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Water

There Is More to Green Than Global Warming

By Thomas Kostigen, Huffington Post. Posted October 3, 2008.


We are facing crises of freshwater, food, deforestation, and ocean health. We need leadership in the protection of all our natural resources.
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There is more to being green than the fight to stop global warming. All of our natural resources are in peril because of what we do and what that does to our planet. Yet, to hear the battle cry of environmentalists these days you'd think there's only one war to be fought -- over our energy supply and its consequences.

We are facing a fresh water crisis. We are facing a food crisis. We are facing a crisis over deforestation. And we are facing crises in our oceans. While carbon emissions from fossil fuels pollute the air, so does a lot of other stuff.

Now is the time to press for leadership in the protection of all our natural resources. We'll have let an opportunity for a better planet -- in this election of "change" -- to pass us by if we just focus on the cause celebre that global warming is today.

We must increase our freshwater supply by about 20 percent by the year 2025 to meet world demand, and 90 cities still dump sewage into the Great Lakes, which supply water to 10 percent of the US population. The Lakes' resource is so great, we are going to great lengths to protect it: Congress last week passed a law formally banning the export of water from the Great Lakes beyond its basin. The price of most food has doubled over the past year, forcing millions deeper into poverty and malnourishment. There is now six times as much plastic as zooplankton in parts of the Pacific Ocean, and 90 percent of the big fish on Earth have disappeared.

Meanwhile, we have an ever-increasing waste and electronic-waste burden on our hands. We each create twice as much trash per day as we did 40 years ago. The average size of our landfills has multiplied 25 times in that period as well. And our e-waste burden is so bad that we ship 80 percent of it overseas to countries with weak environmental standards. These countries in turn make products from our discards and ship them right back to us. (And we wonder how lead paint gets in toys.)

As well, up to 40 percent of global wood production is from illegal timber operations. Deforestation not only displaces people and endangers species, it is the second biggest cause of climate change. (It isn't only fossil fuels that cause global warming.)

To be sure, an alternative energy supply is needed and important. But let's not forget the importance of other environmental factors crucial to our health and well-being, not to mention the planet's.

Digg!

See more stories tagged with: food, water, global warming, climate change, forests, oceans

Thomas M. Kostigen is the author of You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet (HarperOne).

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View:
Why global warming is the most important environmental problem:
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 3, 2008 11:45 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
You have to realize that what we are fighting is:
1. The probable EXTINCTION of HOMO SAPIENS in a
century or
2. The fall of civilization in a fraction of a century, in which only
99.99% of all Americans would die, including you. [See
"Collapse" by Jared Diamond.]

We have already caused an extinction event. Many species we
care about that are not yet extinct, such as polar bears, are as good
as extinct. It doesn't make sense to worry about polar bears any
more. Worry about Homo Sapiens. The references on the
extinction of the human race are listed below and some of the
articles are attached. This is a Paleontology discovery. The
oceanographers do not yet understand it and may deny that it
could happen. It did happen at least three times, but the oceans
did not get hot enough to drive all of the oxygen out of the water
by heat alone. It has to do with a tipping point between different
kinds of bacteria in the oceans.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Those other pollutants are bad but:
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 3, 2008 11:53 PM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Environmental policy = energy policy
Energy policy = environmental policy
because Global Warming
can lead to Hydrogen Sulfide gas coming out of the oceans.

Hydrogen Sulfide gas will Kill all people. Homo Sap will go
EXTINCT unless drastic action is taken.

October 2006 Scientific American

"EARTH SCIENCE
Impact from the Deep
Strangling heat and gases emanating from the earth and sea, not
asteroids, most likely caused several ancient mass extinctions.
Could the same killer-greenhouse conditions build once again?
By Peter D. Ward
downloaded from:
http://www.sciam.com/
article.cfm?articleID=
00037A5D-A938-150E-
A93883414B7F0000&
sc=I100322
....................Most of the article omitted......................
But with atmospheric carbon climbing at an annual rate of 2 ppm
and expected to accelerate to 3 ppm, levels could approach 900
ppm by the end of the next century, and conditions that bring
about the beginnings of ocean anoxia may be in place. How soon
after that could there be a new greenhouse extinction? That is
something our society should never find out."

