Wind and Solar Energy – Free and Green, Right?

Maybe not.

Anybody who has taken a college physics course or studied thermodynamics knows there are no free sources of energy. Of course, actual science, these days is seldom taught anywhere but in the secondary schools. “Scientific indoctrination” is the crap that the teacher’s unions are pushing in the primary K-12 system – global climate is mankind’s fault, yada yada . . .

Alternatives to fossil fuels will take decades to develop and deploy to the point that we can abandon burning coal and oil for energy. The reality may be that worldwide, that may never happen. Hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear are generally out of the reach of third world nations from both fiscal and technology standpoints.

Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso posted an article at CO2 Science that analyzed a recent paper by Goncalves da Silva, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the State University of Campinas (Brazil). They conclude that the good professor sees the flaws in the free energy model:

So what does the professor finally conclude? He finds that “the new technology may actually be an energy sink, instead of an energy source, relative to the global total primary energy supply for many years or decades, depending on its intrinsic energy costs and deployment path, even though stated aims for its gross energy output are achieved [italics added].” Consequently, he says that “to achieve terawatts output from renewable sources, in order to displace massive quantities of fossil energies, will be a slow process, extending over many decades,” and that we should “not place undue hope in new energy technologies to save the world from fossil energies until well after many decades of deployment.” Or, we would add, if ever!

Emphasis mine. The entire post is here.