Re: Al Gore and Winston Churchill. No, really.

Con Reeder <constance@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:slrnh5urh7.hds.constance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx:


No - there is ONE, unsolved, challenge.

How to get the American people/government to pony up the necessary
money to make the grid what it should be. Once that is done most of
the issues with large scale wind or massive multi site solar fade
away.

I can't speak to that. I don't know enough about the issues. I do know
we are nowhere close and won't be any time soon.

We can be there as soon as we want to be. This problem is significantly
less expensive and complicated than building the first nuclear bomb, and
we did that in a few short years.

I might agree we WON'T. I don't agree we CAN'T.


I don't know - I see it in the same way I saw Kennedy saying "I
believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal,
before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning
him safely to earth"

I disagree. Doing something once at a huge cost with no need for
payback is one thing.

....but there was a HUGE payback for the space program. A huge, and
continuing to this day, payback.

We have LOTS of big areas where we can conserve. We are profligate
wasters of power in basically every area of life.

No one thing is anywhere near as big a chunk as transport. It directly
consumes 60% of the oil used in the US, and even more if you count
non- truck freight and pavement use.

Yes, but we use a lot more energy than just oil. In fact, oil constitutes
only a small portion of our energy usage. I'm talking about overall
energy usage.


Cars consume 40% of all oil on their own. At a very poor efficiency
level due to the composition of the fleet.

No, at a very poor efficiency due to the nature of the internal
combustion engine. There is really no such thing as an efficient car.

If the fleet changes ever
17 years, in 17 years we could have a significant savings while still
presumably growing the population. If you combine that with changing
usage patterns and less used for transport to daily activities, it is
a huge difference.

Certainly... and the greater the percentage of those cars that aren't at
all powered by oil (or are only partially powered by oil) the better.

To some extent, of course. But it mostly reduces overall discretionary
demand while encouraging a more aggressive fleet change to efficient
personal vehicles. Since freight is tax-exempt, and it won't affect
fossil fuel for electricity, it won't significantly increase the cost
of business processes in the US. And in the meantime, we get some tax
dollars to pay off the massive deficit. (I wish.)

So we incentivize improving efficiency in the personal auto market, but
do nothing to do so in other energy markets?

I think we can do it (from a technical standpoint) today. It's just a
question of cost. At this point it isn't WORTH doing it, but it could
be done.

Work is cost. We walk a fine line in making necessary changes while
not losing our economic competitiveness. I see the US playing the role
of the world's leading innovator for some time yet. If we stifle that,
we will significantly if not fatally impact the world's ability to
deal with the necessary change.

Probably it will still get done, but if we moved to a completely
planned economy tomorrow I would say the world would be doomed.

We're merely one of the worlds innovators now - and when it comes to
energy technology, we aren't at all. We lag behind a whole bunch of
countries that stifle innovation through economic planning.

Nothing else is real close without massive government
subsidies.

And we don't have the resources.

Sure we do. Look at the budget for the Manhattan project sometime.


And I am certain that the one thing that will really encourage it is
high fossil fuel prices. If the US reduces consumption too much, it
just transfers the usage to other places which will then have a
competitive advantage.

Short term pain, long term gain.


Not really. Any innovation we manage to do while hamstringing
ourselves with incredible cost burdens will certainly be available to
the world to use as second adopters.

The transition will take large amounts of time, even if the technology
already exists. It's unavoidable.

--
Aaron
.

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