Press Release
Pennsylvania State University
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, Nov. 3, 2003
downloaded from:
http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/2003/prPennStateKump.htm
"In the end-Permian, as the levels of atmospheric oxygen fell and
the levels of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide rose, the upper
levels of the oceans could have become rich in hydrogen sulfide
catastrophically. This would kill most of the oceanic plants and
animals. The hydrogen sulfide dispersing in the atmosphere would
kill most terrestrial life."

www.astrobio.net is a NASA web zine. See:

http://www.astrobio.net/
news/modules.php?op=
modload&name=News&
file=article&sid=672

http://www.astrobio.net/
news/modules.php?op=
modload&name=News&
file=article&sid=1535

http://www.astrobio.net/
news/article2509.html

http://astrobio.net/news/
modules.php?op=modload
&name=News&file=article
&sid=2429&mode=thread
&order=0&thold=0

These articles agree with the first 2. They all say 6 degrees C or
1000 parts per million CO2 is the extinction point.

The global warming is already 1.3 degree Farenheit. 11 degrees
Farenheit is about 6 degrees Celsius. The book "Six Degrees" by
Mark Lynas agrees. If the global warming is 6 degrees
centigrade, we humans go extinct. See:
http://www.marklynas.org/
2007/4/23/six-steps-to-hell-
summary-of-six-degrees-as-
published-in-the-guardian

"Under a Green Sky" by Peter D. Ward, Ph.D., 2007.
Paleontologist discusses mass extinctions of the past and the one
we are doing to ourselves.

ALL COAL FIRED POWER PLANTS MUST BE
CONVERTED TO NUCLEAR IMMEDIATELY TO AVOID
THE EXTINCTION OF US HUMANS. 32 countries have
nuclear power plants. Only 9 have the bomb. The top 3
producers of CO2 all have nuclear power plants, coal fired power
plants and nuclear bombs. They are the USA, China and India.
Reducing CO2 production by 90% by 2050 requires drastic action
in the USA, China and India. King Coal has to be demoted to a
commoner. Coal must be left in the earth. If you own any coal
stock, NOW is the time to dump it, regardless of loss, because it
will soon be worthless.
I have no financial connection to the nuclear power industry.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Nuclear is the only replacement for coal
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 4, 2008 12:09 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Nuclear power is already safe. We have done the necessary
research over the past 63 years.

Since 32 countries have nuclear power plants, proliferation is NOT
the issue. Only 9 [counting North Korea] have the bomb.

Nuclear fuel is recyclable.

An all-out nuclear war between the US and the USSR could NOT
have made us extinct.

There is nothing terrorists can do to a nuclear power plant.

The only alternative to nuclear power is coal. Anybody who is
against nuclear power is working for the coal industry, perhaps
without knowing it.

We MUST replace ALL coal fired power plants world wide with
nuclear during the 8 years of the Obama administration. That
means building many thousands of nuclear power plants in 8
years.

Nuclear power is 30% lower in price than coal fired power. The
nuclear industry in France is NOT subsidized. It pays the French
government.

Wind power doesn't work when the wind isn't blowing and solar
power never works at night.

We DO NOT have the technology required to fix the problems of
wind and solar at the present time. Wind, solar, geothermal,
ocean currents, etc. are research projects, not base load power
sources.

