Friday, December 4, 2009
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Richard K. Lester: The High Costs of Copenhagen - What Obama's pledge to reduce emissions by 83% would mean in practice - '...Here is a recipe that would work: Add 30,000 megawatts of new wind turbines every year between now and 2050 (this is nearly four times what was added in 2008, a record year). Add another 35,000 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity annually (more than 100 times what was added last year—a record year for solar, too). That's just the beginning. Now multiply the nuclear reactor fleet fivefold by midcentury. Retrofit all existing coal-fired power plants with carbon capture and storage technology. And build twice as many new plants, also with carbon capture. Natural gas could substitute for coal, but only with carbon capture too. By 2050, the electric power system would be four times bigger than today. Two-thirds of the car and truck fleet would be powered by electricity, and the rest would run on advanced biofuels...' [Good luck.]