Frequently I am criticized as being being "against" renewable energy and conservation.
Of course this is nonsense. All I ever do is to point out the numbers associated with renewable energy, unusally using the EIA tables. One might ask whether the numbers in the EIA tables for renewable energy, about 1.2 exajoules of pure electricity out of 470 exajoules of world energy demand result from my actions. Unlike the Chief Attorney of the NRDC, Robert F. Kennedy who was concerned about the views from his family enclave, I have never registered a single complaint about a proposal to build a wind plant. The fact that wind energy doesn't produce an exajoule certainly doesn't stem from my opposition to the Cape Wind project. I would never dream of filing suit or funding a suit against a wind project off the coast of New Jersey if there were investors anxious to build it, unless of course, they were seeking to double my electric bills.
It's not like on those relatively rare occasions I see a new solar installation here in New Jersey I say, "Oh shit!!!! Someone should do something about covering those damn things up!!!!" It's not like I go to Island Park State Beach, look at the solar PV system on the roof of the building in Parking Field 2 and feel inclined to write the state and say, "Take that damn thing down!"
Hardly.
If I make my kids look at the display one more time showing about 6500 watts at noon, they may throw up. I love that thing. It gives me an excellent opportunity to discuss energy and physics with my kids. What could be better than that?
In fact, the last time I went down to the New Jersey Shore and to watch my children swim in the garbage littered surf, I mused to myself, "Damn, if there were windmills out there, I might be distracted from feeling disgusted by the garbage by looking at wonderful windmills. (Don't worry. The life guards told me the garbage concentration - which that day was roughly about as concentrated as dumpster load dumped in an Olympic sized swimming pool was "perfectly normal" on days when a "northeast wind blows.")
Someone wrote me though privately, to say that he heard that people are disgusted with me privately because, I'm not enthusiastic enough about conservation and renewables, because I'm not a believer in them.
Excuse me?
It made me really pissed off frankly.
The popular "renewables and conservation will save us" meme is at least 30 years old.
Is there something oppositional with actually checking to see how it's doing? Is this being "oppositional?"
What is this? Sunday school? No one can question articles of faith?
I mean, shouldn't we check to see if these decades of promises are being fulfilled?
I am told that I don't believe in conservation, even though I was nearly killed in 1974 trying to substitute a bicycle for an automobile as my main source of transport, because I was concerned about the use of oil. That's right folks! I was living conservation 30 years ago. I will bet that all of the light bulbs in my house were replaced with compact fluorescents faster than 90% of the people reading this, years ago when they still were selling for more than $12/bulb.
Conservation.
Let's talk about it.
In 1998, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology proposed a 2000 Watt Society in which each person on the planet consumes, on average, 2000 watts of power by 2050. Frankly I find all this 2050 talk deluded. That's two generations from now. More than half of the people reading this now will probably be dead by 2050 and more than half of the people expected to live to this standard haven't even been born.
What a bunch of self serving myopic crap it is to dump this responsibility on our grandchildren!!!! Have we no sense of decency at long last? Shouldn't we be acting? Now!!!!!! Is there not something wrong with insisting that our grandchildren must do what we ourselves couldn't care less about doing ourselves?
How much power is 2000 watts anyway? A Toyota Prius has a 76 hp gasoline engine. Flat out (which rarely happens I concede) a 76 horsepower engine produces about 57,000 watts, or nearly 30 times as much power as would be the average power in a 2000 watt culture.
Right now, if one uses these figures and estimates US population at 300 million, we see that the average American now burns about 12,000 watts of power. Therefore the average American to meet the demands of such a society would find it necessary to reduce his or her power demand to 1/6 of current usage. If one assumes a Chinese population of 1.3 billion, one sees that the average Chinese uses about 1500 watts, and thus would be granted a 500 watt increase. If we take the population of the Central African Republic to be 4.4 million, the average citizen there uses 44 watts, less than a typical American car stereo. Thus Central African Republicans would be entitled to increase their energy demand by a factor of almost 50.
If the world population stabilized at 6.5 billion (fat chance probably, at least without catastrophe) a 2000 watt culture would translate to world energy demand of 410 exajoules, about 60 exajoules lower than current demand. So much for conservation. That would seem to be the optimistic limit according to the Swiss speaking in 1998. Oh, by the way, did I mention that world energy demand rose by 68 exajoules - well more than half a United States - between 1998 and 2004?
I didn't?
What a shame! Well I certainly wouldn't want to give anyone bad news.
Now.
If the average citizen of the world consumed as much energy as the average American, world energy demand would be almost 2,500 exajoules per year, or about 5 times as large as it now.
Kill the messenger.
Now.
I am sorry to report - as resident faithless bad guy - that there are still only a few forms of primary energy that are greenhouse gas free. They are, in order of primary energy produced: Nuclear, about 30 exajoules; hydroelectric about 10 exajoules and all of the really, really, really, really, really cool solar cells, windmills, tidal systems, biofuels, rubber bands, geothermal systems combined, about 2 exajoules depending on how you view their thermodynamic efficiency.
I hate to bother anyone with math, but it follows that to produce 410 exajoules of greenhouse gas free energy, nuclear would need to scale up by a factor of 14, hydroelectric by a factor of 41 (which is of course impossible since the rivers are pretty much tapped out) and all of the really, really, really, really, really, really, really cool other stuff by a factor of 235. Of course any increases any one of these elements of a "tripod" would offset the others.
Speaking of tripods, I note that if we were setting a camera on a tripod with one leg that was 30 cm, another that was 10 cm, and a third that was 2 cm, the camera would be pretty wobbly. Of course, it would not be the "fault" of the guy who delivered the 30 cm leg that the leg delivered by someone else was 2 cm long.
I'm sure that someone will come here to read me the Gospel according to Pacala and Socolow. Next month the famous paper will be three years old, meaning that 6% of the "next 50 years" will have passed.
How are the "wedges" going? Am I allowed to even ask?
No?
Why am I not surprised?