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A truthful book:
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 4, 2008 12:21 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Reference: "Power to Save the World; The Truth About Nuclear
Energy" by Gwyneth Cravens, 2007

Page 13 gives life cycle CO2 per kilowatt hour:
Source of energy ............... CO2 per kilowatt hour
Wind turbines .............................. 58 grams
Nuclear ......................................... 30 grams ** The Winner
Coal ............................. 966 to 1306 grams depending on the coal
Solar ........................................... 100 to 280 grams
Hydro ............................................ 240 grams
Natural gas ............................... 439 to 688 grams, gas varies

Nuclear power is also the cheapest, at 30% less than coal, in spite
of the best efforts of the coal industry to drive up cost by
demanding absurdly high levels of safety.

Page 75: A coal fired power plant gives you 100 to 400 times as
much radiation as a nuclear power plant. Worldwide, an average
person gets 0.01 millirem/year from nuclear power plants, the same
as eating one banana.

Page 71: The natural background radiation in northeastern
Washington state is 1700 millirem/year.
The natural background radiation on the Zuni uplift is 500 to 700
millirem/year.
The natural background radiation in New Mexico is greater than the
calculated dose from the Three Mile Island meltdown, if you were
next to the reactor.
A chest x-ray gives you 10 millirem.

Page 98: There is a table of millirems per year from the
background in a list of inhabited places.
Chernobyl: 490 millirem/year
Guarapari, Brazil: 3700 millirem/year
Tamil Nadu, India: 5300 millirem/year
Ramsar, Iran: 8900 to 13200 millirem/year
Zero excess cancer deaths are recorded. All are natural except for
Chernobyl.

Page 269: "[E]very day the collective households and industries of
America throw away nearly a million tons of garbage containing
toxic heavy metals and dangerous chemicals, as well as plastics that
will never break down. That garbage will be our culture's real
legacy, enduring for millions of years after all the present nuclear
waste has decayed."

Reference: "The Revenge of Gaia" by James Lovelock page 102.
Deaths per terrawatt year [twy] for energy industries, including
Chernobyl. terra = mega mega

fuel......... ........fatalities... .....who......... .......deaths per twy
coal......... .........6400...... ......workers........... .........342
natural gas..... ..1200...... .....workers and public... ...85
hydro........ .......4000..... .......public............ ............883
nuclear........ .........31...... ......workers............ .............8

As you can see, nuclear is by far the safest source of electricity for
which I have statistics. Wind turbines can fall off of their towers
and crush you. Workers can fall off of the building while
installing solar panels. Money spent making nuclear safer would
save more lives if it were spent converting TO nuclear from any
other source. Wind and solar are by far the most expensive
options by 600 times or so, and both are intermittent. The lead
required to make batteries for wind and solar would remain
poisonous forever. Nuclear fuel is recyclable.

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Nuclear power plants have NOTHING to do with proliferation of nuclear bombs.
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 4, 2008 12:38 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Reference: "Power to Save the World; The Truth About Nuclear
Energy" by Gwyneth Cravens, 2007 Finally a truthful book about
nuclear power.

Page 50: Power reactors make Plutonium 240 [Pu240]. Pu240 is
useless for making bombs. Plutonium bombs require Pu239.
Pu239 is made in reactors that are specialized for making Pu239.
Governments own Pu239 makers, not power companies.

Page 179: The USA is now on Generation 4 reactors. Generation
4 reactors are impossible to melt down, no matter what the
operators do.

Page 180: ""In 2006, more than 435 reactors in thirty two
countries supplied 16 percent of the world's electricity with a safety
record far superior to that of fossil fuel or hydroelectric generation --
and that's including the Chernobyl fatalities."

