The only real energy solution
2:54 PM
Dual-posted on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=440932770750
Again, I refuse to speculate on anything involving the recent oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico. It's a mixture of bad business practices with bad political leadership. Yes, the two sides are in bed with each other, but what isn't nowadays? Stop looking deep into it and finding things that aren't really there. That's all this situation is.
Oh, and it's not an excuse to start imposing carbon taxes (which BP will BENEFIT from because they're involved in the carbon trade). Don't jump in favor of "alternative" energy because... well... you'll see.
Here are some common energy sources and the basic ideas within them.
It's available as needed, but the environmental costs make it prohibitive in many cases. But it's a catch-22 because there is so much coal available, and shutting down the economy is destructive. Clean coal technology can minimize pollution. Unfortunately, almost all of clean coal technology is devoted ONLY to carbon capture while doing nothing to reduce the real, legitimate threats to the environment.
Oil is cleaner and more effective than coal, but the environmental problems are probably equal due to accidents that can happen. Peak oil is mostly bullshit because there is still a lot more oil in certain areas of the world where you can't dig it out. For example, the California coast. The best way to get this (which is safer to reach than the oil in the Gulf of Mexico) is by lifting the bans on offshore drilling, which you can't do or else Greenpeace will dump all of the oil on the west coast to prove their point. There is SOME clean oil technology just like clean coal, but again, it's being used to capture carbon and not really clean up the smog.
3. Gas
Gas is cleaner than oil, but is much more expensive. The amount of environmental damage is also, comparatively, very low. Remember the combustion reactions in Chemistry classes? Yeah. And gas is about as clean as you can get from a traditional fuel source. The biggest worries are that you need a pipeline to constantly support the plant, and even the slightest accident could cause an explosion. You can also get this gas from both farms and landfills, which is a way of recycling energy and making things more efficient.
4. Hydroelectric
-Really hard to build
-Doesn't generate much power
-Disrupts too many ecosystems
-Not enough rivers to build on
5. Geothermal
It's overall a really good power source, but how many people live in places like Iceland? Almost none. The only threat is a volcanic eruption, and that alone can stop a lot of people from living anywhere near these power plants.
6. Biofuel
This is the biggest bullshit I ever heard of. If you spend a lot of time in a supermarket, you've probably noticed that food prices have more than doubled in the past few years. Why is that? The conventional idea is that global warming is causing droughts, which is reducing crop yields. That's why they want us to replace the edible crops on farms with more biofuels. But wait! Didn't food prices go up in the first place because of biofuels? And now they want the farmers to replace the food they grow with MORE biofuels? Won't that raise the food prices even more? Won't that make people in third world countries starve to death?
The environmental laws say that biofuels are carbon-neutral. Why? Because it's the law, that's why! Well, these biofuels are usually horribly inefficient and they do more damage than they benefit. A farmer will grow only ONE crop (corn or soy) all the time instead of the crop rotation and mixed farming they learned about, because farming regulations are prohibitive and there's a lot of money to be made selling biofuels. This will ruin the soil in the farmland and all surrounding areas. Then the biofuel will have to be processed, which will probably use energy from coal or oil-powered engines or power plants. Then that has to be transported to a new location, in an oil-powered truck. Then it will be stored somewhere where the storage facility is maintained by fossil fuel-powered power plants. Then it will be burned at an efficiency rate LOWER than fossil fuels! In every step of the way from growing crops to using the fuel, people will need to be heavily subsidized by the government because otherwise, it would take more energy to grow, process, and ship the fuel than you would receive from actually using it. Carbon-neutral my ass.
"But if we don't keep up this nonsense, too many people will lose their job!" ~ John Maynard Keynes
7. Solar
The technology is behind many other power sources by several decades. Also, it's really hard to get enough solar power unless you live in a tropical arid place. It's also overly subsidized so it uses up more energy than it gives you back.
8. Wind
There are two kinds of places where wind power is a viable option. One is TORNADO ALLEY. The other is coastal regions. You can't put them in coastal areas because Greenpeace will destroy them. Many people say that the wind mills pose a significant threat to migratory birds, but the ones who get killed are the weaker ones who die on migration routes anyway. And most birds will never migrate at a height of 50 metres, which is a typical height for wind mills.
9. Nuclear fission
Nuclear power is overall the cleanest, safest, and most effective electricity generation system ever designed. There have only been two disasters. Chernobyl was a horrible failure of the USSR and that thing was built sub-standard by every definition. Three Mile Island wasn't as bad as the media (AND GREENPEACE) made it out to be; the farmers near the plant got the equivalent radiation of a chest X-ray. It was handled really well, and is the kind of disaster that only happens once in a lifetime. The containers that nuclear waste is stored in are indestructible, and science is progressing so rapidly that people will find ways of using the waste in only a few decades. The terrorist threat is more hype than reality, because the real threat is statistically negligible compared to everything else that goes on. But if you really need a new place to dump the nuclear waste, I recommend feeding it to Greenpeace members.
10. Wave
Power from waves of moving water. It sounds like a great idea, but it hasn't been extensively studied. No one wants to attempt it because the initial costs are astronomical and no one knows what the returns will be. We're better off only studying it for a while.
Okay, so fossil fuels are destroying the environment, most of the "clean" energy sources cost more than they benefit, and Greenpeace is making everything worse. What do we do? Well, we need to get rid of Greenpeace, first of all. Then what?
Have you ever played SimCity? Remember the Microwave power plants? Believe it or not, we actually have that technology. I'm not sure why no one really talks about it, but several countries (including the United States) have space programs capable of capturing massive amounts of sunlight and beaming it back to giant Microwave satellites on Earth. You can read about it here.
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
If there's anything that will get us out of a horrible depression quickly, it's microwave power. It's also the one solution that will completely replace petroleum for electricity generation. And the power source is unlimited; you can easily send more orbiters out to space to beam to more parabolic dishes on Earth. Electric cars will go on the mass market within the next 20 years or so, and with good batteries, that eliminates the need for oil (or hybrid technology, which just doesn't work).
The technology is still in its infancy, but just like SimCity, it will be available by the year 2030. Even the Peak Oil people think we will run out of oil by then.
Before oil, people were using coal and horses. Well, the horses were pooping all over city streets and it became a serious health and environmental hazard. In a way, the automobile replacing the horse and buggy cleaned up the environment. Now, space-based solar power replacing fossil fuels will help to accomplish the same thing.
This is just another example of an impossible problem being solved by humans with relative ease. I don't pay attention to all the nasty things that people say about humanity. There are good things and bad things in all of us, and I don't think we appreciate the good things enough.
Your thoughts?