Recent comments
ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World
Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Admire Tom's well presented efforts.
However, suggest political action is a waste of time and money:
---huge sums of money are yet to be made in carbon fuels
---residents of world urban centers like LA, Mexico City, and Beijing go about life
in filthy air in complete denial.
---when have nations ever agreed on any single policy especially
if they have to pay.
Rather, suggest using ones limited time energy in a more focused approach:
[support research labs working on fusion energy]
We will suffer the next few decades of greed and folly, but when practical
fusion devices emerge, the darkness will lift!
ct
IRV -- Just to help my understanding a little. I think I pay about 12 cents per KWH (energy). You say it costs $5/watt ($5000/KW) to build the plant to provide the power. Does that mean it takes 4.76 years to recover the cost?
Well you have either just predicted that Sanders doesn't have a
chance......or once again that you are absolutely clueless.
Obama had majorities in both houses and failed.....the Occupy Movement
didn't go home......but were a waste of time.....
InRunV -- Thom often talks about communities building their own solar plants. Using this idea, there would be no need for long transmission lines. Solar on the roof of a house would have a really short transmission line.
Also, with all the stats you quote it would be nice to have some stats on the error in those estimates.
I heard an interesting hydroelectric process they use. The battery they use when demand is down is to run the generators in reverse. That is, they pump the water back up into the reservoir. The ironic thing about the article is that here in drought-stricken California the reservoirs are too full to accept the water. I need to find that article and read it again.
I wish Thom would keep emphasizing the rebate part of the tax and rebate policy. It would alleviate the disastrous economic effect of a carbon tax alone.
Instant-Run-Off’s at it again: “Wow! So in 1931 Edison proclaims Solar, Wind & Tide power will dominate world energy. Fast forward 83 years and now they supply about 1% of world energy, fossil supplying 85%, some success that is.” Yeah, right. How conveniently he ignores the actual reason for this: LOBBYISTS. You know, those pushy little guys who go around bribing politicians to legislate in favor of their corporate masters…
Far as the rest of the world is concerned, it’s pretty much the same. All boiling down to politics. How easy it is for proponents of snake oil “alternatives” like nuclear energy to ignore that simple truth! Never underestimate the political power of the fossil fuel industry.
What Run-Off is selling, I’m not buying.
Does your calculation take into account the cleanup of nuclear disasters? Or the cost of green when green technology can be expected to improve if resources were allocated to green?
RE: "So we are paying ~6X more for ~1/4 the energy by going wind & solar rather than nuclear."
I'm skeptical using wind for power changes weather patterns. Are scientists saying this?
Yeah, but nuking will be because of war for oil.
No I am not joking. It is you that have no idea how many windmills there are currently operating today and they continue to build. Remember we exist in an envelope that is not expanding but the weather conditions are already changing. Some of it is due to the warming atmosphere but some of the warming is being caused by taking energy out of he wind. What we need to do is focus on utilizing hydrogen, especially in transportation. The only byproduct of its burning is distilled water.
What if the citizens of this country demanded that our federal government shift 1/3 of all military spending over to a solar energy grant program? I also wonder what the result of a national poll on this proposal would look like? ..... 99% in favor! If only we had a representative democracy like many European countries already have. Germany pulled it off.
Wow! So in 1931 Edison proclaims Solar, Wind & Tide power will dominate world energy. Fast forward 83 years and now they supply about 1% of world energy, fossil supplying 85%, some success that is.
The EIA, very pro-Solar, puts Solar @ 0.36% of USA electricity production over past year, Wind @ 4.5%, cleaner & greener Nuclear @ 20.2%. And projects in 2036 Solar @ 0.56%, Wind @ 5.1%. And there are major caveats that effectively reduce those already low numbers by a factor of 2 or more that come with these unreliable, intermittent energy sources .
So even the wealthy USA can only achieve 0.56% Solar after 60 yrs of effort, some impressive that is. France went form 0-70% nuclear in 20 yrs with a mundane effort. Even little old Ontario achieved 62% nuclear with It's own indigenous CANDU PHWR natural uranium, nuclear. Whereas the biggest economy in the USA, high tech haven, Thom's poster boy, California, after 30 yrs of all out effort on Solar has only achieved 3.5% & 4.4% with Wind of its electricity consumption. Some impressive that is.
The world has invested $1586B for 892 TWh of generation total wind & solar in 2014 acc to the BP statistical review 2015. That's an avg of 102 GW of energy in 2014. Or $1568B/102GW = $15.4 per watt of avg delivered electricity.
Add ~20% for often long distance transmission, oversized by 3 to 8X. Solar and Wind transmission infrastructure must be sized to carry the peak output whereas the avg output is only 9 to 33% of peak.
Add $2 per watt for natural gas backup power & peaking infrastructure & storage. You still need all the fossil fuel electricity production & distribution to cover the regular missing-in-action solar & wind. Electricity storage is far from economical, insignificant on the modern electrical grid, as a proportion of daily electricity generated.
Add curtailment costs, where hydro must be spilled, nuclear dumped or fossil idled when wind & solar peaks with demand low.
Add wasted fuel, due to induced cycling inefficiencies in the fossil fuel generation shadowing the wind & solar. Big fossil plants do not run efficiently when they must be cycled just as your car uses much more gas in stop-and-go city traffic vs steady travel on a rural highway. And also reduces operating life of the shadowing fossil fuel power plants. Adds expensive maintenance costs while reducing efficiency.
The economics of a grid with large amounts of fluctuating wind & solar favors the replacment of efficient baseload closed-cycle gas turbines or super-critical coal with cheap inefficient open cycle gas turbines or diesel generation. The increased level of wind & solar on the grid has led to a resurrection of dirty, expensive, inefficient diesel generation, that was once destined to obsurity.
