WSJournal Says "Start Stockpiling Food!" 700 Club Says "Ditch the Dollar Now!"

[Midway ®]

Actually, a strong argument can be made that gas is not that expensive relative to disposable income compared with where the ratio has been historically (I cant find the article where I read this but will post it if I can find it).  Also, even over the last 25 years or so, adjusted for inflation, gas doesnt seem to be extraordinarily high.  It is high, but about the levels of the early 1980s.

Gas was not $3.70 per gallon nor was there a recession when that article was written so the equation has changed.

Translation: The article's basic premise is wrong.

And so is yours.

Yeah, says you......  And only you..... An army of one.

[Midway ®]

here's another timely article fron the Riverside Gator archives:

Wilson wins landslide victory

Democrat Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th president of the United States, with Thomas R. Marshall as vice president. In a landslide Democratic victory, Wilson won 435 electoral votes against the eight won by Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and the 88 won by Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The presidential election was the only one in American history in which two former presidents were defeated by another candidate.

Highlights of Wilson's two terms as president included his leadership during World War I, his 14-point proposal to end the conflict, and his championing of the League of Nations--an international organization formed to prevent future armed conflict.

[RiversideGator]

here's another timely article fron the Riverside Gator archives:

Wilson wins landslide victory

Democrat Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th president of the United States, with Thomas R. Marshall as vice president. In a landslide Democratic victory, Wilson won 435 electoral votes against the eight won by Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and the 88 won by Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The presidential election was the only one in American history in which two former presidents were defeated by another candidate.

Highlights of Wilson's two terms as president included his leadership during World War I, his 14-point proposal to end the conflict, and his championing of the League of Nations--an international organization formed to prevent future armed conflict.

How nonresponsive.

[Midway ®]

Makes more sense than your postings. Not timely, but at least it's accurate. I guess it is too contemporary an article for you.

How about this one:

Breaking News: 300 Spartans’ Battle at Thermopylae

[RiversideGator]

Makes more sense than your postings. Not timely, but at least it's accurate. I guess it is too contemporary an article for you.

How about this one:

Breaking News: 300 Spartans’ Battle at Thermopylae

He has nothing to offer but sarcasm.

[Midway ®]

Makes more sense than your postings. Not timely, but at least it's accurate. I guess it is too contemporary an article for you.

How about this one:

Breaking News: 300 Spartans’ Battle at Thermopylae

He has nothing to offer but sarcasm.

And you have nothing to offer but twisted logic, political dogma, half truths, and ignorance. Sorry to s**t on your birthday cake, but as you continue with your inane and ridiculous posts, I will continue to comment on them for what they are.....regurgitated trash. You want intelligent discourse? Then put up things that make some sense instead of your recycled garbage. The intellectual level of your posts don't even rise to the status of political hack.   

And as for sarcasm, your obtuseness prevents you from distinguishing between irony, juxtaposition, humor or any other subtle device. The only way to reach you is through the use of a sledgehammer. You are capable of understanding nothing less.

You are factually inaccurate 30% of the time and downright wrong 60% of the time. The other 40% of the time you could be marginally correct. But then again, I could get better results from a coin toss.

[Midway ®]

Still have not seen any responses from you on this either, big boy:

The point is if one coal fired plant generates 10 times more energy than a solar panel field of 640 acres (paraphrasing from memory the info above) then it isnt exactly an efficient land use or practice in general.

A coal fired power plant (or any power plant for that matter) does not create energy, it converts from another energy source to electricity. if you are going to consider the spatial efficiency of a power plant, then you should also include the infrastructure needed to obtain the fuel for that plant. But, Kwh/Sq.ft would be a meaningless rating for a power plant so there are no specs on that. The closest you can come to that is watts per sq ft for a PV cell. And besides, there's plenty of land thats not good for anything else out west. I don't think Stephen was saying that there should be solar farms everywhere, just where they make economic sense. The extension to everywhere was your contribution. In a country this big, the spatial efficiency of a power plant is a meaningless number.

By the way, the thermodynamic efficiency of a coal fired power plant is about 39%. The rest is waste heat. So about 60% of the coal burned produces no electricity, just pollution and waste heat.

So which forests in Florida would you like to clearcut to build these massive solar panel stations?  Environmentalists complain if a postage stamp piece of land in Alaska is used for oil drilling but you can cover hundreds of acres with such a monstrosity without any problems??  Talk about misplaced priorities.

Once the phosphate runs out, put them over those strip mines. How about in the California, Arizona and Utah deserts? And to compare oil drilling with the placement of PV cells is foolishness and you know it. They are two totally different kinds of activities. Oil drilling is an active endeavour in a delicate ecosystem, and placing PV cells is a passive activity in a desert.

The point is you cannot transport large quantities of electricity (using current technologies) without a huge loss of said power. 

