There is something that is inherently risky about staking your energy and economic future on the whether. Farmers have known this since the dawn of civilization.
Wind and solar energy production may be dramatically affected by climate change. When the north and south Polar Regions heat up and all the polar ice melts, then the thermal differences between the polar and temperate zones will become more equalized and the ocean currents will decline. The winds that now equalize these regional temperatures will becalm and the skies more cloudy. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the butt if the world installed 10,000,000 wind mills and the winds stop blowing? <quote> Three Iowa State researchers contributed their expertise in modeling North America's climate to a study to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres. The study – led by Sara C. Pryor, a professor of atmospheric science at Indiana University Bloomington – found that wind speeds across the country have decreased by an average of .5 percent to 1 percent per year since 1973. "The study found that across the country wind speeds were decreasing – more in the East than in the West, and more in the Northeast and the Great Lakes," said Gene Takle, an Iowa State professor of geological and atmospheric sciences and agronomy. In Iowa, a state that ranks second in the country for installed wind power capacity, Takle said the study found annual wind speed declines that matched the average for the rest of the country. The study's findings made headlines across the country. Most of those stories focused on the potential implications for the wind power industry. <end quote> Read more…. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090625202010.htm On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Terry Blanton <hohlr...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 12:57 PM, Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote: > > According to this story, wind energy in England, is not living up to > > expectations. > > > > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361316/250bn-wind-power-industry-gr > > eatest-scam-age.html > > Of course storage technology could have a major effect on the > viability of PV and Wind energy. > > From http://www.theeestory.com/ > > "Six years after leading the Kleiner Perkins effort to invest in > EEStor, billionaire venture capitalist Bill Joy has finally commented > publicly about the investment at the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge > this past Thursday evening." > > (see video) > > "After the fireside chat, Joy answered questions from a small crowd of > people for over an hour. > > Question: > So, are you still hopeful about EEStor? > > Bill Joy: > Oh yeah. I mean these things are hard so there is always a chance they > won't work. But we're very uh ...... We'll see. I don't know anything > that isn't in the press. > > Question: .... a person team somebody that already may already have a > solution that hasn't been discovered, is that something you think is > possible? Like a crowdsouring ... somewhere in world that's working > .... > > Bill Joy: > It doesn't tend to work that way. It proceeds from somebody who has > deep expertise in a domain who acquires interdisciplinary > collaborators. Thats a better formula. There are no child prodigies in > these fields that involve physics and chemistry. > > You really just have .... you mentioned Carl Nelson he is like 90 > years old an MIT PhD material scientist, who is one of the inventors > under EEStor. If you don't have someone like Carl. I mean you ask > Carl, tell me something about hafnium. Carl will talk to you for 15 > minutes about hafnium. He knows something about every element in the > periodic table. He can tell you off the top of his head what its > crystal forms are and alot of interesting properties. I mean you have > to be intimate with the periodic table to do this kind of stuff. You > have to know .... you really have to have had a career. With somebody > like that, he's probably the oldest founder I ever backed. But you > just have dinner with him and you realize he really understands what > he is doing with materials. > > Now what they are proposing to do is wild. And there's lots of reasons > in which some of these things could fail to be commercialized. I'm not > saying whether it's worked or not and if we've announced it or not, > I'm just saying it's hard. What they're trying to do ... obviously, > it's took years ... to get .... since they .... first .... it's not > easy to do these things. So ... but the worthwhile things usually are > hard and they always take longer." > > <end excerpt> > > I love the way he stuttered. > > Also, there's a letter regarding an overdue FOIA request to the DoE on > rumors from SNL. > > (no, not saturday night live) > > T > >
