Why electric planes are inevitable

And in sweeping the snow off acres of panels. And dust. And in replacing those smashed by hail. And in replacing the turbine blades as they fatigue and approach failure. And is the maintenance of both systems. They are not maintenance-free. (snip)
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EXACTLY !!!

The climate change religion "evangelists" always neglect to mention that already 50,000 tons of expired turbine blades are buried in landfills .

... And they are just getting started .... those blades are from 15-20 year old installations .... since then there have been huge numbers of turbines installed and they will also be coming down soon .... then repeat every 15 years.

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turbine bladses landfill.JPG
 
From Wiki:
Energy Vault is developing a crane that generates electricity from dropping blocks of concrete rather than water. Energy Vault has not specified a release date for its product, but prototypes are in the works and Energy Vault’s stacked blocks concept is being built to be a promising long-duration storage technology.[8][9][10] In late 2020, the Swiss company built in Arbedo-Castione six cranes installed in a 110-meter-high tower moving a 35-ton concrete block up and down that can store 80 megawatt hours of energy.

Can someone tell me how they get 80 megawatt hours out of 35 tons falling 360 feet?

Just a sidenote to mention this is actually old technology .... I bought a wind power book in the 1970's which covered every type of windmill design at the time.

The author was a professor who liked to tinker and had a sense of humor .... he wanted a yard light so he built a very low cost sail-blade rotor by using threaded pipe from the hardware store and surplus parachute fabric for the basic rotor.

The rotor drove several worm-gear reduction units that turned a winch mounted up on a big tripod made from hydro poles .... the winch hoisted a heavy 1956 Buick about 10 feet off the ground .... it was a slow process ... the windmill rotor had to turn thousands of times to lift the car one millimetre .... after a week or two of windy conditions the car was up high.

Whenever he had evening visitors he would demonstrate his ... "free energy yard light" ... he used the 12 volt generator from the car and drove it by a clock-works type of speed-up transmission hooked to the other end of the winch shaft .

The tremendous torque of the slowly descending Buick turned the generator at 800 rpm powering the Buick headlights which he had modified to point down on the yard ... lasted about an hour until the car reached the ground.

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A lot of wind turbines are also "abandoned in place". But hey, they're located in those pesky "fly over states" - so who cares?
 
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EXACTLY !!!

The climate change religion "evangelists" always neglect to mention that already 50,000 tons of expired turbine blades are buried in landfills .

... And they are just getting started .... those blades are from 15-20 year old installations .... since then there have been huge numbers of turbines installed and they will also be coming down soon .... then repeat every 15 years.

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View attachment 100345
Yes they are getting started. Started recycling the blades.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ge...e-blade-recycling-program-with-veolia/591869/
https://www.reuters.com/business/su...nveils-blade-recycling-technology-2021-05-17/
 
If you read more carefully, I specifically said I was referring to future projects. As of 2020, wind/solar projects provide 13% of utility scale power in the US. With the government claiming that number will increase to 50% by 2030, it's obvious that many more of these abominations will be built in the next ten years.

The Biden administration and Democratic Congress are planning to pass new laws that give the industries billions in subsidies, an action unneeded if solar and wind are going to become widespread as its proponents proclaim.

This photo of Hanwha Energy's Unit 174 in Texas is a better example of my complaint. Hundreds of acres of native vegetation was bladed under to build it. To keep the area under the solar panels free of vegetation regrowth, it's a given that herbicides like glyphosate and 2,4,D are being heavily applied on the soil here and at every other solar farm.

28ba32f426ab8c7c3155c8851a9aa544.jpeg


Hanwha and French petroleum giant Total plan to build over a dozen of these solar farms, initiating the wholesale destruction of millions of acres of land now vacant or being farmed.

French refiner Total SE and South Korea’s Hanwha Energy Corp. have agreed to set up a joint venture to build solar power plants and storage centers in 12 US locations, in projects worth around 2 trillion won ($1.8 billion).

The 50:50 JV will build solar energy facilities with a combined power generation capacity of 1.6 gigawatts (GW) to provide electricity to 300,000 households annually in six US states, Total and Hanwha said in a joint statement on Jan. 14.

https://www.kedglobal.com/newsView/ked202101150004
Your citation didn't say anything about where those will be built. Regular farms in the desert will be converted to solar- a better choice than growing water-intensive crops on that land. Only old white men thinks it's a good idea to grow strawberries and lettuce in the desert.
What's wrong with plants growing under the panel? And what's wrong with glyphosate and 2,4-D? One is used on most food farms in the USA, the other is used on most lawns on the USA. As they will site these panels on old farms that shouldn't have been in the desert to begin with, I doubt the use of these chemicals will increase.

