On 1 Jul 2001, at 9:49, J. van Baardwijk wrote:
Ok..I'm Eco-Realist, not Loonie Green..I'm not a treehugger - I
believe in our slogan - "Today's technologies, today's soloutions". I
don't believe in some mythic tech in the future will save us, and I
don't believe in resenting problems without soloutions...
> > > just don't like the irreversable damage we are doing to certain
> > > species in the process of destroying ourselves.
> > >
> >
> >I cannot see any factual basis for this statement. How are we
> >destroying ourselves? Humans are better off today than at any time in
> >history.
>
> I think I have some idea of what Michael means (Michael, feel free to
> correct me!).
>
> We use Earth's natural resources like there's no tomorrow. We pollute
> air, soil and water, we cause global warming, we destroy the
> rainforests, and cause species after species to go extinct because of
> all this. Yes, we humans are doing better than ever, but sooner or
> later our abuse of the planet is going to catch up with us. And then
> there will be hell to pay... :(
Right. We have some ever-worse "natural" disasters. And changing
climate patterns could easily kill millions, if rains fail for good in
large portions of the world. And that's just one side effect.
> >The electricity use of the US in 2000 was 3.8 trillion
> >kilowatt-hours. If I can do my math right, 44 billion of these
> >panels would re required at a cost of about 22 trillion dollars. If
> >we were to do this in 10 years, it would require more than the entire
> >federal budget each year.
> >
> >Not only that, but the footprint would be enormous. Each panel has a
> >footprint of about .63 meters squared. 44 billion would have a
> >footprint of about 30 billion square meters or 30,000 square km.
>
> A footprint of .63 meters squared isn't that much: you can fit several
> of those panels on the roof of your house. Admittedly, that solution
> is not going to work in areas with a lot of high-rise buildings, but
> to provide those areas with solar power, you could set up large fields
> of solar panels in uninhabited areas. IIRC, Arizona is mostly desert
> -- might as well make use of it.
Solar power, while it has its uses, isn't that viable on a large scale.
Firstly, making solar pannels uses a lot of highly toxic
chemicals..it costs a lot to clean them up, and some of the makers
don't even try. Equally, energy efficientcy is low.
More viable, for hot countries, is simply using sun to heat water
during the day, using far simpler, less expensive and less polluting
pannels (basically, water is circulated in pipes back and forth
across a black surface, and it picks up a considerable temperature!)
> Your remark about "the entire federal budget" indicates that you
> expect the government to pay for it. But why not let people themselves
> pay for a solar power installation in their house?
Unfortunately, solar pannels are expensive enough that it takes 2-3
DECADES for them to pay back, except in the sunniest countries.
So that's a problem...what IS the power soloution? Well, it's the
soloution ppl ain't gonna want to hear. Nuclear Power. Simple as
that...statistically, INCLUDING CHENOBLE, Nuclear Power is the
saftest form of power production today.
The main "pollutant" from Nuclear Power stations is hot water, hey
don't pump dioxins and fine particles like coal-fired stations do, for
example. And cleanup..well. Once we get (hopefully soon!)
reuseable spaceplanes, the worst 0.1% (the fraction which will last
tens of thousands of years) of the reactor waste can he hauled into
orbit and fired into the sun.
In addition, we have enough Uranium to power us for literally
*thousands* of years, just from what we have identified NOW. A far
cry from the decades and centuried for other fossil fuels. Gives us
a much longer time to work with.
Andy
Dawn Falcon
