Livyjr, do you operate a motor vehicle?

Heat a house with fossil fuel derivatives?

Or hunt, fish, chop down trees, and survive all on your own?

Here is an interesting wiki piece on Geo Engineering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_engineering

And an opposing view:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7133619.stm

Yes, jeffmoskin ....

I do have a motor vehicle ...

Periodically, I do operate it ....

It's a 4-cylinder Toyota ....

I use it to haul building materials and occasionally, firewood ....

No, actually, I don't ...

Well, jeffmoskin, I don't eat meat, so I don't hunt ....

Yes, I do pretty much survive all on my own ....

If I didn't, I wouldn't be in here writing these words ....

Because nobody else is going to do my surviving for me ....

And so ...

NEW YORK STATE CONSTITUTION ARTICLE XIV - Conservation

§ 4. The policy of the state shall be to conserve and protect its natural resources and scenic beauty and encourage the development and improvement of its agricultural lands for the production of food and other agricultural products.

The legislature, in implementing this policy, shall include adequate provision for the abatement of air and water pollution and of excessive and unnecessary noise, the protection of agricultural lands, wetlands and shorelines, and the development and regulation of water resources.

The legislature shall further provide for the acquisition of lands and waters, including improvements thereon and any interest therein, outside the forest preserve counties, and the dedication of properties so acquired or now owned, which because of their natural beauty, wilderness character, or geological, ecological or historical significance, shall be preserved and administered for the use and enjoyment of the people.

Properties so dedicated shall constitute the state nature and historical preserve and they shall not be taken or otherwise disposed of except by law enacted by two successive regular sessions of the legislature.

§ 5. A violation of any of the provisions of this article may be restrained at the suit of the people or, with the consent of the supreme court in appellate division, on notice to the attorney-general at the suit of any citizen.

NEW YORK STATE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION LAW - ARTICLE 8

§ 8-0101. Purpose.

It is the purpose of this act to declare a state policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; to promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and enhance human and community resources; and to enrich the understanding of the ecological systems, natural, human and community resources important to the people of the state.

§ 8-0103. Legislative findings and declaration.

The legislature finds and declares that:

1. The maintenance of a quality environment for the people of this state that at all times is healthful and pleasing to the senses and intellect of man now and in the future is a matter of statewide concern.

2. Every citizen has a responsibility to contribute to the preservation and enhancement of the quality of the environment.

3. There is a need to understand the relationship between the maintenance of high-quality ecological systems and the general welfare of the people of the state, including their enjoyment of the natural resources of the state.

4. Enhancement of human and community resources depends on a quality physical environment.

5. The capacity of the environment is limited, and it is the intent of the legislature that the government of the state take immediate steps to identify any critical thresholds for the health and safety of the people of the state and take all coordinated actions necessary to prevent such thresholds from being reached.

6. It is the intent of the legislature that to the fullest extent possible the policies, statutes, regulations, and ordinances of the state and its political subdivisions should be interpreted and administered in accordance with the policies set forth in this article.

However, the provisions of this article do not change the jurisdiction between or among state agencies and public corporations.

7. It is the intent of the legislature that the protection and enhancement of the environment, human and community resources shall be given appropriate weight with social and economic considerations in public policy.

Social, economic, and environmental factors shall be considered together in reaching decisions on proposed activities.

8. It is the intent of the legislature that all agencies conduct their affairs with an awareness that they are stewards of the air, water, land, and living resources, and that they have an obligation to protect the environment for the use and enjoyment of this and all future generations.

9. It is the intent of the legislature that all agencies which regulate activities of individuals, corporations, and public agencies which are found to affect the quality of the environment shall regulate such activities so that due consideration is given to preventing environmental damage.

Do you see that as weak or effeminate or something, Frenchy, the fact that I am not out there blowing the **** out of nature with a rifle or shotgun or cannon so that I can then eat flesh which I have killed for myself?

Is it "unmanly", perhaps, to not eat meat?

Or... it's just a joke not meant to insult or demean anyone.

Okay ...

WATCH! LISTEN! LEARN!

"If Great Lakes drop, hydro power likely affected"

By MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press

Last updated: 1:02 p.m., Monday, September 1, 2008

ALBANY -- Could climate change endanger New York's power supply?

A number of studies predict Great Lakes water levels will drop over the century as average temperatures creep higher.

If that happens, it would affect the amount of water flowing through the Niagara Power Project and the St. Lawrence-FDR Project, two state-run hydro facilities that account for about 12 percent of all the electricity generated in New York.

There is no danger of lights dimming anytime soon.

Lower levels are not a certainty and the scientists projecting them say the decrease will occur over decades.

Still, recent trends have convinced many scientists that change is inevitable.

"How much of a drop is really the question," said Joseph Atkinson, director of the Great Lakes Program at the University at Buffalo.

Atkinson said most climate models suggest the region will be drier and warmer, with lake levels dropping from under a foot to up to two feet.

Don Wuebbles of the School of Earth, Society, and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who is involved in climate research for the U.S. government, said the recent Great Lakes figures are a bit less dramatic: decreases of less than a foot, on average, by about 2050 and a one- or two-foot decrease around the end of the century.

"It doesn't sound like much, but it does have meaning," Wuebbles said.

The New York Power Authority's Niagara Power Project, the largest power producer in New York, relies on water flowing from Lake Erie diverted from the Niagara River to produce about 8 percent of the power generated in the state.

The flow from Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence runs turbines on that river's hydro dam.

They are among the largest hydro dams stretching from the St. Marys River below Lake Superior to farther down the St. Lawrence at Quebec that are powered by the Great Lakes outflow.

The authority allocates much of the inexpensive power from the plants to dozens of companies from Delphi Thermal & Interior near Buffalo to Alcoa in northern New York.

The bargain-rate power is a linchpin of New York's strategy to hold on to manufacturing jobs.

The power also goes to municipalities like Massena and Jamestown.

Power reductions due to low levels on Lake Ontario and Lake Erie are nothing new.

Curtailments of allocations were actually more frequent before 2004, according to the authority.

Lake levels and power production at the two plants often were above average this year.

Still, the future of the largest fresh water supply in the world is clearly on the radar of New York officials, who this year entered Great Lakes-area compact designed to protect the resource from thirsty regions elsewhere.

Michigan became the last state to sign the compact in July.

The U.S. Senate ratified the measure last month and it awaits a House vote.

"The Power Authority would be concerned if water levels were consistently lower than the long-term average and this is precisely the reason why Congress needs to act quickly to approve the Great Lakes Compact," according to a statement from the power authority.

While the compact would protect against the threat of water exports, it does not address the threat of warmer weather over the 21st century.

A U.N. panel of scientists last year said that climate change already is happening and warned of even warmer temperatures tied to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Evaporation has been increasing on all the Great Lakes since 1997 amid higher temperatures, said Cynthia Sellinger, a hydrologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But Sellinger said that while water levels on the upper lakes have dropped, evaporation has been mitigated on Erie and Ontario by more precipitation from a series of storm systems from the Gulf Coast, dating from Katrina in 2005.

So while the upper Great Lakes were below average, the two lower lakes that lap up on New York were closer to normal.

Sellinger said no one knows if this trend will persist.

------

On the Net:

New York Power Authority: http://www.nypa.gov/

Helium 3

In what sense, Niteowl?