Page 153: "By 2013 a total of 500 metric tons, or the equivalent of
20,000 warheads, will be turned into low-enriched fuel with the
energy equivalent of three billion tons of coal (thirty million coal
cars)." Old Soviet uranium bombs are being converted into reactor
fuel by oxidizing the pure metallic U235 [burning it] and mixing the
uranium rust with non-fissionable U238. Bombs require pure shiny
reduced metallic U235. Reactors use very impure [2% to 8%]
U235 oxide mixed with U238 oxide or other non-fissionable
material. Bombs require that pure shiny metal U235 or Plutonium
239 slam into pure shiny metal U235 or pure shiny metal Plutonium
239, respectively. Reactors can use converted bomb material as
fuel, but power reactors are NOT a source of bomb material. Once
you have made Plutonium 240, it is useless for making bombs.
There is no way to make it back into Plutonium 239.
Making plutonium239 for bombs requires a special kind of breeder
reactor [not an ordinary breeder reactor] that only governments
who make bombs own.
Any connection between nuclear power and proliferation is purely
delusional. They are not related.

India, China and Russia have nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs
already.We should give or sell them the latest [and therefore safest
and cleanest] nuclear power plant technology. The alternative to
nuclear power is more coal fired power plants. It is coal fired
power plants that are making 40% of our CO2 and it is CO2 that
is causing global warming. It is global warming that will surely
cause the fall of civilization and perhaps the extinction of Homo
Sapiens. Coal fired plants will have to be replaced 100% with
nuclear power plants by 2015 to prevent the fall of civilization and
the extinction of Homo Sapiens. Nuclear power saves us from
14.7 million tons of CO2 per 1000 megawatts per year, compared
to coal. Remember that coal contains uranium and a long list of
other poisons. The alternatives to nuclear power are the collapse
of civilization and the extinction of Homo Sapiens.

I have no financial connection to the nuclear power industry. I
am not being paid to say the above.

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Recycle nuclear fuel. Don't waste it.
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 4, 2008 12:46 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Yucca Mountain contains an enormous supply of nuclear fuel that
should not be wasted. We don't recycle nuclear fuel because
spent fuel is valuable and people steal it. The place it went that it
wasn't supposed to go to is Israel. This happened in a small town
near Pittsburgh, PA circa 1970. A company called Numec was in
the business of reprocessing nuclear fuel. I almost took a job
there, designing a nuclear battery for a heart pacemaker. [The
army offered me more money to work on nuclear weapons
effects.] [A nuclear battery would have the advantage of lasting
many times as long as any other battery, eliminating many
surgeries to replace batteries.] Numec did NOT have a reactor.
Numec "lost" a quantity of reactor grade uranium. It wound up in
Israel. The Israelis have fueled both their nuclear power plants
and their nuclear weapons by stealing nuclear "waste." See:
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/
x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreport
s/buriedlegacy/s_87948.html
It could work for any other country, such as Iran or the United
States. It is only when you don't have access to nuclear "waste"
that you have to do the difficult process of enriching uranium,
unless you have a Canadian "CANDU" reactor or a British
Magnox reactor, both of which run on unenriched uranium.
Numec is no longer in business. The reprocessing of nuclear fuel
in the US stopped. That was the only politically possible solution
at that time, given that private corporations did the reprocessing.
My solution would be to reprocess the fuel at a Government
Owned Government Operated [GOGO] facility. At a GOGO
plant, bureaucracy and the multiplicity of ethnicity and religion
would disable the transportation of uranium to Israel or to any
unauthorized place. Nothing heavier than a secret would get out.

I have no financial stake in the nuclear power industry, and I
never have. Nobody is paying me to say this.

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austerity
Posted by: edgar1 on Oct 4, 2008 12:16 PM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Americans have too much credit and too much money. They've used it to sprawl over the countryside, destroy farmland and soil, pollute bays and salt marshes, and dump filth into water systems and into the atmosphere.

They will not stop regardless of epa regulation, state climate change regulations or plans to promote smart growth that have come fifty years too late. The automobile, a prime culprit in sprawl and consequent pollution, will be with us for the forseeable future. Hydrogen cars are as yet untested, and hybrids are better than conventional cars but don't prevent sprawl. Neither party is about to dismantle the suburbs and the Fifth Amendment which protects private property remains the most important and powerful legal standard in the USA.

