The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I've always wondered why aluminum production requires large quantities of electricity. Can't they use natural gas for heat?

Anyhow, I don't follow the Green New Deal since I don't follow the news, but the tidbits I do see make it clear that it's DOA. It's a race to the bottom of bad ideas, and they'll end up eating their own. Wanting to tear out hydro plants is an example of this. You'll finally get someone saying we should make it illegal to procreate and the bottom will fall out of this movement that history will quickly forget.

I ran the numbers for only the electric grid portion of the 'Deal',and it came in at less than the price of a cheeseburger,per day,per capita.Less than beer or cigarette money.
Seems real doable.

[All Darc]

Alumium requires very few energy to melt, but this is for recycled aluminium. To get aluminiun from mines and extract from rocks (bauxite) and produce industrial aluminun, it's required electrolysis (which take a lot of energy to produce each kg of aluminium).
That's why it's important to recycle aluminium.

When electricity was relativelly new, the aluminium was more expensive than gold, due the processing required.

About solar panel carbon footprint :

http://www.onlynaturalenergy.com/201...oltaic-energy/


And a new solar panel with suposed lower carbon footprint :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmRRMO4iVP8

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

Well, I hope that news is true. The evidence would be wind/solar increasing at least in proportion to coal decreasing. It doesn't solve variability in production and demand though.

It's been reported that Coal has a statistical mean averaged coefficient of utilization of 0.72,which means that in any given year,a coal-fired power plant will only be online 262-days of the year,and will have to rely on 100% power from 'elsewhere' to cover for it over the duration.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
One promise of deepwater,offshore wind,is less variability in production.
During 'dog-days',perhaps solar,or grid battery storage can take up some of the slack.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

What, given some arbitrary cost of CO2 emissions? The cost is infinite as entropy ensures that all is lost.

If any of that were true, we'd see exactly what you propose happening.

In 1991,the USDOE National Wind Resource Inventory figured,that North Dakota,Kansas,and Texas wind could cover total US electrical demand.
50-mile offshore wind is good for 70% of total electrical demand.
As of 2008,turbines were generating $300,000 revenue/year.They pay for themselves in 10-years,and go on for over ten more years with 'free' fuel.
Each turbine pays $3000-%10,000 royalties/year to the landowner.
Each turbine must be inspected each month.Drones are doing this for $400 vs $1,500 for a 'rope climber.'
In 2008,Texas had 23-coal-fired plants worth of wind production.
Today,Texas wind is covering over 10% of total Texas electrical demand.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
*over 100,000 have been killed in coal mine disasters.
*200,000 have been killed by black lung.
*500,000 lives have been shortened by coal-air pollution.
*Today miners are facing Progressive Massive Fibrosis (PMF) for which there is no cure,from quartz/silica dust from hard rock coal mining.
*Fine particulate matter PM 2.5 aerosols are killing 3.45-million people a year,worldwide,of which coal mining is partly implicated.Americans are dying from it.
*Mill tailings present dangers from:
*methyl mercury
*lead
*arsenic
*hexavalent chromium
*selenium
*beryllium
*cadmium
*magnesium
*groundwater pollution
*lake and stream pollution
*birth defects
*asthma
*cancer
The average plant produces 51,000,000,000 -pounds CO2/year
Add in the pollution from mining and shipping up to 1,500-miles one-way, from the Powder River Basin.
Coal has become so unattractive and uncompetitive,that it can no longer attract investment capital.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Start using batteries to store/waste grid power, well then coal is the better option to peak loads.
Unless you are trying to make electricity cost 50 cents a kwh.

Coal's gotta go.As soon as possible.We can't afford it,now that we have options.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

If wind and solar are really cheaper then why does china (where most of the worlds solar panels are made) open a new coal plant almost weekly?
If solar is cheaper then why is only something like 0.2% of electricity in the United States generated with solar.
If solar is cheaper why are the utilities getting so much "other people's money" to put up solar?
Aerohead pays 1 cent a kwh more for "wind power". If it's cheaper why is he paying more?

The observation doesn't support the statement.
Maybeyou are only looking at installed watts of capacity?

The whole world told them it was okay to do it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
As to solar's contribution to the mix,I believe that we need a clarification on the EIA data.
It appears that for fossil-fuels,they are listing energy 'inputs' rather than net outputs.
This doesn't affect renewables,as they do not reflect entropy in the same manner as fossil-fuels or even nuclear.
A coal-fired power plant requires 3.21847 times more Btus into the boiler than it gets out of the generator.
A 1-TW plant consumes 3.2-TW of energy to produce it.
Depending on how you spin the numbers,you could be over rating the capacity of the powerplant by a factor of over three.
And I think that this is exactly what the EIA is doing.
If so,then to keep the same level of intellectual dishonesty,you'd have to call a 2-MW wind turbine a 6.43695-MW turbine.
And the contribution of renewables would have to inflate to 36.6905-Quads for 2017,quite a bit different than 11.14.
It looks like intentional obfuscation,or at least intellectual laziness.
Like saying that Jane Russel wore an A-cup.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by All Darc

A lot of energy it's require to manufacture a typical solar panel, and it's so much that a panel in general takes almost 5 years to produce the energy that was used to manufacture it.
Maybe this explains partially why China needs coal power plants so much despite solar energy price had became atractive.

Under the IPCC agreements,China (an undeveloped country)is exempt from restrictions,and is allowed to grow its coal use until it reaches per capita parity with the developed world.
What they're doing is of no surprise to member signatories of the climate accords.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Allegedly it only takes around 40kwh to make a 200 to 250w panel which is only about 1 gallon of diesel fuel worth of energy.
Even if there was something lost in translation and just the solar cells by them selves took 40kwh to make that's still really good.

I hear that "solar panels will never make more energy than it took to make them" well a 220w panel should make at least 7 megawatt hours over a 20 year life.

For #1-Diesel,I've got 19,240 Btu/pound
6.942-lb/gallon (US)
133,583.32 Btu/gallon divided by 3414 Btu/kWh
= 39.128 kWh
Nice goin'!

[oil pan 4]

We have options. The only thing eating away at coals market share is natural gas.
It sure isn't solar. Solars market share is only about 0.22%

Power plants are rated for power output.
For example tolk power station in earth texas has a rating of just over 1 Gw.

See my solar power post.
Aluminum takes about 70kwh per kg to make from ore.
Glass takes about 5kwh per Kg from its raw materials.
A 250 watt panel uses about 13kg of glass and a few kg of aluminum but I'm not sure exactly how much aluminum.

So we are looking at about 65 kwh just for the glass and at least 100kwh and up to 250kwh for the aluminum so far.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by aerohead

I ran the numbers for only the electric grid portion of the 'Deal'.... Seems real doable.

That was the insidious part of it. Any one part sounded 'reasonable' but off the mark enough to attract comment (Cow farts. They don't fart, they belch and it can be controlled by adding seaweed to their diet. Nothingburger), but it was Part K or so (Crowder read the whole thing out, it took 16 minutes) where they proposed replacing the Union of the various States with a socialist Utopia.