All of the 104 nuclear reactors currently licensed to operate in the United States are light2 water reactors.
Sixty-nine (69) are pressurized water reactors (PWRs) and 35 are boiling water reactors (BWRs).
...
The required amount and usage of water by PWRs and BWRs is essentially identical. Both types of nuclear power reactors are about 33 percent efficient, meaning that for every three units of thermal energy generated by the reactor core, one unit of electrical energy goes out to the grid and two units of waste heat go into the environment.
...
A nuclear power reactor generating one thousand megawatt hours of electricity (1,000 Mwehours) has a waste heat load of nearly 2,000 megawatt hours.
...
Taking the waste heat rejected from that 1,000 Mwe nuclear power reactor (6,830,000,000 BTU per hour) and assuming that the thermal pollution discharge cannot cause the river water temperature to rise more than 5ºF, the equation can be rearranged to determine the minimum river flow rate:

m = 1,370,000,000 pounds mass per hour

Converting this flow rate to cubic feet per second (cfs), a more conventional river flow measure:

cfs = 6,077 cubic feet per second

The U.S. Geological Service maintains an online National Water Information Service at HTTP://WATERDATA.USGS.GOV/NWIS/RT that provide real time reporting of river flow rates. For example, the USA Streamflow Table on November 2, 2007, reported results from 8,428 monitoring locations across the country.

The results show that only one – the Pamlico River near Washington, NC at 7,920 cfs – of several dozen monitored locations in North Carolina had a flow rate exceeding 6,077 cfs.


NUCLEAR BORN KILLERS
Nuclear power plants, whether using once-through or closed-cycle cooling, withdraw large amounts of water from nearby lakes, rivers, and oceans. In doing so, aquatic life is adversely affected. A 2005 study, for example, of impacts from 11 coastal power plants in Southern California estimated that the San Onofre nuclear plant mpinged nearly 3.5 million fish in 2003 alone – about 32 times more fish than the other 10 plants combined. Untold numbers of fish larvae and other life entrained in the water do not survive journeys through nuclear power plants. The more water the plants use, the more aquatic life we lose.

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuc...f-got-water.pdf

--------------

A 2007 report by Frank Barnaby and James Kent lists several FENCH emissions of CO2 vary between 10 and 130 grams per kWh. Methodology from the Storm and Smith publication is cited, and similar conclusions are drawn from this literature study.

Frank Barnaby and James Kent (2007-03). "Secure Energy? Civil nuclear power, security and global warming." (in English). Oxford Research Group.
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publ...ecureenergy.pdf


The WNA also listed several other independent life cycle analyses which show similar emissions per kilowatt-hour from nuclear power and from renewables such as wind power.



Energy Balances and CO2 Implications accessed 23 July 2007
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf100.html

Energy Analysis of Power Systems accessed 23 July 2007
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.html

----

Defining climate change prospects, effects and mitigation

The outcome of any significant global warming will be various changes in climate rather than simply an overall increase in average or nocturnal temperatures. Climate researchers have designed models to predict the consequences both in air and ocean circulation patterns. These give a range and probability of climatic impacts on different regions of the world.

The science behind the politics of global warming took a step forward and also ratcheted up concerns with the release of the Third Assessment Report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2001.

The Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 further reduced uncertainties and led to calls for action. This was published in three parts. The first detailed the physical scientific basis for climate change. The second covered the impacts of climate change, the options for adaptation and identified where people and the environment are most vulnerable. The third part of the report identified options for mitigation of climate change.

A synthesis of all three reports, including a Summary for Policy Makers, was published in November 2007.

The first part of the Fourth Assessment report on the science relating to climate change concluded that the evidence that human-derived greenhouse gas emissions had already had an impact on the climate had strengthened. Furthermore, there was greater confidence in predictions of the impacts of future greenhouse gas emissions.

Among the findings were:

* Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (since 1850).
* Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (90%+ probability) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
* The average temperature of the global ocean has increased to depths of at least 3000 m and that the ocean has been absorbing more than 80% of the heat added to the climate system. Such warming causes seawater to expand, contributing to sea level rise.
* Mountain glaciers and snow cover have declined on average in both hemispheres. Widespread decreases in glaciers and ice caps have contributed to sea level rise
* Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003, about 3.1 mm per year.
* Average Arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years.
* More intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s, particularly in the tropics and subtropics.
* Widespread changes in extreme temperatures have been observed over the last 50 years. Cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent
* The global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 280 ppm to 379 ppm in 2005. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide in 2005 exceeds by far the natural range over the last 650,000 years (180 to 300 ppm) as determined from ice cores.
* The primary source of the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide since the pre-industrial period results from fossil fuel use, with land use change providing another significant but smaller contribution. Annual fossil carbon dioxide emissions increased from an average of 23.5 Gt CO2 per year in the 1990s, to 26.4 Gt CO2 per year in 2000-2005.
* The global atmospheric concentration of methane has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 715 ppb to 1732 ppb in the early 1990s, and is 1774 ppb in 2005.
* The combined radiative forcing due to increases in carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide is +2.30 W/m2, and its rate of increase during the industrial era is very likely to have been unprecedented in more than 10,000 years.

The IPCC predicts that, based on a range of scenarios, by the end of the 21st century climate change will result in :

* A probable temperature rise between 1.8°C and 4°C, with a possible temperature rise between 1.1°C and 6.4°C.
* A sea level rise most likely to be 28-43cm
* Arctic summer sea ice disappearing in second half of century
* An increase in heatwaves being very likely
* A likely increase in tropical storm intensity.

The second part of the 2007 report dealt with impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities. It concludes that climate change will have significant impacts including increased stress on water supplies and a widening threat of species extinction.

The third part of the report in May 2007 dealt with the mitigation of climate change, outlining the prospects and options for change, particularly in the energy sector, which accounts for 60% of emissions. It was signed off by over 100 countries which agreed that major changes are required, to adopt low-carbon energy technologies. It said that a key to achieving this is putting a price on carbon emissions, particularly from power generation. The report acknowledges that nuclear power is now and will remain a 'key mitigation technology'. IEA projections support this.

It says that the most cost-effective option for restricting the temperature rise to under 3°C will require an increase in non-carbon electricity generation from 34% (nuclear plus hydro) now to 48 - 53% by 2030, along with other measures. With a doubling of overall electricity demand by then, and a carbon emission cost of US$ 50 per tonne of CO2, nuclear's share of electricity generation is projected by IPCC to grow from 16% now to 18% of the increased demand. This would represent more than a doubling of the current nuclear output by 2030. The report projects other non-carbon sources apart from hydro contributing some 12-17% of global electricity generation by 2030.

These projected figures are estimates, and it is evident that if renewables fail to grow as much as hoped it means that other non-carbon sources will need to play a larger role. Thus nuclear power's contribution could triple or perhaps quadruple to more than 30% of the global generation mix in 2030. The report also states that costs of achieving any overall target for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations would increase if any generation options were excluded. Clearly, any country excluding or phasing out nuclear energy is raising the overall cost of meeting emission reduction targets. This runs counter to the economic objectives of sustainable development.


Main References:
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report 2007
OECD/NEA World Energy Outlook 2007.

Global Warming - the science - (August 2008)
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf59.html

--------------------------

NEIS
Nuclear Energy Information Service
Illinois' Nuclear Power Watchdog for 25 Years


You Can't "Nuke" Global Warming!


In the debate about solving global warming, the Public is often given a false, misleading choice between continuing with some form of coal -- and nuclear power. Renewable energy is marginalized and not discussed. Misleading statements about environmentalists reconsidering the use of nuclear power abound -- just as fake advertising trumpeting that "Most doctors smoke Camel cigarattes" abounded when the tobacco industry was trying to confuse the public about the health risks of smoking.

What has NOT received sufficient coverage in the media is that we currently possess a great deal of the technological know-how needed to begin creating an energy future that will be BOTH carbon free, and nuclear free -- and by the year 2050 according to Dr Arjun Makhijani of the Inst. for Energy and Environmental Researcy.

You can download Dr. Makhijani's book, order a printed copy, or watch a video of NEIS director Dave Kraft interviewing Dr. Makhijani on Chicago's CAN-TV, on our Carbon-Free Nuclear-Free page.

----

LA Times Opposes Nuclear Power "Solution" to global warming!

