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Heinberg: Anti-Solar, Anti-Wind
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Heinberg argues that the peak-oil is the main problem, and that it will cause such chaos that there is nothing we can really do about climate change until after the collapse and "die off." Then of course, with 4 billion people dead, and no more coal or oil, global warming is a non-problem. In the mean time, he wants to borrow the good name of climate change ecology to help him spread his message of doom.
Heinberg actually likes solar and wind, if they are small scale. His objection is to trying to use them as a significant part of the global-warming solution.
From Heinberg's "Letter from the Future"
There were the nuclear reactors, but they cost so much energy to build and decommission that the power they produced during their lifetimes barely paid for them in energy terms. The same with photovoltaic panels: it seems that nobody ever sat down and calculated how much energy it actually took to manufacture them, starting with the silicon wafers produced as byproducts of the computer industry, and including the construction of the manufacturing plant itself. It turned out that the making of the panels ate up nearly as much power as the panels themselves generated during their lifetime.
Why global warming is not so important
"Even if global warming turns out to be not much of a problem, we will in any case, inevitably, be facing the problem of oil depletion and the effects of oil depletion on our societies, ... could end up being far more consequential than global warming."
Can alternative energy work? No.
JP: Do we have enough alternative sources, and is there any one that’s in abundance that can replace, let’s say, the energy we get from fossil fuels?
Heinberg: In a word, no.
Heinberg on Solar and Wind
Solar and solar photovoltaics and wind account for a tiny fraction of one percent of our national energy budget right now. So that means in order to ramp up production of energy from those sources to meet the shortfall from fossil fuel as those peak in production, will take immense amounts of research, development, manufacturing of infrastructure and so on and that’s not happening.
Heinberg on why carbon sequestration is a dumb idea
The Hubbert peak phenomenon leads to the surprising conclusion that a global peak in coal production could come in as few as 30 years. That raises the question: does it make sense to place great hope in largely untested and expensive carbon sequestration technologies if the new infrastructure needed will be obsolete in just a couple of decades? Imagine the world investing trillions of dollars and working mightily for the next twenty years to build hundreds of “clean” coal plants, only to see global coal supplies rapidly dwindle. Would the world then have the capital to engage in another strenuous and costly energy transition?
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http://zfacts.com/p/866.html | 01/18/12 07:23 GMT
Modified: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:44:02 GMT
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