Oh, really? You know those big tower looking thingys with the wires on them? Those are called electric transmission lines. In this modern age they have actually figured out how to make them work with about a 96% efficiency!

Also, you have to acquire massive tracts of land and clearcut them for the solar panels.  So what is the answer to my earlier question?

Solar electric farms are not appropriate everywhere, but you are trying to make the case that they are not appropriate anywhere.

Posting pictures of the victims of Chernobyl, the one nuclear power plant accident which caused such problems and which occurred in the famously incompetent Soviet Union, is totally uncalled for and unnecessary.  This is hardly representative of nuclear power today either.  Ask the French, who get almost all their power from clean nuclear power, how it is working out for them.

Yes nuclear power is wonderful, and it is a mature and reasonably safe technology. Just one small problem.... nobody knows what to do with the waste plutonium that the fissile reactors produce. It has a half life of 24,000 years. Thats a long time to store something safely. Look up Yucca mountain.  I am all for nuclear power, if you can devise a strategy for disposing of the spent fuel. Could you please work on that, because to date, no one else has been able to crack that nut, and being that you are so smart, I'm sure that you could figure this out during your lunch break, probably with the mere wave of your hand, just like everything else.

Sorry, your black/white views work even less well in the area of technology. Technology is a constant compromise between the desired result and the immutable realities of physics. So, if you are not able or willing to make constant compromises, you'd better keep your day job.

And sorry, Jaxnative, theres no batteries in a solar farm. and as for fuel efficiency, if you think about if for 1 second, even if coal cost 5 cents per ton, solar would still be cheaper, because the sunlight is free. And if you think that a coal fired plant costs less to build or maintain than a solar plant, you'd be totally wrong there as well.

[Midway ®]

It is hard for the average person to understand that an "Educated' person could have such primitive and devolved views related to the sciences.

But, in my field, I have encountered an astonishingly large number of highly educated Neanderthals. At first blush, it would seem counterintuitive, but there are an amazingly large number of behaviours related to humans that are counterintuitive, but nonetheless, true.

Of course there is one eminently logical explanation for his posts: agent provocateur.

[gatorback]

This is why I read the forum, it's colorful language from people like Stephen that keep me coming back; however, I’m not sure if language, and language alone will cause people to start stockpiling food. I wonder how much of that $600 or $1200 economic stimuls check will go to stockpiling food.

[jaxnative]

Let's see, where were we, of yeah:

The reasons solar energy was barely mentioned as a promising alternative energy source was because it is more expensive and requires more space then virtually any alternative energy source. In the January 2008 edition of Scientific American magazine the authors of a pro solar power article envision 30,000 square miles of American Southwest covered with photovoltaic farms. In an atmosphere where natural gas pipelines takes decades to be approved and critical refineries and high power transmission line construction are held up indefinitely with never ending environmental challenges and other legal obstacles, what chance is there to cover tens of thousands of square miles of pristine desert habitat with solar farms?
It would take two nuclear reactors occupying two city blocks to power all New York City. It would take the entire state of New Jersey covered with photovoltaic arrays to provide a like amount of power. Even in the more optimal solar areas of the United States Southwest the land required is vast and virtually unimaginable that it could be converted into solar farms without fanatic environmental opposition.
Equally importantly to size is cost. Power now from even the most efficient solar energy schemes is many times the construction and operational costs of any other electrical generation method. Only through vast subsides is any solar power generation possible.
Solar power enthusiasts have promised dramatic reductions of costs for decades without realized results. What should also be kept in mind is that solar power provides energy only during the daytime. The generation method requires an elaborate and expensive infrastructure to store that energy for night time usage. In the most optimistic projections solar power will be many times the cost of virtually any other type of electrical production method.
For those that promote the solar alternative ought to do some math. Go to the sites that sell solar cell arrays and add up the cost that it would take to generate adequate power for their home. Find out what the DC to AC conversion equipment will cost. Ponder the enormous expense for batteries for night time power. Find out how long the equipment will last until it breaks or loses it capacity. What you will discover is it will cost a good fraction of the worth of your home and by a factor of five you will never pay for it with savings before it needs to be replaced.

[jaxnative]

Solar energy is limited by the per square foot energy output of the sun. With one hundred percent efficiency at the most intense part of the day a solar cell can produce slightly less then 100 watts per square foot. Unfortunately no one can produce solar cells with more then 40.7% conversion efficiency. Moreover the sun is only at peak intensity around 25% of daytime and there are many other systems drains that reduce the overall efficiency.

