On Fri, Nov 09, 2001 at 02:20:40PM -0800, Justin Keyes wrote:
> The bottom line is that we need to switch to alternative energy sources
> ASAP. This is a huge achille's heel for our country.
>
Umm, as soon as you find one, let us know. Not one existing, widely
known source of energy works as well as petroleum. Don't get me wrong--
I agree that petroleum is probably the worst way to power things. I
mean, eventually it will run out, if nothing else! But there simply
aren't feasible alternatives. Solar cars won't do it. Electric cars make
as much pollution at the power plant as gasoline cars do. One
possibility is hydrogen or methane. Problem is that there's no
infrastructure for it. And changing the existing infrastructure over
would take a couple of generations, _if_ everyone agreed that X was the
way to go. And the first time a hydrogen car blew up, there would be a
public outcry, as people forgot that gasoline cars blow up too.
And consider: what if you _did_ have cars whose "pollution" was water?
Naturally no one every stops to consider what would happen if you dumped
three times the water vapor into the atmosphere as there is now.
Wave power endangers ocean life and can only produce limited power at
seaside cities. Wind is a dismal failure. The vast wind farms in
California really produce very little power, and are only feasible in
places where there is a change from sea to land or valley to mountain
(good wind areas). Additionally, detritous on the blades severely limits
the efficiency of them (recent study on the effect of grim on wind
turbine blades). And they're a menace to birds, which create their own
kind of grime on them (ick!).
If all the tree huggers got together to do alternative energy research
rather than complaining about gasoline/coal/oil, we would have solved
this problem by now. It amazes me that tycoons the world over spend all
this philanthropic money on _name_your_disease_ or gun control, while
things like this go unfunded.
I say: GO NUCLEAR! (Just kidding-- it's probably the worst alternative
of all.)
Paul
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