Because according to FOX, it is not sunny, like... Germany.
Fox News expert on solar energy: Germany gets "a lot more sun than we do." [VIDEO]
:roflmao
Printable View
Because according to FOX, it is not sunny, like... Germany.
Fox News expert on solar energy: Germany gets "a lot more sun than we do." [VIDEO]
:roflmao
Perfectly logical.... i knew the Germans were hiding something from us. :)
Oh dear... Export opportunity for Germany? Lol
When did Fox News become a comedy channel?
Bob
I view all news with a jaundiced eye as I grow older. It is unbelievable some of the 'truths' that the media tries to put forth. No, I am not paranoid or an OMG the sky is falling type, just realize that the 'news' usually has an agenda. Sometimes there is a wide gap between the truth and the facts. How sad.
Can we pay them to put up a big mirror over there in Germany and give us a break? It's the least they can do after we've bought all those Mercedes, Audis and Porsches.
Pay them! After all we have done for them by relieving them from their own folly 3 times in the last century, they should graciously be hanging those mirrors to share the sun with us.Quote:
Originally Posted by ace
enjoy,
jim
Those three should sit on the southern side of my roof for twelve hours in July. They might notice some sun while they are up there.
Michael
"According to my research...". lol! I'm surprised this woman has the audacity to even mention the word "research" when she displays such mind-boggling ignorance on this issue.
One of the things you might consider if appearing on a news segment as an expert on the business of green power is to look at the world leaders in this technology and their business model. You might then compare and contrast your country's approach and draw some conclusions from it.
Or perhaps talk about a comparable metric when it comes to seed funding and subsidies? I'd like to know, for example, what proportion of the American GDP the total solar or green Govt. subsidy payments represent, and compare that to say Germany's proportion. But no, that would perhaps be too informative and probably approaching something like too much effort on this "journalists" behalf.
Here's hoping this is not indicative of the general approach Fox News takes to its news and "expert" opinion.
James.
Really Jimbo, I am shocked you could be so misinformed...Perhaps Aunty Jimbo would care to take a run at it?
I think this is their fair and balanced reporting :p
Trayvon Tragedy: Did NBC Edit the Zimmerman 911 Tape to Serve a Political Agenda? - YouTube
This vid discusses media maleficence once media begins to show an agenda they lose their credibility...
A lot of people didn't like the idea a while ago of Germany buying solar from Sunny Greece. I guess they had realized what most of us hadn't, that Greece is nothing compared to the solar hotspot of Deutschland.
Besides the Stupidity of the Fox news staff,,, does anyone believe that Green Energy ie: Solar and Wind is actually viable or clean ????
I live in an area that many people are what we call "Off the Grid" and have been for quite some time, this is not a new trend up here... What is becoming an issue however is that our Refuse dumps are getting more than double the amount of Lead/Acid batteries then the surrounding areas.. This also must be factored with the information that it costs money to drop a battery at the land fill, which up here means that many of these batteries are more then likely ending up buried in holes on the back sides of people's property.. This will eventually leach lead into the water table
So just how clean is Solar and Wind, I know China and India are already having pollution issues from the increase in "Green" industries, also the renewable aspect is being questioned since the technology relies heavily of Rare Earth Metals (key word Rare)..
Is this just another glass of Koolaid ????
I think this just shows how stupid some people are. I remember a past prime Minister of ours (Howard) saying we couldn't 'afford' to sign up to the Kyoto agreement because 'we were a manufacturing economy' and we'd be 'unfairly disadvantaged economically'. I guess he's eating his words now as we scramble to re-build infrastructure year after year post floods etc. I won't even address the 'manufacturing economy' bit. Manufacturing WHAT?
On another ranting point, is the root cause of the issue HOW we get our power or more to the point how MUCH power we're using? When I was growing up we had no air-conditioning, no TV, no electric blinds, no electric toothbrushes, electric mops, etc. We had a radiogram thingy, an electric jug and electric lights. No TVs in each room, no 'game machines' in each room, no DVD players etc. Maybe we should just REDUCE power consumption instead of finding more ways of providing it?
