Global warming. Myth?

[portzy]

I've been wondering for a while; not so much that the earth is going through a change but whether we are contibuting to that change or its all coming about purely naturally.

I've also been wondering what would happen if the whole of the worlds population took the advice of, 'those in the know', and re-roofed their houses by installing solar panels and fitted wind turbines either domestic on gable ends or whole hillsides of them.

If we accept that the worlds weather patterns are driven by the sun; atmosphere heating via insolation; the pressure patterns; air mass movements; currents and tides etc what would happen if this exchange of energy was disturbed, interupted, reduced, or it ceased altogether.

On insolation: The atmosphere is warmed by an exchange of energy from the sun which heats up the earth and that heat is given up to the, (lower), atmosphere via an exchange of energy called insolation. Theoretically, no energy is lost in that exchange but, what would happen if a significant amount of that energy was taken, quite literally, by millions of solar panels and turned into either electricity to power the home or via water heat exchange?.

With either of the above situations you would be relieving the lower atmosphere of energy and therfore heat and would that not have an effect on the weather - temperature - atmosphere characteristics?.

Similarly: Wind turbines extract energy from the wind which has in fact come about either as result of a weather pattern, (fronts, depressions, etc), or large scale air mass movements. Would this interference have an effect because, you are taking energy again?. It is not being allowed to naturally sort itself out rather like the Chaos Theory in reverse.

This was a pub discussion from last night and we were talking "millions & millions" of solar panels and wind turbines. And we drank large amounts of Carling Extra as well but the subject, we thought, was worth a wider audience. What do you reckon?

Portzy.

 

[Vips]

Make mine a pint as well

 

[guydewdney]

wind turbines - just replacing the trees that we have chopped down (from an aerodynamic / air movement point of view)... as an aside - I cant seriously believe that people complain about wind turbines (like the graceful one at green park, reading,) on grounds of 'they kill birds'... oh - like a sparrow is going to get killed by that? yup - theres huge piles of dead birds under all the blades, arn't there? Just like Windy Millars evil bird chopping device....

solar panels - whats the difference between the heating of a solar heat exchanger (hot water type) and it heating the tiles of the roof? the exchanger still gets very hot, and so does he water - its just concentrating that heat into the water, rather than making your loft warm.

solar electrical - again - not very efficient -

]wikipedia - On a bright day, the sun delivers about 1 kW/m² to the Earth's surface. Typical solar panels have an average efficiency of 12%, with the best commercially available panels at 20%, and recent prototype panels at around 30%. This would result in 200 W/m². However, not all days have bright sunlight, and therefore not enough solar energy can be captured.

so 80% of the energy is still being 'wasted' back into the system as before. The electricity is used to make lightbulbs light (wikipedia again - Approximately 95% of the power consumed by an incandescent light bulb is emitted as heat, rather than as visible light. or 20% efficient for low energy jobbies) - heat kettles - again - its just heat - heat heating - (guess what - heat again) - so the energy 'taken' by the solar panel as electricity instead of heating your tiles gets turned back ino heat anyway...


Now - if we just covered our roofs in silver foil, this would reflect all the heat back out again, and we would all be nice and cool... but all the pilots would be blind

 

[Satch]

Anybody who has driven through Woking may have noticed a number of public buildings with their roofs covered by solar arrays. This is part of the Woking Sustainable Energy Project:

http://www.takingstock.org/Downloads/Case_Study_2-Woking.pdf

Central Government looked on with disdain for years. Woking just ignored all the talking shops and got on with their own thing but on a micro scale. Why?

Woking has avoided incurring penalty costs by utilising private wire networks and a local trading system. The existing regulatory regime limits the size of the local sustainable energy system and also the number of domestic customers that can be supplied with low cost green energy.

Now of course being held out by the Government as a model for the future.

 

[Shude]

A colleague of mine recently applied for the grant to have solar panels installed. It's no longer available!

I don't know how long it would take to recover about £10k in fuel bills through using solar but I'm guessing it's a long time, never mind the environmental impact.

You can get a grant to have a personal wind turbine though, works out as about £1k per kw of turbine output I think.

 

[jeremytaylor]

Whether you believe in global warming or not, it does seem a bit of a waste not to harness solar and wind power that is otherwise going to waste.

Unfortunately the cost of photovoltaic panels is currently so great that the payback timescale is way too long to make it viable.

I have no doubt at all that one day every house will have its own mini-solar panel and wind turbine fixed on a pole.

And yes IMHO, a forest of wind turbines is very graceful - far prettier than a power station!

 

[Shude]

And yes IMHO, a forest of wind turbines is very graceful - far prettier than a power station!

All this messing about with turbines seems slightly pointless when they could all be replaced (power-output-wise) with a handful of nuclear power stations.

