Re: Evolutionists are not playing fair...

On Thu, 5 Mar 2009 06:04:48 -0800 (PST), Lee Jay <ljfinger@xxxxxxx>
enriched this group when s/he wrote:

On Mar 5, 2:42 am, Ye Old One <use...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2009 05:44:32 -0800 (PST), Lee Jay <ljfin...@xxxxxxx>
enriched this group when s/he wrote:



On Mar 4, 3:29 am, Ye Old One <use...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 3 Mar 2009 17:24:34 -0800 (PST), Lee Jay <ljfin...@xxxxxxx>
enriched this group when s/he wrote:

On Mar 3, 11:39 am, Ye Old One <use...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 2 Mar 2009 20:36:30 -0800 (PST), Lee Jay <ljfin...@xxxxxxx>
enriched this group when s/he wrote:

[snip.]

Ok, clear the floor. Start from scratch.

We know that the fossil fuels are running out. We also know that if
this world is not to descend into chaos then we need to be far more
equitable in the sharing out of energy.

At the moment the average US citizen uses 11.4KW while the global
average is only 2.2KW. Even so, that still means that the world's use
is 13TW. This is total energy use, not just electricity of course.

No, you're making one of those common mistakes.  Quoting myself from
above, "failure to acknowledge the difference between consumption and
utilization (this one is unbelievably common among existing producers
and lobbyists)".  You're talking about consumption, not utilization,

Well, in effect, I'm talking about production. That has to be there
before it can be consumed.

but using the term "energy use" which is not accurate.  See how easy
it is to fall into that one?

Energy gets used, in one way or another. Energy Use is, frankly, the
only term that counts.

Correct, but you were using the consumption numbers, not the
utilization ("use") numbers.

There is no difference. To use you consume, to consume you use.

Oh, come on Bob! Do you think conversion efficiency is always 100%?
That's the only way consumption = utilization!

Perhaps an example will help.

Let's say we're going to change out the diesel motor in a locomotive
for a brand spanking new dilithium framistat. Do you think the new
magic gizmo is required by the train to replace the lower-heating-
value of the diesel fuel that the old motor consumed (even though the
train has no knowledge or memory of what that was), or the tractive
effort that it provided to the train? The Diesel's LHV is consumption
(what was consumed in the production of the desired energy), the
tractive effort is utilization (the desired energy itself).

And what you have to account for is the energy input to the system

So lets stop talking use and start talking production. After all it is
really the production that has to be increased.

If we assume that we can even things out at 5KW per person. That means
that with out current population (no allowance for growth) we will
need 30TW of power.

Only if we consume the same fuels as now with the same efficiency as
now.

No, that makes no assumption as to the fuels used. It has also allowed
for quite a lot more energy efficiency as it more than halves the
amount currently used in the USA.

We are still very, very inefficient in our usage.  Around 1/3
efficient (perhaps a hair more) for all sectors combined.

And that has been allowed for. We have reduced the 11.GW used by a
USian to an average of just 5GW per person, or 30TW for the whole
world.

You meant "kW" not "GW".

Sorry, yes. KW per person, TW for the world.

Mixing consumption and utilization and then
adjusting one for the other by arbitrarily chopping is not even close
to an accurate way to determine what is required, especially when you
start adding all the people in the world. You have to actually work
the numbers in each sector.

Ok, now set ourselves a target of getting that energy in 25 years time
- say 2035 as a round number.

How do you see us getting that energy? Ok, I know that in that time
scale there will still be oil and gas, so how about just finding say
an extra 20TW over the next 25 years?

We *utilize* about 5TW now.

We consume about 13TW.

That is the base you have to start from.

No, it is not,

Yes it is.

because I don't need to replace those 13TW (it's
actually a little over 15), I only need to replace the energy we use.

Which for 2035 we are using a figure of 30TW.

We *use* 5TW now.

We produce 13TW now. We need to produce 30TW by 2035.

We will not be using 30TW in 2035.

That is the prediction. It is a conservative estimate because it
allows for no population growth and requires western consumption to
fall to less than half its current level.

If we continue
to consume the same fuels at the same efficiency, and we bring the
rest of the world into line with, say, Europe's energy consumption,
then we'd be *consuming* around 30TW in 2035. But that's not the
scenario we're discussion. We're talking about a renewable scenario,
not a business-as-usual scenario.

