I don't mean to be arguing with you Frank. We want the same thing; I'm just a lot more pessimistic than you.
My wife and I have met with contractors in three separate years over the last 15 or so to try to install solar on our roof, which has a large southern exposure, but it just isn't practical. I tried to help a friend who wanted to instal a windmill generator on his quite rural homesite, but the legal and technical problems are insurmountable. As I said, I have supported our local government in getting solar panels on the roof of almost every public building in the county, but while the savings are there, the total impact on electric usage is minimal. I have learned a lot about solar and geothermal energy in Hawaii. They have spent a lot of time, money and ingenuity developing alternate energy sources there, because of the high cost of imported fossil fuels. They have taken some brave steps forward, but still alternate sources form a small part of the total energy diet. Here are some of my images of the wind farm on Maui: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=15039215 http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=15039214 And here is some information on what they are doing and what they plan to do: http://www.firstwind.com/projects/kaheawa-wind http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/560610.html http://www.hawaiisenergyfuture.com/articles/Wind_Energy.html Also on my trips to Maui, I have spoken to many visitors from Western Canada. Their economy is far stronger than that of the US, because of the booming oil industry. As a result, a lot of real estate in Maui has been acquired by Canadians over the past decades, and the trend continues. (Of course, temperatures of 30 below for much of the winter also play a part in that process. <G>) Of course we need to continue to develop alternate energy sources. The magnitude of the problem is greatly underestimated, however, by many activists, and it will be a long time before we can replace nuclear, natural gas and oil as the basis of our economic life. Dan Matyola http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola On Sun, Aug 12, 2012 at 10:24 PM, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not going to continue arguing Dan. I doubt very much that I'm going to > change your mind on this issue and I know that you won't change mine. > > As a parting shot however, let me just say that if everyone lived by your > last sentence we would never have progress. > > We would just keep on going with what we have, never develop new technologies > and when we hit peak oil, what then? I doubt it's going to happen when the > alarmists say it will, but we know the amount of oil in the earth is finite > and some day production will decline. > > If we don't start developing new and economically viable technologies now > we're (not to put too fine a point on it) fucked. > > As for nuclear power, sure it's cheap and kind of clean (okay, temperatures > in the waterways they need to be situated on go up by a degree or two: what's > the big deal with algae explosions that choke a few thousand fish?). No, the > biggest problem is those pesky catastrophic meltdowns. Sure they don't happen > often but when they do... > > I don't have to tell you that the area around Chernobyl is still devastated > by what happened over 25 years ago. And as we saw last year in Fukushimu > (sp?) Japan they can still happen. > > So sure, the two main choices are fossil fuel or nuclear. But we need to be > developing alternative technologies for a couple of reasons: Those two old > technologies will eventually need to be replaced, and until then anything to > relieve stress on the grid will help prevent brownouts, blackouts and the > type of domino effects like the one in eastern North America in 2003 and what > we've seen in India this summer. > > Even if wind and solar can provide 10% of our electricity right now (an > easily attainable goal) we would be much better off imho. > > Cheers, > frank > > "What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof." -- > Christopher Hitchens > > <snip> > Unfortunately, it's fossil fuels or nukes. Name your poison. > > Dan Matyola > http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
