about very different approaches. He wants an array of concentrated investments, she wants a totalitarian state that will enforce all of her childish lifestyle fetishes."

Friedman has made his position perfectly clear in the past. He's a big admirer of the Communist Chinese government, and of the school of "how great America could be if only the right people were in charge". The whole idea is to have the level of control that FDR and the federal government had over the country during WWII. Actual goals are beside the point.

As far as the hokum about how solar/wind will give us energy independence (which we already have thanks to fracking) and create "millions of good-paying high-tech jobs", read this.

"Yes. Correct. 59.1% is right. But it is still under 0.00001% of the energy we are discussing when the topic of 'climate change' comes up. It is a rounding error."

You wish. That's a pretty nice try to hide that you didn't know what "waste heat" is.
Here's another gross conceptual error you committed simply because you didn't read or believe my blog post:

The idea that "the Earth isn't a closed system" is a valied defense against the observation that all of our energy use is released directly into our own environment is totally invalid because no system is closed to energy -- only to matter.

I can explain the entire operation of a pressurized reactor steam plant, including heat transfer principles and equations, because I have run one.

And that is why I am sure you're lost.

I do wish you luck in future study, that you may determine the difference between political hyperbole and actual meteorology. You are welcome at any time to demonstrate that fire does not make its vicinity hotter.

Radwaste,

I hate to break it to you... but for all of your confidence regarding your understanding of the fundamentals of thermodynamics, you seem to have some pretty gross misunderstandings going on when you say this in your blog post:

"This is pretty simple to figure out, if you can simply understand that heat flows from "hot" to "cold" because the "hot" area has more energy in it than the "cold" one."

The reason heat energy travels from "hot" to "cold" has absolutely nothing to do with which region has "more energy" and which region has "less energy".

The reason for this is that it doesn't take things like heat capacity into account. Not all materials are equivalent in terms of their ability to "store" heat energy for a given temperature.

The actual reason that heat energy flows from "hot" regions to "cold" regions is that the total change in entropy is positive when the direction of energy flow is from the system with the higher temperature to the system with the lower temperature.

The direction of heat flow has everything to do with entropy and nothing to do with total energy.