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> Converting large amounts of atmospheric movement to heat will itself result in "manmade global warming" type issues. This single statement clearly indicates

by phaemon 13y ago

> Converting large amounts of atmospheric movement to heat will itself result in "manmade global warming" type issues. This single statement clearly indicates you have absolutely no clue whatsoever about anything regarding energy production. At all. It's like saying that you can't have an LED display on a space rocket because running it would use up all the fuel. Except, that doesn't even capture the scale of the energy disconnect. I can't actually think of an analogy that accurately demonstrates the level of sheer ignorance in that comment...

ctdonath 13y ago
Fine. Enlighten me. Calculate a relevant upper limit: if ALL current human energy needs were provided via wind power, how many modern full-sized turbines would be required? what would the atmospheric impact be, if any? at what point does that impact transition from scathingly negligible to "OMG we're destroying the Earth"? Compare said impact to that of fossil fuels a la "global warming" (a concept which itself would have been derided as "having absolutely no clue whatsoever about anything regarding energy production" just a few decades ago). Don't insult, quantify. I'm not looking for encyclopedic completeness, just a back-of-envelope ballpark akin to "the absolute upper limit for solar power is 1.3kW/m^2, realistic capture about 1% thereof". Pardon me if I didn't perfectly articulate one of several points to authoritative completeness in a brief blog post. And while we're at it, given robust suitable LEDs, how many homes could be lit for one year from the fuel consumed in one rocket launch? You might be onto something.
- phaemon 13y ago
  Really? You fire out a whole screed with pretensions of expertise and now it's up to me to provide figures? Ok. World energy consumption is about 15 Terawatts. Solar energy incoming is about 174,000 Terawatts. Therefore, the percentage increase in energy output if we took all....actually, I'm sure you can work the rest out for yourself.
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    Oh, I'm no expert. That's what concerns me about so much of the babbling about renewable energy: if I can find such major underdiscussed flaws, either I'm confused or the experts aren't as expert as they claim. If you're going to pounce on one sentence (and imply that somehow it should have been thorough when it was just one sentence), then yes I'd like you to back up your broad-brush insults with some figures (nothing difficult, just sensible ballpark framing). OK, for all your attack verbiage we get one salient point: human energy use amounts to 0.01% of all Earth's incoming solar energy. So back to my concern: where is the tipping point at which shifting all our energy use to "renewables" starts adversely affecting the environment? "Manmade-CO2 based global warming" was laughable, now it's practically a religious doctrine. "Solar strip-mining" kills everything living under those panels, taking most of the light & heat. Hydropower wrecks wetlands by turning shallow warm muddy water (which life therein has enjoyed for darn near ever) into deep cold clear basins. Wind farms have their issues, but lack of sheer scale obscures them, and methinks we are ignorant of what effects vast fields of turbines would have (just as we dismissed the effects of other energy sources listed). Blowing it all off as "worrying about an LED's effect on a rocket launch" is historically naive. Manmade CO2 is really just a minuscule percentage of total CO2, yet there's a vast movement to severely curtail human activity in fear of its accumulation forcing a "tipping point" toward global disaster. I'm not convinced that solar panels & wind turbines don't, on a comparably large scale, risk similar consequences.
    - phaemon 13y ago
      > Oh, I'm no expert. That's what concerns me about so much of the babbling about renewable energy: if I can find such major underdiscussed flaws, either I'm confused Yes, you can stop there. You are confused. > "Manmade-CO2 based global warming" was laughable, No, it wasn't. No-one thought you could increase CO2 levels by 70% and not cause an effect. How would the extra energy be removed? Magic? And you're now trying to talk multiple points at once so that you can confuse the issue rather than clarify it. That's why I picked on one point. I wanted to see if you would admit it was wrong.
- phaemon 13y ago
  Actually, another thing. It was well known that the whole reason the earth is warmer than the moon was due to the "greenhouse" effect. The idea that we could safely increase the amount of our main greenhouse forcing gas by 70% without any impact, would be the one that was derided.
gus_massa 13y ago
> Converting large amounts of atmospheric movement to heat will itself result in "manmade global warming" type issues. The main problem is that even if you do nothing, after a while the air in the wind stop dew to the friction and all the kinetic energy is transformed into thermal energy. So using a windmill and connecting it to heater is global warming neutral, but stupid. Connecting the windmill to an engine is much more useful, and after a while all the movement will get transformed into heat, but the process is still is global warming neutral. If you connect the windmill to a laser, and point it to the space it's possible to remove some energy from the Earth and make it cooler, but the effect would be still totally absolutely completely negligible.