[jaxnative]

The least expensive method of producing electricity is by hydroelectric plants at 2 cents a kWh. Equally efficient is power generation through nuclear fission; a nuclear power plant produces electricity at around 2 cents a kWh. This is compared with a coal-fired plant at 4 cents per kWh, Natural Gas at 8 cents per kWh, Fuel Oil at 9 cents per kWh, Wind Power for 8 cents per kWh, and solar photovoltaic at 25-160 cents per kWh.
Wind power has been much promoted by the Environmentalists. However, wind is not a constant, requires large areas for construction and is only practical in certain locations. Other forms of electrical generation are required to supplement wind power. It is doubtful that acceptance of wind generation will persist if sea and entire landscapes are covered with wind generators. At best wind power will fill a small percentage of electrical needs.
Experience in countries such as the Denmarkâ€" where 16% of the country’s total electricity needs come from wind â€" has shown that fluctuations of the wind put the electrical grid under enormous strain. In certain periods there can be as much as 30% power available differences. High winds can provide excess power, followed by insufficient generation capacity and a grid incapable of bringing new power online fast enough to respond to wind speed shifts.

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2008/04/15/energy-2008-the-coming-economic-meltdown/

[gatorback]

Sometimes the things that don't make sense are the right things to do.  Toyota  built the Prius, and Honda build the Accord Hybrid.  Both products were bad business decisions, but Toyota and Honda build it.  Not unlike the W16 Bogatti, that produced 1001 horsepower, and cost $1.1M US. The video is below.  Point is, business decisions are not always the right decisions.

http://www.youtube.com/v/VEL5ABddZ0k
[flash]http://[/flash] 

[Midway ®]

1. Jaxnative, It might help if you were to give attribution to the article you posted.

2. Thats the present technology. But, the way things work, improvements are made that advance a technology forward. For instance, in 1980, flat screen TV's DVD's hand held cell phones, Ipods, personal computers, the internet, MP3 players, flash memory, USB, CD roms, blue ray, satellite radio, white LED's, pentium 1,2,3,4 and core duo did not exist, to name a few things. The development of these things follows a principle known as "Moores Law", that is, that the complexity of technological devices develops exponentially.

3. In a world where everything remains static, your statements would be true. We would be living in caves and eating raw wilderbeast. But this world is different. There are actually people out there who have intelligence, vision and the ability to move the state of the art forward through their research and scientific understanding. These are the people you commonly would refer to as "eggheads".

4. These "eggheads" will and are addressing the issues of PV efficiency and will make forward strides in this field just as they have in other technical endeavours.

5. The current 40.7% conversion efficiency (your number?) is quite spectacular, given that the best efficeincy for a coal plant is about 42%, and enough energy from the sun reaches earth every second to meet the electricity needs of the whole planet for a year.

How much solar energy reaches the earth?
Frequently Asked Questions - Energy
The sun’s energy reaching the earth surface is 15,000 times more than our energy demanded. In each fully sunlit hour, about 1kW of power is available to each m2 of surface.
Before reaching the earth surface, about 30% of the 177x1012 kW is reflected back to outer-space. 47% out of the 70% reaching the earth converts to heat. It keeps our earth warm. The rest absorbs by water.
In the environment, about 0.2% of the energy transforms and carries by winds and currents, while photosynthesis absorbs about 0.02%.

6. Its painfully obvious that you have no idea what you are talking about here, so it would behoove you to do a little research and put some thought into what you are saying here so that it makes sense. For you to take a stance against this technology when you don't really know anything about it and totally discount the fact that technology is an evolutionary process is a very backward position.

7. And, BTW none of you rocket scientists have picked up the ball and run with it to come up with a proposal for disposal of that spent nuclear fuel, you know, that plutonium with the half life of 24,000 years. And while you're working on that just remember that you can't put a whole bunch of it too close together, or BOOM!


My most favorite quote:

It would take two nuclear reactors occupying two city blocks to power all New York City.

Ha Ha Ha, yeah we could put them north of 96^th St. Nobody cares about what's North of 96^th St. They wouldn't even notice! You could disguise them as Monty Burns High School for Technology.

And if you want to solve Denmark's lack of wind problem, just send them RiversideGator.

[RiversideGator]

Makes more sense than your postings. Not timely, but at least it's accurate. I guess it is too contemporary an article for you.

How about this one:

Breaking News: 300 Spartans’ Battle at Thermopylae

He has nothing to offer but sarcasm.

And you have nothing to offer but twisted logic, political dogma, half truths, and ignorance. Sorry to s**t on your birthday cake, but as you continue with your inane and ridiculous posts, I will continue to comment on them for what they are.....regurgitated trash. You want intelligent discourse? Then put up things that make some sense instead of your recycled garbage. The intellectual level of your posts don't even rise to the status of political hack.   

And as for sarcasm, your obtuseness prevents you from distinguishing between irony, juxtaposition, humor or any other subtle device. The only way to reach you is through the use of a sledgehammer. You are capable of understanding nothing less.

You are factually inaccurate 30% of the time and downright wrong 60% of the time. The other 40% of the time you could be marginally correct. But then again, I could get better results from a coin toss.

Bile..  vitriol..  vitriol..  bile..  Ad hominem attack..