In article <1188248684.368755.164390@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups. com>,
cyclintom@gmail.com wrote:
> On Aug 27, 8:15 am, "Phil Holman" <piholmanc@yourservice> wrote:
> > "Tom Kunich" <cyclintom@yahoo. com> wrote in
> > messagenews:13d48217orrp140@corp.supernews.com...
> >
> >
> >
> > > "Phil Holman" <piholmanc@yourservice> wrote in message
> > >news:04KdnU2xEOmNb0zbnZ2dnUVZ_q2hnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
> >
> > >> "Jim Flom" <jim.flomREM...@telus.net> wrote in message
> > >>news:UsgAi.2569$Pd4.497@edtnps82...
> > >>> "Donald Munro" <fat-dumb...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > >>>news:46d19314$0$22310$ec3e2dad@news.usenetmonster. com...
> > >>>> Jim Flom wrote:
> > >>>>> It's the cows. "...while the digestive difficulties of one
> > >>>>> burping cow may
> > >>>>> not seem like a big deal, the cumulative effects of 1.3 billion
> > >>>>> cattle
> > >>>>> producing over 100 million tons of methane annualy can have a
> > >>>>> significant
> > >>>>> effect on the world's balance of greenhouse gases."
> > >>>>>http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/1997/Dec/hour1_120597.html
> >
> > >>>>> And Tom.
> >
> > >>>> Tom produces dangerous quantities of methane ?
> >
> > >>> You obviously haven't read his global warming contrarian rants.
> >
> > >> "The answer lies in the soil" divert about 3 out of the 60 mega tons
> > >> of dead organisms and animal waste from the carbon cycle per year.
> > >> Maybe deposit it in a place with no oxygen where is could be used as
> > >> a fuel source in generations to come. Now there's a novel idea.
> >
> > > Phil, reduction of carbon is a great deal easier done with genetic
> > > engineered lifeforms. The problem is this: the energy requirements of
> > > modern society are so high that we cannot feed the world and supply
> > > energy per capita as we are presently doing not to mention the
> > > increasing appetite for energy that we see reflected in the use of
> > > SUV's and world wide use of air conditioning.
> >
> > Yes Tom, these things are easier said than done. 178 000 tera watts of
> > solar radiation hits the earth; total human energy consumption in 2004
> > was 15 tera watts. The potential is there, having the will to utilize
> > and develop the technolgy to harness it is an issue.
>
> Pretending that number is sensible: the earth is 7/8ths water so only
> 22,000 terawatts are easily availble for harvesting. Of that amount
> the plant life requires 90% of it leaving some 2200 terawatts. This,
> mind you, on an area of 149 million sq km. meaning that there ain't a
> lot of power on any surface at any time that allows us to harvest it
> economically. This indicates that 22 x 10^14 watts is some 15
> megawatts per square kilometer. Conversion from heat to electricity
> can't much exceed 5% in real terms (subtracting out pie in the sky
> numbers that ignore cloud cover and nighttime) so that means that out
> of a sq km we could get 3/4ths of a megawatt.
>
> The present cost of conversion runs about 25 cents per kilowatt hour
> so that available enerrgy would run about $200,000
>
> So we could probably set up a really nice power grid that MIGHT work
> out for a mere $3,750,000,000,000. Of course that ignores the fact
> that we would have to build the factories that could build the solar
> cells in sufficient quantities. Not to mention clearing all that land
> - Rhode Island might have trouble finding enough land to use. And how
> are these things going to be mounted again? What happens to the land
> under the cells which are now permanently shadowed?
>
> There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
I am the farthest thing from a green-power True Believer (well, this
side of a peak-oil anti-speculator, at least) but $4 trillion actually
sounds really cheap for a global power-generation infrastructure (it
would be much less than 10% of global GDP, or less than a fifth of the
US GDP; you could probably float a bond issue big enough to pay for it).
I doubt you could buy a new copy of the current global power generation
infrastructure for that kind of money, and I'd bet the market value of
the global power assets would far exceed that same figure.
As for Rhode Island, I'm pretty sure they're not energy-independent
right now, so solar power wouldn't be all that scary. I assume that US
solar power generation would be concentrated in, er, the Sun Belt, or at
least in Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico the California desert, and other
vast wastelands.
--
Ryan Cousineau rcousine@sfu.ca http://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos