Heavyweight physics professor weighs into climate/energy scrap

[megimoo]

[SIZE="2] "Skipping one bath saves a much energy as leaving your TV off standby for over six months."

"So we could turn America into a 'HoverCraft' with wind powered turbines and it wouldn't make much of a difference in our energy useage !"

Professor David J C MacKay tells The Register that he was first drawn into this field by the constant suggestion — from the BBC, parts of the government etc — that we can seriously impact our personal energy consumption by doing such things as turning our TVs off standby or unplugging our mobile-phone chargers.
Anyone with even a slight grasp of energy units should know that this is madness. Skipping one bath saves a much energy as leaving your TV off standby for over six months. People who wash regularly, wear clean clothes, consume hot food or drink, use powered...snip

In conclusion: if we covered the windiest 10 per cent of the country (UK) with windmills, we might be able to generate half of the energy used by driving a car 50 km per day each. Britain’s onshore wind energy resource may be “huge,” but it’s not as huge as our huge consumption. I should emphasize how audacious an assumption I’m making. … The windmills required … are fifty times the entire wind hardware of Denmark; seven times all the windfarms of Germany; and double the entire fleet of all wind turbines in the world. This conclusion – that the greatest that onshore wind could add up to, albeit ‘huge’, is much less than our consumption – is important …

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06...arbon_free_uk/[/SIZE]

[Elspeth]

So we're all supposed to take cold showers? :)

[megimoo]

So we're all supposed to take cold showers? :)

I suppose we could just build Nuclear Power plants But the Tree Humpers would be very,very upset

[biccat]

A fairly interesting read. While he does take man-made global warming as an established underlying fact, he discusses the potential alternatives by putting numbers to them, instead of just throwing platitudes like the left commonly does.

He makes a valid case for nuclear energy, and suggests future technology that doesn't rely on wind or solar energy or, the left's favorite, magic pixie dust.