Shortly after I became a daily visitor to the internet, I discovered Steven Den Beste. To this day, I stand in awe of his intelligence. Steven was one of the most widely read writers, at that time, blogging prolifically on science, politics, warfare, engineering and anything else that crossed his mind. A phenomenally analytic and literate mind possessing the ability to reduce the complex to the simple and expose the complexities of apparently simple subjects.
Den Beste impressed a wide variety of people and drew enormous attention to his website, USS Clueless. As one would expect, he also drew the ire and contempt of those whose fantasies he ruined. One day, he just hung it up and quit without warning. Weary of the constant barrage of hostility from corners whose intelligence and understanding could never approach his and tired of the whole thing, Den Beste refused to put up with it anymore. I was among a vast and disappointed audience and yet I could sympathize with his frustrations.
Today, he still occasionally blogs here, but not about the former subjects. He touched on old territory today concerning constant requests for comments, especially concerning the hot topic of the day, alternative forms of energy. Here is an excerpt from a letter he sent to a writer who contacted him:
I don’t blog about that kind of thing anymore. I never enjoyed blogging about energy, anyway, because for too many people “alternate energy” is more about religion than about physics. They believe that if we are just creative enough, we can overcome fundamental physical limitations — and it’s not that easy.
In order for “alternate energy” to become feasible, it has to satisfy all of the following criteria:
1. It has to be huge (in terms of both energy and power)
2. It has to be reliable (not intermittent or unschedulable)
3. It has to be concentrated (not diffuse)
4. It has to be possible to utilize it efficiently
5. The capital investment and operating cost to utilize it has to be comparable to existing energy sources (per gigawatt, and per terajoule).If it fails to satisfy any of those, then it can’t scale enough to make any difference. Solar power fails #3, and currently it also fails #5. (It also partially fails #2, but there are ways to work around that.)
The only sources of energy available to us now that satisfy all five are petroleum, coal, hydro, and nuclear.
My rule of thumb is that I’m not interested in any “alternate energy” until someone shows me how to scale it to produce at least 1% of our current energy usage. America right now uses about 3.6 terawatts average, so 1% of that is about 36 gigawatts average.
Show me a plan to produce 36 gigawatts (average, not peak) using solar power, at a price no more than 30% greater than coal generation of comparable capacity, which can be implemented at that scale in 10-15 years. Then I’ll pay attention.
Since solar power installations can only produce power for about 10 hours per day on average, that means that peak power production would need to be in the range of about 85 gigawatts to reach that 1%.
Without that, it’s just religion, like all the people fascinated with wind and with biomass. And even if it did reach 1%, that still leaves the other 99% of our energy production to petroleum, coal, hydro, and nuclear.
Den Beste had this to say in his comments:
The way you can tell that a fan of “alternate energy” is a religious cultist is to ask them this question: If your preferred alternate source of energy is practical, why isn’t it already in use?
Why not? Because of The Conspiracy™. The big oil companies don’t want it to happen, and have been suppressing all this live-saving green people’s energy all this time for their own nefarious purposes.
As soon as you hear any reference to The Conspiracy™, you know you’re talking to someone who is living in a morality play. That isn’t engineering any more, that’s religion. And while religion is an important part of many people’s lives, it has no place in engineering discussions.
Den Beste opened up his comments for 24 hours on this post, a rare thing for him to do.
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The only point I’d like to make is that it is ALWAYS possible for a conspiracy to be real. (It’s a bit like the murder trial, where the prosecution is trying to prove motive and opportunity. Sometimes that ‘proof’ means they ‘done’ it. However, sometimes the’proof’ may be wrong.) Big Corps., sometimes have, desire, motive and opportunity. Industries work together with others in their industry to lessen competition, from the outside.
To suggest otherwise is errant. examples of powerful folks doing this kind of thing are: Randolph Hearst, successfully lobbying to get Hemp outlawed in order to sell more of his timber, ( for paper) from his holdings. The joint attack on electric companies owning the streetcar company underwent was also and example. The oil, tire and motor companies sold a lot of cars etc.
To suggest that big companies, especially those accompanied by BIG egos, might not go out of their way to squash new idea’s which could adversly affect them. I think his simplistic test for a ‘religious’ point of view regarding all things environmental, may be a little shallow. The rest of his work looks great.
So that point, Re: the religion of popular opinion
#1Sorry i didn’t finish .