by phaemon 13y ago

ctdonath 13y ago

Fine. Enlighten me. Calculate a relevant upper limit: if ALL current human energy needs were provided via wind power, how many modern full-sized turbines would be required? what would the atmospheric impact be, if any? at what point does that impact transition from scathingly negligible to "OMG we're destroying the Earth"? Compare said impact to that of fossil fuels a la "global warming" (a concept which itself would have been derided as "having absolutely no clue whatsoever about anything regarding energy production" just a few decades ago). Don't insult, quantify. I'm not looking for encyclopedic completeness, just a back-of-envelope ballpark akin to "the absolute upper limit for solar power is 1.3kW/m^2, realistic capture about 1% thereof". Pardon me if I didn't perfectly articulate one of several points to authoritative completeness in a brief blog post. And while we're at it, given robust suitable LEDs, how many homes could be lit for one year from the fuel consumed in one rocket launch? You might be onto something.

phaemon 13y ago
Really? You fire out a whole screed with pretensions of expertise and now it's up to me to provide figures? Ok. World energy consumption is about 15 Terawatts. Solar energy incoming is about 174,000 Terawatts. Therefore, the percentage increase in energy output if we took all....actually, I'm sure you can work the rest out for yourself.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Oh, I'm no expert. That's what concerns me about so much of the babbling about renewable energy: if I can find such major underdiscussed flaws, either I'm confused or the experts aren't as expert as they claim. If you're going to pounce on one sentence (and imply that somehow it should have been thorough when it was just one sentence), then yes I'd like you to back up your broad-brush insults with some figures (nothing difficult, just sensible ballpark framing). OK, for all your attack verbiage we get one salient point: human energy use amounts to 0.01% of all Earth's incoming solar energy. So back to my concern: where is the tipping point at which shifting all our energy use to "renewables" starts adversely affecting the environment? "Manmade-CO2 based global warming" was laughable, now it's practically a religious doctrine. "Solar strip-mining" kills everything living under those panels, taking most of the light & heat. Hydropower wrecks wetlands by turning shallow warm muddy water (which life therein has enjoyed for darn near ever) into deep cold clear basins. Wind farms have their issues, but lack of sheer scale obscures them, and methinks we are ignorant of what effects vast fields of turbines would have (just as we dismissed the effects of other energy sources listed). Blowing it all off as "worrying about an LED's effect on a rocket launch" is historically naive. Manmade CO2 is really just a minuscule percentage of total CO2, yet there's a vast movement to severely curtail human activity in fear of its accumulation forcing a "tipping point" toward global disaster. I'm not convinced that solar panels & wind turbines don't, on a comparably large scale, risk similar consequences.
  - phaemon 13y ago
    > Oh, I'm no expert. That's what concerns me about so much of the babbling about renewable energy: if I can find such major underdiscussed flaws, either I'm confused Yes, you can stop there. You are confused. > "Manmade-CO2 based global warming" was laughable, No, it wasn't. No-one thought you could increase CO2 levels by 70% and not cause an effect. How would the extra energy be removed? Magic? And you're now trying to talk multiple points at once so that you can confuse the issue rather than clarify it. That's why I picked on one point. I wanted to see if you would admit it was wrong.
phaemon 13y ago
Actually, another thing. It was well known that the whole reason the earth is warmer than the moon was due to the "greenhouse" effect. The idea that we could safely increase the amount of our main greenhouse forcing gas by 70% without any impact, would be the one that was derided.

gus_massa 13y ago

> Converting large amounts of atmospheric movement to heat will itself result in "manmade global warming" type issues. The main problem is that even if you do nothing, after a while the air in the wind stop dew to the friction and all the kinetic energy is transformed into thermal energy. So using a windmill and connecting it to heater is global warming neutral, but stupid. Connecting the windmill to an engine is much more useful, and after a while all the movement will get transformed into heat, but the process is still is global warming neutral. If you connect the windmill to a laser, and point it to the space it's possible to remove some energy from the Earth and make it cooler, but the effect would be still totally absolutely completely negligible.