Researchers map out an alternative energy future for New York

[Havendalefarm]

I am absolutely positive fossil fuel driven energy and our highways kill several times more creatures than wind power ever will.Quite frankly I would propose that the internal combustion engine has altered the globe more in its roughly 100 years of widespread use than everything that came before it combined ,due to the fact of how it changed the scale of what we do and its effects on agriculture. That is one reason I think wind and solar is a more ethical choice for the future. Of course I also feel that a simple common sense sustainable land use plan where folks don't commute long distances to work, allowing also for a more efficient use of housing resources, should be a major part of ANY greener future. Without that the rest is a band aid at best.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

i'm pretty sure they are trying to figure out how many birds are killed vs how many are actually found. I'll send him an email since I'll be out of the office the next few days. Maybe he can shed more light on it.

Matt

 

[EatenByLimestone]

I am absolutely positive fossil fuel driven energy and our highways kill several times more creatures than wind power ever will.Quite frankly I would propose that the internal combustion engine has altered the globe more in its roughly 100 years of widespread use than everything that came before it combined ,due to the fact of how it changed the scale of what we do and its effects on agriculture. That is one reason I think wind and solar is a more ethical choice for the future. Of course I also feel that a simple common sense sustainable land use plan where folks don't commute long distances to work, allowing also for a more efficient use of housing resources, should be a major part of ANY greener future. Without that the rest is a band aid at best.

That I couldn't tell you anything about. There are still two big questions that I'm not sure how any scientist can ethically answer with certainty. First, is global warming occuring? The second is, If it is, is it due to activities caused by man? Given the amount of argument over something like evolution, which in theory has been happening since the first single celled organism miraculously appeared, how could they possibly come to a decision on global warming. Global warming would have only been happening since the industrial revolution.

Then you bring up the ice caps also disappearing on Mars and the argument starts all over again.

Politics has gotten in the way of any true answer.

Matt

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Next time I'm unhappy with my job, I'm going to think about the guy who's job it is to run around Schenectady in January hiding dead bird carcasses.

Ha! It's not my job! I remap wetlands for the next week or so and then I'll be doing creel surveys. A friend may be doing this somewhere in Western NY. The funny thing is the company was based out of NJ and was going to be sending him packages of frozen birds. I can only imagine getting pulled over with a bunch of (now thawed) bodies of birds protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It might make some interesting explaining.

 

[peter01vekselman]

Interesting study. Another reason not to frac.

http://www.rdmag.com/news/2013/03/researchers-map-out-alternative-energy-future-new-york

"...a new study finds that it is technically and economically feasible to convert New York's all-purpose energy infrastructure to one powered by wind, water and sunlight (WWS)." Kudos on this. But how feasible is feasible really?

Great thread by the way.

I'm new here, and I'm looking forward to joining more discussions soon.

Peter Vekselman
https://twitter.com/coach_peter

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Welcome to the forum Peter!

Matt

 

[begreen]

i'm pretty sure they are trying to figure out how many birds are killed vs how many are actually found. I'll send him an email since I'll be out of the office the next few days. Maybe he can shed more light on it.

Matt

While you are checking, find out how many thousands of birds are dying in the tailing ponds of the Alberta tar sands.
(broken link removed to http://www.energy-reality.org/action/tailing-pond/)

 

[EatenByLimestone]

The company that offered the job was West, Inc. He was offered a position to deposit dead animals on the sites of wind farms so they can correlate actual mortality. I had replied to Old Spark in a conversation.

What do the tar sands have to do with NY? While it's impossible to infer tone from a written post it appears to be in a snippy tone. Were you aiming for that? If so, why?

I still don't see the whole state being powered by alternative energy. I'm betting our Gov.promptly put the paper in a desk drawer where it has been gathering dust.

Matt

 

[oldspark]

I agree not 100%, that would be tough to do, 25% would be huge in that respect.
EatenByLimeston was talking about jobs that I had heard about when we got on the same page.

