energy alternatives

On Jan 18, 3:40 pm, International_Harves...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(*** Harper) wrote:
        There are side effects to burning anything to make power,
whether we are burning a mountain to make electricity or a retired
dinosaur to heat our houses.

Precisely my point. That is why it is ignorant to be
burning anything.


        There are several facts that we need remember:
-----------------
* People have increased the amount of energy they use to live every
year since the year 1. (In year 0, the energy required was quite high
but I think most of it came with a bang.)

Cutting back individual consumption cannot be done
by individuals thru simply changing their habits, beyond
say....10%. To reduce individual consumption the devices
and systems we are dependant on have to draw from
new and inventive technologies.


* There are more people this year than last.

Humanity both as a society, and most people personally
do not grasp the ramifications of exponentiality.

* Oil is arguably more important as a base for everything from
medicine to plastics than as a fuel.

I don't have a problem with that as long you don't
drive your tanker into rocks while drinking scotch.
Gives a whole new meaning to scotch on the rocks.

* We are running out of oil faster than we are running out of coal.

Lol! No we aren't. There is more oil left in the world than
mankind can use. We debunked that urban legend shortly
after the Carter administration. The only shortage is caused
from our ability to retrieve it at an acceptable price. It does
however make for good copy and sound bite as we bend
over and take it from Exxon on a quarterly basis.

* We have no coherent energy policy in the U.S. Or elsewhere in the
world.

Several countries have exemplary energy policies. Germany
is a world leader. Iceland is a rolemodel. Brazil is leading the
bioethanol revolution. Things are happening so fast now ***,
you have to be pretty sharp to keep up will all the cutting edge
alternatives.

* If we stop burning coal, we stop making electricity.

There are better ways. There is new technology now.

* Without electricity, you won't be able to post to this newsgroup.

I have a solar panel that gives me electron flow to
go online all I want without someone being able to
throw a switch at the home office and turn it off.

We can have no coherent energy policy as long as the players
are political sea anemones waving in whatever current passes them by.
Al Gore says no burning/digging/burying fossils (now _that_ guarantees
job security among the Washington fos^H^H^H Luddites) so they go look
for hydro. Boone Pickens says the world blows so they start climbing
towers. And so on.

Mm, sounds like a synical outlook. Heres my main point-

On the level of personal power consumption, new homes should
be required by "buildings and codes" to come installed with a
complete solar panel system.

In Switzerland, *it is the law* - and it should be here too.

There are only two cheaper sources of electrical power than
coal in the United States: hydro and nukes.

If you decentralized utilities, and let each home make
its own power, then you have many choices.

PETA is afraid of hydro
because it might drown their kittens

Large scale new industrial hydro is just as bad as
large scale anything. Personal minihydro, if you have
the resources, is superior to any power source in the
world. It is also possible to extract hydrokilowattage
from water treatment plants.

and everybody here seems to think
"nuclear" is a synonym for "bomb."

Yes, people who aren't smarter than a 5th grader.
The rest of us just don't like 500 thousand 55gal.
drums of spent uranium buried under our neighborhood,
as we await it to escape into the aquafer.

Pop test #1

Which last longer, a 55 gal drum, or the radioactive
half life of uranium?

I _like_ using electricity for power.

Lol. Kinda like saying, sex feels good.

We get centralized
generation and a technology we understand.

Centralized generation is wrong on so many
levels. Yes you understand it. But to learn the new
science and technology will be better for mankind.

Unfortunately we have just
half the infrastructure we need to transmit that power if we all start
driving electric cars.

That's just incorrect. Cars can have solar panels covering
the entire roof, and it looks like paint. When you get home
at night you plug it in. How often do you exceed 200 miles
per day? 95 % of the population doesn't. Ranges can be
extended beyond that. Electric cars is the answer for
personal transportation. Hydrogen fuel cells are the answer
for everything else.

 I _like_ using electricity for power.
In order to get there,
we need a coherent energy policy based on actual science.

Please understand me here. We're looking at 2 different things.
One is home useage, and the other is transportation.

Until then, we need to burn coal.

We shouldn't be burning anything. Our national budget should
have been directed toward alternative energy years ago, and
away from fighting proxy wars.

FTR, I do applaud affordable
efforts to clean the smokestacks of any manufacturing effort.

Cleaning smokestacks misses the point. Not using
smokestacks is the point.

If that
takes peeps with vacuum cleaners at the coal mountain, so be it. I'll
sell them reindeer insurance.

You just want to look up their skirts when they bend
over to vacuum!

Pop test #2

a. What *** of material with the dimensional area
of a football field weighs 1/500 th of a pound, and
why is this staggeringly significant in the field of
alternative energy?

b. What breakthrough process allows water to be
split at ambient tempertures and very low
voltage, and why is this staggeringly significant
in the field of alternative energy?

c. What is the significance of Chinese discoveries
regarding the long distance transmittion of water
in a vaccum?

When you know the answers to these questions, then
you will begin to see the light.

---
Mark

ps....

Pop test #3 (extra credit)

Why did Ralph Nader have to force Insurance
Companies to quit misrepresenting term life
insurance, and make them admit that they
systematically;

a. pay only 2% on the surrender value
of your whole life insurance policy
b. charge you high interest to borrow
your own money, and deduct the
loan amt. from the face value of your
whole life policy.
c. when you die, pay your beneficiary
the policy amt. and yet steal the
savings account aspect of your
policy.



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