Re: Nova/Frontline

[GlennACarlson@aol.com]

Consider the following critique of biomass from the PBS/Frontline web site.  
Did you even watch the program?

"To make renewables cost-effective, though, you need to use a lot of land.

Yes, overcoming the low-density problem brings up inevitable land-use issues. 
 Let me give you an example. Say that by 2050 you wanted to supply ten 
terawatts of power -- or ten trillion watts, which equals the current total 
energy consumption of all humankind -- and you wanted to do it with biomass 
energy. You would need an area equal approximately to 10 percent of the 
Earth's land surface area. That's equal to all the land that's used in human 
agriculture right now. If you needed 30 terawatts generated by biomass, you 
would need three times as much land.

So you can imagine a world where the only things on the planet would be human 
beings and wheat, and we would eat the wheat and we would use the wheat to 
make alcohol for our vehicles. But no other biological diversity would exist, 
because we would have appropriated all of the land surfaces to do that.  
That's the kind of issue that you have to deal with when you seriously talk 
about stabilizing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "

Glenn A. Carlson, P.E.
glennacarlson@aol.com

In a message dated 4/20/2000 10:37:05 AM Central Daylight Time, 
bflood@SLAC.Stanford.EDU writes:

<<The Nova show seemed to take an approximately fair view of the various
 technologies and examined most of the realistic advantages and disadvantages
 of each. But, it was disappointing to see them conclude that nuclear isn't
 the answer because there isn't enough uranium readily available to meet the
 10 terawatt demand that's expected to grow to 30 terawatts over the coming
 century. They didn't apply this critique to any other method of producing
 power (other than to show a Greenpeace spokesperson claim that wind power
 could do it all, overlooking the general lack of wind during the coldest and
 warmest weather). Also, they were silent on the waste produced in the
 manufacture of solar voltaics, but of course were clear about the problems
 (mostly political) of radwaste storage.
 ============================
 Bob Flood
 Dosimetry Group Leader
 Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
 bflood@slac.stanford.edu
 
  >>
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