I have been on this planet a long time and I have been hearing that phrase ever since I was a kid.
I hear it sometimes many times a day, from everyone who thinks about running for Town Council up to and including the President of the United States.
“We need clean and affordable energy.”
Let me tell you something about energy. It comes at a price.
We generate electricity in a number of ways but in all but one we need to crank a generator. The exception is a solar panel, the photovoltaic conversion of sunlight energy into a flow of electrons.
We crank generators with a turbine powered by steam, water, wind or burning fuel—the jet engine.
With the exception of wind and water all the other systems use steam made by heating water by burning hydrocarbons or heat generated by the decomposition—fission—of nuclear material.
Generators turned by jet engines burn either gas or burn refined jet engine fuel.
Those are our only options. The dream of generating heat from fusion, the squeezing together of hydrogen atoms to form helium with the byproduct of heat only occurs on stars. The best minds on the planet have been attempting to achieve this for decades but have failed. The temperatures and pressures required are not attainable on a continuous basis.
Now to some of the reasons why we will not have “clean and affordable energy.”
The best deal that you can get regarding energy is to hang your wash on an old-fashioned clothesline but your neighbors and environmentalists don’t want to see your underwear flapping in the breeze like Tibetan prayer flags.
Neither do they want to see wind turbines against the skyline on their hills.
Neither do they want to see solar panels on your roof or in your yard if there is not enough sun that hits your roof.
Neither do they want to see dams on the rivers.
Neither do they want to see power plants and transmission towers on their favorite beach.
So to keep saying, “We need to find new ways to generate clean and affordable energy”, accept the fact. There are no new ways.
KNOW WHAT WE NEED?
“Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.”
Looks good on a Christmas card but it ain’t gonna happen anymore than we will get affordable and clean energy.
It’s esthetics versus utility.
It’s wishes versus reality.
When you are done chewing your nails, go to Whole Living Today to get your blood pressure back down to normal.
Two years ago we lost our dog of 13 years. We have always had a dog but after the last I felt that I did not want to buy another puppy.
A puppy takes a lot of care. You must feed it, make sure it has water, take it for walks, play with it, teach it to interact socially, take it to the vet and spend a lot of time with it.
Yesterday I opened a can of worms that I have been trying to avoid since I started this BLOG–politics and Global Warming.
They are intertwined.
Now that I have, I must follow through on a series of related articles….or look like an idiot.
In short, yesterday, “I Bought a puppy”.
The planet is warming. There is enough good data to support this at the present time. We do not know if it will continue to warm up or if it will start to cool.
So far this winter some seriously cold weather and snow have been seen around the world.
In the 1970’s the fear was that the planet was cooling.
As I said yesterday it is cyclic and unpredictable.
There are greater amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere today than there had been as shown by measurements in core samples from ice.
Whether the Sun started the warming cycle a couple of centuries ago and people are adding to it now is a possibility.
Warming of the northern regions releases carbon dioxide from the permafrost along with a far more effective greenhouse gas, methane.
Glaciers are melting. That too is verifiable.
Iceland and Greenland are volcanic in nature and some of the glacial melting can be coming from the rock under the ice and not just the atmosphere.
Science is full of symbols and numbers. Symbols frighten some people but they are “shorthand” for abstract concepts: momentum, energy, force etc.
Numbers indicate magnitude or quantity.
I will try to keep these at a minimum
Most people have heard of “Carbon Dating”.
There are three isotopes of carbon. An isotope has the same chemical properties but different internal configuration for an element.
Carbon 12 is the most common form of carbon and about 99 % of all carbon exists in this state.
Carbon 13 makes up most of the rest.
But there is also Carbon 14, a radioactive form that disintegrates to about half of itself in 5600 years. This is termed, “Half Life”.
Carbon is the major constituent of plant life and it is from this that we derive all of our common energy sources, our hydrocarbons: firewood, coal, oil and natural gas.
No matter what hydrocarbon that we burn to extract the energy that the sun originally put into it, the by-product is water and carbon dioxide.
By measuring the residual carbon 14 contained in ice samples we can determined when that carbon was captured and stored.
Ice core samples do indicate that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has been increasing during the period of the industrial revolution and the increasing population on the planet.
It seems obvious to conclude that people are the cause.
Maybe but maybe not.
If the Sun triggered this warming trend agriculture would spread and populations would grow because there is more food to support them. It may be a corollary rather than a cause.
I am in total agreement that we must reduce carbon emissions but not catastrophically destroy our ability to lead reasonably comfortable lives until we really understand what is happening.
I will continue with this subject in a series of articles that deal with power generation, electric vehicles and nuclear energy.
“Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode of…. Will the World Turn?”.
(CNN) — The glaciers in the Himalayas are receding quicker than those in other parts of the world and could disappear altogether by 2035 according to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
Wed Jan 20, 7:30 am ET
GENEVA – A U.N. warning that Himalayan glaciers were melting faster than any other place in the world and may be gone by 2035 was not backed up by science, U.N. climate experts said Wednesday — an admission that could energize climate change critics.
The Himalayan glacier claim, made in the group’s voluminous, Nobel-winning report, was little noticed until The Sunday Times said the projection seemed to be based on a news report.
How timely for me to restart my BLOG today and the article that I posted earlier today.
This is exactly what I have been talking about and the reason that I started my BLOG two years ago.
(Readers, please check my post of earlier today.)
Before you dive off the cliff, know how deep the water is.
I started this BLOG in November 2007 and it has been my intention to terminate it after two years. It’s not because I am bored with it or that I do not have sufficient material to continue it.
