How many wind turbines and solar panels does the world need to replace coal, oil and nuclear power?

Wow you "heard" this and you "heard" that-I heard that it isn't dangerous to build a nuclear reactor that can only withstand a 7.5 earthquake a half mile from the San Andreas fault-just a little bit more false con propaganda. I wonder if they're rethinking that little nugget...

BTW little genius-wind and solar are "natural" energy; coal must be mined and processed which is a tremendously polluting process even before it's burned as fuel, which is not natural. Same with the nuclear materials used in nuke plants, except it's an even dirtier process. Your contention that the production of solar panels and wind turbines is more polluting than coal or nukes is more than simply false-it's ridiculous. Finally, just because your uninformed brain can't conceive of how a sustainable power grid would work doesn't mean there's not a plan in place, or that it can't work. I suggest you inform yourself further on this subject, the information is cleverly concealed in books.

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Ahh, the geniuses are out in force today..."Woofy", where do you think the energy to run those electric motors is going to come from? Fairies? Elves? Reddy Kilowatt?

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"golden", you answered your own question-solar systems ARE better now and have steadily been improving since their inception and have become more affordable smaller, lighter and far more efficient. Too bad the government chose not to fund solar research in favor of giving welfare to oil companies-we'd be even farther along and the systems would be even better.

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"hotshot", I don't mind $4 gas at all; the last gas crunch in 2008 led to a dramatic reduction in driving by Americans as well as increased interest in and purchases of fuel efficient vehicles-apparantly it's the only motivation to conserve most people will heed. Why else do I not mind? My husband and I own a (16 year old) car that gets 30MPG city, 34MPG freeway, we (purposely planned to) live within a 3 mile radius of our jobs, we consider carefully the necessity of car trips and plan them to reduce the numbers of miles we drive and we practice hypermiling. Guess what? We fill our 10 gallon tank every other week. Again, that's ten gallons of gas for two weeks of driving-therefore I have no need to whine about $4 a gallon gas,.

There is an abundance of free energy available on this planet. Wave, wind, solar, (underground), and many many others that I can't remember right now. If some of the multi-trillions currently being spent being spent by the US government on defence (and the rest of the planet defending ourselves FROM the US) were re-directed towards exploiting sustainable, long-term energy supplies, then much work would be generated and the cost of energy would drop significantly - in the long run. So, why are we not utilizing these sources of energy? Unbelievably short-sighted right-wing political ideology, that's why! One thing almost never reported about nuclear power, is that there isn't much nuclear power fuel available on this planet. I think I can quite honestly state that when the time comes when we are forced to move from non-renewable to renewable energy production, it will probably be far too late with far too much damage done and the environment will collapse and become incapable of supporting oxygen breathing life-forms. I concluded many years ago that capitalism will probably end all life on this planet one day. Capitalism IS right-wing politics! Do you now see where the problem is coming from?

FIRST i read UP THERE:

Consider the amount of oil to run a nuclear facility. Tons more than a generator motor.

Once a turbine is activated (motor started) the winds themselves turns the windmill. Each turbine is lined up with the next (wind farms) to push wind at the blades, they each push each other.

WRONG ON ALL COUNTS !!!

Nuclear reactors use effectively NO OIL.

At wind-farms the turbines MUST BE ARRANGED to NOT block AIRFLOW to another turbine. Each turbine is "subtracting" some of the energy from the wind, not INCREASING the speed of that wind.... it is PHYSICS (and hydrodynamic flows)

PHOTOVOLTIAC

to supply ONE house with electricity, photovoltaic cells would have to cover the entire roof.

A supermarket would require a photovoltaic field roughly ten times larger than its own roof,

or 1,000 times larger in the case of a high-rise building.

photovoltaic can surely SUPPLEMENT our power NEEDS but it requires ENORMOUS use of LAND and one might CONSIDER that land can have NO TREES blocking the SUN.... and further note, NO FARMS, no BUILDINGS, nor can it be CLOUDY without dramatic LOSSES in OUTPUT.

WINDMILLS:

consider countries who have made LARGE commitments to windturbines AND good places where the wind is relatively constant. The efficiency is STILL a major problem. In Denmark, Spain and Germany the turbines are ONLY productive approximately 100 days per YEAR.

Remember also these turbines are NOT pretty little windmills, but massive structures. In round numbers, under MAXIMUM efficiency and WINDS, we can generate about one megawatt per acre of land.