 

[glojo]

. And we drank large amounts of Carling Extra as well but the subject, we thought, was worth a wider audience. What do you reckon?

Portzy.

Me thinks the Carling is still in the system??

Harnessing flowing water is a cheap way of generating electricity. I wonder where there is copious amounts of 'flowing water' that is usually simply flushed down the urinal

Nice question Portzy I noticed you were drinking beer and not 'Port'

Regards,
John

 

[Shude]

Harnessing flowing water is a cheap way of generating electricity. I wonder where there is copious amounts of 'flowing water' that is usually simply flushed down the urinal

Flushed down the urinal?

Water of the colourless kind falls from the sky up here in the North! We have loads of the stuff!

Now you've got me wondering about running a generator off the guttering...

 

[Satch]

Perhaps we should take a more selfish view: Solar panels on the roof along with a couple of small wind turbines linked to a flywheel energy storage device, run your own kit, flog any surplus generated to the grid but otherwise just wait for the lights to start going out in about 15 or 20 years.

Just replacing all bulbs with energy efficient ones, putting a real "off" switch in appliances and being more careful with energy use would take us a very long way.

However, never fear, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is at hand with new draft Regulations for Solar energy! Hurrah! The planet is safe.

However, one writer notes:

"Certain clauses in these documents are incomprehensible. One wonders if anyone has proof read them for basic readability and technical logic."

"The documents wholly contradict each other on positions to site solar panels in terms of steepness of and how far to deviate from South facing. The result of this contradiction could be that 20% of homes that have viable roofs for solar panels that face between SW and SSW or SE an SSE would be wholly from having solar panels, even though the performance compromises on these panels only 10-20%"

"One clause is so badly drafted that it appears to require traditional designs of solar panels (i.e ones which use heat exchangers for water heating) to be installed in the dark. Strangely enough, solar panels do not work in the dark. This would in effect instantly make 82% of such existing solar panels in the UK illegal."

 

[glojo]

Water of the colourless kind falls from the sky up here in the North! We have loads of the stuff!
.

This thread is all about global warming and on the local news they are just saying that numerous roads are being closed simply because the tarmac is melting and the gritting trucks are not coping. All school sports days have been cancelled, and folks are being 'cooked' in twenty minutes or less.

I would love to install solar panels, but all the experts have stated we would never recoup the costs? If anyone knows different then please feel free to speak up either here or via pm.

John

 

[Rose Chap]

I'm holding out for a personal nuclear power generating solution.

I will then fit it to my car so I have a nuclear powered CLK, and can go 300,000 miles on one rod.

 

[DITTRICH]

I'm holding out for a personal nuclear power generating solution.

I will then fit it to my car so I have a nuclear powered CLK, and can go 300,000 miles on one rod.

No! No! No! Surely you need a "Mr Fusion" that you can just dump water and the dregs from coke cans into. It worked for Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd!
Les

 

[DieselE]

If you believe the global warming predictions then the current heat wave will be a fairly current event. Noticable yesterday that with no wind the turbines did not move at all.

For a sound energy policy, we need an element of nuclear but we also need to find a way of economically making use of the 300 years worth of coal under the ground in the UK. Ways already exist to burn coal in power stations without giving off vast quantities of sulphur and CO2.

 

[guydewdney]

From the missus:-

Industry definately needs nuke, as microgeneration (wind / solar etc on a sub 20kw level) isnt enough... the govt plans for new nukes still do not come anywhere near filling the hole we have, as the current nuke stationsa re coming OFFLINE as fast as the new ones are going to be coming Online...

this isnt exactly true of ALL stations, but theres a lot of older ones out there on their last legs...

even tho' Im (Mo - not Guy) a green stinky hippy, I know we NEED nuke - even tho I dont like it! [Guy - very pragmatic burd this one...] - but we need a lot less if the govt pulled its finger out of its ****, and gave the general public helpful ways in which to save energy, and invest in micro energy.

John - go solar heating - as in water - photovoltaic is wate of time. Or geothermal if your garden is big enough (need about an acre) - or stick a wind turbine at the top of that flag pole of yours...

 

[Ian B Walker]

I saw a program on discovery not a long time ago with reference to wave power. apparantly on the River Severn they are trialing them. Also a place in Scotland where a guy is trialing some form of torpedo generator. As for John putting a wind turbine in his garden, there is plenty of room, however the view from there may be slightly distorted I know of a Quarry near Howarth that put a wind generator in to run his crushing plant and his house. What he doesnt use he sells back to the National Grid.

 

[glojo]

John - go solar heating - as in water - photovoltaic is wate of time. Or geothermal if your garden is big enough (need about an acre) - or stick a wind turbine at the top of that flag pole of yours...

