5 ms·

> This is independent of the method of power generation. Nope: I'm SURE you can see this, wind comes and goes often just hourly. A coal plant commonly can

> This is independent of the method of power generation. Nope: I'm SURE you can see this, wind comes and goes often just hourly. A coal plant commonly can go years without so much as a single flicker in the power output. The coal plant itself and its pile of coal out back are no doubt factors of 10 more reliable than wind or solar. You seem to be dreaming of renewables, at no matter what effort, e.g., superconducting long distance grid lines, molten salt storage, etc. WHY? A lot of nonsense, expensive, chancy, risky nonsense all due to some quasi-religion about CO2. The renewables proponents want to talk storage: Yes, storage would be crucial for much in renewables. But with coal, there's a really easy approach to storage -- just that pile of coal out back renewed occasionally by long coal trains such as Burlington Northern that Buffett invested in. Don't be fooled: It's all a swindle, about CO2, and some people are getting big bucks from this swindle.

pintxo 7y ago
The term we are talking about is called capacity factor [1]. According to this article, capacity factor for nuclear (no data for coal available) is ~0.9 vs .2-.4 (hydro), .47 (wind), .29 (solar) for renewables. So the difference in availability between current base load plants (nuclear) and renewables is somewhere between 3x (hydro, solar) and 2x (wind). I got it, that you do not buy into the co2 story, and it's everyones right to have their own opinions. But have you ever considered that there might be other factors which would make it possible for you to see renewables as a worthy alternative? Burning stuff [2,3] causes all sorts of effects on our environment, directly impacting health. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor [2] https://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/sources-of-exposure/power-plants https://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/sources-of-exposure/power-plants [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London
- graycat 7y ago
  > Burning stuff [2,3] causes all sorts of effects on our environment, directly impacting health. It can; apparently in the US long it did; but a lot of the dirt got cleaned up. E.g., can have clean air even in LA and NYC with lots of gasoline and Diesel power cars and trucks. And outside the top 50 or so US cities, car and truck exhaust is a problem not worth even talking about. E.g., coal needs to be cleaned up since it can put out sulfur, mercury, some radioactivity, etc. Some uses of coal in China and India might be causing significant to serious problems there. For some ugly problems, see the movie I referenced here: The movie shows some of what happens in Africa where they try to cook indoors by burning dried animal dung -- really bad, ugly medical problems. They would be much better off burning coal or using electricity from burning coal in a power plant.
  - pintxo 7y ago
    You might be underestimating the negative health effects of "burning stuff", have a look at page 3 of [1]. Replacing coal with gas should give a 10x improvement on air pollution related deaths and serious illness. If we could go full renewable (or fusion, if it wasn't always 25 years away), we could get rid of even more averse health effects. Note: your argument of coal based electric energy is better than burning stuff at home is strongly supported by [1]. But this is not what we are arguing about. No one was proposing to abandon electric energy from the grid and go back to burn wood at home. The question was, if there maybe is a health argument to switch from coal (or generally burning stuff) to renewable energy. [1] (This has been published in The Lancet, sorry for the potentially biased looking link, but due to the paywall at the original publisher I had to resort to google for an alternate provider) http://www.scotianwindfields.ca/sites/default/files/publications/electricity_generation_and_health_the_lancet_2007.pdf http://www.scotianwindfields.ca/sites/default/files/publicat...
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    Well, I can imagine burning dung is worse for your health than burning coal. Between apartment size dung stoves and a centralized coal plant I would totally chose the coal plant. That is a bar so low you'll have to dig it up though.

pintxo 7y ago

The term we are talking about is called capacity factor [1]. According to this article, capacity factor for nuclear (no data for coal available) is ~0.9 vs .2-.4 (hydro), .47 (wind), .29 (solar) for renewables. So the difference in availability between current base load plants (nuclear) and renewables is somewhere between 3x (hydro, solar) and 2x (wind). I got it, that you do not buy into the co2 story, and it's everyones right to have their own opinions. But have you ever considered that there might be other factors which would make it possible for you to see renewables as a worthy alternative? Burning stuff [2,3] causes all sorts of effects on our environment, directly impacting health. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor [2] https://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/sources-of-exposure/power-plants https://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/sources-of-exposure/power-plants [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

graycat 7y ago
> Burning stuff [2,3] causes all sorts of effects on our environment, directly impacting health. It can; apparently in the US long it did; but a lot of the dirt got cleaned up. E.g., can have clean air even in LA and NYC with lots of gasoline and Diesel power cars and trucks. And outside the top 50 or so US cities, car and truck exhaust is a problem not worth even talking about. E.g., coal needs to be cleaned up since it can put out sulfur, mercury, some radioactivity, etc. Some uses of coal in China and India might be causing significant to serious problems there. For some ugly problems, see the movie I referenced here: The movie shows some of what happens in Africa where they try to cook indoors by burning dried animal dung -- really bad, ugly medical problems. They would be much better off burning coal or using electricity from burning coal in a power plant.
- pintxo 7y ago
  You might be underestimating the negative health effects of "burning stuff", have a look at page 3 of [1]. Replacing coal with gas should give a 10x improvement on air pollution related deaths and serious illness. If we could go full renewable (or fusion, if it wasn't always 25 years away), we could get rid of even more averse health effects. Note: your argument of coal based electric energy is better than burning stuff at home is strongly supported by [1]. But this is not what we are arguing about. No one was proposing to abandon electric energy from the grid and go back to burn wood at home. The question was, if there maybe is a health argument to switch from coal (or generally burning stuff) to renewable energy. [1] (This has been published in The Lancet, sorry for the potentially biased looking link, but due to the paywall at the original publisher I had to resort to google for an alternate provider) http://www.scotianwindfields.ca/sites/default/files/publications/electricity_generation_and_health_the_lancet_2007.pdf http://www.scotianwindfields.ca/sites/default/files/publicat...
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  Well, I can imagine burning dung is worse for your health than burning coal. Between apartment size dung stoves and a centralized coal plant I would totally chose the coal plant. That is a bar so low you'll have to dig it up though.