Only if the govt cuts subidies to the public and business will the credit crutch be snapped. Of course the bailout of mortgage paper is an awful way to begin credit reform. Ending mortgage interest deductions, deductions for interest for business, ending absurd artificial depreciation schedules are all ways to return the US to a cash economy based on the value of work and not artificial value created by the Fed, banks and the IRS.

The Feds recent pumping of hundreds of billions of credit to banks was a pathetic effort by Bernanke to prevent a Depression. Well, where did he get the money. It didn't exist. He printed it. So eventually those dollars will be used to import more goods and thus decline in value. Inflation will be triggered.

To save the environment we need to have an economic collapse, which we need anyway to restore commons sense to business and consumers. Otherwise we'll have ugly sprawl, inadequate air and water, and hyperinflation. I doubt the constitution will survive that toxic brew.

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Don't make the octane mistake.
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 5, 2008 4:36 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
How do coal fired power plants get ahead of transportation [cars
and other vehicles] in carbon emissions? Gasoline, diesel fuel,
etc. are half hydrogen. For example, octane is C8H18. To figure
out what fraction of the energy is from burning the carbon, you
have to look up the heat of formation of carbon dioxide and the
heat of formation of water. It takes 1 carbon to make one CO2,
but it takes 2 hydrogens to make 1 H2O. You can do the
arithmetic and apportion the energy between the carbon and the
hydrogen. You have to subtract the energy required to break
down the octane into atoms. It is easier to remove the hydrogens
than it is to separate the carbons, so the energy subtracted gets
apportioned too.
Coal is almost pure carbon, except for the URANIUM,
ARSENIC, LEAD, MERCURY, Antimony, Cobalt, Nickel,
Copper, Selenium, Barium, Fluorine, Silver, Beryllium, Iron,
Sulfur, Boron, Titanium, Cadmium, Magnesium, Calcium,
Manganese, Vanadium, Chlorine, Aluminum, Chromium,
Molybdenum and Zinc that are coal's impurities. Even though
transportation uses more energy, coal fired power plants put more
CO2 into the air. Coal fired electric power plants account for 40% of our CO2 output.

Transportation isn't even the second largest CO2 emitter.
Industrial processes are. The largest CO2 emitter of the industrial
processes is concrete making even though the energy used is less.
The first step in concrete making is heating limestone [calcium
carbonate] to drive off the carbon dioxide to make calcium oxide.
Coal is burned to make the heat, but the limestone is the greater
source of CO2. Other industrial processes include steel making,
metal casting, etc.

The easiest way to make the biggest reduction in CO2 emissions
is to convert all coal fired power plants to nuclear.

My sole source of income is my retirement annuity from the
federal government. I am telling you the above to avoid the
horrific consequences of global warming.

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Nuclear NO, Solar YES!
Posted by: Ottomatic on Oct 5, 2008 4:57 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Nuclear Power builds Dependency and
SLAVERY!
It is unsafe for Man, Planet and Beast.
Look at the Destructive Consequences.

We have been blackmailed by the Nuclear Lobby since the fifties.
Time to take our heads out of the sand and
Wash the FAUX MEDIA PROPAGANDA out of our eyes.

Solar Frees U.S.
21st Century Building Practices and
Local Green Energy Production is the Answer.
The Electric Grid wastes 1/3 the power.
Moving Goods over long distances is a thing of the Past.
Who can afford it?

The Micro-Democracy Revolution is here.
Buy Energy Independence with your money.
Higher efficiency and Self sufficiency is the Key.

Go Local,
Local is better.
Fresh Fruits and Vegetables taste better,
Clean Green Energy means a Cleaner Environment
Less waste,
Recycle, Renew and Create.
Go back to the Farm.
Go back to The Village.
The Industrial Age is over.
The Corporations have failed us.
The Titanic is sinking and the Chimp is bailing ship.
Are you going to go down with the Ship?
Brake the chains, open the doors and take a
Giant Step to FREEDOM!