“If your preferred alternate source of energy is practical, why isn’t it already in use?”—This just about says it all. Remembering that we have to supply in mass quantities for a mass demand, what we have now is the best we got. Why we are not tapping our own resources instead of importing it is beyond me?? The liberal media has given only one side of the story, their preferred side. They give people like Algore all the coverage he wants as if he is an expert in the subject. You have to figure with all those great minds trying to find a solution, for right now there is none. And if we keep letting the Dimwits tell us it will take supposedly ten years to get any results then when do we start and what if we had started ten years earlier? So start DRILLING, NOW!!!!!!
Texpat, I read both your post and Beste’s post. This is great stuff. I particularly like the part about conspiracies and religion intertwined with engineering discussions. I never majored in physics, chemical engineering, etc, but I understand enough of the concepts (some of which are common sense and relatively simple math) to understand that oil companies aren’t hiding a magic bullet.
I don’t see a truly viable “alternate energy” source that is economically feasible on the immediate horizon. We’ll be burning fossil fuels for a long time to come, particularly in automobiles - there simply isn’t anything out there that can match its energy density, portability, and relative simplicity for many applications.
As far as generating electricity goes, Geo/Wind/Solar can’t meet the needs. You want to stop burning fossil fuels, go nuclear.
I am still interested in the potential of technologies such as nuclear fusion, but lots of development and technological advances need to happen to make that viable. Don’t expect to see it in my lifetime…
Nuclear. The most energy dense and cleanest way to create electricity that will EVER be found. Why do we even need to find anything else?
So brains gets in the way of fantasy. I LOVE IT!!!
I want to order 100 nuclear plants and massive drilling throughout the country. Uncapping the capped wells included.
#6 darren10
I’ll see your 100 & raise you 50. I want them to be putting two new ones online a month for a few years.
I also want them to rescind the executive order Peanuts signed that bans spent fuel reprocessing in the US.
Nuke’s are the way to go for most electricity . Fossil fuels are the only viable fuel for autos until they come with some majic juice to power the millions of existing vehicles that will be in existance for decades to come.
Texas, the leader in wind power is producing how much? 1/100 of a percent of Texas’ power requirement?
The way I see it here’s the proper mix of physics and religion… Dinosaurs died for me. Christ died for me. I want my dinosaur death benefit today. I’ll gladly wait for my Christ death benefit until a later date.
I thought we couldn’t really use windmills because there are too many birds that are not smart enough to fly around them instead of into them.
I wonder what the net environmentsl cost of producing solar cells is? I’ve always thought that semiconductor production generated lots of ugly chemicals.
Not to mention that unless we want to cover a huge portion of the desert southwest with even the newest technology solar cells, we’re not going to meet large-scale energy requirements. Not to mention covering hundred or thousands of square kilometers of land.
Texpat, neato article. Anybody see cold fusion-like schemes at full gallop being hyped? AlGore for sure. T. Boone perhaps? Worshippers at the foot of Gaia’s altar maybe? The mind reels.
Caller on the Wed. Rush program indicated that you needed at least 90% backup capacity for wind generated power. This is based on the reliability factor of wind generated electricity. I wonder if the Texas PUC requires the owners of the wind farms to provide the 90% in backup capacity. Doubtful.
Now T. Boone Pickens is promoting wind generated electricity. His promotions sounded fairly reasonable until he mentioned that Al Gore should be Energy Commissioner of BO is elected president. His recommendation probably didn’t even factor in that he would make millions from his wind farm investments if the idiot were made energy czar.
Stupidity seems to be the quickest way to riches.
whitetop,
I heard that call! Rare because I rarely get to listen to Rush. He sounded totally credible.
There was an episode in, I believe, May of this year when there was sudden and unpredictable dead zone of wind around Abilene. No wind, no power. That area of the state went into panic mode and they had to quickly shift massive amounts of power from other parts of the state to prevent blackouts in West Texas. I bet Boone has plenty of big kVa backup diesel Cat gensets at his place. What a scam artist !
That’s three of us who heard that call to Rush. I also recall the wild-eyed panic reported when the wind quit blowing up there. Big oops.
And regarding solar collectors, they no workie well when it’s cloudy.
#14 whitetop
You are right. When you can find enough stupid people to give you their money for a big ole windmill they don’t even get to own, then you get rich.
#14;
Even before I read a black and white article showing T. Bone Picken’s financial interests in alternativbe fuel companies, I knew he had financial ties into them during his stupid alternative energy commercials on radio. I just now saw the TV version. Same line of crap, but this time with visuals to sell his lies.
Seems like solar and wind would require some seriously BA batteries to tide people ober when it’s cloudy or calm.