In an excellent article written July 23rd, 2007, the LA times points out some of the many reasons why nuclear power doesn't make sense as a "solution" for global warming. You can read it on their site, or download a .pdf file from us.

http://www.neis.org/Campaigns/YCNGW/2007_0...kes_LATimes.pdf

----

Book and Fact Sheet Available

There are lots of reasons you can't 'Nuke' Global Warming. The fact is, Nuclear power won't save us from Global Warming any more than it will be "Too Cheap to Meter" - thats just another overenthusiastic promise from an industry that hasn't delivered on any of its promises. There's a new book - "Nuclear Power is Not the Answer" - in which Dr. Helen Caldicott addresses this very topic. NEIS also has a pdf factsheet that you can download here:

http://www.neis.org/Campaigns/YCNGW/You_Ca...bal_Warming.pdf

----

Nuclear Power Can't Replace the Biggest CO2 Sources ...

Nuclear Power sounds like a good solution for global warming, until you realize that the largest emitter of global warming gasses is the transportation sector. Plan to strap a reactor onto your SUV? Automotive fuel-efficiency standards would be much faster, much more effective, much less expensive and much less of a material handling problem than building reactors to crack water into hydrogen.

----

Nuclear Power Itself Causes Global Warming!


While nuclear industry spokesmen are fond of pointing out that nuclear power plants release no greenhouse gasses in operation, they always fail to point out that Uranium Enrichment accounts for huge percentages of some CFCs released in this country. For example, United States Enrichment Corporation's sites in Ohio and Kentucky released 800,000 pounds of CFC-114 in 1999. CFC-114 lasts 300 years in the atmosphere, and causes 9800 times more global warming per pound than CO2. So US enrichment activities in 1999 released the equivalent of 3,920,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. In addition to global warming, CFC's in the atmosphere cause another problem. They destroy the ozone layer. CFC-114 is one of the worst substances know to man in terms of ozone destruction. This is all just more evidence that Nuclear Power is not a clean technology!


----

Nuclear Power Won't Work in a Global Warming World

Nuclear power plants require water. Lots and lots of cooling water. The majority of water used for any purpose in Illinois - more that 75% - is used as reactor coolant.
What happens when global climate change results in more hot, dry summers (punctuated by violent storms which create runoff but don't raise river levels for longer than a few days? With increasing electricity demand for air conditioners, higher environmental temperatures and less water in the rivers, the reactors will have to shut down or cook the fish. It has already happened here, and in France in 2005. NEIS has a two-page .pdf report discussing the ways in which Nuclear Power Plants can't operate in a Global warming world.

http://www.neis.org/Content/Global_Warming...rench_Nukes.htm

http://www.neis.org/Campaigns/YCNGW/2007_0...Hot_Weather.pdf

----

In fact, it happened again in 2006. Read our letter to the Editor from August 2006:


The recent heat wave contained two news stories about nuclear energy, one widely broadcasted, one completely ignored.

The first was about the record-setting electricity use, fuelled by the region’s demand for air conditioned relief. Exelon and other nuclear utilities attribute their success at meeting this demand to nuclear power.

The second story barely appeared after the heat broke, when people weren’t paying attention. Both here and internationally, the demand for electricity was indeed met, sometimes by nuclear power. However, in many cases these reactors were either not allowed to run at full power, or, if they were, they were given regulatory permission to exceed safety and environmental standards. In other words nuclear plants were allowed to keep the air conditioners running, but only by risking an accident or damaging an already heat-stressed environment.

In Illinois Exelon’s Quad Cities and Dresden reactors had to curtail power output because the hot water discharged into the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers exceeded EPA heat discharge regulations. This occurred previously in 1988, when then-ComEd reactors had 100+ reactors days of curtailed power output or complete shut down related to excessive thermal discharge. This resulted in millions of dollars of water-cooling retrofits for the reactors. Exelon came close to power curtailment again during Illinois’ 2005 drought.

Exelon’s Limerick reactor in Pennsylvania also curtailed power output. Across Lake Michigan the Donald Cook reactor building overheated on July 29-30, resulting in an automatic reactor shutdown.

Europe experienced similar problems. This year as in the 2003 heat wave, the French government gave permission for reactors to exceed heat discharge and even safety standards at 37 reactors. Germany allowed several reactors on the Elbe River to discharge in excess of thermal standards. One reactor in Spain was shut down completely rather than thermally contaminate the Ebro.

These situations occur in climatic conditions far less extreme than those anticipated in a full blown global warming world. They serve as a warning that nuclear power is ill-suited to help us in a global warming world – unless we are willing to either further destroy the environment, or risk increased likelihood of a nuclear accident.

When nuclear reactors will be wanted most, they are likely to be least available, and then only at greatly increased risk. Contrary to the spin that the nuclear industrial complex is feeding the public, you can’t ‘nuke’ global warming.

Gratefully, David A. Kraft Director, NEIS

We are stuck.

There are too many people on this planet to go back to the past. We need to go forward. That will mean:

1. Nuclear power.

2. Geoengineering of the planet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_engineering

Okay .....

Generally, when there is too much of one species on the earth, either God or nature takes care of that, jeffmoskin ....

And so ....

So it has been all through history.

We now possess the ability to ALTER THE FUTURE OF HISTORY.

Or we can take our chances with mother nature.

We have always had the ability to alter the future of history ....

The Romans had it and exercised it ....

The Athenians had it and exercised it ....

The Persian Empire had it and exercised it ....

The Ottoman Empire had it and exercised it ...

Great Britain had it and exercised it ...

Sodom and Gomorrah had it and exercised it ....

And now, here we are ....

And so ...

God, nature or the human race takes care of it...

So we have a choice...we either eliminate part of the human race or come up with alternatives...

Now, are there any nuclear reactors outside of the US which are more efficient?

Are the French nuclear reactors more efficient?

Nope. All based on the Westinghouse 70's design.

So, even if there was a way to ensure safe design and management of a nuclear reactor through effective government regulation of design, construction and maintenance, there really is no way to produce a nuclear reactor that is "less hot".

I think another problem is that northern France has much colder waters to deal with on its North coast than America does...the other issue is that their population is declining while ours is growing.

In 2001, the US Dept of Energy organized an international forum called Generation IV to select those new designs that would be installed by 2030.

http://www.gen-4.org/Technology/systems/index.htm

Reactor type: thermal efficiency: kern op temp

VHTR: 52%: 1000 C

SCWR: 44%

SFR: 34%: 374 C

GFR: 48%: 850 C

MSR: 50%: 700 C

LFR: 33%: 550 C

What are the numbers of the reactors we have now...and is there any estimate regarding what effect if any nuclear reactors have had in increasing water temperatures?

I mean I know Livyjr has said that the temperatures on I believe he said Lake Ontario have increased --- but how much of that is due to global warming and how much to the nuclear reactor...

I guess this is probably an impossible calculation to make definitively...but are there reasonable estimates?

Current nuclear reactor technology: efficiency: kern op temp

PWR: 32% : 275-315 C

BWR: 32% : 285 C

The BWR is effectively a PWR without the steam generator.

CANDU: 30% :305 C (canadian design)

RBMK: 31% : 284 C (russian design)

Nope. Too many people disagree on the trends and the effects of global warming.

Some thermal efficiency figures I listed above for Gen IV reactors have been improved and should be corrected as follows:

LFR: 40%

SFR: 45%

GFR: 45%

So the obvisou price of greater efficiency it seems, is more heat --- and more heat --- increases the negative environmental impact...which will help to hurt the ecosystem...

The philosopher's stone would be how to turn heat into matter.

The opposite.
The greater the efficiency the less heat per KWH.

Although it is true that no matter what we do, we are going to generate heat as we generate electricity, I wonder if the heat we generate is all that huge. Look at the heat energy present in a typical tropical storm. These happen all the time. Not to mention the incidental solar radiation of 1 KW per square meter at the equator at noon. Do the math. That is a hell of a lot of energy.