 

[oldspark]

Is there more power to be gen. by water, new dams some where, I thought we were tapped out on any major elect. produced by water? Smaller projects maybe.

 

[begreen]

The company that offered the job was West, Inc. He was offered a position to deposit dead animals on the sites of wind farms so they can correlate actual mortality. I had replied to Old Spark in a conversation.

What do the tar sands have to do with NY? While it's impossible to infer tone from a written post it appears to be in a snippy tone. Were you aiming for that? If so, why?

I still don't see the whole state being powered by alternative energy. I'm betting our Gov.promptly put the paper in a desk drawer where it has been gathering dust.

Matt

Nothing snippy Matt, more like irony. The question of bird kill from wind turbines came up. Many of the bird kill articles are pushed by the oil industry to smear wind power. The point of bringing up the tar sands is that oil kills a whole lot of birds too, but we don't hear about that.

 

[begreen]

What is not discussed often is geothermal. It is 24/7 energy. With cheap energy we avoid this resource, but entire countries like Iceland are powered by it. Ironically the biggest concern is causing small earthquake caused by injecting large volumes of water horizontally into deep bedrock that can cause fractures as it creates steam. Hmmm, what other process does this and has that stopped widespread use of this process?

 

[semipro]

What is not discussed often is geothermal. It is 24/7 energy. With cheap energy we avoid this resource, but entire countries like Iceland are powered by it. Ironically the biggest concern is causing small earthquake caused by injecting large volumes of water horizontally into deep bedrock that can cause fractures as it creates steam. Hmmm, what other process does this and has that stopped widespread use of this process?

Yeah, fracking. I contend that geothermal is not renewable though and as you've noted, tapping it may have heretofore unknown adverse impacts.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Is there more power to be gen. by water, new dams some where, I thought we were tapped out on any major elect. produced by water? Smaller projects maybe.

Microhydro is possible on any stream with very little head and/or flow. It really doesn't have to affect the stream's run either. I've seen slow turning achimedes screws which trout or any other migrating fish could navigate.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

Nothing snippy Matt, more like irony. The question of bird kill from wind turbines came up. Many of the bird kill articles are pushed by the oil industry to smear wind power. The point of bringing up the tar sands is that oil kills a whole lot of birds too, but we don't hear about that.

Ok, I figured I was reading too much into it. Sorry. Maybe we don't hear anything because it happens in another country. I know Germany tried to do something interesting with using the ground to absorb the heat from, if I remember right, a power plant. Maybe it was even nuclear. What they did was bury cooling lines under a farmer's fields. Their rationale for this was the ground would absorb the heat. The early heat would make the ground tillable earlier and everybody would be happy.

The law of unintended consequences dictates that something is going to happen. It turns out that insects liked the warm grounds also and the farmer had to deal with the damage they caused.

NPR had a story on something like this early today. In Copenhagen they are using the old cooling system for a power plant to pump cold sea water into the city. Buildings along the route can use the cold sea water to cool air as a substitute for traditional air conditioning. I guess the pipes are over a yard in diameter and the water will be warmed a few degrees by the time it re-enters their harbor.

Matt

 

[woodgeek]

Yeah, fracking. I contend that geothermal is not renewable though and as you've noted, tapping it may have heretofore unknown adverse impacts.

Agreed. The 'conventional' geothermal. which requires groundwater/geysers is a remarkable small resource (a significant fraction is already tapped and depleting at a measurable rate). Enhanced geothermal, where water is injected, aside from the quakes, is also not that large a resource. If used extensively, we could mine out all the best locations in <100 years IIRC.

 

[Ashful]

I contend that geothermal is not renewable though and as you've noted, tapping it may have heretofore unknown adverse impacts.

Exactly. Folks re-quoting all the talking points on "climate change" are often pushing geothermal as the alternative, as if we have the power to change the climate, but not affect sub-surface temperatures. We can only hypothesize at the possible effects.

Our appetite for energy cannot be fueled in large part by any resource, without dramatically affecting that resource, whether it be hydro, solar, geothermal, whatever.