My hope as a physicist is that our representatives make energy and environmental policy decisions based on sound science. So far that has not been the case. The main reason for this is that we are engaged in an epic battle between scientists and lobbyists for those with financial or political agendas.
Right now the scientists–the group with the better case for sound public policy–are losing.
I used to think that trying hard and being right was enough. Foolish me! Everything today is really about public relations. The Internet has spawned the perfect storm. Within a few minutes we can now send messages that are read by millions of people. At the other end, recipients are in overload, due to a steady bombardment of these messages. It is very hard for almost everyone to separate the wheat from the chaff.…
Suppose you began this morning by learning that some investors and developers had stepped forward with a reportedly new type of commercial grade electrical power called “Zephyr Integrated Power” (ZIP). Being clever, they are spending a LOT of time and money marketing ZIP, knowing that this is their chance to break into the grid in a BIG way.
Their message– ZIP is “FREE, CLEAN, AND GREEN”–sounds great! Oh yes, and for good measure, ZIP will create oodles of jobs.
So the basic question is this: exactly what do we do before we allow these people and their new product on the electric grid?
We wouldn’t be so gullible to just take their word for it, would we? Yet this is exactly what we are doing today!
And there is more: our politicians are so enamored with ZIP that they tell these promoters that we will not only allow them on the grid, we will FORCE utilities to use ZIP.…
“The current rush for large scale onshore wind developments, connected by a hugely centralized grid system, shows a poverty of imagination and thinking rooted in the early 20th Century. If attention continues to be focused on increasing renewable energy targets, without any requirement to demonstrate what each development will achieve in greenhouse gas emissions reductions (including all aspects of the generation and transmission), we face a possible worst case scenario, where we achieve renewable energy targets through inappropriate developments and at great cost to important environments — only to discover that our greenhouse gas emissions are up, along with our energy consumption, and our energy supply is not secure.”
– The John Muir Trust, at http://www.jmt.org/what-we-think.asp
As a physicist and environmental advocate, I have been asked to elaborate a bit on my position regarding the Global Warming Theory (GWT), and how it relates to wind energy.…