The sun is really hot.

I still think that, since we cannot afford to have this planet warm (or cool) by, say 5 degrees C, we need to be thinking about pro-active thermal control, a la mirrors in space, or particles in orbit.

And for that we will need to have world cooperation.

And for world cooperation we will need to quit acting as though we were the only country on it.

Which starts with getting rid of the Bush Regime and all its apparachicks.

I have been since the 1970's, jeffmoskin ...

I did graduate level research on it that was funded by the USEPA ....

And so ...

Subject: D7) How much energy does a hurricane release?

Contributed by Chris Landsea

Hurricanes can be thought of, to a first approximation, as a heat engine; obtaining its heat input from the warm, humid air over the tropical ocean, and releasing this heat through the condensation of water vapor into water droplets in deep thunderstorms of the eyewall and rainbands, then giving off a cold exhaust in the upper levels of the troposphere (~12 km/8 mi up).

One can look at the energetics of a hurricane in two ways:

1. the total amount of energy released by the condensation of water droplets or ...
2. the amount of kinetic energy generated to maintain the strong swirling winds of the hurricane (Emanuel 1999).

It turns out that the vast majority of the heat released in the condensation process is used to cause rising motions in the thunderstorms and only a small portion drives the storm's horizontal winds.

* Method 1) - Total energy released through cloud/rain formation:

An average hurricane produces 1.5 cm/day (0.6 inches/day) of rain inside a circle of radius 665 km (360 n.mi) (Gray 1981). (More rain falls in the inner portion of hurricane around the eyewall, less in the outer rainbands.) Converting this to a volume of rain gives 2.1 x 10**16 cm3/day. A cubic cm of rain weighs 1 gm. Using the latent heat of condensation, this amount of rain produced gives

5.2 x 10**19 Joules/day or
6.0 x 10**14 Watts.

This is equivalent to 200 times the world-wide electrical generating capacity - an incredible amount of energy produced!

* Method 2) - Total kinetic energy (wind energy) generated:

For a mature hurricane, the amount of kinetic energy generated is equal to that being dissipated due to friction. The dissipation rate per unit area is air density times the drag coefficient times the windspeed cubed (See Emanuel 1999 for details). One could either integrate a typical wind profile over a range of radii from the hurricane's center to the outer radius encompassing the storm, or assume an average windspeed for the inner core of the hurricane. Doing the latter and using 40 m/s (90 mph) winds on a scale of radius 60 km (40 n.mi.), one gets a wind dissipation rate (wind generation rate) of

1.3 x 10**17 Joules/day or
1.5 x 10**12Watts.

This is equivalent to about half the world-wide electrical generating capacity - also an amazing amount of energy being produced!

Either method is an enormous amount energy being generated by hurricanes. However, one can see that the amount of energy released in a hurricane (by creating clouds/rain) that actually goes to maintaining the hurricane's spiraling winds is a huge ratio of 400 to 1.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html

jeff: how can you say the opposite when picadilly has provided a table of new reactor types --- their efficiency levels and their temperature levels and the higher the efficiency the higher their heat output...

The efficiency is the electrical power output divided by the thermal power output.

I may have this wrong. but in all thermodynamic conversions, higher temps and higher pressure ratios always translate to higher efficiencies. Efficiency is the power you get to use divided by the total power involved. The power not used is wasted and merely expelled as heat to the environment.

Seems to me that for a given amount of power consumed by humans, we want the most efficient plant, even though it appears that we are outputting a higher temperature.

BTW, Thermo was not one of my better courses.

I agree we always want the most efficient system --- but if more and more efficient nuclear system result in more and more heat --- at what point is the heat generated a diminishing return...

I guess in your mind because of the demand for energy by the human race and the present cirucmstances where no acceptable alternative renewable energy exists to replace the other carbon based fuels which we are using to stem the increase in global warming --- you are suggesting that nuclear power for the time being is the only acceptable choice...

And I believe Livyjr and picadilly remain skeptical on this --- and I am becoming more skeptical --- but agree that we need to have some way to balance these issues...

For instance, at what level does the heat output from nuclear energy become equivalent of the heat output of burning gasoline or coal for energy or even producing ethanol whether it be corn or sugar based?

Are there any studies out there which objectively evaluate these alternatives?

Correct.

But one has to distinguish the heating sub-system, from which the thermal power is measured to calculate global system efficiency, from the conversion sub-system from which the temps and pressure you mention would be taken.

When it comes to nuclear plants, temperature of the core is a determinant factor of corrosion and deformation of mobile parts which cause leaks, and which doesn't have exactly the same consequences and environment hazards if they develop in a coal/gas plant or in a nuclear plant.

Heating is a lot easier than cooling.
So the diminished return starts, in it's broadest sense, when we start getting uncomfortable with the ambient warmth.


Typical Heat Values of Various Fuels (MJ = Megajoules)


Today, it takes the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline to produce 1 gallon of ethanol from corn.

Those numbers say a lot.

Black coal (NSW & Qld) 24-30 MJ/kg

Uranium - in fast breeder reactor 24,000,000 MJ/kg

Only a factor of a million to one.

In getting that kg of coal out of the ground (not to mention ripping the land to shreds), transporting it to the power plant, burning it (creating CO2, acid rain, and fly ash), a hell of a lot of wasted heat is sent off into the environment because coal-fired plants are less efficient than nukes.

There are no alternatives.

We are too numerous to revert to medieval life-styles (except for the beheaders who like it just fine and live in caves).

And sugar based ethanol is a lot less --- this is why I have always had concerns about Obama's allegiance to corn ethanol -- McCain has been a little bit more open to sugar based -- without allegiance to the corn lobby -- but his dril drill drill nuclear nuclear nuclear mantra has concerned me as well...

Thursday, August 25, 2005
56. SUGAR CANE ETHANOL

There was an interesting cover story in Newsweek (Aug. 8, 2005) about sugar cane ethanol from Brazil. After reading it, I am convinced that ethanol (like gas-to-liquids) is a serious contender for replacing crude oil in motor fuels.

1) Brazilian sugar cane ethanol is much cheaper than oil. From the article: "Super-efficient Brazil now sells ethanol at the equivalent of $25 dollars a barrel, less than half the cost of crude." So I think we can dispense with the incorrect notion that no other form of energy is as cheap and convenient as oil (see #37). Brazilian sugar cane ethanol is cheaper than oil, just as convenient, and environmentally superior because it does not increase CO2 levels. ("In terms of price, the average cost of fuel ethanol production in the country (Brazil) is around 50 cents per gallon" Source)

2) Serious money is being invested: "To keep up with demand, local sugar barons and giant multinationals will invest some $6 billion in new plantations and distilleries over the next five years." This is on a par with Shell's $6 billion GTL (Gas-to-Liquids) facility in Qatar.

3) Ethanol production is booming. The growth rate is about 9% per year (click for a clearer picture, source):

4) World production of ethanol in 2004 was 10.77 billion gallons (=40.8 billion liters), which comes out to roughly 700,000 barrels/day. The heat content of ethanol is 3.5MMbtu/barrel (source), so energy production from ethanol is 2,450,000 MMbtus/day. Gasoline, on the other hand, has a heat content of 5.3MMbtu/barrel (same as previous source), and thus ethanol production is equivalent to gasoline production of about 460,000barrels/day.
On the average there are 19.5 gallons of gasoline in a barrel of crude oil (Source), so ethanol is providing the gasoline equivalent of 1 million barrels/day of conventionally refined crude oil. For comparison, Indonesia produced 1.2mbd of crude oil in 2003(source). Ethanol is as big a factor in the world gasoline market as Indonesia.

5) There's weird goings-on in the global sugar market

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2005/0...ne-ethanol.html

Is ethanol energy-efficient?
Introduction
Ethanol under fire: David Pimentel et al
Pimentel's arguments
What standard farm?