Reaffirm the Positive Goals, Values and Ideals that got us here.
Strengthen The Constitution and The Bill of Rights
Expand every Citizens Rights and Freedoms.
Trust in Humanity.

One for All and All for One.

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Hydrogen as a fuel:
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 5, 2008 4:57 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Storing energy as hydrogen: Great idea, sort of. It has been
around a long time, like a century or more. It never caught on.
Why? Germany had hydrogen pipelines a long time ago.
Hydrogen works in spark ignition engines and turbine engines, if
the engines are big compared to gasoline or natural gas engines of
the same horsepower. Hydrogen is ideal for fuel cells.

People have not invested in hydrogen as an energy storage
medium because hydrogen is a difficult gas to deal with.
Hydrogen gas leaks out of any and all containers, no matter what
they are made out of. Why?: Because the hydrogen atom,
minus the electron, is just a proton, 1000 times smaller than an
atom. Any solid material is just a sponge, not a wall, as far as
hydrogen is concerned. The electron is easily lost to the atoms of
the wall, leaving just the proton. Even a whole hydrogen atom is
the smallest atom and easily squeezes through solid walls.
Hydrogen will stay bottled up at low pressure to a certain degree,
but the best way to make it stay put is to leave it in the form of
water. Solid materials can be used as filters for hydrogen and
helium. If you make a hydrogen storage facility, you have to
expect to loose a lot of your hydrogen. Energy stored as
hydrogen gas has to be used very soon after the hydrogen is
made.

Pressureized hydrogen storage requires very high pressure, and
the tank is still much too big. The hydrogen fuel tank for a
pickup would use up the whole cargo capacity of the pickup.

Liquid hydrogen storage requires a lot of energy to cool the
hydrogen because hydrogen liquifies at a very low temperature, near absolute zero.

Hydrogen can be stored as sorbed into intermetallic compounds.
Intermetallic compounds form a super-sponge for hydrogen gas.
It was proposed that cars use hydrogen gas tanks containing
intermetallic compounds. A typical car would require a 300
pound gas tank. Research was done on this subject in the 1970s.
Nobody ever commercialized it. Would it work for electric utility
energy storage? Are there enough of the metals required
available? Clearly the storage facility would be large and
expensive. I am going to let other people invest their money.

Hydrogen also causes its container to become brittle and break.
Hydrogen embrittlement is a big problem for the steel pipelines
that transport hydrogen.

A hydrogen flame is invisible to the human eye. That makes it
dangerous, so you have to mix it with a gas that makes a visible
flame. Otherwise, people will accidentally walk into a hydrogen
fire.

Hydrogen that has leaked out of something escapes from Planet
Earth. The earth does not have strong enough gravity to hold
hydrogen. Only giant planets have free hydrogen in their
atmospheres.

If you want to use hydrogen as an automotive fuel, you might
consider combining it with something else to make something
easier to liquify. Possibilities include ammonia [NH3] and
hydrazine [N2H6]. Hydrazine is double ammonia. One of the
problems is that hydrazine is a "monopropellant," which you can
read as "explosive." I would suggest that plug in electric battery
hybrid cars are a better alternative.

Of course, NASA can afford to use hydrogen for fuel cells and
hydrazine for rocket thrusters for orientation in space.

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Solar and wind power
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 5, 2008 5:20 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"Power to Save the World; The Truth About Nuclear Energy" by
Gwyneth Cravens, 2007 Finally a truthful book about nuclear
power. Gwyneth Cravens is a former anti-nuclear activist.

Page 249: "The manufacture of photovoltaic panels requires highly
toxic heavy metals, gasses, and solvents that are carcinogenic. ........
If a residential fire burns a solar panel, people would be at risk for
exposure to toxic vapors and smoke, ... . If modules are dumped
into municipal landfills, then heavy metals such as arsenic and lead
can leach into the soil and water table. Hundreds of thousands of
years from now, some of those substances will still not have
decayed: their life spans are essentially eternal."

