A few words on solar and wind

There's a particularly nasty person in our Godless Columbia group. I say this not because of what he thinks, but because of his arrogance and his obvious Randroid leanings. He thinks he's John Galt, I guess.

In a recent thread on our message board, he said Gore was an idiot and yada, yada, yada...I had to respond:

Carbon-based fuels are finite and contribute to climate change. These are two facts that no amount of spin or sarcasm can change. Thus, it doesn't really matter whether or not alternatives are expensive, since we have no choice but to adapt; it isn't a question of if, but how quickly it can be done.

There is no way that wind and solar will ever generate the energy an industrial/information society needs to function. This is the pipe dream of pantheistic environmentalists. Even Al Gore can't power his own life without resorting to fossil fuels and appeasing guilt with carbon offsets.

From Scientific American:
A Solar Grand Plan

A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.
...
The energy in sunlight striking the earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption for a year. The U.S. is lucky to be endowed with a vast resource; at least 250,000 square miles of land in the Southwest alone are suitable for constructing solar power plants, and that land receives more than 4,500 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) of solar radiation a year. Converting only 2.5 percent of that radiation into electricity would match the nation’s total energy consumption in 2006.

This analysis completely ignores wind, geothermal and other alternatives like hydropower -- tidal and additional waterfall-based generators.

It also limits the cost to $400B total...when analysts are being realistic by pointing out that we're spending $700B a year on foreign oil, and to redirect a large piece of that will be necessary each and every year from here on out until we have the infrastructure in place.

From a study conducted at Stanford University:
Evaluation of global wind power

Global wind power potential for the year 2000 was estimated to be ~72 TW (or ~54,000 Mtoe). As such, sufficient wind exists to supply all the world's energy needs (i.e., 6995-10177 Mtoe), although many practical barriers need to be overcome to realize this potential.

Thus, approximately five times the amount of world demand for energy exists in the form of wind alone.

The particular barriers applying to solar and wind are storage and efficiency, and there are good solutions out there for both involving either: 1) compressed air storage of energy, or 2) pumping water uphill. To believe that we have the intellectual ability to go to the moon and build the Large Hadron Collider, but can't use wind farms and solar farms all over the country to eventually replace carbon-based sources is a bit credulous.

Basically, it isn't a question of if, but how quickly it can be done.

Environmentalism is a new religion with sacred spaces, a dogma, an object of veneration, an apocalyptic doomsday, and even a system of guilt and indulgences.

Environmentalism far pre-dates Gore, which I seriously hope you know, so who/what is the object of veneration? The earth? Since it is our sustaining force, I would say that may be justified...

Environmentalism is the recognition that our resources are finite, as well as rapidly changing; that our impact on those resources is both long-lasting and growing rapidly as the global population explodes and economies expand. From this, it is logical to conclude that our technology and innovation must adapt to these facts...however costly or inconvenient they may be.

This guy is busy calling another member of GC a coward for not being more open (angry?) about atheism at work, so he'll probably take a little while to respond.