One of the most controversial issues relating to ethanol (and more recently to biodiesel as well, see below) is what environmentalists call the "net energy" of ethanol production: is more energy used to grow and process the raw material into ethanol than is contained in the ethanol itself?

It's especially controversial in the US. In the US most ethanol is made from corn (maize), which is far from the best energy crop (Brazil uses sugar cane). Nonetheless, a US Department of Agriculture study concludes that ethanol contains 34% more energy than is used to grow and harvest the corn and distill it into ethanol. "Estimating the Net Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol", by Hosein Shapouri et al., US Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Office of Energy and New Uses, Agricultural Economic Report No. 721, July 1995 -- "Studies conducted since the late 1970s have estimated the net energy value of corn ethanol. However, variations in data and assumptions used among the studies have resulted in a wide range of estimates. This study identifies the factors causing this wide variation and develops a more consistent estimate... We show that corn ethanol is energy efficient as indicated by an energy ratio of 1.24."
http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm

"The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update", by Hosein Shapouri and James A. Duffield, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Energy Policy and New Uses, and Michael Wang of the Center for Transportation Research, Energy Systems Division, Argonne National Laboratory. Agricultural Economic Report No. 813, 2002: "Corn ethanol is energy efficient... For every BTU dedicated to producing ethanol there is a 34% energy gain... Only about 17% of the energy used to produce ethanol comes from liquid fuels, such as gasoline and diesel fuel. For every 1 BTU of liquid fuel used to produce ethanol, there is a 6.34 BTU gain." Full report (Acrobat file, 176 kb):
http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-814.pdf

In "How Much Energy Does It Take to Make a Gallon of Ethanol?", David Lorenz and David Morris of the Institute for Local-Self Reliance (ILSR) state: "Using the best farming and production methods, the amount of energy contained in a gallon of ethanol is more than twice the energy used to grow the corn and convert it to ethanol." A 1992 ILSR study, based on actual energy consumption data from farmers and ethanol plant operators, found that the production of ethanol from corn is a positive net energy generator. In this updated paper the numbers look even more attractive: more energy is contained in the ethanol and the other by-products of corn processing than is used to grow the corn and convert it into ethanol and by-products.
http://www.carbohydrateeconomy.org/library.../uploadedfiles/
How_Much_Energy_Does_it_Take_to_Make_a_Gallon_.html

New study confronts old thinking on ethanol's net energy value, 3/28/2005 -- Ethanol generates 35% more energy than it takes to produce, according to a recent study by Argonne National Laboratory conducted by Michael Wang. The new findings support earlier research that determined ethanol has a positive net energy balance, according to the National Corn Growers Association. That research was conducted by USDA, Michigan State University, the Colorado School of Mines, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and other public and private entities. Argonne is one of the US Department of Energy's largest research centers.
http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?...d=/templatedata
/ag/story/data/agNews_050328crETHANOL.xml&catref=ag1001
Report on the new study :
http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PDF/03_28_05
ArgonneNatlLabEthanolStudy.pdf

A USDA study released in 2004 found that ethanol may net as much as 67% more energy than it takes to produce.
http://www.ethanol.org/documents/NetEnergy...ceofEthanol.pdf

http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html

I watched this program on solar power last night and it was quite interesting...

It seems Germany has become the international standard for producing solar panels ---

It is a shame the US could not have earned this reputation...

Saved By the Sun
PBS Airdate: April 24, 2007
Go to the companion Web site

NARRATOR: Solar power has long been effective for small electronic devices and for a certain kind of individual who grooves on the sun. But as worldwide demand for electricity increases, so does the burning of fossil fuels to create it, which is contributing to global warming and the dangerous climate conditions that may result. This is forcing us to take a fresh look at a clean energy source with the potential to revolutionize power production.

NATHAN LEWIS (California Institute of Technology): Your only choice that can meet the insatiable human appetite for energy is the sun.

NARRATOR: Worldwide, the demand for clean energy is revitalizing the solar industry, and new solar panels are sprouting up everywhere. In America, more and more roofs are sporting solar panels, and owners like the results.

PHIL REAVIS, JR. (Somerville, Massachusetts): I love it.

NARRATOR: But solar power has been around since the gas crisis of the 1970s, and it's yet to make a serious contribution to the energy needs of the nation.

VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN (The Economist): For decades, solar has been the energy of tomorrow. Unfortunately, it's also been a field of failed promises, as well.

NARRATOR: There's the obvious problem...

STERLING BURNETT (Energy Policy Analyst): When the sun doesn't shine, it's not generating electricity.

NARRATOR: ...and the cost.

PEDRO PIZARRO (Southern California Edison): Solar panels tend to be more expensive than fossil fuel resources.

NARRATOR: But new technology, giant solar power plants and innovative business models are beginning to take this clean energy source to the next level.

But can solar power provide enough electricity to meet the demands of the 21st century? Up next on NOVA: Saved by the Sun.

Major funding for NOVA is provided by David H. Koch and by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, serving society through biomedical research and science education: HHMI.

Major funding for this program is provided by the Lemelson Foundation, a philanthropy that supports invention and innovation to improve lives in the U.S. and developing countries; and the PBS Foundation's Environmental Programming Fund, supported by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation.

Major funding for NOVA is also provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by PBS viewers like you. Thank you.

NARRATOR: If it were up to this man...

LARRY KAZMERSKI (U.S. Department of Energy/National Renewable Energy Laboratory): Hey, Paula. This is Kaz.

NARRATOR: ...sun power would have taken off long ago.

Larry Kazmerski works at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado. He's been trying to improve solar technology ever since Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House. And he survived Ronald Reagan taking them down and slashing his budget, which no president has yet to restore to 1980 levels. But he's never lost faith in the sun.

Kazmerski's office looks like a cross between a mad scientist's lab and a head shop. Kaz, as he's called by everyone, even designs solar ties. An unabashed solar optimist, he's studied virtually every aspect of solar science and has become a collector of solar history.

1958 BELL SOLAR BATTERY (TV Advertisement): Yet, in this modern age, men have at last harnessed the sun with the Bell Solar Battery. Portable radios powered by sunlight have already been made as laboratory models.

LARRY KAZMERSKI: This is 1958, pretty risqué for that time. And by the way, I have that radio. This is the radio; it's a transistor radio that runs off of solar cells that are on the top here. It doesn't work perfectly, but then I tell people that, you know, I'm just a little bit older than this radio, and I have parts of me that don't work anymore either.

NARRATOR: In 1979, Kaz was in attendance at the solar panel's main coming out party, although the sun was nowhere to be found the day President Carter visited N.R.E.L.

LARRY KAZMERSKI: I'm afraid that the solar gods weren't shining here on our Solar Energy Institute, and it started raining and then got cold; we got sleet; it snowed. We had brought in a big photovoltaic array—it was about 30 kilowatts—and here is President Carter, standing in front of this 30-kilowatt array, reaching out with his hand and thought he would help a little bit by wiping the surface of these solar cells.

And I remember I was able to grab the President's arm, at that time, 'cause I was really afraid, thinking that this would be the first time that an American president had been electrocuted by solar technology. And I didn't think this would do our technology very good.

NARRATOR: But it's not the threat of electrocution that is solar technology's greatest drawback, it's the in and out and up and down nature of the sun.

All solar panels, or photovoltaics, use sunlight to produce electricity. The stronger the rays, the more juice they produce.

It's a simple process that begins with the individual solar cells that make up a panel.

LARRY KAZMERSKI: If you were small enough and could crawl inside one of those solar cells, it would just be a hubbub of activity.

NARRATOR: A solar cell is like a sandwich; the top part is for protection, the bottom is its base and the middle layer, made of silicon, is where the action is.