No. Wrong. We are talking about the need to produce 30TW of energy in
2035. How we produce it is the question.

If I replace it with energy that goes from production to consumption
just as inefficiently as we do know, then I do.  But that's not what's
being proposed, plus I do the computations in the use column and work
back up to the needed production.  Using renewables makes this far
more efficient than traditional sources.

I gave you one example, wind power, and showed how impossible that is.

Show me where showed that it was impossible? You just used a totally
inappropriate scenario (100% wind)

Rubbish. Have you not read what was written? I've said that one sixth
of the total energy production for the world of 2035 could come from
wind. If it did, then we would need to install a 3MW wind turbine
every 3 minutes, day in - day out - week after week after week for 26
years.

and applied an incorrect energy
utilization number to it. Two wrongs don't make a right. I am not
proposing a scenario even remotely like the one you have just burned
down. In other words, you're burning a straw-man.

I using figures supplied by leading experts. I gave you details of the
programme. Have you tried to watch it yet?


Let's say that doubles to 10TW,

We are looking at a target of 30TW in 2035, so I'm looking for 20TW
from you to be built over the next 25 years.

Asked and answered above.

No, you have given no answer. You have tried to evade.

No evasion is necessary or provided. You are using wrong numbers,
it's as simple as that.

I'm using numbers as provided. Are you saying these experts were
wrong?

The replacement of coal (for example) by
another source does not require that new source to have the same
conversion efficiency as the coal it replaced, nor does it mean the
losses are paid for in the same way as they are with a source like
coal. Take wind for example. The wind energy not extracted by the
rotor is not a paid-for and transported finite resource like coal-
produced heat that we have to again pay to remove with water and
cooling towers, themselves consuming some of the usable energy we just
created. With wind, it just goes on by. Accounting for conversion
efficiencies is a drastically different proposition in a renewables
scenario than in a fuels scenario, and you are just ignoring that fact
completely.

Oh for firk sake. It doesn't matter HOW the energy is produced it is
the OUTput were are looking at.

We have to come up with how we can produce 30TW of energy for the
world of 2035.

We started off with looking to wind to produce a sixth of that total.
But it looks impossible, but maybe we could get half way there. We
will just have to see.

and we
get the new energy in efficient, renewable ways.  We can do that with
various solar technologies (mostly thermal and thermal-electric, very
little PV), two separate types of heat pumps, and wind - if we want
to.  We won't do it that way, but we *could* - all the necessary
resources are available to do that in a way that doesn't break the
bank (though, they seem to be doing a good job of breaking themselves
at the moment), and doesn't break existing systems.

This is sounding very airy-fairy.

The ultra-short executive summary of this internally is a 30 page
presentation.  Posting the details to usenet would be a massive
undertaking.  It's mostly solar thermal, solar thermal electric, wind
and heat pumps.  The particular technology used depends on the use
sector and the geographic location.  Almost everywhere you go you end
up using more than one source, but the proportions vary quite a lot.
Solar is nice in Florida, wind is terrible.  Wind is nice in the North
West, solar not so much.  You get the idea.

Yes, and I've already seen your problem.

You haven't even seen my proposal in detail,

Don't need to. I see your problem from what you wrote above.

thus you can't have seen
the problem. Even so, you haven't expressed a real problem, just an
issue that comes up because you are proposing a totally unrealistic
scenario (replacing all current fuel *consumption* with wind-generated
electricity).

Where did you get that daft idea from?

I'm talking about just 5TW from wind by 2035. A sixth of the total
energy needed.

Tell you what, I'll give you a starter.

To produce 5TW with wind generation in 2035 you would need to be
installing a new 3MW wind turbine every 3 minutes for that 25 year
period.

You wouldn't do this all with wind, so that's a strawman.  

FFS, we are not doing the whole 30TW with wind. We are talking about
getting a mere one sixth of our power from wind - please address the
issue and stop the evasion.

1/6th of a totally wrong number.

Nope. One sixth of a very conservative number.

Plus, you're making yet another
common mistake and confusing installed capacity with energy generation
as though all capacity factors were 1. They are not, especially with
renewables. We end up needing more like 2-3TW of installed wind
capacity by 2050. This is quite a doable number, economically,
structurally, and from a materials point of view.

It is. So say we can move a bit faster and get 2.5TW out of wind by
2035.

So where does the rest come from?

