New Coal and Natural Gas Power Plants in Arkansas and the South.

I was out to visit a new natural gas power plant in Tontitown Arkansas yesterday. Looked up some info, you can find articles here and here. The first deals with the Tontitown plant and the second deals with the larger SWEPCO network over Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas.

I got to see some of the plans, and you can see the substation that has already been built next to it on Google Earth here. The plant will appear in that (now enlarged) dirt area to the left of the substation. The article states that there will be two gas turbines and one combined cycle steam turbine, but on the plan, I saw a fourth unit of the same size. I believe the turbines will be GE 7FA units but I could be wrong. I am definitely sure of the 7 though. Notice the Tyson chicken farm right next to the plant.

Now I am definitely more ok with the natural gas peaking plants than I am with the coal mainline plants because of reasons listed before. And, I am much happier about a natural gas plant being a few tens of miles from my home rather than a coal one. But, that ignores the availability of wind power close enough to here to be useful. Any US wind resources map you look at will show you class 3 wind resources in two separate areas, on both sides of the River Valley. And I know there are not alot of people that live on those areas because they are mountainous (for Arkansas that is.) Additionally, there is a huge portion of Texas that contains class 3 and 4 wind, not to mention Oklahoma.

It is refreshing however to hear of more wind turbines going up in Oklahoma and Texas though. And I'll tell ya, it was very enlightening to find out how much more efficient George W. Bush's house is than Al Gore's.

WiredForStereo

I like Global Warming!!!!

Ok, that title was just to get your attention.

There exists a great debate about global warming. Who caused it, what will happen, and what's Al Gore been eating anyway?

I rented "An Inconvenient Truth" with an open mind. As a sustainable living minded person, I thought it would be a good subject to ad to my repertoire. I didn't immediately buy the thing hook line and sinker, but I thought his points were good and I believed the science. I was at the time very interested in the concept of electric cars (still am) and eliminating gunk in the air is the main benefit of that (as well as electricity being much cheaper than gasoline.)

So, I began my research into global warming. I looked at catastrophic weather changes, I looked at glacial melts all over the world, I looked at CO2 and temperature graphs.... wait, there's something interesting. It appeared to me at that time that CO2 levels seemed to follow global warming cycles, not precede them. This made sense to me. When you compost, the hotter the pile is, the faster it rots, creating more carbon dioxide in the process. When the temperature in the world gets hotter, things rot faster, on land and in the water.

Plants like carbon dioxide, it makes them grow faster, it's the fundamental building block of plants and sugars and food. In fact, many commercial greenhouses boost their CO2 levels to about 1000 ppm, four times the atmospheric level to achieve a substantial increase in production.

An additional point is that CH4 methane (found in cow farts and *gasp* natural gas) is a far greater threat as a global warming gas than is carbon dioxide. But plants don't eat methane.

I have said in the past that I don't buy the world ending alarmism that seems to pervade some circles, but I support global warming because it furthers my goals of a sustainable culture powered by locally generated renewable energy. I stand by that today in true political style, I support something I don't believe in because it helps something I do. It's not hypocritical because I openly espouse the truth and the facts in what I am doing.

Aside from global warming, pollution is a huge problem, NOx, POx, SOx, VOC's, heavy metals from mining and coal power plants and ozone depleting chemicals are all still a huge problem. These are the problems our culture needs to focus on. Carbon dioxide is barely a nuisance (and may be considered fertilizer) whilst entire forests are perishing due to acid rain (see Sweden.)

Yes the planet is warming, yes humans are partially to blame, but the planet will go on, it's we humans who need to rearrange ourselves around it, not it around us. It's a perfectly built system, it's a garden of Eden. We can live on this planet without wrecking it, but even in wrecking it, it can still recover and outlive us.

If you really want to help global warming, STOP EATING MEAT, because that's where most of it comes from.

I hope this is a well reasoned explanation, I would love some comments.
WiredForStereo