Winter Puts Crimp In Green Energy Sources

It seems that going green doesn't exactly work out as planned during the winter. Wind, solar, and even tidal power sources don't work as well in the cold as they do the rest of the year. Snow thwarts solar power collection, unless you are out clearing off solar collectors regularly. Ice and wind can damage solar collectors and wind turbines and ice can prevent tidal systems from operating at peak capacity.

It gets worse. Biodiesel doesn't work in the cold, and if the percentage of biodiesel is high enough, it will congeal into a frozen mess that will bring an engine to a standstill.

But have no fear - if global warming is as bad as the New York Times thinks it will get (or at least their reporter thinks), the seasons will disappear:

So in regions where homeowners have long rolled their eyes at shoveling driveways, add another cold-weather chore: cleaning off the solar panels. “At least I can get to them with a long pole and a squeegee,” said Alan Stankevitz, a homeowner in southeast Minnesota.

As concern has grown about global warming, many utilities and homeowners have been trying to shrink their emissions of carbon dioxide — their carbon footprints — by installing solar panels, wind turbines and even generators powered by tides or rivers. But for the moment, at least, the planet is still cold enough to deal nasty winter blows to some of this green machinery.

In January 2007, a bus stalled in the middle of the night on Interstate 70 in the Colorado mountains. The culprit was a 20 percent biodiesel blend that congealed in the freezing weather, according to John Jones, the transit director for the bus line, Summit Stage. (Biodiesel is a diesel substitute, typically made from vegetable oil, that is used to displace some fossil fuels.)

The passengers got out of that situation intact, but Summit Stage, which serves ski resorts, now avoids biodiesel from November to March, and uses only a 5 percent blend in the summertime, when it can still get cold in the mountains. “We can’t have people sitting on buses freezing to death while we get out there trying to get them restarted,” Mr. Jones said.

Wind turbines may send chunks of ice hurling into nearby structures and fields, though designers say that doesn't happen because the systems shut off if they become unbalanced.

The thing of it is that the planet will be plenty cold to hamper green machinery for years to come. It just depends on where you are (and that still will include most of the US for the foreseeable future). For all the talk about climate change, temperatures are where they were 10 years ago.

If carbon emissions were truly the culprit, you would expect that the increase of carbon emissions would result in a constant uptick in temperatures, but it's overwhelming hubris to think that man can overcome global and solar events with puny carbon emissions. Indeed, studies of solar output suggest that we're heading for a cooling period, not a warming period.

Still, even if global warming isn't going to happen, choosing renewable energy sources makes sense and is a better alternative than trying to obtain petroleum based products from unstable parts of the world. It's also why hydro and nuclear should be pursued; they are more reliable than the "green" options over the long term. After all, clearing the air of particulates and other emissions does make sense as people can breath easier and are less likely to succumb to respiratory distress and diseases like asthma, but the obscene interest in taxing the heck out of carbon emissions makes no sense especially since carbon dioxide is a natural byproduct of human respiration.

Besides, water vapor is a much more efficient and prevalent greenhouse gas - the problem for the econuts is that they haven't quite figured out a way to demonize it just yet. But, as the climate doesn't exactly cooperate with the so-called models and warming doesn't exactly go as planned, you'll see the same folks pushing global warming saying that everything is the result of global warming, including cooling and cold weather. It's already happening as climate change has come to replace global warming as the term of art.

It's also a term of deception.