This photo clearly illustrates the desecration that turbines will visit on every ridgeline in the Southwest. As is typical across the country, none of the access roads to these several hundred turbines are paved. Little or no engineering was done when they were constructed, and where the roads pass small valleys on the mountain, no relief culverts have been installed.

Spoils from the grading of the roads is simply pushed into these valleys. These turbines will require blade replacement at some point in the near future. The heavy trucks that will haul them to the turbine base and the huge cranes that will lift them into place will further exacerbate the erosion of soil

106216240-1572537090795gettyimages-1139164884.jpeg



Websites like this one trumpet the proliferation of "the dramatic growth of clean energy." There is no mention of environmental stewardship, just bromides about the "clean, renewable energy."

https://environmentamerica.org/feature/ame/renewables-rise-2020
That citation is nothing more than someplace to post opinions. Looking at the first page, it doesn't mention any projects nor where they will be built. That looks like the area around Palm Springs- those have been there for decades now, too.

What are you scared of?
 
I think it hysterical that pages of this thread are devoted to Al Gore, who hasn't been in public office in a generation. I think one of the bigger problems with alternative energy sources is energy costs in this country are artificially low. We keep them that way with wars and stuff. Sooner or later energy costs will rise, and alternatives will become viable. Problem is most of those use fossil fuels in their manufacture, so when energy costs rise so with the cost of alternatives.
 
I think it hysterical that pages of this thread are devoted to Al Gore, who hasn't been in public office in a generation.

Just pointing out that stupidity is ageless and Al is definitely ageless.
 
I think one of the bigger problems with alternative energy sources is energy costs in this country are artificially low. We keep them that way with wars and stuff.

If your premise of "that way with wars and stuff" is true, what that really means is the rich are subsidizing low energy costs for the lower income people.

Wars keep energy prices low -> Wars are funded by taxpayer money -> The rich pay the majority of taxes

0210_distribution_of_taxes-full.gif


So look at the bright side, Michael, without your supposed wars, many lower income people could not afford to drive!

Oh ****! throttle closed, ailerons level, yoke forward, rudder opposite of rotation...
 
I think it hysterical that pages of this thread are devoted to Al Gore, who hasn't been in public office in a generation. I think one of the bigger problems with alternative energy sources is energy costs in this country are artificially low. We keep them that way with wars and stuff. Sooner or later energy costs will rise, and alternatives will become viable. Problem is most of those use fossil fuels in their manufacture, so when energy costs rise so with the cost of alternatives.

This isn't the case for the electric sector. Nearly all fossil fuel power plants use domestic sources such as natural gas and coal. Oil fired power plants died out after the oil crisis of the 70s.
 
If your premise of "that way with wars and stuff" is true, what that really means is the rich are subsidizing low energy costs for the lower income people.

Wars keep energy prices low -> Wars are funded by taxpayer money -> The rich pay the majority of taxes

0210_distribution_of_taxes-full.gif


So look at the bright side, Michael, without your supposed wars, many lower income people could not afford to drive!

Oh ****! throttle closed, ailerons level, yoke forward, rudder opposite of rotation...
Those are tax rates, not what people actually pay in those groups.
 
Those are tax rates, not what people actually pay in those groups.

No true Jack, easy to find on line. I'd post it but this is going in the direction of spin. Research for yourself, the info is on the treasury website.
 
depends what you mean by the internet. Certainly not what we think of today when we say internet.
The web is not the Internet. Doesn’t matter the carrier, HTTP, TCP/IP, SNMP, etc are still the same protocols used regardless of thedata stream.
 
Please do believe your ears! He did NOT say "invented." If you have to change his words to make your point, AND ignore the context, then you don't have a point to make.
Gore voted for funding for the ‘net when he was in the Senate. That was his participation.
 

Well that is great if they start recycling the blades by chopping them up and using it as filler in concrete.
But to me it is mostly feel-good ointment for the folks who are saving the planet.

Blades made in Denmark ... long ocean voyage to our shores ... huge truck-trailer to haul them to site .... turn a multi-million dollar generator for 15-20 years ... dismantle the whole works .... steel and copper machinery to scrap yard for recycling ... chop up the fiberglass blades ...... truck grindings to concrete plants and toss some in the cement.

WHEW !!! ... VOILA !!!! ... the planet has been saved.

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Amazing thread drift. To bring things back to reality, one of the main points of the video is one that has been well-recognized for a long time, but also one that has been long-time ignored by policy makers: that is, externalities--the apparently "hidden" costs of commodities or products that are not captured in the market price. Often, the externalities are difficult to quantify, but they are no less real, and someone has to pay for them. Typically it is the consumer of the product or activity. Virtually every commercial activity or product has associated externalities. The externalities of fossil fuel consumption (which include pollution and contribution to global CO2 load) are a classic example, but it is certainly not the only example of a commercial activity with significant externalities, and green technologies are not exempt.