When particles of sunlight, called photons, strike individual atoms of the silicon, they easily break the weak bond between silicon's nucleus and its outer orbit of electrons. Once freed, the electrons travel to the top of the silicon layer, where they move in a current along metal conducting strips. Then it's across the panels to wires that feed the electricity to the house.

Today's solar panels produce twice as much electricity as earlier models, and they're cheaper than ever. These benefits are helping to create a solar renaissance from sunny California to leafy New England.

Once too heavy and cumbersome for most roofs, today's panels are extremely easy to live with, which suits new enthusiasts like Phil Reavis just fine.

PHIL REAVIS, JR.: You install it and forget about it. There is no fuss, no muss.

NARRATOR: And no batteries like the old days, because most owners stay wired to the local power grid and don't need batteries for nighttime power.

PHIL REAVIS, JR.: The house is just like a hybrid car. Half the time, it runs off the solar panels and half the time energy is coming in from the grid. I love it.

NARRATOR: The Reavises live in Somerville, Massachusetts, a few minutes drive from downtown Boston. Phil is an industrial designer; his wife Trecia is in personnel, and their son, P.J., wants to be a pilot.

The Reavises were the first in their community to go solar.

PHIL REAVIS, JR.: I started thinking about solar energy, solar panels, the environment, probably back in the '70s, when I was a teenager, during the first energy crisis. And back then, I was thinking, "Boy, when I grow up, I'm going to do stuff differently than my parents are doing right now." And, unfortunately, it's taken me 30 years to actually make that happen.

NARRATOR: Bill and Debbie Lord are passionate advocates for solar power. Their custom-designed home, near Kennebunkport, Maine, is their second solar house and is prominently featured in solar magazines.

Bill Lord has a Web site for the curious, and he offers onsite tours for those interested in converting to solar.

He begins his show and tell in the basement.

BILL LORD (Kennebunkport, Maine): This is our power generation station; this is where we convert the electricity that comes down from the roof to household current. When the sun hits the panels on the roof, it agitates the electrons in the panels. The electrons come down the wires to these inverters. It's direct current. Most homes don't operate on direct current. They operate on alternating current. So these two white boxes are converting it to household A.C.

NARRATOR: In addition to their solar electricity panels, the Lords have solar hot water panels that feed a radiant heating system in their floors. With large insulated tanks to store the sun-heated water, they have vastly lowered their gas bills as well as their electric bills.

BILL LORD: The system handles itself. It turns itself on in the morning, it shuts itself off at night. We can be far away and it still works on our behalf.

NARRATOR: Meaning his house is producing electricity whether he uses it or not. And what he doesn't use goes back to the grid for other houses to use. And since the utility company gives him credit for the excess electricity, something called net metering, Bill's bill is shockingly low.

BILL LORD: On a monthly basis, we pay $7.47 to be hooked up to the power company. Essentially, we pay nothing for electricity.

NARRATOR: With over 40 states offering similar net metering credits, why aren't America's rooftops crammed with solar panels?

LARRY KAZMERSKI: The first question, of course, as a consumer is, "How much is this going to cost me?" That's the sticker shock.

For a normal house you need between two kilowatts and four kilowatts of photovoltaics. And this is going to run you someplace between about $15,000 to $28,000.

NARRATOR: And if you have a large house and add solar hot water panels as the Lords did, the price can go even higher.

BILL LORD: The active solar elements on the house cost about $50,000.

NARRATOR: And it's the high cost of solar power that underlies most arguments against it.

VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: Right now, solar panels are not very efficient and they're expensive.

HOWARD HAYDEN (Physicist): The only people that have those solar collectors are really very wealthy people.

NARRATOR: But is this really true?

TRECIA REAVIS (Somerville, Massachusetts): Well, last I checked, we weren't very wealthy.

NARRATOR: The Reavises are a two-income, middle class family, with a budget that won't allow many extravagances.

TRECIA REAVIS: We're, kind of, building our home. We have a son who is in school and, you know, we have a lot of other things that we could be doing, that we need to do.

NARRATOR: But when they learned the state of Massachusetts would pay half the cost of their panels, they jumped at the opportunity.

TRECIA REAVIS: I don't think we would have done it without the state support.

NARRATOR: The Massachusetts grant made what would have been a $24,000 investment $12,000. Fourteen states currently offer similar incentives. And then there's the additional benefit of net metering.

PHIL REAVIS, JR.: This is the bill for this month, and it's $129. And it probably would be double that last year about this time.

NARRATOR: On average, Phil Reavis now pays less than half what he once paid for electricity. He doesn't save as much as Bill Lord since he doesn't have as many panels. But saving money was never his only goal.

PHIL REAVIS, JR.: I know that I'm reducing my carbon footprint on the world. I feel great about having the panels installed.

NARRATOR: A sentiment shared by virtually everyone who goes solar.

BILL LORD: It's not about payback. It's about, first, treading lightly on the environment, not using fossil fuels to do the work that other homes require fossil fuels to use.

And over the last 11 years, 70 tons of CO2 have not been put into the atmosphere because we've been using solar power.

NARRATOR: Power plants that use fossil fuels are responsible for 40 percent of the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere every day. And rising CO2 levels are a major cause of global warming.

DANIEL SCHRAG (Harvard University): Human society is burning coal, oil and gas to get energy. And the result of that burning is carbon dioxide. The CO2 level has never been this high for millions of years.


Now, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. And what that means is it is very good at absorbing heat that is emitted from the Earth's surface. And some time in the next 50 years, we're literally going to go off the scale here.

The Earth's atmosphere acts like a greenhouse, absorbing some of that heat energy and radiating it back, ultimately increasing the surface temperature of the Earth by a small amount.

NARRATOR: And this rise is contributing to severe weather conditions that seem to be growing worse each year.

DANIEL SCHRAG: The expected consequences of climate change, I think, many people are familiar with: flooding in some places, droughts in other places, melting of glaciers—which cause sea-level to rise—bigger, more powerful hurricanes, and a variety of other unusual climate effects.

But what actually scares me are the unexpected ones. It's the surprises that really hurt people.

NARRATOR: Concern over global warming has helped boost panel sales 600 percent since 2000, as more people try to do their part to stave off the crisis. But all the solar panels in America produce only two coal plants' worth of electricity, an amount not even close to meeting the power requirements of a major city.

And more power is what every city needs, especially when the weather turns hot and air conditioning use soars.

NEWSMAN 1: A dangerous heat wave is making people miserable from coast to coast and is now blamed...

NEWSWOMAN 1: More than 100 deaths are being blamed on 12 days of extreme heat.

NEWSMAN 2: Triple digit temperatures, reports of 120 degrees in some places...

NEWSWOMAN 2: And that is putting a terrible strain on the power companies and the people who depend on them.


NARRATOR: It's July 25th, 2006, week two of a record-setting Los Angeles heat wave. And nowhere is the heat more intense than in the Grid Control Room at Southern California Edison and on its Grid Control Manager, Tom Botello.

It's Botello's job to direct the electricity generated by the region's power plants to homes and businesses, traffic signals and hospitals, and everywhere in between. But the very nature of electricity makes this all a high stakes poker game, where the losers could be us.

VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: You can't store electricity like you can store lots of other things, like bananas or copper or other commodities. And that's why you're always going to need a grid manager. And these are very courageous men and women who are asked to do the impossible, to predict tomorrow, or the next hour, how much electricity supply we're going to need, based on how many people might turn on their air conditioner or how many factories might suddenly decide to go into high-output mode.

NARRATOR: Although Botello tries not to show it, this is about as stressful as a job can get, as the heat wave is forcing SoCal's 13,000,000 customers to use more electricity to keep things cool. And this is when most blackouts occur.

TOM BOTELLO (Southern California Edison): What causes blackouts is when there is insufficient supply on the system to serve the customer demand.

