How do you folks handle emotionally, knowing where we are?
I'm just starting to transition from saving the planet mode of 35 years to understanding that it's too late.
What our children will deal with...my son wants to be a father one day, and he would be a great dad. Except for what's coming.
I am working to stay centered but am feeling fear and anger and sorrow for the coming loss on an unfathomable scale. Our Hawaiian birds, forests, reefs, fish, people...and the world. Mahalo for any insights that hou care to share. Aloha.
= new reply since forum marked as read
This discussion might be very informative.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112758758
Some people do what that post shows for the reasons discussed, but the nuclear industry has a concerted PR campaign that does it to create a sense of desperation they hope will overcome the public's lack of acceptance of the technology. Adding to that is the fact that the entrenched energy infrastructure controls agencies like the Energy Information Agency and the International Energy Agency. And it is these agencies that the academic community has traditionally depended on for the most accurate forecast of energy needs and the performance of the options to satisfy those needs.
The problem is, for more than 20 years they've been sandbagging the competition. I began studying the transition away from carbon in grad school 11 years ago, and I noticed that the EIA was consistently forecasting a 2% annual growth in wind when for the previous 5 years the industry had been showing an actual average growth of about 50% per year. They are better now because there has been a huge amount of criticism, but they are still extremely conservative.
The problem was so bad that the UN sponsored a new energy agency that specializes in renewable sources - the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) ( https://www.irena.org/ ).
Their 2013 assessment included a look at the performance of prior forecasts. They found what experts in the field already knew - the models from the established energy community were producing conservative forecasts that were grossly inaccurate, while the modeling from groups like Greenpeace have been predicting actual performance pretty accurately.
You can download the report with this link, and the information I'm talking about is on page 15
http://www.unep.org/pdf/GSR2013.pdf
So, lthough it may not seem like it, we are making very good progress with renewable technologies. This stage is largely building a manufacturing base large enough to bring renewable energy costs down to where they are competitive with fossil fuels. We are there with several important technologies in a number of markets; onshore wind is one of the least expensive types of new generation, and solar PV is competitive in a rapidly expanding range of markets. With that reduction in price comes a corresponding growth in demand which drives growth in manufacturing which results in lowered costs that sets off another cycle of growth in demand - rinse and repeat.
Energy efficiency and renewables resources are more than adequate. And as you can see from the cost-deployment charts we are at a major turning point in what will be selected going forward.
Finally, regarding energy efficiency - it is far more important a topic than is generally appreciated. Here is the status of world final energy consumption by source.
Most discussions you've seen about how much energy we need look at "primary" energy consumption The numbers on the left of the chart below). This is the concept behind calls for energy efficiency (another set of technologies that are anathema to the coal and nuclear industry because it slashes their profits).
Understanding the energy wasted from thermal sources is very significant to appreciating what energy source is doing what.
Primary energy measures the total amount of energy that is embodied in a raw fuel source - no matter whether it is powering our lives (ie electricity or or propulsion for autos) or whether it is waste heat being transferred to our waterways from nuclear plants or heat that's causing NO2 emissions off the hot engine block of an internal combustion.
An alternative (and most say better) way of looking at the production and use of energy is to measure what is needed and consumed by the actual work being accomplished. For example, an average internal combustion engine (ICE) powered car ejects 85% of the energy content of the gasoline it consumes as heat and only uses 15% for motive power. When we look for alternatives to gasoline do we think biofuels, and duplicate the efficiencies of the gasoline powered ICE or do we focus on batteries and electric motors that have far better efficiencies - typically using 90% of the input energy for locomotion?
Writ large, what does that mean? Take a look at this flow chart and note that the "rejected energy" comprised 58.1 quads of the total 95.1 quads of primary energy used in the US last year. How much was actually used to do the work of the nation? Only 37 quads.
If we look more closely at the various sectors we can see where the major opportunities for energy efficiency improvements are to be found.
Also, energy is closely related to water use.
See http://www.nawindpower.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.11788#utm_medium=email&utm_source=LNH+07-19-2013&utm_campaign=NAW+News+Headlines
Hope that helps.
especially because my first grandson is about to be born, and another grandchild may be on the way.