When I taught undergraduates about energy production and consumption, too many were unclear on where electricity came from, and did not understand the difference between a primary and secondary energy source. To many of them, electricity was 100% clean and externality-free. Hence the need for education. The intersection of science, externalities, politics, and economics is an over-constrained and often internally conflicting problem with difficult-to-quantify constraints to balance and prioritize. There are no simple answers.
 
Who’s Al Gore?

Cheers

Around 2007 the socialist Saskatchewan Canada government invited Al Gore to come speak to university students and promote his inconvenient truth movie .

Gore agreed and stated his requirements .... cost of jet for him and his entourage ..... seven rooms in a 5-star hotel ..... $125,000 speaking fee .... 5 stretch limousines for him and his entourage.

He spoke for most of the day Saturday ..... we had a late winter , still snow on the ground ... he kept the limos running all day so they would be warm when he headed back to the airport.

Told us to stop driving so much and turn our home thermostats down.

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Another thought process.....
 

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To keep the area under the solar panels free of vegetation regrowth, it's a given that herbicides like glyphosate and 2,4,D are being heavily applied on the soil here and at every other solar farm.
There is a solar farm newly built near one of my home airports and they mow the grass! Such modern technology has never been seen before and will certainly spread around the world like wildfire. This is in NY where plants actually grow fast, not like the desert where you barely have to mow them down once a year.
 
I recently ordered a couple of books on Kindle. One is "Fate is the Hunter" (1961) and the other is "Flying Circus" (1974) Both were written by Earnest K. Gann and tell about the early years of commercial aviation. In it's nascent beginnings it was hardly a viable business model and faced all kinds of hurdles and perils that, over the following decades, were all overcome. But it took risk and determination and many failures along the way to achieve that. So, if we leave the politics out of it, there are going to be electric airplanes in the future. Just because we don't know how to do it right now doesn't mean we'll never figure it out but as we find with many technological advancements it's probably not going to be a slam-dunk. There are always compromises and trade offs to be made.
 
Apples and oranges. When airplanes were new they had to carve out a niche in the commercial sector, something they did over time. Wars helped advance the technology. Now they're trying to reinvent the whee. Sort've like saying "we have to build airplanes out of cast iron because that's the only material we have available". Just because it's available doesn't make it a good material to construct aircraft.

Sad that you can't find anything to read that isn't 50 years old.

I'd believe that graph more if the numbers added up to 100. I suspect strongly that whatever it's graphing is not what we think we're looking at.
 
If your premise of "that way with wars and stuff" is true, what that really means is the rich are subsidizing low energy costs for the lower income people.

Wars keep energy prices low -> Wars are funded by taxpayer money -> The rich pay the majority of taxes

0210_distribution_of_taxes-full.gif


So look at the bright side, Michael, without your supposed wars, many lower income people could not afford to drive!

Oh ****! throttle closed, ailerons level, yoke forward, rudder opposite of rotation...

It's interesting how the estate tax disproportionally whacks the people it supposedly is put in place to help by supposedly leveling the playing field. People have to stop voting on feel good, or screw someone else talking points, and look at the results of actions by politicians they elect.
 
No true Jack, easy to find on line. I'd post it but this is going in the direction of spin. Research for yourself, the info is on the treasury website.
I respectfully disagree. The information on-line is whatever one cares to post, and there is a lot of garbage to sift through. Anything political gets a lot of disinformation from both sides. Some very wealthy people are alleged to pay no taxes. If that is true, and I'm not saying that it is, then the amount of tax people pay is somewhere between 0 and the rates in your citation. I've also heard that people at the bottom end of the scale are alleged to pay no taxes, either. I'm not trying to make it spin material, either, but it's difficult to find real facts.
 
Well that is great if they start recycling the blades by chopping them up and using it as filler in concrete.
But to me it is mostly feel-good ointment for the folks who are saving the planet.

Blades made in Denmark ... long ocean voyage to our shores ... huge truck-trailer to haul them to site .... turn a multi-million dollar generator for 15-20 years ... dismantle the whole works .... steel and copper machinery to scrap yard for recycling ... chop up the fiberglass blades ...... truck grindings to concrete plants and toss some in the cement.

WHEW !!! ... VOILA !!!! ... the planet has been saved.

.
So, what's wrong with that? You can make concrete from sand (silicates), or you can toss some fiberglass blades (also silicates) into the mix. The waste solvent from my lab is burned to make concrete, instead of using coal or oil to generate the heat. What's wrong with recycling the steel and copper machinery?
What is really scaring you?
 