Page 250: "Solar farms big enough to supply 1,000 megawatts per
year [sic] or more would cover over fifty square miles and produce
a quantity of toxic waste that would be significant."
"For the 70 to 80 percent of the time when nature isn't cooperating
[with your solar power scheme], you need the grid or a fossil-fuel
generator."
"The largest systems of unsubsidized solar energy in a sunny place
range from 22 to 40 cents per kilowatt-hour, in other words, solar
is the costliest alternative energy of all."

Page 251: Solar power requires cutting down trees to keep the
trees from shading your solar panels.
"Wind tends to fail during heat waves. ... Wind power turned out
to be highly unreliable, with capacity plunging from its usual 33
percent to 4 percent during the time of peak demand."

Page 257: World CO2 emissions from electricity generation come
to 9,500 million metric tons a year. Using a small footprint,
hundreds of nuclear plants in more than thirty countries cut carbon
emissions by 600 million metric tons every year."

Page 269: "[E]very day the collective households and industries of
America throw away nearly a million tons of garbage containing
toxic heavy metals and dangerous chemicals, as well as plastics that
will never break down. That garbage will be our culture's real
legacy, enduring for millions of years after all the present nuclear
waste has decayed."

Page 290: There is a mistake: She says that the Waste Isolation
Pilot Plant in New Mexico is the only nuclear waste repository in
operation. France has one.

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Wind & Solar
Posted by: AsteroidMiner on Oct 5, 2008 5:57 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Renewable energy could 'rape' nature
11:10 25 July 2007
Downloaded from: NewScientist.com news service
http://environment.newscientist.com/
article/dn12346-renewable-
energy-could-rape-nature.html

http://www.newscientist.com/
blog/environment/2007/07/
renewable-energy-bad-
nuclear-power-good.html

Phil McKenna
Ramping up the use of renewable energy would lead to the "rape of
nature", meaning nuclear power should be developed instead.
http://www.inderscience.com/
search/index.php?action=record
&rec_id=14671&prevQuery=&
ps=10&m=or
So argues noted conservation biologist and climate change researcher
Jesse Ausubel in an opinion piece based on his and others' research.
http://www.newscientist.com/
channel/opinion/mg18925361.
500-interview-be-
green-think-big.html
Ausubel (who New Scientist interviewed in 2006) says the key renewable
energy sources, including sun, wind, and biomass, would all require vast
amounts of land if developed up to large scale production – unlike nuclear
power. That land would be far better left alone, he says.
Renewables are "boutique fuels" says Ausubel, of Rockefeller University in
New York, US. "They look attractive when they are quite small. But if we
start producing renewable energy on a large scale, the fallout is going to be
horrible."
Instead, Ausubel argues for renewed development of nuclear. "If we want
to minimise the rape of nature, the best energy solution is increased
efficiency, natural gas with carbon capture, and nuclear power."
'Massive infrastructure'
Ausubel draws his conclusions by analysing the amount of energy
renewables, natural gas, and nuclear can produce in terms of power per
square metre of land used. Moreover, he claims that as renewable energy
use increases, this measure of efficiency will decrease as the best land for
wind, biomass, and solar power gets used up.
Using biofuels to obtain the same amount of energy as a 1000 megawatt
nuclear power plant would require 2500 square kilometres of prime
Midwestern farm land, Ausubel says. "We should be sparing land for
nature, not using it as pasture for cars and trucks," he adds.
Solar power is much more efficient than biofuel in terms of the area of land
used, but it would still require 150 square kilometres of photovoltaic cells
to match the energy production of the 1000 MW nuclear plant. In another
example, he says meeting the 2005 US electricity demand via wind power
alone would need 780,000 square kilometres, an area the size of Texas.
Part of the land used in Ausubel's calculations is for storage and
transportation: "Any renewable energy supply needs a massive
infrastructure, including steel, metal, pipes, cables, concrete, and access
roads."

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