I have seen many claims about how man is running the climate that just do not pan out. Oh I am told, no, man does not run climate, he just effects climate. What is the alarm then I wanted to know. If we only effect it, what is the beef with man? Well check out this man. He is simply explaining problems that exist. Not dreams of Obama's father, but actual problems that exist. We may try denial, but that won't work. We can discuss all day long, That can't change the problems this man presents.
Do you even try to understand the real issues? It seems not. Firstly, he has a masters in cultural anthropology. That certainly doesn't make him an energy expert. Because he was naive, he had unrealistic expectations for wind and solar. Anyone who actually studies this subject has long known that wind and solar can't solve the problem. So now that he's grown up a little, he is swinging wildly the other direction, again with unrealistic expectation. How many nuclear power plants would it take to replace all other energy sources? What is the required investment for each plant? How long does it take to build a plant? Where are you going to put them? I've done the math, It would require far too many power plants to be practical; it would cost a fortune, it would all be socialist power, and it would probably take 200 years to build them all - with a life expectancy of perhaps 50 years. Banks won't finance nuclear power plants. It has to come from government money. How many trillions? He ignores the fact that his nuclear power solution would require rewiring the entire country and forcing everyone to go electric. So add another trillion? And what about ships, large trucks, trains, and planes? He doesn't understand the nature of industry and the certitude of failures, as we saw in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. He completely ignores the real solution: Fuels derived from algae. For the price of a few nuclear power plants, we could convert the country to algae fuels. No re-wiring the entire country, no need for a tons of nuclear waste to manage. No threat of a catastrophic failure taking out an entire city or worse. No concerns about terrorists taking over a nuclear plant and forcing a failure. No need to worry about securing all of those facilities and the waste facilities. Nuclear power is far from cheap and easy even if it could be made safe. And even a safe design can fail due to unforeseen circumstances; or when they build the sea wall 6 feet too short to reduce costs, even when a long history of tsunamis was known, as happened in Fukushima. This led to large quantities of highly radioactive materials being dumped into the environment. Even as I write this, I am absorbing radiation from the nuclear disaster in Japan. Algae farms can be located in the oceans, eliminating the need for land and clean water. It is carbon neutral. It can completely replace petroleum with a reasonable amount of dedicated area. And it can even be used to fuel generating stations, to carry the grid load when the sun goes down. But he never mentions third-generation and later alternative fuels, because he isn't an energy expert. He's an anthropologist.
He also ignores the fact that the price of solar is dropping by orders of magnitude, and soon every house will or could produce more power than it uses. He is using old technology as the basis for his argument. But this is what solar has really done. And never mentions that soon you will be able to spray on your solar panels, like paint.
There are currently 98 nuclear reactors operating in the US. This provides 9% of our total energy needs. So to replace all other sources, we would need about 1000 similar reactors. $4,000-$6,000: The capital costs (per kilowatts electrical (kWe)) to build a nuclear reactor. https://gigaom.com/2010/02/19/nuclear-power-by-the-numbers/ $4000 - $6000 per KW is $4 to 6 million per Megawatt. With a typical 1000 MW per reactor, we get $4-6 Billion per reactor. And if we need 1000 reactors, about $4 to $6 Trillion to source all energy needs using nuclear power. Figure at least another trillion to rewire the country. So it would cost $5 to $7 trillion, or about $20,000 for every person in the US. And that is just the out-of-pocket construction costs. After paying your $20,000 per family member tax bill, you still need to pay for your electricity.
Note that solar is now showing an initial cost of 30 cents per watt, or $300 per KW. With a 30% duty cycle [light of day], that effectively works out to about $1000 per KW. Again, nuclear is $4000-$6000 per KW. Also, the cost of decommissioning nuclear power plants has proven to be 10 to 15 times more expensive than building them - and can take 5 times longer to clean up than it took to build. So your tax bill for nuclear power is now more like $300,000 per family member. Los Angeles has about 4 million people, or 1.2% of the US population. So just the city of Los Angeles would require about 12, full-sized nuclear reactors.
People always seem to be talking about making energy as opposed to saving it. A brick is a chunk of clay heated to 2000 degrees for a day. I have been pulling bricks out of an old house along with t&g 1by4 heart pibe walls and floors. not to mention floor joist...rafters. ..tin roof.....and purlins. I watch the dyi network a lot. I saw people take a sledge hammer to a glass block wall...glass block is expensive and can be reused. How much energy does it take to make glass block....a window pain....hinges....cinder block? All the wood is antique longleaf pine rough cut ....showing saw marks and ax marks. There are over 30 growth rings for every inch of thickness. What I am saying is that there is no magic bullet. Reduce...Reuse...Recyle...
Instead of destroying cabnets....donate them .... heaters.... and stuff that works. Just saw a laminate floor for sale at a thrift store....cool.
No, not on its own but combined with other things....like wind, solar, geothermal, and other approaches like carbon farming it couldn't hurt. I have heard it said that for every four square feet of deconstruction three square feet of new construction can be made.
I don't think most useful materials are wasted much these days. If there is a buck to be made, someone is trying to make it. There are companies that do nothing but resell discarded materials. When a factory is torn down, or inventory is discarded at a large company, companies often bid to reclaim the materials. And small companies sell anything they can on EBay.
That doesn't mean the old materials go unused. It simply means that no one wants to buy a new house make of old stuff.
I've never thought of Carlin as being an idiot. But his statements sure are idiotic. For example, he leaves out the fact that the rate of extinction is 1000x the natural rate. So his example is lame beyond absurdity We are destroying the planet. Only we can save it. I thought he was intelligent enough to understand that. Yes, saving the planet really means trying to save the human race from eliminating itself; or making life for your grandchildren more harsh than life has been since the stone age.
It depends on what the old stuff is. But you are right most people would want a "new" house. Some of this is understandable. I have been pulling out the rafters and celing joists today and even though the wood is old and dirty it has promise. It would make fabulous furniture albeit heavy. The t&g stuff is better than anything around. Much better than laminate .
If renewables were such a great idea, the government could just subsidize by maybe 40% and market forces would take over from there. The fact is they're a lot more than 40% more expensive.
Well, THAT's obviously false. Solar has made huge progress in efficiency and cost. Today, there are companies that will put solar on your home for FREE if you will sign a contract that lets them share in the cost savings. The fact that our government isn't investing in clean energy to any great extent is NOT driven by an assessment of the technology. For just ONE example: How much do you think BigOil and BigCoal want Trump to invest in clean energy?
IMHO, the game changer will be when we can make affordable shingles out of solar panels. Tesla is getting close to that point. I'm hoping that I can delay my next roof long enough to have those installed.
Amen. https://www.tesla.com/solarroof I've seen reports of people working on designing active solar siding for larger structures. Maybe that's more focused on larger structures such as skyscrapers.
