OrionWorks wrote:
It's obvious that Kunstler's perception of the reality of the situation,
while possible, is fortunately not shared by you nor by me.
Fortunately, there are enough unrealistic dreamers in the world willing to
abandon sensible perceptions of the reality of the situation.
Indeed. I expect all readers here are technological optimists. I was not
suggesting that Steve agreed with Kunstler! But I still take issue with the
statement that Kunstler is "realistic." How "realistic" is it to ignore the
fact that the US has thousands of square miles of desert, and it would take
only a small fraction of that to produce all the energy we now use?
Other reviews of the book say it predicts Las Vegas will be abandoned
because it uses so much electricity. Las Vegas is sitting in the middle of
an ocean of solar energy, for crying out loud! Suppose you built a
solar-energy industrial complex built next door to Los Vegas, on roughly
the same scale as that city. That is to say, you use the same amount of
materials, at about the same cost, but you cover a somewhat larger area.
Not only could this complex supply all of electricity and automotive fuel
in Las Vegas, it could supply all the fuel used everywhere on planet Earth.
This is obvious. Look at a map; do the numbers. This is not an "unrealistic
dream," it is a simple, straightforward cost benefit analysis.
The 25 kW solar gadgets cost $400,000 each nowadays, but anyone can see
that in large quantities they would cost maybe $50,000, or $2,000/kW of
capacity. That's quite reasonable and far cheaper than conventional fission
reactors. In humongous quantities -- manufactured in the millions -- the
cost would probably fall to about $6,000 each, or $500/kW, which is dirt
cheap. Again, this is not an unrealistic dream. It is the logic of mass
production, something that Henry Ford proved back in 1908. Anyone can also
see that it would take reasonable, do-able amounts of steel, concrete and
desert land to manufacture and install millions of these things. Each
gadget obviously weighs roughly as much as automobile. We manufacture 17
million automobiles per year; and we have 150 million of them in service at
any given time. The solar gadgets last longer and we could maintain a
"fleet" of 30 million of them without much trouble. That would supply 1.2
kW per U.S. citizen during the daytime, which is approximately enough to
sustain a typical lifestyle after you take into account inefficiencies from
hydrogen, and improved efficiencies from better lighting and plug-in
hybrids, and so on.
This would not be an elegant or cheap solution. It would require hydrogen
pipelines and a lot of other new expensive infrastructure.
So the question boils down to this: Can we afford to build another Las
Vegas if that is what we must do to avoid worldwide energy shortages? Of
course we can!
We have not done this heretofore because oil has been so cheap. It is cheap
because it is subsidized unfairly, and because we do not pay directly for
the damage it causes from pollution and war. There are no technical
limitations preventing us from doing this. If we start today, within 20
years there will be no energy shortage, and virtually no pollution from
energy. On the other hand, gasoline will cost $8 per gallon, whereas with
cold fusion it would cost $0.00000001 per gallon.
Of course there is no need to actually make 30 million 25 kW solar gadgets.
I would recommend a mix of . . . maybe ~10 million solar gadgets, ~3
million large scale wind turbines, and 200 new fission reactors in places
that are far from deserts or windy areas. That would supply all the energy
we need including liquid fuel, plus it would generate a tremendous amount
of income from selling excess fuel to Japan and other countries, and it
would eliminate the need for coal.
- Jed
- Re: "The Long Emergency" (book) Jed Rothwell
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