[ RadSafe ] All the Energy We Will Need for Millennia

[Jeff Terry]

The best thought out numbers that I have seen on Energy costs are in the book, "The Geopolitics of Energy." Everyone has a bias when putting together these calculations, but I think that it has the best that I have seen. I don't believe that the conclusions can be implemented, but I am not optimistic by nature. 

Bats in the US are quickly becoming endangered due to White Nose Syndrome with mortality of 90-100%. http://www.fws.gov/whitenosesyndrome/
Additional pressure from wind turbines could easily push the species over the edge. 

The wind industry is lucky that people are afraid of bats, if each turbine was killing 20-40 cute bunny rabbits, they would have been banned already. 

If you figure that you need 1 million windmills to generate 4 trillion kwhr of energy in the US, probably a generous estimate to windpower. You are looking at killing 20 million bats per year. Bats have 1 offspring per year, they are not like mice with large broods. Estimates from bat experts suggest that they will be extinct in 20 years only considering the disease. http://www.bu.edu/cecb/bats/ 

The loss of bats will likely increase West Nile Virus deaths in humans due to excess mosquitos. Stop Windpower now. People don't kill people, windmills do.

Excess condensation in the contrails will likely affect crop growth. Many of these issues have not been investigated. 

Windmill and solar power generation have not been vetted. Nuclear has. 


Jeff


On Oct 5, 2011, at 1:00 PM, James Salsman wrote:

>> The Earth has all the fuel we need for millennia in the form of
>> uranium and thorium
> 
> The problem is that the actual realized cost of nuclear power in the
> U.S. proven to be between 25 and 30 cents per kilowatt hour:
> 
> http://web.archive.org/web/20090225154550/http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nuclear-costs-2009.pdf
> 
> We can argue whether the regulations and political opposition which
> causes this are justified (and I have a feeling we probably will) but
> according to a SLAC colloquium presentation earlier this year, nuclear
> would be expected to kill ten times as many people as wind, primarily
> because of issues involved with mining.  Meanwhile wind costs are the
> lowest and falling, currently at 5-6 cents.
> 
>> and we don't have to ... kill birds with windmills
> 
> If the U.S. started synthesizing transportation fuel from nighttime
> wind and stopped importing oil entirely, and derived all that fuel and
> all electrical power from wind, that would only require turbines on 5%
> of U.S. farm land:
> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/19/0904101106
> 
> You know what a dead bird is to a farmer? Free fertilizer. Even with
> that exclusive wind power scenario, house cats would still kill more
> birds, because the new larger multi-megawatt turbines turn slower and
> so are only deadly at their smaller surface areas on the tips of the
> blades.
> 
> As Jeff has pointed out, the danger to bats is a more pressing
> concern, but I have yet to see any study which seriously suggests that
> exclusive wind power in the U.S. would be a mortal threat to any bat
> species, just that more study is needed on the subject.
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