Wind Power
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Started by wglassfo - Sept. 19, 2019, 1:10 a.m.

If  we eliminate all fossil fuels, somebody smarter than me did some math

He assumed all power needed to replace fossil fuel would come from wind power

Now nobody is saying we will have wind power only, as a source of power

But this man just wanted to put things in perspective so people could visulize what all this fossil fuel really means

He calculated that if wind only was used, the entire land mass of the USA including mountains, rivers etc would have a wind mill every 1.6 kilometers on a square grid.





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Re: Wind Power
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By madmechanic - Sept. 19, 2019, 10:50 a.m.
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Along similar lines, Bill Nye is on video saying that if you were to go full solar, and assuming a 10% solar panel efficiency, you would need an area the size of France covered with panels to satisfy the world's energy needs. Of course that's when he was interviewed years ago, the world energy need has gone up since then.

By metmike - Sept. 19, 2019, 12:25 p.m.
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As an environmentalist, I am for viable renewable energy that makes sense. Solar energy makes sense in many situations.

This looks like a very small area but note the location from my link.  It's in the spot in the US that has the most sunshine and it's high angled, powerful sunshine vs areas farther north.

The farther north that you go, the weaker the sun. Many climates in the north that have a great deal of cloudiness would not generate a significant amount of solar energy in the Winter months.

The other thing is that we are not having a climate crisis with an urgent need to convert from abundant, cheap and reliable fossil fuels. This is completely made up. The "save the planet" narrative and  exaggerated claims of an impending apocalypse are based on anti science and extreme solutions of global climate model solutions that have all been too warm and wrong and then, the output from those wrong solutions is amplified greatly beyond even what they project to scare the heck out of people. 

In 10 years, the time we have to save the planet for instance, if we do NOTHING, the actual science tells us that the oceans will be around 1 inch higher and the global temperature will be around 0.13 degrees C higher.

There will be even less violent tornadoes, around the same hurricanes and drought. The planet WILL be greener with high confidence and crop production will be higher.

There WILL be more rains, including flooding  events. There will be a slight increase in heat waves but the warming will continue to be more concentrated in the coldest places, especially during the coldest times of years.

In 10 years, we will be even deeper into the climate optimum for life on this greening planet.

Solar power is great but fossil fuel power is still better. 

Consider the legit environmental impact of solar and wind(mining and vast  land use, which includes the need for massive battery production) vs fossil fuels and you'll find that fossil fuels are more environmentally friendly in most areas.


By metmike - Sept. 19, 2019, 12:47 p.m.
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Fossil fuels are actually solar energy stored on a  geological time scale in an extraordinarily dense/compact form.

Life on this planet gets/got all of its energy from the sun. When that life dies,, it decomposes and becomes fossils. With great amounts of time passing, deep below the surface, these fossil were exposed to pressure and conditions that resulted in the energy from, what was previous life at the surface, getting more and more concentrated.........pockets of coal, oil, natural gas. Incredible amounts jam packed into what was previously not so dense an area when that life first perished. 

No need for batteries to store this energy because its already stored in the very dense fuel to begin with.

Since it will take millions of years to replace, its obviously not renewable on anything but a geological time scale. But fortunately, the earth is billions of years old and we have something like 200 years worth of coal and 100 years worth of natural gas in the ground stored in the perfect/most potent, usable  form known to mankind. 


By metmike - Sept. 19, 2019, 1:02 p.m.
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This sounds too good to be true................but it's even better than that.

Fossil fuels came from carbon based life that once existed, which took a lot of the beneficial CO2 out of the atmosphere. Of course the oceans have vast amounts of CO2 suspended in them. 

Atmospheric CO2 levels were dangerously low over a century ago (below 300 parts per million at one point) before the industrial revolution. Had CO2 levels dropped as much as they went up, plants would have shut down even more(they were already very compromised at those low levels) and the human population, along with most other creatures would have struggled to survive. Current CO2 levels are close to 410 ppm, almost half of the optimal/ideal level for life. 

All animals eat plants or eat something that ate plants at some point in the circle of life.

Burning fossil fuels has resulted in us rescuing the planet from those dangerously low levels of this entirely beneficial gas.

Earth is greening up:

Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth

"An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States."

globe of Earth from North Pole perspective

This image shows the change in leaf area across the globe from 1982-2015.



metmike: This has come with the best weather/climate in the last 1,000 years, the last time that it was this warm. The biosphere is booming. We are in another climate optimum, though the higher latitudes are not nearly as warm yet as they were during the Holocene Climate Optimum between 9,000 to 5,000 years ago.

Holocene climatic optimum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum


"Out of 140 sites across the western Arctic, there is clear evidence for conditions warmer than now at 120 sites. At 16 sites, where quantitative estimates have been obtained, local HTM temperatures were on average 1.6±0.8 °C higher than now.  Northwestern North America had peak warmth first, from 11,000 to 9,000 years ago, and the Laurentide Ice Sheet still chilled the continent.  Northeastern North America experienced peak warming 4,000 years later. Along the Arctic Coastal Plain in Alaska, there are indications of summer temperatures 2–3 °C warmer than present.[5] Research indicates that the Arctic had less sea ice than the present"


 

Temperature variations during the Holocene from a collection of different reconstructions and their average. The most recent period is on the right, but the recent warming is only seen in the inset.

By metmike - Sept. 19, 2019, 1:04 p.m.
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If none of this rings a bell or connects to anything that you've been taught or told about from the gate keepers of the climate change secrets then...........WELCOME!

Welcome to the authentic science and truth!


Sound impossible to believe?

Here's how they hijacked climate science to fool everybody using fake science and manufactured realities:

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/38156/


More climate realities here:

https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/27864/