NARRATOR: The current heat wave is producing dozens of localized blackouts that are being blamed for scores of deaths and millions in economic losses.

NEWSWOMAN 3: The elevators died with the power, leaving one man trapped inside.

NARRATOR: But things could get worse if grid managers cannot find additional electricity to keep ahead of the demand.

PEDRO PIZARRO: When we hit that summer afternoon at 4:00, and everybody's going home and turning on their air conditioners, our system load shoots up.

NARRATOR: Although SoCal has a small amount of solar power feeding the grid, it's only a drop in the bucket. So managers call for additional electricity from their 30 natural gas plants and from the state's two nuclear reactors; and they start buying power from neighboring states that use coal-fired plants, by far the worst CO2 emitters.

With the city at risk of a major power failure, global warming will just have to wait.

PEDRO PIZARRO: The reality is that today, with available technology, you need fossil fuels to have the kinds of fast response units that can follow load and maintain our system and balance.

NARRATOR: Despite their best efforts, grid managers are running out of ways to combat this summer's power crisis. In a bold move, Tom Botello decides to ask certain factories, office buildings and schools to go offline, voluntarily, to conserve power.

TOM BOTELLO: The entire Western grid could be vulnerable if we did not take these emergency actions to disconnect certain portions of our system—non-critical customers—for an hour at a time.

NARRATOR: But with more high temperatures on the way, no one knows if this measure will work. If it doesn't, the city faces the dangerous prospect of massive blackouts and the inevitable chaos that would follow.

But by day 14, Los Angeles's weather finally cools, and so does the demand for more electricity.

This summer's crisis is over. But there is little sense of relief. With global warming contributing to the hottest summers on record, there will likely be many more heat waves to come. And each new emergency underscores just how much our current survival depends on fossil fuels and how our future survival may depend on how quickly we get rid of them.

DANIEL SCHRAG: Once the oceans start to warm, once the ice starts to melt...very difficult to reverse those trends. And so by the time we really notice that it's catastrophic, it may be too late to do anything about it.

NARRATOR: Nuclear plants produce electricity that is virtually carbon-free, so building more of them could help slow global warming. But public fears over accidents and atomic waste have halted new plant construction everywhere in America.

Renewable energies, like wind and solar power, don't have nuclear's drawbacks, but unless we can vastly increase their output, and do so at competitive prices, they will never play a major role in our energy mix.

But on the edge of the Mojave Desert, about a three-hour drive from Los Angeles, sits a sleeping giant with the capacity to produce megawatts of clean electricity.

OPERATOR 1: Sun's popping out.

OPERATOR 2: Time to rise and shine.

Welcome to Kramer Junction.

NARRATOR: Kramer Junction is the largest solar power plant in the world, occupying an area bigger than New York's Central Park.

OPERATOR 3: Sun angle is 8.5, and we are positioned at 8 degrees.

NARRATOR: It was built 20 years ago, in response to the energy crisis of the 1970s, and, today, makes enough electricity to power 150,000 homes in the greater Los Angeles area.

Called a solar thermal plant, Kramer Junction uses mirrors, not silicon panels, to turn sunlight into electricity. The parabolic shape of the mirrors is the key. Each row of shiny troughs tracks with the movement of the sun to continuously focus the blazing hot rays on this glowing tube of synthetic oil.

KENNETH KINDSCHI (Kramer Junction, California): Now, while these mirrors are cool to the touch, the H.C.E. tubes can reach up to 750 degrees.

NARRATOR: The scalding hot oil flows to the power plant, where the scorching tube passes through a vat of water, instantly boiling it and creating jets of pressurized steam. The steam is directed to turbines that spin out electricity just like a fossil fuel plant. And there are no emissions but excess steam.

KENNETH KINDSCHI: We use this instead of conventional fossil fuels to generate the electricity that's tied onto the grid.

NARRATOR: In the Mojave Desert alone, there is enough sunlight to power all of Los Angeles County and the rest of the country, as well. But Kramer Junction is the only solar facility out here. The obvious question is, "Why?"

PEDRO PIZARRO: What communities are going to be willing to cede the amount of open space that would be required for making that a reality? You also have to layer onto that the transmission requirements to get that big field of solar mirrors connected to the grid where customers are.

VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: When you transmit power, you lose power, just by the nature of transmitting through copper wires. But it also costs money. It's always better to produce electricity closer to where you need it.

NARRATOR: America's second big thermal plant is doing just that. It's being built just outside the ravenous market for electricity known as Las Vegas. So it will avoid the high transmission costs faced by Kramer Junction and should become a major source of electricity for this fast-growing city.

But plants like this need lots of sun and huge tracts of land. So the future for this form of solar power may lie only in the open vastness of the desert Southwest.

And for some observers, all solar power has a critical limitation that will keep it from ever becoming a major source of electricity anywhere.

STERLING BURNETT: The sun doesn't always shine. And when the sun doesn't shine, it's not generating electricity. And we don't have the batteries, yet, to store the energy properly.

NARRATOR: Without the ability to store the daytime power they produce, solar thermal plants shut down at night and stop making electricity.

HOWARD HAYDEN: Solar is absolutely marvelous technology for numerous kinds of applications, running your calculator so you don't have to replace batteries and running remote things. It just isn't going to run the United States. It can't even come close.

NARRATOR: But other countries aren't so sure.

Driving on Germany's autobahn, at speeds sure to get you a ticket in America, a curious sculpture lines the motorway. It's a "Great Wall" of solar panels, and this stretch feeds the power grid in Munich. This is Germany's answer to getting more renewable energy, thousands of solar panels producing millions of watts of electricity.

And this man is largely responsible.

HERMANN SCHEER (Member, The German Bundestag): We are in a very deep energy crisis. Fossil fuels are running out and created a climate disaster. The only real and realistic option is the general replacement of fossil and atomic energies by renewables.

NARRATOR: Hermann Scheer has been Germany's leading advocate for renewable energy for more than two decades. A long-term Member of Parliament, in 2000, Scheer won support for his National Renewable Energy Act, which requires Germany to produce 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

Although detractors said this goal was impossible, the country is already ahead of schedule and could even reach 30 percent renewables by 2020.

So why is Germany, a country hardly known for sunshine, going over the moon for solar? The answer is simple: cash incentives.

HERMANN SCHEER: With our Renewable Energy Act, we gave each producer of solar power, even a very, very small one, a price guarantee to give his power to the grid. That means to sell it.

NARRATOR: Anyone who puts up solar panels will get about 50 cents per kilowatt hour for the electricity they send to the grid. But they pay only about 20 cents for the electricity they buy from the grid. So at the end of the month, panel owners almost always make a profit.

LARRY KAZMERSKI: Didn't take long for the Germans to figure out that this is worth it. They can make money. So they started to rent space, even on their neighbors' roofs to slap up photovoltaics.

NARRATOR: With the government's cash incentives, any open space has become fair game for solar panels, regardless of who or what gets in the way. And since the price of electricity is fixed for 20 years, most panel owners will easily recoup their investment. And the grid receives a huge infusion of new solar energy.

The government's cash incentives are getting everyone into the act. Like his ancestors before him, Heinrich Gartner raised cash crops and animals on the family farm. Then three years ago he added something new to the mix: solar panels, 10,000 of them, that supply power to about 1,500 nearby homes.

The National Renewable Energy Act had convinced this pig farmer to become a power producer.

HEINRICH GARTNER (Buttenwiesen, Germany): It was one of my hobbies to play with electricity or something like that, but here it's a power plant. We produce about 1,000,000 kilowatt hours of electricity here, with these solar panels. And the amount of money was, for the whole installation, about 5,000,000 U.S. dollars.

It was a lot of work to convince the bank.

NARRATOR: But Gartner got his loan because of the government's price guarantees.

HEINRICH GARTNER: We have a fixed price for the next 20 years that is guaranteed. That means we have, every year, an income of about 550- to 600,000 U.S. dollars.

