I think nuclear energy is an ok way to go for now. You forgot natural
gas... propane. That's a perfectly viable alternative that is better
for the environment as well; also, we can create it artificially;
also, there is at least as much of it available as there is petroleum.
In the mean time, work on a way to safely use plutonium and/or
economically use fusion. Infrastructure is not really a big deal....
people are just scared of change.
--Justin K.
--- Paul M Foster <paulf@quillandmouse.com> wrote:
> 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
=====
/"\ ........................................................
\ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign | Justin Keyes
X - NO HTML/RTF in e-mail | m9u35@yahoo.com
/ \ - NO Word docs in e-mail | . .
\ /
,~~~~~~~~ O
(__________)
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Find a job, post your resume.
http://careers.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 20:02:31 EDT