US Electrical Consumption: 3.892 trillion kWh

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS:

Conveniently for the Turbine Maker (General Electric) who will actually be making these turbines in CHINA not in the USA :

No large scale IMPACT studies have been released. But anyone who has been around a windturbine can tell you, YES you will find large numbers of dead Bats and dead birds. Consider the poor BAT which consumes 1,000's of mosquitos per hour.... wait until you SEE the overpopulation of mosquitos, after we have successfully killed all the bats...

Oh and not to forget the turbine BLADES have problems with ICING. Consider the DIAMETER of the blades, roughly 320 feet. A single turbine is a FOOTBALL FIELD in diameter. When the ice comes OFF these spinning blades, it has alot of kinetic energy.

In a noise-abatement environment they must LIMIT tip speed to 200 feet-per-second. Yes NOISE is another PROBLEM. Check for research already done relating to VLF hum. (very low frequency).

A chunk of ice flying at 200 feet per second will cut you in half, or at a bare minimum ruin your day entirely.

There is NOTHING in our current arsenal of technology, that comes CLOSE to the generation EFFICIENCY of Coal, Oil, or natural gas.

Long GONE are the United States smokestacks belching clouds of black smoke. So the MYTH which is still promoted by alarmists saying we are MAJOR polluters is simply a myth.

Meanwhile, since we are NOT drilling ANYWHERE, and have PULLED coal mining permits, the United States is MORE DEPENDENT on FOREIGN ENERGY than we were a few years ago....

think about that fact !!

How do you LIKE $4 gallon gasoline ??

Green technology at this stage is not viable for the long run...we don't have the technology as of yet to replace all other modes of energy...Windmill Farms are EXTREMELY ugly and kills thousands of birds and only work when the wind is actually blowing...solar is not ready for prime time, too expensive for the average joe...we should be pursuing other engines that would use less gasoline and some exist but nobody is promoting those because they are convinced electric cars are the way to go but those are a farce because we don't generate enough electricity now for homes to use, can you imagine how little we would have if all cars starting using that same energy? IT is a farce that during an economic crisis the current powers that be are wasting money on green technology garbage that won't work. We should be figuring out how to drill our own oil and get off foreign sources and build more plants to produce more electricity, not figure out how to use the little electricity we currently produce in all our vehicles...Liberals...what a concept.

Both the wind turbines ( windmills) and solar panels are less costly to implement than nuclear power and have less disaster potential.

They have proven that Windmills miles out in the ocean are a great source of power. This dose not consume any land. For land bound areas they should use public roadways to line the windmills.

For areas without sustainable winds they can use the combined effect of windmills and solar power.

Honey, any motor needs oil. Whether it is a generator for a windmill or a nuclear reactor. Motors are what runs the world. Consider the amount of oil to run a nuclear facility. Tons more than a generator motor.

Once a turbine is activated (motor started) the winds themselves turns the windmill. Each turbine is lined up with the next (wind farms) to push wind at the blades, they each push each other.

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Very good question, and most people do not have an answer.

The truth is we need to use whatever we have, and conserve as much as we can.

There is no excuse for overuse, pollution, and not recycling. Yet many people are not doing it.

Natural gas is an ideal source and is abundant, but is NOT being talked about as much as it should. It is a clean and efficient source of power.

What is really going on is interference by individuals who stand to make millions of dollars depending which way we end up supporting.

The Democrats blame the Republicans for backing oil, yet they are going to make millions of dollars using wind turbines.

I say get the gov out of the decisions, and let the people decide which way to go.

Each American and illegal immigrant needs three solar panels and two wind turbines if they do not have a car or truck. Why don't the liberals just hook up clean, non-polluting and safe electric motors to turn the generators at the electric plants and save all the gas and so forth? It would be much safer than nuclear energy and easier to invent the equipment than the Internet was to invent.

solar panels are a great idea. trouble is that like many great ideas, they just don't work that well. the cool thing is the modern ones work hundreds of times better than the originals. why not develop them? imagine if an eight by ten inch panel on your roof could power your house. why not?

as for wind turbines, leave mine as dutch windmills only. those turbine farms are freeky. "harnessing" the elements doesn't seem like such a great idea.

I've never heard of airplanes or parachutists hitting a windmill? lol...

if we focused on hydroelectric, solar and wind... we may not be able to totally cut our dependance on fossil fuels, but we could reduce it a great deal, with relatively no harmful effects and NO POTENTIAL HARMFUL EFFECTS...

and even assuming you're correct about the windmill production, if it lasts for 10 years and can fuel 100 electric cars over that time... it's still a MASSIVE energy savings... and I really doubt what you say is true for an average car and an average windmill...