0.5 of an acre

I somehow do not think a wind turbine would please either the neighbours or the council, plus the thing would melt in this heat (joke)

We are located at the top of one of the seven hills of Torquay and I feel that the geothermal idea would have a lot going for it.

I will p.m you for more details about solar heating.

Regards,
John

 

[Satch]

Well even if there is actually no Global Warming there ******* well is on the London Underground. 47C today on the Central Line and conditions to disgrace a slave ship.

Only a matter of time before someone pegs out when a train gets stuck.

 

[grober]

The Toxic Texan has spoken

George Bush aka " THE TOXIC TEXAN" doesn't believe in Global Warning. This means its definitely TRUE.
I think most people in the Scientific Community have accepted the basic premise that the burning of fossil fuels has altered the composition of the atmosphere and hence the radiation balance. Where the uncertainty lies is in the rate of change of the planet's weather systems and the subsequent consequences of same. The spectrum of these varies from the catastrophic,- failure of the gulf stream, melting of the ice caps, desertification of temperate zones etc to the optimistic,- we cut back a bit on fossil fuels and use nuclear/renewable energy,use technology to capture CO2 and store in the oceans/depleted oil fields etc. The economic and political pressures steer governments to the optimistic end of the spectrum because its closer to the status quo. Hence the development of the carbon emissions "market" in an attempt to control things. In the end its probably the actions or lack of them by the new emerging economies of India and China which will decide things in the immediate future. I have to say that's not looking good. All the UK can do is to continue to develop technologies and legislation which minimise CO2 release to the atmosphere. As individuals we have to ask ourselves the question "Do I need to consume all the energy I do" the answer is still maybe yes for now but just dont kid yourself that you, your kids or somebody in the world will probably have to pay for the consequences down the line.

 

[Dieselman]

I have something of an interest in green projects and can hopefully contribute to this thread.
I am not a fan of photovoltaic panels on the grounds that they use more energy during manufacture than they will generate in their life's use, in addition they are environmentally bad to manufacture, they cost too much and have a short life.

Wind. The UK has the windiest coastline in Europe and apparently we could generate our energy requirements three times over from wind turbines. there are some powerful turbines now being installed off the east coast which will generate significant power.

I know about the horror stories of bird deaths but they are mainly due to a few badly sited wind farms in the US, Spain and Norway. These farms were built before anyone had understood the impact of siting wind farms right in the fight path of migrating birds.
Recent siting takes this into account so this shouldn't be a problem any more.

Solar energy is where we derive all our energy from and is the most abundant source. We actually recieve approximately 1kW/h per sqM of space as a year round average, not as a maximum. This is approx 900w in Scotland and 1300W on the South coast.

As has been said the energy collected by solar collectors doesn't remove any energy, it simply transfers it into the water.

I wasn't going to mention this on the forum but I now sell solar water systems having been so impressed with the one I installed at home. I have been gaining specialist knowledge over a period of time and can now design and supply a system for just about any application if required.
Just for info my hot water cylinder was at 90 degC today and has been maxxed out at 85 degC for the last few weeks.

Power stations par-se are bad news due to the Co2 they emit or cause to be emitted. For obvious reasons coal and gas emit Co2 however they are burnt by the nature of burning the fuel which is made of carbon.
Most people have a perception that nuclear power doesn't generate Co2, unfortunately they are incorrect. Due to the mining of the uranium ore, processing, transport, subsequent storage and maintenance of spent rods, it is claimed that nuclear power actually generates more Co2 than burning gas for power but less than coal.

This might be interesting to some: http://www.britishwindenergy.co.uk/

I'll dig out more information and links if required.

The simplest way for us to reduce carbon emissions is to use less electricity by using energy efficient appliences, even down to lightbulbs as 50% of a household electricity usage is down to lighting. As has been said incandescent bulb wastes nearly all the power put into it as heat. In fact they are just heaters being driven so hard they glow white hot.
If every household changed their bulbs for CFLs then that would reduce the countries energy requirement by about 25%.

Ok, I'm sad but I do use solar power and buy my electricity from a wind farm to reduce our personal impact as I feel we have a duty to conserve and I am not making any sacrifice in the way I live.
I also went onto a water meter and saved just under £400p.a. even before the 650 litre water butt was placed.

Another linky. One for the Hadley centre and their observations. It makes interesting reading about the rate of change of Co2 and the climate changes.
http://www.met-office.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/models/climate_system.html

As you may all have noticed we are in a heatwave yet March was colder than the Winter months of Dec, Jan, Feb. Last time that happened was winter 1975/'76 and what happened then? Heatwave and drought in Summer '76.
Also three of the driest years on record have been in the last five years.
Maybe there's more to this weather and climate thing than is immediately obvious.