From: "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2001 2:49 AM
Subject: Re: Bill Moyers Reports: Earth on Edge
> We use Earth's natural resources like there's no tomorrow.
Actually, we don't. We do use resources as if we will find new ways to use
resources in the future, including new technology that uses different
resources and developing technology that allows us to use higher entropy
states of resources.
>We pollute air, soil and water, we cause global warming, we destroy the
rainforests, >and cause species after species to go extinct because of all
this.
That is true. But, if recent reports are right, we've been doing that for
tens of thousands of years. In the far past, we have "accomplished" this
with very low population densities. If we, for example, were to have the
ecological consciousness of the Native Americans, we would destroy the
ecology of the US in very short order with a fraction of the present
population.
In the US and Europe, we have improved our per capita environmental impact
tremendously. I lived near an old steel plant, and down river from old
paper mills. The river by my house was unswimmable. They poured the waste
from steel making directly into the river for years.
This no longer happens. The river is now quite usable, with just a warning
area around the place where they dumped solids years ago. We've improved
the condition of that river tremendously.
The best example I can give of this is farming. Tremendous advances have
been made in decreasing runoff and erosion. An example of this is the new
planters that allow planting without first turning the soil: corn is planted
with the stalks still in place. This significantly cuts erosion. Indeed,
one of the reasons that rotation of corn with soybeans had been decreased in
the last 20 years was that it had been possible to do this with corn, but
not soybeans. The very latest planters, IIRC, can now plant with soybeans
in the field.
As a result, erosion has been decreased to the point where people can farm
indefinitely with present techniques. In other words, erosion is reduced to
below the rate of natural regeneration of top soil.
>Yes, we humans are doing better than ever, but sooner or later our abuse of
the
> planet is going to catch up with us. And then there will be hell to pay...
> :(
How? Worst case scenario that I see is the high end of global warming.
While that will be a significant problem, and require very expensive
adaptation by people, it will not push us backwards to living conditions
that are as bad as even the last century.
>
> >Not only that, but the footprint would be enormous. Each panel has a
> >footprint of about .63 meters squared. 44 billion would have a footprint
of
> >about 30 billion square meters or 30,000 square km.
>
> A footprint of .63 meters squared isn't that much: you can fit several of
> those panels on the roof of your house.
No it is not. But you have to remember the output of one panel: about 0.25
kwatt-hour per day. As a result of this, 44 billion of these panels would
be needed to meet the needs of the US. That is a lot of space. With about
105 million households in the US, and with household use of electricity as
about half of the total, we would be talking about 200 of these panels per
household. That is a total footprint of 120 meters squared.
And, this assumes a southward facing surface, and no trees. Trees are an
important part of the urban ecology, and getting rid of them will result in
problems.
> IIRC, Arizona is mostly desert -- might as well make use of it.
We could do that, be as another poster pointed out, the ecology of the
desert would be very adversely affected. Plus, as still other posters have
mentioned, the manufacture of solar panels is not very environmentally
friendly.
>
>Your remark about "the entire federal budget" indicates that you expect
>the government to pay for it. But why not let people themselves pay for a
>solar power installation in their house? Sure, it will cost several hundred
> dollars per household.
If it cost several hundred dollars per household, then it would be an easy
slam dunk project. Using my figures, it would cost $100,000 per household.
Even using Michaels (which I think are very optimistic) it would cost
$30,000 per household. There are very nice houses in Houston that cost less
than $100,000.
>The system works in The Netherlands, it could also work in the US.
In what sense does it work? Are there are few high profile showcases houses
that hare heavily subsidized, or are there many purely solar houses? I gave
you the sources for my numbers, they are websites for solar companies. At
http://energytrends.pnl.gov/netherlands/ne004.htm
I got some numbers.
I put together the 3% for "other" sources and calculated the solar fraction
of this from table 2 and obtained an estimate of 0.1% of the total
Netherlands energy coming from solar power and about 0.03% coming from
photoelectric cells (about 0.07% comes from thermal solar). This fraction is
not consistent with any practical sense of working.
I know that a lot of people are put off with number crunching like this, but
IMHO it is absolutely essential. A solar electricity system that costs
$500/household or even $5000 per household is very practical. I'd buy a
system that costs $5000 per household and $500/year to maintain in a
heartbeat: I could pay principal and interest on a loan to finance this and
the maintained cost in less than three years...and then reduce my
electricity bill to $500/year. But, at $100,000 per household (and I'm
guessing a few thousand a year in maintained), it would be a prohibitive
economic burden.
The other aspect of number crunching is pushing throw the PR and seeing how
much solar energy is actually used. If I found that 10% of the
Netherlands's energy came from solar, then I would agree that solar energy
is working there. About 0.1% is at a level where a very impractical system
can be set up as a highly publicized example, without any practical
application. Let me use an analogy.
Dan M.
