Renewable Energy

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Solar PV is EXTREMELY reliable. EXTREMELY. The first modern PV cell manufactured at Bell labs in 1954 still works. New modules are warrantied for 25 years and will work for much longer. They require little or no maintenance.

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I did not mean mechanically reliable. I mean that the sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

[fraserbrown]

My view is going to be slanted since both my parents work for oil and gas and I will be soon as well, but it will be a hell of a long time before we eliminate fossil fuels from usage in out daily lives and we will most likely be using petroleum byproducts for many, many decades. A challenge for the board; Plan a day of activities that does not use oil and gas or any of their byproducts. Gogogogo.

[mbillie1]

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Plan a day of activities that does not use oil and gas or any of their byproducts. Gogogogo.

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get totally naked and eat a bunch of peyote and run fking wild in the desert, ship it

[coyote]

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just watched something on the history channel where scientists projected that we will see huge effects in about 100 yrs. if the current trend keeps on going, Im pretty sure that was without even considering population explosion and large countries like China becoming more industrially dominant (ie. using a lot more fossils fuels(

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I feel pretty confident in stating that the scientists most certainly factored in population growth and increasing fuel demands in their projections. You think they just sat down on a Saturday afternoon over a few beers and divided the current fuel usage by the estimated remaining fuel to arrive at the figures? Hooray! Nobel Prize here we come!!

[mbillie1]

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just watched something on the history channel where scientists projected that we will see huge effects in about 100 yrs. if the current trend keeps on going, Im pretty sure that was without even considering population explosion and large countries like China becoming more industrially dominant (ie. using a lot more fossils fuels(

[/ QUOTE ]

I feel pretty confident in stating that the scientists most certainly factored in population growth and increasing fuel demands in their projections. You think they just sat down on a Saturday afternoon over a few beers and divided the current fuel usage by the estimated remaining fuel to arrive at the figures? Hooray! Nobel Prize here we come!!

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lol i'm gonna agree with you here as well

[fraserbrown]

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Plan a day of activities that does not use oil and gas or any of their byproducts. Gogogogo.

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get totally naked and eat a bunch of peyote and run fking wild in the desert, ship it

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Ya this is the only real answer, I had fun trainwrecking a discussion in an Environmental Sciences class with this example

[Quanah Parker]

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Why do we need to save energy?

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Valid point. We don't.
Population control is the answer.
But that would be bad for the economy and the religious nuts would get in a tizzy.

[dukemagic]

in a class i'm taking this quarter, the professor went through the calculations to show that ALL of america's transportation system (cars/trucks/motorcycles/semi's/planes/etc) could be powered by 120,000 windmills.

the problem is that these windmills would have blade diameters of 90 meters, and so the amount of land necessary to build these 120,000 windmills was something like 1/4 of nevada. but the professor was saying that there is a lot of off-shore sites that are viable (have high average wind velocities, etc) that could certainly hold a large number of windmills (on the scale of tens of thousands).

i don't know how accurate his calculations were, but it made sense at the time. an interesting thought, for sure. it would just take a lot of start up capital and a lot of land and/or offshore sites to make this happen. but geez, imagine powering all of america's vehicles through 100,000 windmills. crazy.

[wadea]

I watched the same History Channel episode last night. I share the OP's views, for the most part and I take small measures to reduce my energy consumption.

There's one scene in the show that really gets me rolling, though. It's when they're talking about a 20 foot sea level rise (or however high) and how it would submerge big parts of big cities. They have CG video of a twenty foot tidal wave washing over the city - as though the sea level would instantaneously rise 20 feet instead of a tenth of an inch per year. I'm pretty sure that the actual rate of rise will give even the ants ample time to head for higher ground.

A more likely scenario is that levees will be built around the cities to hold the water back. This is not ideal (see New Orleans) but has been shown historically to work (see Holland).

I'd also like to say that I agree that it will be difficult to convince most people non-economically to take measures to combat energy consumption. What we really need is for our elected officials to just take a stand against popular opinion (which is unlikely to happen) and mandate changes. Not to further politicize this - and I haven't worked out the numbers at all - but I would guess that we could save even some of the money we spend on our Middle East affairs and use it to build those solar and wind farms, then our economic interest in the Middle East becomes similar to our economic interest in Africa. Further, with us out of their hair, Middle Eastern countries may be less likely to want to hurt us. AND, with us NOT buying their oil, they would have less resources to mount a threat against us should they want to.

So basically, I haven't thought it through farther that what I've just written, but perhaps energy independence by renewable means could solve more of America's problems than just global warming.

[fraserbrown]

^^Im pretty sure middle eastern countries have more concerns with the US than just the pruchase of oil. LOL at the theory of introducing renewable sources of energy will combat terrorism