Explain how people without any level of formal education (at least 1/2 the world if not greater) is going to maintain and operate a solar or wind system. They are systems because they require “stuff” to work.

A solar panel works great while the sun shines but once you start increasing the complexity of the system with inverters, chargers and batteries the system becomes more difficult to understand and maintain. Are you going to use heavy metal based rechargeable batteries, or are you going to hydrogen generating lead /acid batteries for back-up? Each with their own unique environmental and safety concerns.

Wind generators require substantial maintenance. The side loading on the bearing require a good lubrication system. The blades needs cleaned and the generator and gearbox needs maintenance. Even on the simplest system without a gearbox (individual home system) maintenance is required.

The nations that currently use carbon to generate energy will be the nations what with the knowledge to move to solar and wind, but individual ownership becomes difficult without the knowledge to maintain the system. At that point the individual becomes dependent on someone else and the repair and maintenance prices will reflect this need.

Coming from rural America where a water well and septic system was used to bring “city comfort” to the farm, these systems are not everlasting and do require maintenance. The water well will freeze or lose it’s prime and someone (everyone in the house) needs to know what to do and how to fix it OR YOU DON’T HAVE WATER.

I doubt if someone living in a tin, mud or stick hut will be able to maintain a solar or wind system. They can use the energy no doubt but they will not be able to fix the problems that will occur in the systems. The idea is great, but I find it difficult to believe it really could be sustained by the people in remote areas.

Lack of maintenance leads to random failures, which would lead to a high likelihood that one or more systems in a small community would be down on any given day. The loss of a dependable system will with a few years have the community back to its original ways. An example of this can be seen in many homes where low income people, elderly or uneducated cannot pay to fix a heater so they do without – and all that is wrong with the system is the thermocouple has failed that keeps the gas valve open (an 8 dollar item).

I do believe that indivudual ownership will occur (I am currently planning a rural home for retirement that will include solar
(passive and collective) and wind; with a natural gas generator backup. As I show people the system their eyes begin to roll and you can see they are lost with the simplest part of system. They understand the solar (not how it works) they understand the wind (not how the mechanical energy is converted) they certainly do not understand the maintenance schedule required on each of the systems.

Good Luck with your effort.

For the technical details see “The Astounding High Cost of `Free’ Energy,” http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202008/Energy_cost.pdf

You can also read about the 4th generation nuclear plants, which are small, modular high temperature reactors with direct conversion gas turbines (which are suitable for small power grids and don’t require water for coolant), and reprocessing, which turns 97 percent of the spent nuclear fuel into new fuel. And you can find
more background on the Malthusians and their population control policies. See http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler

ScienceDaily (May 19, 2009) — The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth’s climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago – and could be even worse than that.
The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well – such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.
Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding global warming, it is important “to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science,” he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. “In that sense, our work is unique,” he says.
The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees. The difference is caused by several factors rather than any single big change. Among these are improved economic modeling and newer economic data showing less chance of low emissions than had been projected in the earlier scenarios. Other changes include accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling induced by 20th century volcanoes, and for emissions of soot, which can add to the warming effect. In addition, measurements of deep ocean temperature rises, which enable estimates of how fast heat and carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere and transferred to the ocean depths, imply lower transfer rates than previously estimated.
Prinn says these and a variety of other changes based on new measurements and new analyses changed the odds on what could be expected in this century in the “no policy” scenarios – that is, where there are no policies in place that specifically induce reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, the changes “unfortunately largely summed up all in the same direction,” he says. “Overall, they stacked up so they caused more projected global warming.”
While the outcomes in the “no policy” projections now look much worse than before, there is less change from previous work in the projected outcomes if strong policies are put in place now to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions. Without action, “there is significantly more risk than we previously estimated,” Prinn says. “This increases the urgency for significant policy action.”

To illustrate the range of probabilities revealed by the 400 simulations, Prinn and the team produced a “roulette wheel” that reflects the latest relative odds of various levels of temperature rise. The wheel provides a very graphic representation of just how serious the potential climate impacts are.
“There’s no way the world can or should take these risks,” Prinn says. And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback “is just going to make it worse,” Prinn says.
The lead author of the paper describing the new projections is Andrei Sokolov, research scientist in the Joint Program. Other authors, besides Sokolov and Prinn, include Peter H. Stone, Chris E. Forest, Sergey Paltsev, Adam Schlosser, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, John Reilly, Marcus Sarofim, Chien Wang and Henry D. Jacoby, all of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, as well as Mort Webster of MIT’s Engineering Systems Division and D. Kicklighter, B. Felzer and J. Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.
Prinn stresses that the computer models are built to match the known conditions, processes and past history of the relevant human and natural systems, and the researchers are therefore dependent on the accuracy of this current knowledge. Beyond this, “we do the research, and let the results fall where they may,” he says. Since there are so many uncertainties, especially with regard to what human beings will choose to do and how large the climate response will be, “we don’t pretend we can do it accurately. Instead, we do these 400 runs and look at the spread of the odds.”
Because vehicles last for years, and buildings and powerplants last for decades, it is essential to start making major changes through adoption of significant national and international policies as soon as possible, Prinn says. “The least-cost option to lower the risk is to start now and steadily transform the global energy system over the coming decades to low or zero greenhouse gas-emitting technologies.”

This work was supported in part by grants from the Office of Science of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and by the industrial and foundation sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.