It astonishes me that one would actually NEED an electric toothbrush and electric blinds, how pathetic ARE people that they can't do this [insert video of one moving one's toothbrush manually across one's teeth for several minutes]?
Of course I should put my hand up and say I'm also a consumer of too much power, but I honestly wish I wasn't. It's hard to be a peasant hermit living in the woods like Henry Thoreau, but I wish I WAS.
(hippy Carl having a hippy rant)
Not surprising coming from the "news" channel that gave us Karl Rove, the Romney Landslide, "skewed" polling, Sarah Palin, global warming denial, and on and on...
The sad fact is that Germany, France, really Europe in general, are decades ahead of us in weaning themselves gradually off of fossil fuel sources and on to more sustainable/green energy sources, which, yes, have impacts, but orders of magnitude less than coal/oil/natural gas. The country that put a man on the moon should have led the world in this initiative. But sadly, we seem to be racing backwards with respect to science and technology (not to mention government's crucial role in incentivizing their development when correctly managed), two things which helped us forge the mightiest economic superpower in world history post WWII. Very sad, really.
Try this google search "The Hidden Pollution of Green Energy" it is a rather good search, and you will find some interesting ideas, I became curious when Hybrid Ford Escapes first hit the car lot and I had this little Hippy Gal explain to me that they had more overall negative impact on the Enviroment from cradle to grave then an H2 Hummer did...Quote:
Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad
Quote:
Originally Posted by gssixgun
But it has the little green leaf on the side of it, so it must be good for the enviroment. :) Here's an interesting article for those who think wind power is good for the enviroment:
Large Wind Farms Raise Temperature Near Ground - WSJ.com
Seems wind contributes to the increasing temperatures of climate change. :hmmm:
As farcical as the Fox News piece was there definitely is no free lunch with the production of green energy. It may very well be as polluting in the long run as the energy sources it seeks to replace. What you make on the beer you loose on the peanuts.
Bob
Of course Solar Power doesn't work in the United States. No one has yet to be given a patent on sunlight. As soon as someone is allowed to own all sunlight and is able to sell it to you, we'll see that it works just fine.
Lol it aught to be a pretty simple thing to figure out. Surely they have studies out their comparing sunlight between the 2 countries.
Solar doesn't work in the USA because coal is cheap and more efficient. And because the battery tech doesn't exist yet...
Out of curiosity, are they using lead acid batteries for storage during non-peak or intermittent hours?Quote:
Originally Posted by gssixgun
Overall though, this kind of hits the nail on the head for what a lot of people miss about green technologies, a great example being hybrid cars. Not just in the disposal of batteries, but also manufacture. I believe that overall going to green technologies is the right path forward, but we have to be very careful in how we report results and technologies to the public to disclose the actual cost, not just monetary. It is still lower as a whole than conventional fuels, all things considered, IMO and based on my own research.
There is a nice map, the link is somewhere out there. I think Germany got average sunlight comparable to Alaska.Quote:
Originally Posted by stdreb27
A lot of battery tech does exist currently for applications in solar, but that isn't a necessity for widespread acceptance of solar power, there are a number of other options for capturing that energy, as well as the idea of simply using solar power as a supplement to the grid. One of the biggest problems is political will.
As someone from Texas, I would seriously doubt germany gets more sunlight...Quote:
Originally Posted by ScienceGuy
But it's not political will. (I've dealt more with wind than solar on a electric grid scale) There is political will. That's why wind projects are getting almost 50% of their cost subsidized, I don't know what else one would want short of a complete ban, which they're doing more or less (with the unspoken ban on coal plants.) And when they kill endangered birds, no one notices... If the same thresholds were enforced for wind that is enforced for natural gas and oil drilling, there wouldn't be a wind turbine anywhere (slight over exaggeration)... Hell down here they have one of the only almost successful wind turbine fields in the USA, and it's literally 30 miles from the major flight path of whooping cranes. They've basically shut down sandhill crane hunting in the same area just in case some poor sap accidentally shoot a whooping crane instead of a sandhill...
