More than three decades ago, some modern people I knew tried to replace fossil fuels with alternate sources of energy. Later, in the latter 1970s, under a Democratic president, the U. S. government increased funding dramatically for such research. Moreover, in hopes prices would come down with increasing scale, it provided subsidies for installations that used alternate sources of energy, such as solar hot water heaters.
At that time I thought that by 1995 or so, the U. S. would have stopped needing fossil fuels. I was wrong. I do not know the reason why. Perhaps this was because of a true "cannot do" situation, or perhaps because too high a discount rate discouraged work by private organizations, or perhaps because the 1980s U. S. Republican government cut funding for alternate sources of energy. Regardless how conservative you think its leaders are, the U. S. Democratic party has been and still is willing to fund research in and subsidize installations for alternative sources of energy. But primarily such funding would go only to sources with low energy densities, such as those from sun, wind, geothermal, wave, ocean temperature difference, and ocean currents. (As I point out in `http://www.rattlesnake.com/notions/energy-alternate-essence.html', these sources use the traditional `elements' of Fire, Air, Earth, and Water. Incidentally, it is very hard seeing these source as generating round-the-clock energy as cheaply as fossil fuels. As far as I can see, only if good batteries become available that are cheaper than pumped storage lakes -- perhaps super-capacitors or non-ancient-times, artifically created solid or liquid fuels -- could diffuse and intermittent energy sources may become reasonably inexpensive.) Although some U. S. Democrats have suggested it, few favor uranium or thorium fission or as-yet-uninvented hydrogen or hydrogen-boron fusion plants. (You might consider these nuclear reactors as applying Aristotle's fifth element, "quintessence".) This disfavor is likely because of the fear of accident, the fear of long term hazardous waste (even thorium reactor waste, at one-tenth the time for uranium, require thousands of years of safe storage), the fear of neutron diversion into bomb making, and the fear that a U. S. administration will use such plants to create steam and hydrogen to convert coal, coal shales, and oil tars to gasoline. (A side question: could someone tell us whether hydrogen bombs can direct most of their explosive energy in one direction like shaped chemical explosives? If such explosives exist for hydrogen bomb designs, then we may be able to afford artificial, multi-kilometer wells for geothermal electric plants. If the bombs were detonated deeply underground, none of their radiation would escape to the surface. As far as I can see, it would be better for everyone, including Americans and Europeans, if, for example, the Chinese government used several its hydrogen bombs for this purpose rather than burned coal.) -- Robert J. Chassell [EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8 http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
