----- Original Message -----
From: "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2001 2:40 PM
Subject: Re: Europe, the US, and Environmentalism
> At 01:20 20-6-01 -0400, Gautam Mukunda wrote:
>
> >The renewable energy technologies just
> >don't exist, and I'm not sure that they ever will.
>
> Energy from renewable sources already exists, therefore the technology
> exists too. I must agree though that the current state of technology
> doesn't make widespread use of renewable energy possible. It will still
> require a lot of money and a lot of research before that will happen.
>
And, the techniques for doing it in a cost effective manner will probably
not be strongly connected with the techniques to do so in an expensive
manner.
> Here's a thought: instead of wasting zillions of dollars on some missile
> shield, let's spend that money on research into renewable energy.
I've been skeptical of the claims of feasibility for both systems. I'm
curious as to what your position is. Is it that renewable energy production
is more practical than a missile shield, or that a missile shield is a bad
idea? If the former, could you discuss your technical analysis of both to
show why you consider economical renewable energy more likely to be feasible
than an effective missile shield. If it is the latter, could you explain
why you don't think protecting the United States, Europe, Japan, Australia
from a potential threat from North Korea or Iran is worthwhile.
Dan M.
>Now *that* should give things a boost... :)
>
>
Not as much as you might think. When there appears to be a technological
dead end, the solution has not usually been to simply hammer harder and
harder against the brick wall. Instead, one keeps one's eyes open when
investigating a number of areas that don't appear to be related.
One of the ways to see this is looking back on past predictions of the
future. Few of them included the actual technology that made the
breakthroughs. It is like scheduling serendipity. :-)
The practical thing to do in both areas, IMHO, is to fund basic research in
the general vicinity of what is wanted. Solid state physics, mesoscopic
physics, laser physics all come to mind here.
Now, you may argue that research in standard technologies are funded at a
much higher level than alternative energies and that if they were just
funded, things would really get hopping.
However, I personally know what happened to produce about half of the
tremendous cost reduction in finding oil featured in "the New Old Economy"
article that was featured in Atlantic monthly and mentioned on the list a
while ago. The pure funding for this was virtually nil. The engineering
and development costs for the prototype units was under a couple of million
dollars. This contrasts with the European subsidies of 1.5 billion American
dollars (a Greenpeace number). I'm not saying the subsidies are wrong, but
that the minimal results after years of subsidies indicates that there are
technological problems that are not easily solved.
Dan M.