As for solar, I've priced out multiple systems for various projects small and large talking offshore platforms, and well the money just doesn't work out. The maintenance is too high requires too much space. The storage doesn't exist.
I'm all for technological advancements. But lets face it, even with green tech being subsidized to the tune of 50% of install costs, coal is still cheaper. That isn't even discussing CNG tech that's out there. And that is the ultimate driving force... Not government will.
Yes most of the Green systems up here rely heavily on the storage systems, North Idaho is not well known for sunshine or wind.. The best system to have up here is Hydro, if you are lucky enough to have a steam flowing across your property... One week of real weather up here can shut down all these systems however..Quote:
Originally Posted by ScienceGuy
To date, nuclear is still the cleanest, greenest form of energy.
Sadnly, the 'green' party disagrees because nukular -> bad.
Going green can solve distribution problems, availability problems and resource scarcity.
It cannot, however, beat the economy of scale of a large energy plant in terms of efficiency or being environmentally friendly.
Green is only green if you don't look at the manufacturing process, which is conveniently located in places noone gives a crap about, done by people noone gives a crap about.
they need to invent a technology that will generate power at night and during the day that doesn't need "storage"
wind is too inconsistent and solar goes off when the sun goes to sleep. so is no good to supplement anything during the peak period of the early morning and evening
at least with coal they can feed more or less coal into the fire or switch on more generators blah blah.
guess the only solution to that would be hydro but then when the river dries up what then?
what if they used solar to power a kinetic energy that would drive the generators at night?(winding up a rubber band if you will) rather than a battery storage system
Obviously there is no free lunch, and all of the non-fossil alternatives have their own environmental impacts. Only the most naive greenie believes otherwise, just as only the most rabid oil/gas coal company shills deny the devastating impacts we've gotten from those technologies. It seems we're now shipping much of our coal overseas to developing nations (where we can turn a blind eye to often much-filthier power plants whose emissions don't respect political boundaries), and now natural gas is the big thing. Unfortunately, fracking has its own potentially-horrifying environmental impacts, so there are no easy solutions...
Still, the US must reclaim its leadership in research and development of alternative energy sources. Again, this nation put a man on the moon, cracked the genetic code, invented the silicon chip, the Internet, and the computer revolution, and the list goes on. A lot of our great inventions and advances (space exploration, GPS satellite technology, and the Internet for just a few examples) were mostly government/NASA/DOD projects until markets developed that made them viable commercial enterprises: satellite communications and Google Earth, the WorldWideWeb that our lives now revolve around, etc.
We all know that Solyndra was a debacle, in part because they couldn't compete with cheap Chinese manufacturing (which is a whole 'nother topic I guess). But we've seen (and our lives are made better by) countless examples of inventions and technology that started out as government research, something subsidized, incentivized through the tax structure, parnternships, whatever...Eventually, markets and demand were created where none existed before. And that is what I think America needs to be doing with alternative energies, though it has to be done RIGHT, with eyes wide open to potential impacts (as we learned-and are still learning it seems, about the impacts on the environment and food prices of ethanol additives to gas).
The main problem is that storing those amounts of kinetic energy is very hard.Quote:
Originally Posted by blackers10
I know places in Belgium where they store energy as potential energy through hydro.
The surplus is used to pump water in larger quantity to higher areas in an artificial lake.
When it is needed, sluices are opened in the other direction, letting the water stream through hydro power generators.
I know in spain they ha(d/ve) molten salt reservoirs which are very convenient, because salt can store a large amount of energy in molten form. Teh main problems there are performing maintenance on equipment that stays at a several hundred degrees celcius, and also to make sure the temperature never drops below the crystallization temperature. Because once it solidifies, it is a huge bother to get the entire thing going again.
