Greens trashing the environment part 527

[excoriator]

Jun 3, 2015 11:07:41 GMT marchesarosa said:

"a puff piece ", exco? It was from your own fav organ of Green propaganda, The Guardian.


How do you think clean air and other environmental legislation has been achieved, exco, if not with the consent and co-operation of industry? You seem to believe they have no right to be consulted and included in the debate. They have as much, if not much more, information and experience of the workings of their industry than any government bureaucrats proposing new standards.

It is the words of the industry spokesman that constitute the PR puffery, not the newspaper that reported it!

Confusion still evidently reigns supreme in the Marchian bonce!

[aubrey]

Jun 3, 2015 11:20:28 GMT marchesarosa said:

why on earth are the republicans against it?

The Guardian tells you in the article you quoted. Because at the moment "plummeting oil prices are cutting deeply into company profits". You have HEARD of the crash in the oil price in the least year, I suppose, aubrey? The legislators recognise the oil industry as golden goose, aubrey. BIG OIL are the biggest corporate tax payer in the USA.

The Republicans are an elected political party, are they not, aubrey? Just because they have a philosophy that is different from yours does not make their concerns illegitimate. They take control of the US Senate this month. This may not suit you, but, tough!

So are the Democrats, who are in favour of the laws. Republicans are against them for two reasons: one is that, at the moment, they are against anything Obama proposes, on principle - even things that were proposed by Republicans in the past (Obamacare, for instance). And, two, Republicans, as a whole, think there is no such thing as AGW, so they would naturally not agree with attempts to curb it.


Lobbying by itself is ok. But when it comes to donations for candidates and parties, as payment for supporting their particular industry, come what may, that's just bribery. Lobbying is a huge industry in the US. It has nothing to do with democracy, just who can pay the most. Lobbyists working for the Koch brothers (IE, the oil industry) keep pushing for the laws limiting campaign donations to be weakened. Eventually the US will be run by corporations, via compliant politicians.

[marchesarosa]

Here's a nice example of a company that is now selling globally that is NOT trashing the environment - quite the opposite, in fact - Netafim founded 1965

www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/netafim-israel-water-conservation-irrigation-desert/393722/

The Israeli farmers who pioneered the revolutionary technology known as drip irrigation weren’t trying to solve one of the world’s most urgent problems. They were just trying to survive. They lived in the desert, and they didn’t have enough water to grow their crops. One day, they met an engineer named Simcha Blass who told them about his amazing new invention.

In its simplest form, it was little more than a hose with holes in it. But behind each hole was a sophisticated little device called a dripper, a sort of button-like valve that emitted just the right amount of water. Snaked along a row of crops so that the holes were positioned directly above the roots, the hose could direct each precious drop of water directly to the plants, growing a bigger bounty while using a fraction of the water.

The farmers decided to start manufacturing these hoses, and over time, they improved upon the technology, perfecting the drippers that regulated the flow of water, and connecting the pipelines to computers that could determine exactly how much water each plant needed and when....more

These hosepipes are petroleum based, too!

[excoriator]

They could use solar powered pumps to supply the water too.

[marchesarosa]

Not at night, exco.

[marchesarosa]

Here's an interesting new take on pumped storage for flat landscapes.

euanmearns.com/flat-land-large-scale-electricity-storage-fles/

Flat-land Large-scale Electricity Storage (FLES)
Posted on June 3, 2015 by Euan Mearns

A few weeks ago I attended a small, commercial, energy storage conference in Brussels organised by Energywise where I heard a most intriguing talk on building a large pumped storage hydro scheme in Holland. The talk was delivered by Dr Jan Huynen, the president of SOGECOM who struck me as being a very serious energy engineer. The project is nearing fruition, with a €1.8 billion price tag and 1.4 GW of supply for 6 hours yielding 8 GWh per daily cycle, this is no toy. Holland is of course totally flat!