And all those costs and we are easily getting past $20 per watt of avg delivered electricity with wind & solar, all associated costs included.
Compare with India's new Nuclear PHWR (Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor) @ $1.90 per watt.
China Nuclear @ $1.7 to $2.8 per avg watt electrical energy.
Korea APR1400 exports @ $2.7 per avg watt.
Certainly western reactors can be built in scale at under $5 per avg watt.
And wind turbines lasting 12-15 yrs, solar 25 yrs and Capacity Factor (actual % output) dropping substantially towards end of life. Vs Nuclear 60-100yrs lifespan.
So we are paying ~6X more for ~1/4 the energy by going wind & solar rather than nuclear.
And Hillary Clinton just announced her energy plan of expanding US solar to 140 GW capacity by end of 2020 up from the present 20 GW (18.3 PV, 1.7 CSP) a 700% increase. Even more expensive than the avg wind & solar above. I get $25 per watt avg output for latest utility scale solar pv in USA:
Agua Caliente Solar PV Project, $1.8B cost, $6.21/wpk, 626 GWh/yr, 24.6% CF, $25.2/wavg
Makes perfect sense really. Under our crony capitalist form of government, those with the most cash buy whatever government policy they want. Fossil has all of the cash, so they buy the energy policy that will ensure their energy hegemony for a long time into the future. Wind & solar are very effective as greenwashing for fossil, misdirection from nuclear and guarantors of fossil generation. As well as push up the price of electricity to make energy substitution, fossil to electricity (i.e. electric vehicles, heat pumps) less economical. And the incredible wasted capital lost on the renewables is just dumped on the lowly consumer.
Obama went to Alaska to pick up a check from shell .
Windymike ~ I can only assume you are joking. If not, you have no grasp of exactly how huge our atmosphere is compared to the average wind field. Please allow me to put this scenario into perspective. If it were possible for the slight resistance of a field of windmills to alter worldwide weather patterns than it would already be happening because of the wind resistance of such structures as blades of grass, trees in forests, and mountain ranges. Your fears are not planted in reality.
Sounds like a plan. If they end up changing the direction of the prevailing winds to blow any other direction but West, I would be rid of that stupid lake effect snow.
I agree we need to look to alternative fuels, hydrogen and solar are both clean and effective. Wind power, I believe, presents just another way to alter the weather patterns. Wind is the Earth's natural cooling engine and relys on heating at the equator. Problem is that you are taking energy from the wind, conservation of energy, converting it into electrical energy. So what you are doing is slowing and weakening the wind energy as it travels around the world. I noticed when I returned from Asia in 1979 there was an abundance of windmills along the coastal mountain ranges and as I traveled inland noticed a change in loval weather. The changes have increased as the construction of new wind fields also increased, down through Texas and up into Ohio. Eventually if we continue to rely on the wind we will change the entire weather patterns around the world
.
I'm not worried about the fossil fuel problem; the way international events are going, we'll nuke the planet into a burned-out cinder long before fossil fuels run out.
But, we deserve nothing less.
The more the American Public knows about each candidate the better.
Short term profits, it's the American way.
I was actually thinking yesterday about how the conservatives in the south used John Lennon's "bigger than Jesus" comment as an excuse to purge rock and roll from their communities, and got themselves stuck with country music, which is crammed into a tight (and conservative) definition, all because they're afraid of change.
The reason political parties use delegates is probably so that the dropping out of a candidate can be dealt with. No delegate is required to keep voting for the same person for the same office at successive meetings. However, delegations are chosen to have a proportional representation of nominees for the most important office that's up for election that year. E.g., in 2010, there was no presidential election, so the Colorado Democratic Party could have chosen either the gubernatorial race or the senate race. We had one nominee for governor (John Hickenlooper), but two nominees for senator (Michael Bennet and Andrew Romanoff), so delegates had to identify with either Bennet, Romanoff or Undecided at each stage.
In the Democratic Party, delegates are chosen at previous party meetings. The meeting that's open to all registered Democrats is the caucus. At the caucus, delegates are chosen to serve precincts at county meetings and state legislative-district meetings. At the state house meeting (at least for us in Colorado), delegates can be chosen to represent their house district at the congressional-district and state meetings. At the state meeting, delegates can be chosen to repesent their state at the national meeting (the DNC).
I live in a large county, so I go to a county meeting that breaks up into district meetings. The hierarchy probably works the other way around in places where counties tend to be smaller than legislative districts.
The process for going to the next level is this: At the caucus, you record which candidate you're in favor of. Using the totals, the precinct committee figures out how many of the precinct's attending voters in favor of each candidate should be sent to the next level. Those delegates are then elected from among the attending members that were recorded as favoring the associated candidates. The same thing happens at the house district meeting. Which precinct you're from no longer matters at that point. At the state meeting, if national delegates are to be chosen, they'll be elected by the whole assembly, and there are a lot of them, so there's a long ballot. When the numbers get large like that, the Democratic Party requires that men and women be represented in equal numbers, so the ballot is actually split by gender. (I foresee some interesting discussions about transgendered people in the next decade.)
In the old days (at least as late as 1944), presidential nominations weren't made until the national convention, so having humans gathered in one place was absolutely necessary for choosing a candidate and unifying the party behind him.
My Attorney Bernie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCNHMPB7u3Q
Sanders' degree is a B.A. in political science.
Kreativekkj, are you talking about the newsletter running on autopilot?
I wonder if Thom realizes that the only part of his excerpt of his book is the first part - over and over and over?