Al Gore on Conan

His Nobel prize, was that the physics one? He clearly has a childish ignorance of thermodynamics.

Repeat after me, Al: TEMPERATURE IS NOT HEAT.

What business does a non-engineer have preaching about what comes down to engineering? These are the guys that couldn't handle algebra in high school. What a foolish pretension to useful knowledge! Shut up and let the critical thinking minds invent the plausible ideas!

There is limitless heat and cold all around us, a few miles under our feet and above our heads. What a stupid, fraudulent notion that this is a "supply of energy" in any practical sense.

Anyone who confuses temperature with heat understands less science than was common to the age of Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), whose technical achievements in laboratory apparatus still required that he defecate in an earthenware pot. And if history were staffed with minds like Al Gore's, we would all be likewise encumbered still.

TEMPERATURE IS NOT HEAT.

Even my dear, sweet, late aunt-in-law knew more than Al Gore, when she was wont to say, "hot foods should be served hot".

So you must agree, that Gore is technically incompetent as proved by his risible technical statements. Geothermal is a rathole, and his gee-whiz- that's-hot not only does not change that, he doesn't even deserve a microphone, even if you are a wanna-believer that geothermal has any general utility.

Putting the fancy boys from law school in charge of energy is why energy is scarce. They are worse than incompetent, because they would force us into working with ratholes like geothermal. The astonishing thing is that Gore would claim special authority for the very subjects like energy that he is obviously incapable of understanding.

When the perfect energy fantasy is physically impossible, to someone like Gore, it just makes it a more perfect fantasy. In short, a medieval ontological "proof", opposite to physical science. Science is wonderful, so wonderful ideas ("millions of degrees" at the touch of a magic drill bit) must be scientific.

[snip]

High explosives.

They solve two problems: drilling and creating sufficient surface area in rock strata to provide the needed heat exchange surface area. Hot rocks (high temperature) don't conduct heat very well. Witness the ability of scientists to walk on fresh lava fields in places like Hawaii, where the solid surface may only be a few feet thick over molten lava. What's needed is not just a hole in the rock, but a sufficient volume of fractured rock through which some working fluid can be pumped to carry its heat back to the turbines.

Whether he's competent in the subject is something I wouldn't know. Clearly he made a mistake, something that we all do. But I don't read his stuff and I haven't seen his movie, because I follow energy issues pretty carefully and I'm not interested in hearing a popularizing cheerleader tell me how it is. He's vulgarizing technology. That's what I did for a living, for decades. I don't need him; I can do that all by myself. d8-)

However, as I said, you have a lot of catching up to do on geothermal, particularly the EGS pilot projects going on everywhere from Latvia to the US Virgin Islands, from Israel to California.

Google Geothermal EGS. It will keep you busy for a while.

Producing electricity using Geothermal heat is feasible. But probably not economical in most places. The high temperatures need to be relatively close to the surface or the drilling costs are too high. I doubt if you will see any electricity produced by Geothermal heat east of the Mississippi in the next hundred years.

So Gore is half right. Large scale is select locations.

Geothermal heat pumps on the other hand are a way to use less electricity to heat homes and hot water. And will be more popular when heating costs double.

Dan

Obviously.

Maybe you should invest some time into learning to read, rather than just parroting the Warmingist dogma.

Good Luck! Rich

Oh. Duh...I hadn't thought of that. I guess you spend a lot of time reading Al Gore, eh? d8-)

Geothermal power production is, as you say, carried out in areas where shallow wells will access the high temperature zones and, (to the best of my knowledge, all major commercial geothermal fields have, to date, been developed in these areas. However... Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), drilling deep wells into zones that are just hot, as opposed to zones that contain hot water as conventional geothermal does, has been investigated since at least 1973 (in the U.S.) and I believe that at least one plant, in Germany, is actually in production, but perhaps in a limited way.

According to one study I saw approximately 100 Gw of power could be built in the US in the next 50 years using current technology.

Cheers,

John B. (johnbslocomatgmaildotcom)

The number of potential sites has multiplied by a large factor, or will be, if EGS is as successful as many scientists project. They're able to drill a lot deeper, into harder and drier rock, than anyone thought feasible just a decade ago. It's a combination of new drilling technology and explosive fragmentation of rock, which allows a much more efficient and widespread system of production wells on any single site.

So it's a rapidly-advancing technology that had been lying moribund for several decades. The action is right here and now. I didn't see the original piece by Al Gore, but that's probably why he's making an issue of it now.

They're getting their share of development money, too -- again, with matching funds from industry. This press release doesn't say much but it gives the overall figures, and you can follow links from here if you're interested. This was just announced less than three weeks ago:

You are mistaken. I'm all caught up with your environmental tomorrowland projects. Like Peltier devices, electric cars, dogs walking on hind legs, and women preaching, they work.

Nope, you're not. You probably just looked it up and found out how far off base you are, and now you're going to try to bluster your way through.

Too bad. You might have learned something interesting.

I have not kept up with oil drilling. But three decades ago, they did drill wells over 25,000 feet deep. So how much deeper can they drill now?

This shows an estimate of the temperatures of the earth at 10 km depth. About 32,000 feet.

Dan

Drilling technology allows them to reach 10 km (32,000 feet), but the greatest depth thought practical for geothermal wells was considered to be 3 km until fairly recently. Now they're looking at 6.5 km, which is a threshhold that one big study considered practical, and which, if you drilled holes in about half of the western US , could produce enough

200-deg C water to equal 2,000 times the current electric generating capacity of the country. Some recent reports say they're looking at 10 km depth for geothermal in proposed projects. Projections are that we could practically produce about 10% of US electric generating capacity with geothermal by 2050.

If you want to see the major projections, here's a brief:

...and here's the complete MIT study, "The Future of Geothermal Energy":

Cool map. The people in the western states should have it made, if EGS works out.

For some reason I thought you were an older gentlemen, not a schoolyard priss trying to pick a fight. Your insults and disrespect would be more effective if you based them on a least a little knowledge of the target. Also, refine your concept of probability. Ignorance of past events does not make them contingent. You seem to know a lot about metalworking, so I find your crankiness troubling.

I haven't heard about the Israel one, but they had to stop the study in Basel, Switzerland:

I read that and it was quite interesting. They were working a 16,000 ft well and injected at about 4,250 psi. Neither figure is particularly amazing in oil well terms. Bottom hole pressures would been about 11,000 psi which again isn't really unknown. so what caused the seismic activity?

I suspect that it is a matter of fracturing an extremely dense formation which could mean that any movement due to a fracture being formed would result in force being applied to the surrounding structure.

But I'm not a reservoir engineer :-)

Cheers,

John B. (johnbslocomatgmaildotcom)

"Aren't cats Libertarian? They just want to be left alone. I think our dog is a Democrat, as he is always looking for a handout" Unknown Usnet Poster

Heh, heh, I'm pretty sure my dog is a liberal - he has no balls. Keyton

Seems to me that Ed is being exceedingly polite and patient. You, on the other hand, had this nonsense to say about liberals: "Liberals are not engineers or physicians. They don't produce tangible things like machines, power, medicine, etc. They can't honestly calculate sums in a budget, much less integrate or differentiate. They can only apply the armed force of government to confiscate and hand out what others have made. Don't waste your time trying to defend their pretensions otherwise."

Pot kettle black....

Since Mr. Kinch has informed us that liberals can't do math, I wouldn't put too much stock in that......