Renewable Energy and Global Warming? Are Solar and wind helping?
Where I am coming from:: GW / Climate change is undeniable and Man Made.
I'm looking for thoughts from people who are knowledgeable in areas like Physics, Meteorology and Earth Sciences or generally know how the Earth and Nature work.
Solar and Wind energy seem to be the only two renewable sources that take energy directly out of the air. What makes me wonder is that I think they may be benefiting the environment more than we realize.
In addition to being clean energy sources they may be removing a lot more energy out of the environment then we realize, as they have been put in by the world on a massive scale. I tend to think wind turbines and solar panels probably dissipate nearly 100% of the energy that hits them. If the CO2 and pollution that we pump in the air is somewhat the same amount of energy as what we take out, we might have already found a way to compensate?
What do you think?
By the way renewable energy output has gotten to be almost even with nuclear energy output at 9%, much to the chagrin of the energy monopolies.
Ok Qaiser lets try to make this simpler, and Greg but the thing is if we can still convert it to energy then the energy existed. Energy is energy and if we're saying there's extra energy in the atmosphere I think getting rid of it or using it is a little less energy in the environment, nomatter if its at ground level or not.
We say our problem is that the CO2 mixed with the pollution we pump into the atmosphere heats up the atmosphere.
Ok that energy is already in the atmosphere. Now since solar and wind take whatever forms of energy they are and convert them into energy we use.
Now energy is energy. The physics law of conservation of energy has to apply here. In other words you dissipate some at the ground level and you've dissipated the total energy in the atmosphere, at the time, by that amount.
You can actually see it with wind turbines in water where fog develops because you actually cooled the surrounding air. You've also created a down draft that could be bringing some CO2 d
I meant to say the downdrafts created by turbines might bring CO2 down to ground level where it can be absorbed by plants trees or oceans.
P.S. You jokesters are real funny.
There're solutions for bird and bat problems. Change the color of turbines, for instance.
No renewable energies can be developed by any company and any country thats what you're all afraid of losing your monopolies, but forget it there future is written. Good luck getting nuclear plants running again, they take to much collaboration, effort and money to bring. Plus we haven't built any of them in 30 years. Where do ya think we'll get the nuclear experts?
Mtrstude, thanks but one thing you're saying it ultimately gets released back but thats true for everything, ultimately it will go back but what if the next time it does its CO2 free which is our ultimate goal. Maybe we can continue with our reduction in energy usage so it won't go back so quickly.
Pindar, well they must be helping somewhere cause we're putting them up everywhere and we've stabilized our CO2 output in the last 3 years and Global CO2 output was down 1.3% in 2008 could be that it was due to the global recession. But still there's more amunition to fight the folks that say GW is not due to humans.
But I can't believe CO2 is all at ground level. Even if it is heavy the wind can still fling it around like it was nothing. That goes agains everything including NASA which has the atmospheric CO2 at 331 PPM. http://climate.nasa.gov/
You know whats really strange is that the people that are right are getting the thumbs downs and the people that haven't a clue are getting the thumbs ups? Whats up with that? Well then to all the people getting the thumbs down, I commend you! You struck a cord with the denialists, great job!
Pindar I'm not talking about the UK if thats what you're talking about. Where did you get that figure?
Here's the EIA's figure. Winds contribution in the U.S. may be small but its not 0, more like around 0.8% in the U.S.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/rea_prereport.html
The only brainwashing being done is by the money flows. Pindar I don't join anybody for the purposes of joining them. If I happen to be on the same stance as them its because they and I both see the obvious.
Show me the evidence, but thats the problem isn't it! The GW / Climate change denialists have no evidence to show and no way to disprove the facts and true observations.
Lalu are you talking about the 9% figure Lalu? Why don't you check the graph on the EIA link I posted. That has renewables at 8% vs 9% for nuclear and that was for 2009.
"Worldwide wind energy production at the end of 2009 was 340 TWh, which is about 2% of worldwide electricity usage."
http://energy-statistics.blogspot.com/2010/09/global-wind-energy-statistics.html