If anybody has access to it, this is a great review that addresses well the problem of solar energy storage: Nocera, D.G., Cook, T., Dogutan, D., Reece, S., Surendranath, Y., Teets, T. Chem. Rev., 2010, 110, 6474–6502. It's just one facet of the problem, but it seems to be in the discussion now. This chart sums up a lot of the issues with various methods of storage, if you understand energy density and power density:
Attachment 120642
You can see PHES (pumped hyro) is on the low end of both power and energy density. Most kinds of purely mechanical storage are going to be on the less efficient side due to thermodynamics. We're after storage with high energy density, so there's a lot of active research to store solar energy not in what people commonly think of like batteries, but to drive reactions to store the energy in chemical bonds, one of the highest densities (disregarding nuclear, but forming nuclear bonds is not on the scale of energy of solar transformations). The idea is to use solar energy to form carbon neutral fuels that can then be transported or used when the sun is not shining. Of course this is all just basic research now that is years off, but a lot of people don't realize that some of this research is out there and could use support.
Wow-Thank you ScienceGuy for the technical details! I think SRP needs an official science advisor.
By the way, my wife lived all over Germany for years, and just laughed about the 'more sun' bit-hello desert Southwest!
I don't consider such a stupidity a problem, the problem is why it got there. Foxnews is simply really good at what they do, which is providing entertainment under the label of 'news'. They have plenty of really smart people, Gretchen Carlson from that video being an excellent example, however these people are not paid for being journalists but for playing journalists on TV, and that's what they do.
The 'financial analyst' on the other hand isn't all that bright, but that's why she's not entrusted with higher profile job. My guess is that she was hired for her looks and ability to talk in grammatically correct sentences, not for analytical abilities.
The reasons Germany is doing 'clean energy' are primarily political and they have the economic power to make it work, even if there are more profitable energy sources like nuclear power which are politically inacceptable.
As far as the pollution from battery sources - that means that the market is severely distorted. A good but rather crude solution I could think off the top of my head is for people to pay the full cost of the battery, including the environmental cost of improper disposal. If they chose to dispose it properly they could get the cost difference credited back. Or they can continue doing it this way and pass the cost to the future generations which will have to deal with the environmental clean up and the health problems. It's all a matter of choice, and being stupid enough to not see all the costs doesn't make those costs disappear.
Enough of this silliness. What is next?Quote:
Originally Posted by gugi
Paying 3d world countries actual value for their ores and minerals?
Ending virtual slave labor in 3d world countries?
Not doing business with corporations who make their 'employees' stand waste deep in chemical sludge?
You sound like a hippie :p
No Ivan, our economic structure depends in large part on conveniently forgetting that such a thing as 'waste', or indeed, the entire concept of 'other people', exists. And since we are on top of that foodchain, I demand that you cease this foolery which might upset the comfortable status quo.
I always find it interesting that many don't like something simply because they don't understand it. Most U.S. warships are run by nuclear power. I for one understand nuclear power & am all for it...but sadly there hasn't been a nuclear power plant built here in the U.S. since the 80's IIRC. It's amazing how a small reactor in a fast attack submarine can produce so much power...Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno
Nuclear power was about to make a comeback, even enjoying a brief rebirth among greenies, before the Japanese earthquake and Fukushima explosion and ensuing drama put the kibosh on it.
80,000 dams in the US, only 3% are used today to produce electricity, hydro power is clean, green, and these are all existing dams that could be all used for the production of electricity. There is only a few projects in Ohio, and a couple other states.
And the other side of that story can be found by searching the term "Tear down the Dams" you can find all the info about how the Dams are wrecking the ecosystem :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin103
Basically the real problem is there are 4 Billion too many people on the planet :p that is the number as I understand it anyway...
When were they something else?:rofl2:Quote:
Originally Posted by BobH
Tear down the dams, from what i read they wont need to tear them down, they are doing that on their own, another alarming infrastructure in the US.Quote:
Originally Posted by gssixgun