Life is full of choices and there are many priorities that clamor for attention:
E-mails have to be read and answered, jokes need to be forwarded, the garbage must go out, wood for the fireplace must be brought in, snow must be shoveled and toilet paper rolls must be replaced when empty.
People say, “I wonder where the time went.”
That’s the answer. It was chewed up by trivia.
Anyway, the reason for this post is the goading by a very interesting and well-researched book that my granddaughter gave me recently, “Hot, Flat andCrowded” by Thomas L. Friedman. It is loaded with good information and a “must read” by Liberals and Conservatives alike.
I do take exception, however, that the author implies that all the ills of the modern world are the result of the policies of the United States in many areas.
First, a digression. I wrote and publisheda novel in 1994, DESTINATIONS, which has been out of print for years.
I am seriously planning to have it reprinted soon. I have had to make no changes to the original after all these years because I feel it is more current today than when I wrote it.
In the story, I have a character ask the following:
“Who’s telling you what and why?”
This is something that everyone should ask themselves when they are presented with an argument that they are somewhat wary of.
Back to Friedman’s book. On page 147 I read something that made me take notice and I quote now:
“Many climatologists believe that Katrina’s unusual ferocity was fed by the warmer waters in the Gulf on Mexico, which, they believe, are partly attributable to global warming.”
Friedman stated that after World War II the United States increased its industrial output and as a result generated much more CO2, the major cause of Global Warming. This production increase, he claims, accelerated after the fall of The Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War.
Being the scientific skeptic that I am, I said to myself, “Wait a minute, what about other hurricanes before WWII?”
During the 1930’s the United States was in a deep depression and industrial production along with CO2 emissions would have been way down.
This led me to look at hurricanes of epic proportion.
The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, was a Category 5 hurricane. The Hurricane of 1938 was also a Category 5 hurricane. These occurred before there had been significantCO2 generation. Hurricane Camille in 1969 was a Category 5 hurricane. Hurricane Gilbert of 1988 was a Category 5 hurricane. Hurricane Andrew of 1992 was a Category 5 hurricane.
Katrina, however, came ashore as a Category 3 hurricane.
It was not a “ferocious hurricane”. The damage that it caused was not by high winds but by a poorly maintained levee system and people living below water level.
Significant rain along the MississippiRiver basin could have created the same result without its being a hurricane.
What I am getting at is that the Hurricane of 1938 devastated New England without having traveled across warm Gulf water caused by the United States industrial CO2 pollution.
Now, my point is this. There is no question that the climate is changing. It does so on a daily basis. I have been keeping daily weather records for over 40 years because that is my nature; to observe and hopefully predict. As I stated in my first BLOG article, I am a scientist.
The geological records of the planet shows the extremes of ocean levels that have occurred over time. These levels are a function of global warming and cooling. There is no argument there but the Earth’s temperature ranges are neither predictable as a function of time nor consistent in amplitude.
I live along the Connecticut coast. The railroad line from New York to Boston runs along this coast and a series of bridges had been built across the estuaries in Stonington, Connecticut that flow into Fisher’s Island Sound then into the Atlantic Ocean.
The clearance under these bridges leave barely enough room for small boats to pass under yet this clearance has been approximately the same during the past 100 years.
What does this mean? The oceans have neither risen nor fallen enough to cause a change in the clearance between the water level and the bottom of the bridge.
This is a “yardstick” cast in stone.
If this is true, then the ocean heights have not changed at Stonington, Connecticut, Samoa, Sri Lanka or Sicily.
People can say, “The beach used to be way down there but now the waves are lapping at my foundation. That proves that the ocean levels have risen.”
Wrong, that shows the effects of erosion at work.
In 1952, on the northwest shore of Oahu, Hawaii I have photos that show about 50 yards of beautiful sandy beach. When I returned in 1953, the beach was only about 20 yards wide with about a six foot drop to the water of hard black lava.
At the time, I asked one of the “locals” about it.
He said, “The sand comes and goes. It will come back.”
In 1954, the wide sandy beach was back.
He understood.
Fishermen who leave Chatham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod in the morning often must return in a different channel because the sand bars shift daily.
Let’s not confuse beach erosion with ocean heights.
Before we become “Chicken Little” and scream that the sky is falling down, let’s get some solid data that does not favor some scientist’s job, does not support a political party’s agenda and does not allow someone to make a fortune at taxpayer’s expense.
There are two steps necessary for an impending dictatorship
The first is to silence opposing views. Today it can be achieved by controlling the media: television, radio and the Internet.
Any system through which those with opposing views can gauge the extent of dissention in society must be eliminated.
Revolutions are not undertaken by a single person and unless the strength of the opposition can be evaluated with respect to the strength of the government no action is taken.
The second is to disarm the people to prevent forceful opposition.
The method employed throughout the world has been the registration of weapons
. This provides the government with not only the number and types of weapons but a list of where they are located.
Enforcement of this is through very severe penalties if unregistered weapons are used or otherwise found.
After registration, there are several means of control.
The most dramatic and the least likely to be tolerated in a free society is confiscation.
A more subtle and gradual process is ownership permit fees and taxes.
These can be raised to such levels that people voluntarily give up their weapons.
Finally there is the elimination of manufacture and the distribution of ammunition.
I may be wrong but it appears that we are presently on that course.
I have sent this out as an E-mail to many of my friends and quite a few disagree with me.
Thankfully we live in a free country where I can express my opinions
“It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.” —George Washington
I have been on this planet a long time and I have been hearing that phrase ever since I was a kid.
