Red Suns

31/3/11 08:36
[identity profile] dv8nation.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] talkpolitics

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12895157

China is #1 in low carbon energy and tops in making solor panels and wind turbines. I'm a bit surprised but given recent events this accomplishment seems extra noteworthy. Now I'm of the opinion that a lot of the freaking out people are doing over nuclear power is foolish, foolish or note it will hurt the nuke industry. Given this and China's rising power makes me wonder if solor and wind aren't due for a major expansion in use.
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Date: 31/3/11 01:48 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dwer.livejournal.com
plus they don't tend to put up with "no wind farm blocking my view of the pastoral beach" attitude, either.
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Date: 31/3/11 20:08 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dwer.livejournal.com
well, if you'd come up here every once in a while, we could do that together.
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Date: 31/3/11 17:07 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
That's a fallacy, however. The Qing Empire had arguably a more "free market" than contemporary Mercantilist European economies had. Did that make the British Empire of Adam Smith socialist?
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Date: 31/3/11 17:33 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
That's always a point to keep in mind, I will say. A government strong enough to do good is also strong enough to do evil.

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Date: 31/3/11 17:06 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
They also have a dictatorship from a family of dictatorships known for false statistics. If you believed the USSR's statistics it was as economically strong in 1991 as it was in 1961. The PRC's from the same kind of thing, it doesn't have very much incentive for an honest report of what it does and does not do.

Admittedly the USA falsifies science, too, but the USA doesn't have a record of working dissidents to death the way the PRC does......
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Date: 31/3/11 03:07 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] the-rukh.livejournal.com
19,000 industrial size windmills would power all the homes in the US. Mind you, that's homes, not all electrical usage, but the point is that they produce more than you imply.
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Date: 31/3/11 03:42 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] the-rukh.livejournal.com
Yes, there's a couple mountains in the US, I have heard. And, actually you don't, you just need wind. Flat ground works well for that too, as long as it has wind.

Why?

Yep

I didn't ignore that, pretty sure I specifically said that. ;)

There's tons of wind farms in Oregon, works well on farms because they have lots of open space. They're really neat looking. They don't kick up dust or scare cattle like the PR assaults have alleged either.

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Date: 1/4/11 02:59 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gunslnger.livejournal.com
They just kill birds. And bats.

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Date: 1/4/11 04:25 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] the-rukh.livejournal.com
Less than most other power sources.

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Date: 31/3/11 04:19 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com
yah, a fridge in the garage is so 50's, wow (:

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Date: 31/3/11 12:06 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] blue-mangos.livejournal.com
Hey, we have long cold winters up here. When summer rolls around we don't want to waste a second of outdoor time by going inside to get a beer.

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Date: 31/3/11 16:34 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com
oh, well, then (: & just so you know, i'm no one to judge. whether for summer beers, or to store stuff for those pop-up visitors, i have some family members whom do the very same thing.

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Date: 31/3/11 04:21 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com
that's right ~ maybe the Amish have been waaaayyyy more ahead of the times than any of us ever would have imagined.

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Date: 31/3/11 02:30 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/
I am not against solar and wind per se, but it seems like China's economy makes this more feasible for them. Their per capita energy use is much lower than ours and there are plenty of places that are still not hooked up to a grid. The relatively small push they can get with alternative energies goes a long way when you are talking about some people not having electricity in the home, and a huge number of people that don't even have central heating during the winter (everyone south of the Yangze). Does this make sense to anyone that knows more about it?

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Date: 31/3/11 04:18 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com
of course they are due :D in fact, they are well overdue. put alas, we can all say time is of the essence now that everyone has taken such fright from the nuclear catastrophe. let's see what cooL gizmos china will soon come out with *eyes open wide*

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Date: 31/3/11 04:24 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com
They also lead the world in strip mining and acid rain...

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/EXTEAPREGTOPENVIRONMENT/0,,contentMDK:20266322~menuPK:537827~pagePK:34004173~piPK:34003707~theSitePK:502886,00.html

Likewise, the industrial scale production of solar panels introduces it's own set of problems (http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/944095.html?thread=73196767#t73196767).

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Date: 31/3/11 05:23 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com
yup, probably we shall see more hydro and wind over there. solar is more for regions like the middle east. when they run outta oil they'll still have solar :3

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Date: 1/4/11 01:37 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] harry-beast.livejournal.com
Maybe China will build another environmental nightmare like the Three Gorges Dam.

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Date: 31/3/11 08:15 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] allhatnocattle.livejournal.com
Wind farms on massive scales also has problems, effecting ground wind manipulation, evaporation rate changes and issues of killing wild life. Nothing is perfect.

