New
research shows, albeit unintentional, that generating electricity with solar
panels can also be a very bad idea.
The manufacture of just 1 square meter of solar panels generates
between 7,500 and 31,400 kilograms of greenhouse gases. An average household needs at least 8 square
meters of solar panels for electricity generation alone,
which boils down to a global
warming debt of a whopping 60,000 to 940,000 kilograms of CO2. These
numbers
equate to 12 to 188 intercontinental flights. In some cases, producing
electricity by solar panels releases more greenhouse gases than
producing electricity by gas or even coal.
Producing
electricity from solar cells reduces air pollutants and greenhouse gases by
about 90 percent in comparison to using conventional fossil fuel technologies, claims
a study to be published this month in “Environmental Science & Technology”.
Good news, it seems, until one reads the report itself. The researchers come up
with a solid set of figures. However, they interpret them in a rather
optimistic way. Some
recalculations (skip this article if you get annoyed by numbers) produce striking
conclusions.
Solar
panels don’t come falling out of the sky – they have to be manufactured.
Similar to computer chips, this is a dirty and energy-intensive process. First,
raw materials have to be mined: quartz sand for silicon cells, metal ore for
thin film cells. Next, these materials have to be treated, following different
steps (in the case of silicon cells these are purification, crystallization and
wafering). Finally, these upgraded materials have to be manufactured into solar
cells, and assembled into modules. All these processes produce air pollution
and heavy metal emissions, and they consume energy - which brings about more
air pollution, heavy metal emissions and also greenhouse gases...
More: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/03/the-ugly-side-o.html
===============
Researcher: Basic Greenhouse Equations "Totally Wrong"
New derivation of equations governing the greenhouse effect reveals "runaway warming" impossible
Miklós
Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is
also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter
of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.
That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the
greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate
predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by
another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist
with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley
Research Center.
After studying it, Zágoni stopped calling global warming a crisis,
and has instead focused on presenting the new theory to other
climatologists. The data fit extremely well. "I fell in love," he stated at the International Climate Change Conference this week.
"Runaway greenhouse theories contradict energy balance equations,"
Miskolczi states. Just as the theory of relativity sets an upper limit
on velocity, his theory sets an upper limit on the greenhouse effect, a
limit which prevents it from warming the Earth more than a certain
amount.
How did modern researchers make such a mistake? They relied upon
equations derived over 80 years ago, equations which left off one term
from the final solution....
More: Greenhouse Equations
(Via: http://www.keelynet.com/#whatsnew)