Is this just another Green pipe dream? Or does it offer a solution to the apparently intractable problem of energy storage? There is of course nothing new about pumped storage hydro. But all existing schemes use natural relief and elevation to create the head required to store gravitational potential energy that creates pressure and power. What makes Flat-land Large-scale Electricity Storage (FLES) unique is that the whole system is located underground (Figure 1). This of course adds cost but also, as we shall see, it offers substantial benefits.





Figure 1 FLES employs a small surface reservoir and deep lower reservoir with all tunnels, pipes and generating kit below the surface [1].


Why Energy Storage?

Electricity demand in advanced societies follows a very specific and precise pattern that mirrors human and societal behaviour. Demand is always higher during the day than at night when most people are asleep. It is higher in winter when we spend more time indoors keeping warm. It is higher during the week when the wheels of commerce are more active. (Figure 2) The demand pattern may vary from country to country.



Figure 2 The very specific cyclical pattern of electricity demand reflects individual and societal adaptation to using the energy stores of fossil fuels and uranium in electricity production. Using energy stores has resulted in a very well ordered society that is not equipped to use the intermittent energy flows from renewable energy sources.

Society has evolved in this way because we had access to energy stores, namely fossil fuels and uranium. We can release energy from those stores at a rate that matches demand exactly.

It has now been decreed by the majority of OECD governments and organisations that we must abandon this system upon which our civilisation was built to use instead stochastic (unpredictable) energy flows from renewable energy sources. This decree is based upon multiple layers of deception. But whether we like it or not, we now have significant and growing amounts of renewable energy flows on our electricity grids that threaten their integrity and our prosperity. The only way to convert third class energy flows into first class energy stores is to somehow store renewable electricity for use when we want to use it. As we have seen in recent posts, the scale of this challenge is formidable [2, 3, 4, 5, 6].

Without delving into the details there is only one storage show in town and that is pumped storage hydro. This technology alone provides the energy efficiency, storage capacity and power delivery to provide a meaningful and economically viable solution (Figure 3).

Historically, pumped hydro in Europe was built primarily to store surplus nuclear power at night and to release this surplus into the daytime peak demand. The business model was founded on price differentials between day and night time electricity prices. However, despite what appears to be clear social benefits, pumped storage in Europe remains an insignificant fraction of total generation more.....
euanmearns.com/flat-land-large-scale-electricity-storage-fles/

[excoriator]

Idiot woman!

Pumped water can be stored in an elevated tank for watering at night, although I doubt the plants would require watering then anyway.

Photosynthesis stops, the stomata close, and the relative humidity rises with lower temperature meaning less transpirational loss.

I seem to recall a friend telling me of an experiment involving water containing dye and a growing celery plant which showed the slowing or stopping (I can't remember which) of water take up at night. Whether this is general across all plants I have no idea for sure but my bet is that it does.

[excoriator]

Building pumped storage facilities like this would be very expensive. Its a pity our Euan's expertise hasn't extended to Isentropics' solution which I reckon is a front runner for energy storage. It is cheap, clean, scaleable, efficient, compact, and can be built anywhere you like.

Perhaps Euan would benefit from watching the video explaining how it works here.

This seems to me to be the best approach in the race for energy storage. They are currently constructing a pilot plant connected to the grid which will come on line later this year, and we may hear a little more about it. So far, though, there is little need for storage as the country has enough conventional power stations to tide us over periods when there is no renewable power, so there is little need for storage. When we see a few more powerstations demolished, we shall begin to see serious attention being paid to PHES and other technologies I expect.

One very interesting form of pumped storage involves raising the whole sea level by a tiny amount, by pumping air into an under water tank or container. Energy is stored by compressing the air to do this and regained by directing it through turbines. The problem with this is that it involves heat being generated as the gas is compressed, and low temperatures resulting from it expanding through the turbines. Isentropics has also devised a method of combining their PHES into such a system so this heat is used. The overall efficiency can be lifted into the nineties by these means.