There's much better places to grow that stuff than in the desert. No water except what's imported in, or draw down the aquifer.
While I generally agree, there are sometimes good reasons for desert cultivation. Potatoes (I'm native to Idaho) are susceptible to blight if grown in wet climates. That's what caused the Irish potato famine in the late 1840's. But grow them in a dry climate, when the amount and timing of water applied can be carefully controlled, and it's not a problem. Sure, we also have fungicides now should they be needed, but controlling how much water is applied gets most of the credit for blight-free spuds.

Potato trivia: the Irish (and a German botanist studying the blight) mostly figured out the germ theory of disease during the famine. They showed there was something invisible, yet transmissible, killing the potatoes. However, Pasteur got most of the credit 20 years later when he fixed a critical problem with the early theory and published more widely.
 
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I respectfully disagree. The information on-line is whatever one cares to post, and there is a lot of garbage to sift through. Anything political gets a lot of disinformation from both sides. Some very wealthy people are alleged to pay no taxes. If that is true, and I'm not saying that it is, then the amount of tax people pay is somewhere between 0 and the rates in your citation. I've also heard that people at the bottom end of the scale are alleged to pay no taxes, either. I'm not trying to make it spin material, either, but it's difficult to find real facts.


Here you go Jack, right from the source. It will take some work, but you should be able to wade through it, if you want the truth that is....

SOI Tax Stats - Individual Tax Statistics | Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov)
 
A lot of wind turbines are also "abandoned in place". But hey, they're located in those pesky "fly over states" - so who cares?
I didn't realize that California was a "fly over state." o_O
 
Hence why I bicycle to work when weather conditions permit. Fewer miles put on the car, less gas purchased, extra exercise, and a nicer view on the commute. Win win.
Oh snap, I electric bicycle sometimes too. Is that doubly bad? Destroying the economy and destroying the planet. I should add a wind turbine to it so I can start charg
Here you go Jack, right from the source. It will take some work, but you should be able to wade through it, if you want the truth that is....

SOI Tax Stats - Individual Tax Statistics | Internal Revenue Service (irs.gov)
I'll bet that does not include the data from those individuals who are "currently" being audited by the IRS and won't release their true tax figures.....
 
...When I taught undergraduates about energy production and consumption, too many were unclear on where electricity came from, and did not understand the difference between a primary and secondary energy source. To many of them, electricity was 100% clean and externality-free. Hence the need for education. The intersection of science, externalities, politics, and economics is an over-constrained and often internally conflicting problem with difficult-to-quantify constraints to balance and prioritize. There are no simple answers.
I keep waiting for our leaders to say something about how they're going to make electricity production carbon-neutral, but if they have, I haven't run across it.

Electric Power Generation - 2020.jpg

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php
 
I'll bet that does not include the data from those individuals who are "currently" being audited by the IRS and won't release their true tax figures.....

I bet it does, although the ones like Sharpton etal who don't bother to file, they aren't there.
 
Oh snap, I electric bicycle sometimes too. Is that doubly bad? Destroying the economy and destroying the planet. I should add a wind turbine to it so I can start charg

I'll bet that does not include the data from those individuals who are "currently" being audited by the IRS and won't release their true tax figures.....
Lol
Truth hurts. Keep thinking whatever you want my friend.
 
I think it hysterical that pages of this thread are devoted to Al Gore, who hasn't been in public office in a generation. I think one of the bigger problems with alternative energy sources is energy costs in this country are artificially low. We keep them that way with wars and stuff. Sooner or later energy costs will rise, and alternatives will become viable. Problem is most of those use fossil fuels in their manufacture, so when energy costs rise so with the cost of alternatives.
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Hi steingar .... I plead guilty to also mentioning Al Gore in this thread .... but I justify it as follows :

--- Gore was , and is , one of the foundational evangelists for the United Nations climate change agenda.
--- The objective of the UN is to control the smokestacks and exhaust pipes of the world ..... brilliant strategy .... he who controls the energy controls the world
--- Gore and apostles are smart ... indoctrinate the youth and patiently wait for old fossils like me to fade away.
--- It is working very well .... after 30 years our younger adults believe that a battery in a car or airplane will save the planet.
--- built in carbon taxes almost equal my monthly electric bill
--- The Al Gore mansion uses as much electric power in one month as a normal home uses in one year.
--- The Boeing 747 holds 225,000 liters of fuel ... climate change activists love to travel.
--- My diesel car gets 50 mpg but I am considered the enemy because I do not endorse the UN as saviors of the planet
--- The planet already has a savior and it aint them.

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