Like most
approaches that actually work, this energy would come from many
sources.

Ok, break down, roughly, what percentage of the world's 30TW power
needs will come from each of the possible sources.

It's still not 30TW.

That was the figure, a conservative figure in my opinion, that was
used in the Horizon programme.

The final mix is a little complex because it includes heat pumps
(which are hard to account for) but you'd be getting well over half of
the net primary energy from various solar technologies, the largest
being solar thermal. We use a lot of low-temperature water, space and
process heat, and we already get that efficiently. Replacing that
chunk is hard because there's just so much of it.

Ok. lets turn to solar power.

They considered producing 10TW from solar. No good. That would mean
250SqM of solar cell every second for the next 25 years. Where would
we put it all? Ok, I know that not all solar energy will come from
direct solar cell conversion, but then we need even more space.


That takes up one hell of a lot of land (about 2% of the
worlds land was the estimate given in the Horizon programme). And also
supposes that the ones built early in the program will have a working
life expectancy long enough to get them through to contribute to the
total needed in 2035.

Wind turbine design lifetimes are 20-30 years.

So far they are a lot shorter,....

There are turbines in Tehachapi that have been there since the 80s.
Since modern machines haven't even existed for 20 years, we don't
really know what it will take to keep them going and when the
crossover point will be reached between on-going maintenance and
repowering.

Exactly.

but OK, as long as they  can go beyond
25 years they can contribute to the 2035 needs.

It still leaves us with the real problem. To produce 5TW with wind
generation in 2035 you would need to be installing a new 3MW wind
turbine every 3 minutes for that 25 year period.

Even if that's true, which it isn't, so what? Globally, that's not an
insurmountable production problem. We currently produce more than 2
automobiles *per second* or about 400 every 3 minutes.

According to the 2006 figures we produce half that.

400 2-ton
automobiles weigh 800 tons - about twice the mass of a single 3MW wind
turbine.

What has mass got to do with it?

Just throwing out large-sounding numbers is not a
demonstration that a problem exists. You have to actually work the
math.

I have.

You don't have to take a car to an out-of-the-way spot, install it on
the top of a very large mast, attach bloody great blades to it and
then run miles of cable to utilize the output.

Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds like a VERY difficult
target to reach and I dread to think what effect all those wind farms
are going to have on the landscape.

Strawman, like I said.  Nevertheless, we could easily install that
many worldwide if we wanted to, which we don't.

Oh we could could we?

Easily.

Dream on.

The target in the US
is 300GW by 2030.

A small fraction of what is needed over the world.

And we are a small fraction of the world, and that target is for 20%
of electricity, not 100% of energy.

So what percentage of the target 30TW do you think wind can produce
for 2035?

That's less than the rate we accomplished during
the fourth quarter of last year (which was a record quarter).  Recent
growth rates have been in the 30-50% range.

But let us say we can reach the target and build the equivalent of a
new 3MW wind turbine every 3 minutes for the next 25 year (I don't
think we stand a ghost of a chance) where do we get the rest of the
energy? Remember, we are looking for an extra 20TW in just 25 years.

No, we are not, as I've repeatedly demonstrated. We get most of the
rest *of the correct numbers* from solar thermal, solar thermal
electric, and heat pumps.

Nope. Not even close.

It's a bit funny that you're focusing on the easiest part of the
problem - the generation of renewable energy. Figuring out what forms
the final energy has to take, how it's going to be converted and
utilized, and how it's going to be brought to market is far harder
than just figuring out where the energy comes from.

If you can't produce it you have lost before you start.

We have access to
so much more renewable energy than we need that just getting it is not
hard at all. Remember, we currently utilize 5TW

No, we use 13TW.

and have access to
100,000TW of renewable energy.

The hell we have.

Obviously, much of that goes to other
uses (the largest is the global hydrological cycle) but even if you
just get access to the excess on land, and use a 90% exclusion
assumption on top of that, you still have almost 2 orders of magnitude
more than you need to run every scrap of civilization.

Answer the question. How are we going to produce 30TW of energy by
2035?

So far we know that, even if people were prepared to put up with the
impact on our landscape, wind power is going to be hard pressed to
produce even a sixth of that total. Solar power, in all its forms,
will help. Tidal, geothermal and a few other oddballs may help. But
where is the bulk going to come from?

Lee Jay
--
Bob.

.

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