Quote:
Originally Posted by Renato1
Hi Robert,
Sort of right. The USA which doesn't have much by way of emission mitigation programs, has cut its emissions significantly - mainly by using all that newly found fracking gas.
Which is kind of ironic.
Cheers,
Renato
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Too right, Renato!
I don't really want to talk about the practicalities of energy generation and their consequences in this thread, but I totally agree with you.
(When I was talking of mitigation, I actually meant primarily solar, wind, and hydro)
As you say, some of the much despised and derided fossil fuels (which we are told are creating a "serious pollutant" that is apparently sending the biosphere
rapidly towards its
doom ) are the only energy option that have
actually reduced greenhouse gas emissions so far (by burning gas instead of coal), because the 'renewables' are currently so costly that they too often end up producing a small amount of energy for a vast expenditure of money.
To give one example of a super-expansively financed green boondoggle, here is a two billion dollar facility that produces 'green' renewable energy, all very nice and none of those horrid fossil fuels, but note that it produces very little energy for the money expended:
http://www.ivanpahsolar.com/
(compare the energy output of this facility with its enormous cost)
(only 140,000 homes serviced, for a cost of two billion dollars)
But I will say no more about the politics and economics of energy, because to enter the realms of the political/moral/economic/'environmental' debate about global warming is to enter a world of zealotry, vested interests, passionate end-of-the-world believers, and also much more subtle biases, which is why I intend to keep to the climatic science itself in this thread!
cheers, Robert
Note 1:
Without the "pollutant" in question (CO2), all of the plants on our planet would die, and all the animals too, including all humans. The Carbon Dioxide "pollution" is what is essential for photosynthesis!
Note 2:
A further problem with concentrating solar thermal plants like Ivanpah, is that they literally cook many many thousands of birds (just wait for your dinner to be cooked as you stand by the mirrors in the plant, and it falls out of the sky, ready for eating)