Rob J

Wind turbines sound nice when you’re reading about them–once they are actually built, you realize that they make noise and kill birds. Solar cells sound wonderful…but their deployment will consume zillions of acres, and their manufacture involves certain toxic chemicals. Intelligent grid sounds smart–but electricity doesn’t travel over fiber optic data circuits, and at some point transmission lines need to get built.

The fundamental problem is that there is now a large class of people who live entirely in the world of words and images, and hae difficulty dealing with actual reality.

I don’t know about other nations, but here in the U.S. if electricity shutdowns occur, people will want heads to roll, and no politician will want to be the one in the crosshairs.

You have to differentiate between the AGW hysteria caused by the Greens and GW which is caused by the sun.

We only need that peak for perhaps 50-100 hours per year (out of the 8760 hours of a year). Instead of installing additional generation, we could be working to mitigate those few peak hours. This can be done by conservation, by distributed peaking resources or by distributed energy storage capabilities around the grid.

One thing that won’t do is wind power. It never blows just when you need it.

Oh, and our national electrical grid is going to have to get much, much smarter very fast in order to deal with all that renewable energy that comes online and offline so capriciously. Texas recently very nearly had a massive outage when the wind in west Texas quit blowing unexpectedly, leaving the grid 1,400 megawatts in the hole. Fortunately, they had programs in place that allowed them to shed 1,400 megawatts of industrial demand within a few minutes or the grid would have become very unstable.

One only need take note of how the fearmongers react to new technologies, such as: nano, genetically modified crops, certain types of pesticides that eliminate/reduce disease and suffering of people, etc. to know that people will always oppose logical solutions to modern day challenges.

While as noted utilities are in desperation building small gas turbine plants that are normally used for peak power, it’s looking very grim right now and these predictions of unreliable power within 15 years look very likely as things stand.

Have you considered the impact of rapid technology advances?

Have you considered the effect of political hysteria on the advancement of technology? It does no good for us to make technological advances if the political class won’t let us adopt.

Nuclear power is the natural successor technology to fossil fuels. The entire global warming problem results from political suppression of this technology. Had we continued building nukes at the same rate as we were in 1970 we would today be Kyoto compliant. If we had adopted France’s approach and switched 70% of our electricity production to nukes we wouldn’t have a global warming problem ever even under the most pessimistic models.

Politics can block necessary technological change. Look at Chinese history or for that matter most of western history. Technological progress requires a conducive political environment. The same anti-technology politics that drives people to block power plants will block other developments as well.

Ever hear about plan ahead? What happens if these wonderful new inventions take 20 years to reach the market instead of 10? Then what? But I have a little cautionary note for you:

Biofuels Scam you will love the end:

The fall of the Soviet Union has taught these idiots nothing. You can just hear the voices in their head. “We are smarter than the stupid Soviets. We have Degrees from Harvard.”

For this reason, I don’t worry about tomorrow. Just look at the rate of change in technology; pay attention, and you’ll be amazed what’s coming.

(Ahem.)

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

For every lawyer working to stop nuclear power, there is an industry lawyer (or investor lawyer, or pro-power-interest-group lawyer) working to make it happen.

Thankfully. Because, in a society guided by the rule of law, you don’t want to cede the legal argument to the Luddites.

So, let’s at least check the nametags before we start the strangling.

(This message brought to you as a public service by The Lawyers Who Defend Against Frivolous Lawsuits, Manufactured Class Actions, Fraudulent Whiplash Claims, Coercive ADA “Pre-suit Demands,” and “She Died, Therefore The Doctor Must Have Been Negligent” Estate-Filler.)