Chemical Engineer <cheme...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am an engineer and I like new technology as do many. > Of course! But if you had to choose between a tried and true old method that works as well as a new one, I'll bet you would go with the old one. It is a safer choice. It is often a wistful choice . . . > The entire CSP market in California has been created from State > Legislation, Federal grants, loans and subsidies. > My point exactly! And in May 1844, the entire telegraph market was created by fiat by Congress, which paid way to much to adventurous young Turks such as Ezra Cornell so they could waste money learning many different wrong ways of laying a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington DC. A big fat waste of the taxpayers' money it was -- everyone said so. That is also what many people said about the government's subsidies for steamships, and railroads, and canals before that, and later sewers and other public health measures, public schools, land grant universities, the NIS, the Panama Canal, air transport (heavily subsidized from 1914 to the 1930s) and countless other technologies. > The market will dry up when those options go away again with changing > adminstrations just as it did 25+ years ago. > Or not. The market for steamships, railroads, air transportation, computers, integrated circuits and the Internet did not dry up after the government privatized these things and let corporations reap the benefits. These things always start out as a technology that could not survive without government support. There are THOUSANDS of examples, big and small. Of course there are failures, such as ethanol. But they are far outnumbered by the successes. There is no technical reason why CSP cannot become competitive with other technologies, especially if you factor in the cost in lives, health, and global warming from the alternatives such as coal and natural gas from fracking. Of course it is not competitive now. If I had a cold fusion generator right now, you can be darn sure it would be hundreds or perhaps thousands of times more expensive per watt than any alternative. The first 100,000 cold fusion power reactors will be far more expensive than any other kind. The first computers cost way more than mechanical calculating machines. Some of the first transistors cost $17 and they replaced vacuum tubes costing a nickel each. That comparison misses the point. It was obvious that transistors would soon get cheaper. Granted, not many people realized they would someday cost a millionth of of a penny, but it was clear there was "plenty of room at the bottom" (Feynman). - Jed
