[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
FWIW: I'm NOT arguing we SHOULD build a thousand solar towers, even though I've obviously taken the side that maybe they might not be such a bad thing considering what the alternatives might be.
If we do not build thousands, they will contribute only a tiny fraction of our overall energy, and there is no point to developing them at all. It will cost billions to develop them, so we should spend that money on some other source of energy that can be scaled up to provide at least 10% or 20% of our total needs. Building a dozen towers worldwide would contribute nothing more than a few tourist attractions.
Also, have you worked out how much land area it would take? 10,000 ha for a 200 MW unit is a *lot*. Unless you happen to be in a desert, we have better uses for 10,000 ha (25,000 acres). I do not know whether the land area scales up with the size of the tower, but if it does, building 2,500 of these things would take up 25 million ha. That's 2.7% of our land area. In the U.S. all pavement in roads, highways and parking lots takes up 16 million ha, which is bad enough. You propose to more than double that! The land devoted to the tower is covered over with a "huge glass roof" or skirt and cannot be used for anything else, as far as I can tell.
See:
http://earth-policy.org/Alerts/Alert12.htm
This looks more like an environmental nightmare than benign renewable energy.
There are other sources of energy such as biomass which can only contribute a tiny fraction of our energy needs, yet which should be developed. We have a great deal of biomass pollution that we need to treat anyway, so we might as well generate energy from it and kill two birds with one stone. Miscellaneous energy sources such as cow manure, peanut shells, and the leftovers from olive oil presses will never produce even 1% of our energy, but we might as well use them because we have to dispose of them somehow.
I'm arguing what the POLITICAL and CULTURAL ramifications might be if we were to pursue this kind of a project on the same scale we pursued the Apollo project.
Beware of Apollo projects. Look what Apollo degenerated into: the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. They are abominable, obsolete white elephants. They stand in the way of real progress in space exploration.
> "If anyone hears a machine, it is too loud. If anyone is > bothered by one, it is too intrusive." >
Sometimes, Jed, you strike me as a Luddite disguised in sheep clothing.
Darn right I am a Luddite, and proud of it. The other thing I said in Chapter 21 is: ". . . machines must serve humanity; it should never be other way around." Read this:
"Considerable injury has been done to the proprietors of the improved frames. These machines were to them an advantage, inasmuch as they superseded the necessity of employing a number of workmen, who were left in consequence to starve. By the adoption of one species of frame in particular, one man performed the work of many, and the superfluous labourers were thrown out of employment. . . . The rejected workmen, in the blindness of their ignorance, instead of rejoicing at these improvements in arts so beneficial to mankind, conceived themselves to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism. In the foolishness of their hearts they imagined that the maintenance and well-doing of the industrious poor were objects of greater consequence than the enrichment of a few individuals by an improvement, in the implements of trade, which threw the workmen out of employment, and rendered the labourer unworthy of his hire."
- George Gordon, Lord Byron, describes the Luddites during the Debate on the Frame-work Bill in the House of Lords, February 27, 1812
We should not implement new technology that hurts people or throws them out of work *unless* we also take steps to help those people and give them new livelihoods.
- Jed
