[ExI] Richard Lindzen on climate hysteria

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Wed Aug 5 11:08:31 UTC 2009


2009/8/5 Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com>:

> You don't need something that will give you a 100% solution. For
> "major player" I mean something comparable to hydro, or nuclear, that
> is, something capable of supplying a good fraction of the total
> electricity generation. Wind energy recent growth has been impressive
> (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Wind power usage ). It is
> now making sizable power generation in small countries, and has now
> appearing on big nations' charts.
>
> Currently, the biggest problem with wind farms is overloading: when
> there's too much wind, they have to shut down the farm because either
> the grid can't take it, or the other plants can't power down fast
> enough. But if you have a lot of storage at hand that can adsorb the
> power surge, like, say, some tens of millions of parked electric cars,
> this can play nicely. Various efforts, collectively called "smart
> grids", are going in this direction.

Another not-100%-solution but with a smaller capital cost than new
renewable or nuclear energy generation is natural gas, which releases
about half the CO2 compared to coal for a given amount of energy, and
less than 1% of the particulate pollution. Natural gas can also be
used directly in car engines with minimal modification and greater
efficiency as compared to electric motors (when you take into account
that the electricity will still mostly be generated using fossil
fuels). Finally, natural gas is very abundant when non-conventional
sources such as shale and coal seam methane is taken into account:
enough for at least a century at current rates of usage, perhaps much
more if methane hydrates are ever exploited.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



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