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Date: 31/3/11 06:50 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mikeyxw.livejournal.com
The expansion of solar and wind is China isn't necessarily at the expense of nuclear. The China Daily, the english version of the official news, is still talking about how safe nuclear can be and that it has a role in the future. Then again, they're still building coal plants.

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Date: 31/3/11 07:17 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
I'm for expanding solar. Less sold on wind.

I'm of the opinion that a lot of the freaking out people are doing over nuclear power is foolish

Well, you are certainly entitled to an opinion. And so is the IAEA, who seem to think the evacuation zone is 20 miles too small. (http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/31_18.html)
The International Atomic Energy Agency says radiation levels twice as high as its criterion for evacuation were detected in a village 40 kilometers from the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

This is outside the 20 kilometer exclusion zone and the 20-to-30 kilometer alert zone where the Japanese government advises voluntary evacuation.

The nuclear watchdog reported the findings at a meeting of its members in Vienna on Wednesday.

The IAEA said its experts measured levels of Iodine 131 and Cesium 137 in soil around the plant between March 18th and 26th.

It said measurements in Iitate Village, 40 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima plant, was double the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation and that it has advised Japan to carefully assess the situation.

In Tokyo on Thursday, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters that the government has been notified by the IAEA of its radiation findings.
So, is the IAEA foolishly freaking out or what?

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Date: 31/3/11 07:55 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] yes-justice.livejournal.com
Fukushima is a red herring?

Anyhow, its hard to be rational when we just don't have enough data.

We don't know how many cancers crop up because the incubation period is from 0 to 60 years. We don't know how many genetic mutations will be passed on for an unknown number of generation, but we do know its not zero. We don't know how the concentrations will vary as it comes up the food chain. We don't know that for animal or marine life. We're like Romans with lead.

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Date: 31/3/11 15:48 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rasilio.livejournal.com
No, Fukushima is a once in a century situation event at worst and therefore says nothing about the actual safety of nuclear power in general.

Even if we are to assume that an event of this magnitude were to happen once every 20 years and render an 8000 sq Kilometer (50.46 KM radius circle) uninhabitable for a period of 500 years. That would mean that at most 200,000 sq KM of land would be rendered unusable.

That is an amount of land equal in size to the State of Nebraska or the Country of Belarus.

According to Greenpeace the US alone destroyed 1/8th of that territory in just 70 years from Coal Mining...

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/coal/Mining-impacts/

(Note, 1 Hecatare = .01 Sq KM)

And as far as Wind and Solar go, well you'd need to cover an area 10 times that large in solar panels/windmills to generate even a fraction of the electricity that the Nuclear does.

http://jlnsolar.com/wind-solar.html

Wind generates about 300 KWH per acre and Solar about 450KWH which translates to 75MWH per SQ KM for Wind and 115 MWH per SQ KM for Solar.

Total Nuclear power generation in 2009 was 2.5 Billion MWH

So assuming we can somehow double the efficiency of both Solar and Wind per acre of land use in order to equal the Nuclear power generated in 2009 you would need

16.67 Million Sq KM for Wind
10.87 Million Sq KM for Solar

So you'd need to completely cover an area equivalent to Russia in Windmills or Canada plus Bolivia in Solar Panels just to replace the nuclear power plants we have already constructed and even that assumes that we can double the efficiency we get out of them today.

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Date: 31/3/11 16:58 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
The one cautionary thing I'd use with these statistics that this is a dictatorship saying this. They have no real reason to tell the truth in the entire about what they do or how successful they are at it. Generally speaking these dictatorships are not very efficient. If these statistics *are* accurate, then the PRC is absolutely doing very good things. Their pattern of behavior with things like the environment-wrecking dams does not give me much encouragement as far as that goes.

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Date: 31/3/11 17:29 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rasilio.livejournal.com
The statistics are probably true, however they don't quite say what the OP thinks.

Yes China is the #1 investor in green energy, however that it primarily because it along with India are by far the #1 investors in all energy projects right now because they have HUGE populations (nearly 30% of the global population between them) and barely developed industrial infrastructure.

It is entirely reasonable that the country in the world with the largest population and the least developed industrial infrastructure would be building more renewable plants than anyone else because they are building more plants of every type than anyone else.

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Date: 31/3/11 17:36 (UTC)
From: [identity profile] underlankers.livejournal.com
Eh, to me the sheer size of those countries tends to obscure that development in them is very uneven. There's parts of those countries where infrastructure vastly surpasses the United States (an admittedly low bar) and there's parts of those countries as squalid as Middle Ages Europe. While this is true in all countries, the sheer demographic bulge tilting in favor of East Asia and the Indian Subcontinent means those huge masses of poor, starving people are also disproportionately far larger than elsewhere (see: Liudong Renkou).

So while *parts* of those countries will benefit, others will not......

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