NARRATOR: After loan payments and other expenses, Gartner's profit is less than $60,000 a year, so he hasn't given up his pigs yet. But his solar farming has far greater potential.

HEINRICH GARTNER: I am still a farmer. I'm still breeding pigs. But the hunger for electricity is even bigger than for food at the moment, in Germany. We can produce, here, really green power. There's no atomic waste or carbon dioxide emission. We want to show that it is possible to make electricity that doesn't do a lot of bad things.

That's an important point, because I want to give my farm, later on, to my junior, as my father gave it to me.

NARRATOR: But what about apartment dwellers and other citizens who don't own solar panels? How satisfied are they with the government's generous support of solar power?

JOACHIM PFEIFFER (German Parliament): We have one of the highest energy prices in the world, and that's really a great problem for the normal consumers. They have to spend a lot of their household's income for electricity.

NARRATOR: Germany has always had high electricity rates, about double the rates in America. And the government's renewable program has added an additional 15 to 20 dollars per month to the average bill. But, so far, there's been little public opposition and Hermann Scheer thinks he knows why.

HERMANN SCHEER: The prices are a little higher than the average of other countries, but people know, with these additional costs, they contribute directly to a clean future for all. Therefore, 80 percent of the people accept that.

NARRATOR: And Germany's support of renewable energy has had a surprising impact on the economy. The country now boasts a thriving solar industry that has become the darling of investors the world over.

This one plant in Germany's Solar Valley, produces almost a million solar cells a week. In just a few years, Germany has become the world leader in solar cell production.

The industry has created 170,000 new jobs and mass production is dropping the retail price of solar panels lower and lower. So the future of German solar power looks bright, although it still has its detractors.

VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: Some people look at Germany and see that the subsidies that were lavished on the solar industry have successfully produced a big solar manufacturing industry. And they say, "See, it was worth it." I would say be careful in drawing that conclusion. Simply because something has taken off doesn't mean it's sustainable.

NARRATOR: But to Hermann Scheer, solar power is not only sustainable, it's the best alternative we have to fossil fuels.

HERMANN SCHEER: Fossil fuels create increasing economic problems for all, rising prices at the same time of depleting resources. They create political conflicts, they create military conflicts. They create environmental damages. And that means our children subsidize our energy, and for this subsidy, we destroy the environment. This is a contradiction which could not be carried anymore.

NARRATOR: Within the next two decades, Germany's solar panels and wind generators could be providing one third of the country's electricity, which would reduce its total CO2 emissions considerably. By contrast, the United States currently gets only one percent of its energy from solar and wind.

There is a growing consensus in Washington that America should be producing more renewable energy. But so far, there is no movement to create a national incentive program like Germany's.

But one trend is showing real promise here, and it's not being led by government but by business.

This Whole Foods market is in Ridgewood, New Jersey. At first glance it's pretty much like any other Whole Foods: neat and bright, with lots of great looking food at premium prices.

CASHIER (Whole Foods): Hi, would you like paper or plastic?

NARRATOR: But there is one thing different about this particular store. The roof is covered with solar panels. They look expensive, but Whole Foods didn't pay a cent for them. They're owned by a solar energy power company called SunEdison. Its founder and CEO is Jigar Shah.

JIGAR SHAH (SunEdison): We help companies like Whole Foods move to solar power. SunEdison and its investors pay all of the upfront costs for these solar systems, and Whole Foods promises to buy the power over a long-term contract.

NARRATOR: Jennifer McDonnell is a Green Mission specialist for Whole Foods.

JENNIFER McDONNELL (Whole Foods, Green Mission Specialist): And we use a lot of energies. And solar power powers everything in this store, from lighting to the steamers, slicers, the coolers, freezers, anything that requires electricity, even the registers.

So it's important for us to look at ways to make that energy clean and be aware of the amount of energy that we use.

NARRATOR: Solar panels on this store complement, do not replace energy from the grid.

JIGAR SHAH: The solar power only produces 15 percent of the store's use all year around. But it produces between 50 and 100 percent of its energy needs during the daytime. And that's the time when the power from the utility company is the most expensive.

NARRATOR: This is especially true in the summer.

LARRY KAZMERSKI: During the summer months, when you have all this air conditioning demand during the day—you know, it's 95 degrees with 98 percent humidity outside—you're not paying seven cents a kilowatt-hour. You're paying up to 30 cents a kilowatt-hour during the summer.

JIGAR SHAH: Whole Foods' air conditioning bills are the highest when the sun is beating down on their roof. That's when these solar panels are producing the most power.

NARRATOR: So at these peak hours, solar power is cheaper than grid power. And there's more potential energy savings for the store.

Electricity rates fluctuate with the price of fossil fuels. And since most experts expect fuel prices to rise, the SunEdison deal has an added benefit for Whole Foods.

JIGAR SHAH: We are guaranteeing Whole Foods a fixed price, for 20 years, from these solar panels. That's something that their traditional utility company can't promise them.

NARRATOR: How much Whole Foods saves over the next 20 years will depend on the cost of their conventional energy, but SunEdison knows precisely how much it will make from the Whole Foods deal.

JIGAR SHAH: I know exactly how much sun is going to hit these panels every year. I know exactly how long these panels are going to last, which is about 40 years. And because of that, just based on interest rates and based on my cost of installation, I can figure out exactly whether these systems will be profitable or unprofitable from day one.

VIJAY VAITHEESWARAN: If you look at companies, like SunEdison, who are helping retailers put up solar panels on their roofs, you're suddenly seeing a linkage of the capital markets—which have traditionally been very reluctant to get into solar energy—with the retail sector. That's how you do things in America. You link the technology to the capital, and that's where the rubber hits the road.

NARRATOR: Or where the sun hits the panel.

But in the end, can green stores like Whole Foods and innovative companies like SunEdison really make a difference?

JENNIFER McDONNELL: Businesses can make a difference in the energy mix in our country. And I think they have to, because capitalism is what America is built on. And we expect businesses and entrepreneurs to step up to the plate and bring solutions to the challenges that we face as a country. And solar is—or any renewable energy—to me, is the right thing for business to get involved in.

NARRATOR: And supermarkets aren't the only candidates for large solar installations.

JIGAR SHAH: With all of the municipal buildings, all of the distribution centers, all of the schools, all of the other big, large, flat roofs that every typical city has, you can meet between 20 and 40 percent of the peak power needs of an average American city.

NARRATOR: There are other large-roof technologies that could create more solar power for the grid. One of the most promising is flexible solar sheeting that can cover very large areas and potentially supply more power than conventional panels.

Still, rooftop solar arrays are not very efficient. Even now the very best panels and coverings convert only 15 percent to 20 percent of the sun's rays into electricity, about half the conversion efficiency of a coal plant.

SARAH KURTZ (National Renewable Energy Laboratory): We'd like to be able to improve upon that, so we've been researching how to use more sophisticated materials to put together a high efficiency cell.

NARRATOR: Back at the National Renewable Energy Lab, Sarah Kurtz leads a team that is developing something called a multijunction solar cell. It looks like a miniature version of a normal solar cell, but even at this tiny size, it's much more powerful because it contains several micro-thin layers of light-absorbing materials.

The light from the sun is revealed as a band of colors, each color a different wavelength of energy. Traditional silicon solar cells absorb only the red spectrum of the sun's rays. The rest of the energy bands are blocked.

SARAH KURTZ: You could do better if you could use two different types of materials, or even three different types of materials, to attune them to the color of the light that's coming down.

NARRATOR: The extra layers allow the cell to absorb additional wavelengths of light, greatly increasing its efficiency.

The potential of multijunction cells as a power source was recently revealed on, of all places, Mars. The robotic rovers roaming the Red Planet were originally projected to last about three months. But they're still functioning more than three years after their momentous landing, tha