Where Has Our Ability To Discuss Issues Gone? | Eastern NC Now

    If one of us dares bring up a Sensitive Issue, the other of us immediately begins to take offense. The problem is how we now define what a Sensitive Issue is. A Sensitive Issue has now come to mean any issue where our opinion is different from the Other Guy's Opinion on that Same Issue.

    We have forgotten what our Founding Father's Guidance tried so hard to teach us... "Everyone Is Entitled To His Own Stupid Opinion".

    When it comes to Solar Power the Other Guy is definitely stupid. There does not seem to be any possibility of one side of the argument thinking that the other side of the argument is not Stupid, Unthinking, Devious and a Bunch of Other Bad Things.

    Is it possible to have a meeting of minds? Probably not but I'm going to give it a try anyway. Wish me luck...

    The Ivanpah Solar-Thermal Plant in California uses thousands of mirrors to reflect sunlight and generate steam. It consists of three solar thermal power plants on 4,000 acres of public land near the Nevada border. Fields of heliostat mirrors focus sunlight on receivers located on centralized solar power towers. The receivers generate steam to drive specially adapted steam turbines. The project, which had a total cost of about $2.18 billion, received a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the United States Department of Energy.

    There have been a series of missteps and technical difficulties that threaten to make this newfangled solar-thermal technology unworkable.

    Here are facts that the Pro-Solar Side do not want to come to grips with...
     Solar Power has a long way to go before it will be able to fulfill the predictions of those who support it.
     Some costly high-tech solar power projects aren't living up to promises their backers made about how much electricity they would generate.
     The Ivanpah Plant was supposed to generate more than a million megawatt-hours of electricity each year but, 15 months after its startup, it is producing just 40% of that prediction.
     Replacing broken equipment and learning better ways to operate the complex assortment of machinery has stalled attempts to reach full potential.
     Engineers have had to fix leaky tubes connected to water boilers and contend with a vibrating steam turbine that threatened nearby equipment.
     The power plant requires far more steam to run smoothly and efficiently than originally thought. Instead of ramping up the plant each day before sunrise by burning one hour's worth of natural gas to generate steam, the plant needs more than four times that much help from fossil fuels to get the plant humming every morning.
     Another unexpected problem: Not Enough Sun. Weather predictions for the area underestimated the amount of cloud cover that has blanketed the area since it went into service in 2013.

    Plant operators say their plants will reach power targets once the kinks are worked out.

    The short paragraph above makes my argument for me. Below is what I think the argument of the Fossil Fuel Proponents ought to be (I'm a True Conservationist because I only use one bullet)...
     Until such time as Solar Power can replace Fossil Fuel Production, can we halt attempts to shut down Fossil Fuel Production?

    My no-so-crazy argument (is anyone listening?) is simply this... If we were to shut down all Fossil Fuel Production immediately, as some propose, it would be impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel or even crank up the Ivanpah Solar-Thermal Plant each morning.

    Would I kid u?
    Smartfella

    Lagniappe: A couple of other points to consider...
     The plant was delayed several months and had millions of dollars in cost overruns because of wildlife protections for the endangered Desert Tortoise.
     Once built, U.S. government biologists found the plant's superheated mirrors were killing birds. It is estimated that 3,500 birds died at the plant in the span of a year, many of them burned alive while flying through a part of the solar installment where air temperatures can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

    Yea, I know my bringing up these 2 Lagniappe Bullets makes me Stupid, Unthinking, Devious and not a True Conservationist as I claimed above when I bragged about only using 1 bullet.
    -------------------------    Updated April 8, 2018
    I tried to find an update to the issues presented in the above Blog Posting (7/19/15). It was not easy. Below are a couple of paragraphs from an article I did find dated 3/24/16 in the MIT Technology Review. If you want to have at it about other updates, have at it and let me know in Comments to this Blog Posting what you find...

    "Saying that over the last 12 months the facility has reached 97.5 percent of its annual contracted production, BrightSource officials dismissed all other issues as a normal part of the plant's startup phase. But the troubles at Ivanpah have joined the delay or cancellation of several high-profile projects as evidence that concentrated solar power could be a fading technology.
    Last year BrightSource canceled a 500-megawatt concentrated solar project planned for Inyo County, California.
    That move followed the 2014 decision of French nuclear giant Areva, which acquired an Australian concentrated solar startup called Ausra in 2010, to exit the solar business after losing "tens of millions" of dollars.
    And the Spanish company Abengoa, which has developed several large concentrated solar projects and received $2.7 billion in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy, is in talks to restructure its debt and is in danger of becoming Spain's largest-ever bankruptcy."

    The Bottom Line in my original Blog Posting is still the Bottom Line in this Update. The only difference is I changed it from a Question to a Statement..."Until such time as Solar Power can replace Fossil Fuel Production, we ought to halt attempts to shut down Fossil Fuel Production."

------------------------     Updated August 10, 2018
    Said another way...At the point in time when the inventors of the automobile began making real progress in inventing the automobile, the Automobile Lobby was not going around advocating the killing of all horses.