Global Warming is over.

[wannaBMthree]

Antartica may have gained some ice, but it's only because its sheer volumne of land.

The Northern Pole on the other hand:

Arctic sea ice reaches new low, shattering record set just 3 weeks ago

"We're smashing a record that smashed a record," center scientist Walt Meier said.

In the 1980s, he said, summer sea ice would cover an area a bit smaller than the Lower 48 states. Now it is about half that.

A report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows the Arctic's melting ice is resulting in the lowest sea ice levels since satellites started tracking the measurements in 1979. The difference between this year's low and that of 2007 is 293,000 square miles, about the size of Texas.

[Kershaw]

that's pretty impressive.

last saturday germany created half the power they needed by solar and what are we doing? lol...

[Vedubin01]

last saturday germany created half the power they needed by solar

You have a link to that?

[rwh11385]

You have a link to that?

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-05-26/news/sns-rt-us-climate-germany-solarbre84p0fi-20120526_1_solar-power-power-plants-nuclear-power

It's a peak statistic. But still impressive.

[z31maniac]

that's pretty impressive.

last saturday germany created half the power they needed by solar and what are we doing? lol...

Germany - 137,847 sq mi
US and A - 3,794,101 sq mi


Part of the problem with comparing us to European cities when it comes to infrastructure/transportation is how much larger we are and how much more sparsely we are populated. Also interesting note from the article:

"Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone." - That much capacity and only 4% of one country.......that means all the solar power in the world right now = 8% of Germany's needs.

Like the politicians are going to figure out where to come up with $100 billion for our power delivery infrastructure over the next 20 years?

Still pretty cool though............makes you wonder how much power we could generate in the deserts of California/Nevada/Arizona/New Mexico....

[rwh11385]

Germany - 137,847 sq mi
US and A - 3,794,101 sq mi


Part of the problem with comparing us to European cities when it comes to infrastructure/transportation is how much larger we are and how much more sparsely we are populated. Also interesting note from the article:

"Germany has nearly as much installed solar power generation capacity as the rest of the world combined and gets about four percent of its overall annual electricity needs from the sun alone." - That much capacity and only 4% of one country.......that means all the solar power in the world right now = 8% of Germany's needs.

Like the politicians are going to figure out where to come up with $100 billion for our power delivery infrastructure over the next 20 years?

Still pretty cool though............makes you wonder how much power we could generate in the deserts of California/Nevada/Arizona/New Mexico....

Well, that's the plus of at-site power generation - if your consumption takes place at the source, you don't need to worry about our third-world infrastructure. Obviously putting back into the grid is another subject, but distributed generation is certainly helpful compared to only a few central generation facilities. Many smaller generation locations mean less distance covering through power transmission, which also means less line loss. Although transporting an entire region's wealth of renewable energy would definitely take additional high voltage lines.

And we'll need to invest somehow to upgrade. At least it's so bad, it makes terrorism of it challenging. http://io9.com/5662593/the-us-electr...say-physicists


Here's an interesting map of how power is transferred between different areas. Certainly areas when are net importers ought to be interested if they can generate more of their own.

http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=4270

Here's a map of the wind/solar potential:

[Fusion]

That's all great until you realize that not even the Germans have found a way to control the amounts of energy provided by wind/solar into the grid and that surrounding countries are having a very hard time balancing the incoming overflows. If the balance got out of control, not only would there be massive blackouts, but it could also cause nuclear power plants going into "self-sustaining" mode, aka loss of offsite power.

[mrsleeve]

Kinda hard to base load the grid with windmills that have a very unpredictable out put pattern. Wind solar and anything else that is not able to produce an acceptable minimum output 100% of the time, will for ever be supplement generation source.

[Ryann]

My uncle's in the energy business. He told me that current solar technology only gives back 80% of the energy it takes to manufacture and put into service over its lifetime.

[z31maniac]

Heeter, i love that the greenies in California couldn't power their state without everyone else.

[Fusion]

Kinda hard to base load the grid with windmills that have a very unpredictable out put pattern. Wind solar and anything else that is not able to produce an acceptable minimum output 100% of the time, will for ever be supplement generation source.

Until we're able to "buffer" and store massive amounts of eletctric energy.
Right now zee guhmans are utilizing the best of these sub par options, but still having huge problems with them.
Plus coal plant production has gone up 30% since Fukushima so they have some environmental "catching up" to do :giggle:

[rwh11385]

Until we're able to "buffer" and store massive amounts of eletctric energy.
Right now zee guhmans are utilizing the best of these sub par options, but still having huge problems with them.
Plus coal plant production has gone up 30% since Fukushima so they have some environmental "catching up" to do :giggle:

There's already a lot of electricity storage, but there'll have to be more and smarter load balancing in the future. It's an issue, but it's already an issue that load during the day peaks and demand drops when everyone is asleep. As sleeve said, renewable generation varies and unpredictable, but so is demand right now. It is timely that the sun shines just before and during peak demand.

http://www.nrel.gov/csp/pdfs/45653.pdf - like sleeve said, PV and Wind won't replace baseload, but there are other renewables for that.

The problem is generally response times in powering up a NG plant to respond in demand peak or a drop in renewable contribution, but stored energy could level that out.


If this works... http://www.isentropic.co.uk/ would be sweet.

But who knows?


Until then, a summary of existing storage: http://www.electricitystorage.org/te...ogy_comparison

[rwh11385]

In other news: http://www.jouleunlimited.com/news/2...-carbon-neutra

Audi is going to validate Joule's ethanol and diesel that is produced by a microbe. Also Joule secured $70M in private equity to continue on ($110M total now).

[Kershaw]

i think this is even more interesting...

Nuclear fusion nears efficiency break-even

http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/66235-nuclear-fusion-nears-efficiency-break-even

[Vedubin01]

this thread just took a positive direction. Much better discussion!