[aubrey]

You shouldn't water plants when it's sunny.

[excoriator]

Mrs E. tells me this. The claim is that droplets of water can act as magnifying glasses and burn the leaves. I reckon it's bollocks. Evolution would not result in such a fragile piece of technology that rain following sun causes widespread damage.

[aubrey]

The Telegraph says it's not true, others say it is. I think they're all interpreting the same piece of research: IE, that it happens most on hairy leaves. In any case, you should really water at the roots: and however you do it watering in bright warm sunlight would mean the water evaporates more quickly, so it's better to do it in the evening.

[excoriator]

In any case, you should really water at the roots

Why?

Nature doesn't deliver water there. It delivers it from the sky, hitting the leaves well before the roots. The plants will have evolved to accept this sort of delivery not one that aims it at the roots.

I see - even on 'Gardeners World' - experts pouring water onto the ground around the plant and causing visible disturbance to the soil. My bet is that most plants would be very unhappy indeed at this. One thing I have learned about gardening is that there is an awful lot of bollocks in the subject, particularly what plants 'like' and what they don't 'like'.

We were told it was 'impossible' to grow asparagus anywhere on our allotments. The soil wasn't right for them! Everyone seemed unanimous on this and nobody even tried. We went ahead anyway and it is probably our most successful and certainly best appreciated crop. I notice the doomsayers are now following us and planting it too with similar result. Mrs E's stock as an expert gardener has shot up and she is delighted, although I clearly recall persuading her to give it a go and being accused of never believing what I'm told. History has been rewritten. It was her decision to go ahead not mine. (True I suppose, as she is the gardener) OK I'll shut up.

[aubrey]

The natural way is not always the best, Exco (except when it comes to allowing cows into fields, like).

[excoriator]

Well I am not going to argue about anything as vague as 'Nature's Way'. But I do believe in evolution, and think it's wise to look at what environment has subjected the plant or animal to before turning it to our advantage.

In the case of watering plants, rain has done the job for most of them over all of their evolution, and therefore the plant is well adapted to water hitting the leaves before it gets to the ground.

My grandfather was an excellent and enthusiastic allotment holder. He ran three immaculate ones in his seventies, and his approach to watering was to simulate rain. He did so at cloudy times rather than sunny ones because that is when rain occurs which I think has at least some rational supporting argument behind it. He was pretty sceptical of the advice of gardeners generally, in particular the claim that you needed to dig a trench at least as deep as you want your beans to go up and put a good layer of manure at the bottom. His approach was to stick 'em in with no digging at all, but to keep the weeds down by burying them in compost as soon as they came up. Minimise any competition and leave them to it was his approach. It seemed to work.

[marchesarosa]

Greens trashing the Environment, again!



French Minister apologises for Nutella Climate Claim. Segolene Royal mistakes Nutella for bio-diesel!



Eric Worrall writes

French Ecology Minister Segolene Royal has apologised for claiming the popular breakfast spread Nutella exacerbates climate change.

In the interview, she argued that oil palm plantations were supplanting forests, leading to deforestation and causing “considerable damage to the environment”.”

Well there is no doubt about that, but the problem is not Nutella, it is EU environutz demanding they put biodiesel in their tanks. Where do they think it comes from? Oil wells??? That stuff grows on palm trees!

The monocropping is causing the catastrophic destruction of Malaysia’s jungles and the extermination of species and the destroying of natural habitat for hundreds of thousands of species of creatures large and small. It is directly caused by biodiesel mandates in the EU in order to offset global warming, the claim. The burning of the peat bogs and slashed jungles of Western Indonesia that clouds the air in Singapore is an extension of that Climate Calamity Industry. If Segolene Royal is driving a diesel car she is contributing to the destruction she quipped Nutella was causing. Someone invented a word for that.

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Yeah, it's hypocrisy (allied to ignorance)