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Cheap Seats 2017

Pittsburgh, Paris and the Possible (Part 1) - 06/07


By Rich Trzupek
  While announcing his decision to withdrawal America from participation in the silly Paris Climate Accord, President Trump noted that he “…was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”
  It was classic Trump: brassy, pithy and completely politically incorrect. Unsurprisingly, the left, Hollywood elites and the mainstream media flipped out, predicting the end of life as we know it on planet earth unless we jumped back on the Paris climate change bus.
  In response, Pittsburgh’s Democratic Mayor Bill Peduto said this: “Pittsburgh will not only heed the guidelines of the Paris Agreement — we will work to move towards 100 percent clean and renewable energy for our future, our economy, and our people.”
  I am moved to respond to Mayor Peduto proclamation. This being a rather complex issue and complex issues taking a bit of time to explain, even by as talented a complex issue explainer as yours truly, my response must necessarily be delivered in two parts given the restraints of acceptable column-lengths. That said, let us begin: the following is an open letter to Mayor Bill Peduto.
  Dear Mayor Peduto,
  I am pleased to hear that you and other like-minded mayors will be working to move towards 100 percent clean and renewable energy. I don’t think that there is anything about President Trump’s decision to withdrawal from the Paris deal that prevents you, or any public official, from working to move towards any sort of energy plan you like. 
  Indeed, I believe that one of the early drafts of the preamble to the Constitution said something about “working to move towards possibly, someday, if everything works out, maybe creating something like a more perfect Union.” As Americans, we defend the right of any citizen to work to move towards any future one can imagine.
  Satire – albeit briefly – aside, attaching one qualifier to a goal is grounds to be suspicious about the ability to actually achieve that goal. Attaching three qualifiers pretty forces one to conclude that we’re not talking so much about an achievable goal as we are talking about a fantasy. And, indeed, that is the case here, as anyone with a rudimentary understanding of physics and thermodynamics could tell you.
  I’ll explain why you won’t be running Pittsburgh on 100 percent clean energy – ever – in a bit, no matter how much work and moving towards it you put into achieving that nebulous goal. But, we should begin with the big picture: how science and technology come together.
  There is an unfortunate tendency, particularly among those not educated in one of the sciences, to believe that science can accomplish anything if just throw enough money and brains at the problem. We put a man on the moon, didn’t we? We can do anything!
  Well, no – actually we can’t. To quote Montgomery Scott: “you canna defy the laws of physics!” By way of example: as much as I might want to and as much it would undoubtedly benefit the nation, I cannot wave my arms and turn every politician in Washington into the High Plains Drifter version of Clint Eastwood.
  We put a man on the moon by understanding and following the laws of physics, not by pretending they don’t exist. When it comes to so-called “clean energy” the first two laws of thermodynamics are particularly relevant. Simply put, the first two laws of thermodynamics says that one cannot extract more energy from a system than one puts into it, nor can one extract an equal amount of energy from a system. Those of us educated in the sciences like to put those two laws in poker terms: “you can’t win”, and “you can’t break even”. (Third law, if you’re interested, is “you can’t get out of the game.”)
  Let’s start with demand. According to the Census Bureau the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) contains about 2.3 million people. According to the Energy Information Administration the average electrical demand in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, of which I am reliably informed the Pittsburgh MSA is a part, is about 1.3 kilowatt hours per capita. When we do the math, we find the Pittsburgh MSA needs about 3,000 MW of generation capacity
  Pennsylvania currently produces a little over 4.5 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. Assuming that we can apply that percentage to Pittsburgh, you are working to move towards adding renewable generation capacity to replace the remaining 95.5 percent, or a little over 2,800 MW of generation capacity with clean, renewable energy. Being a responsible fellow, I am sure you intend to do so without breaking any laws of thermodynamics, so in part 2 of this dissertation we will consider how you monumental a goal that is to work to move towards.
  E-mail: rich@examinerpublications.com
  www.threedonia.com

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