>I started out, in thinking about a posting on this, but discovered that it >might end up in a book. I will therefore only start with a couple of points >and try to expand it when I have time.
Good point. Sometimes I or others open a topic than is bigger than we imply or think about. In such cases, if I see it, I feel that I want to acknowledge the importance of the topic by responding, but it's too big and I end up feeling obligated to spend too much time too quickly. >Maybe >we are going to see an other move from the cities to rural areas. I've been thinking this, locally here in the city where I live, if we fail to see further progress on dealing with local pollution, particularly of water, and of time management (there is only so much sitting-in-one's-car-in-traffic that I think one can take). >2. The electricity production is an other ball game, because they would go >Sun/Wind/Hydro/Nuclear on both short and long term. The major problems here >are peak demands and they cannot be solved without solving some usage >problems. I agree that it will be be very exciting to see progress on "production by saving". But there is another issue you allude to which is peak demand production, and interestingly, around here, this involves diesel. This was much-discussed in last year's energy crisis, that some diesel generators had to be used sometimes, as a last-ditch sort of thing. Just a point, off-topic. >3. Heating should go Bio Fuels and or Bio Mass. Cooling can also do that, >but we should start to talk about drying instead of cooling, the human body >will take care of the cooling, if the air is dry enough. To change the >usage are several massive tasks and takes a long time, we have some >experiences of this. Passive solar power will also play an important part. Your points make sense. One of the reasons I ask about biodiesel use for at-home or local distributed energy electricity or other immediately-useable energy production is that if one has it ready-at-hand for transportation, I suppose it could also serve well for other household and local energy needs, such as electricity production, cooking, heating, cooling, drying, etc. The fact that it's ready-at-hand being a contributor to an argument in its favor, with other arguments against it such as the fact that it's more dear for transportation, and other things can be used for those other energy requirements. >4. Developing countries have a chance here, if they realize that copying >the models and habits of the developed countries only will bring them in >trouble. They have the advantage of starting on a clean piece of paper and >have much more to loose than gain in accepting the influence from global >corporations and developed countries, which by the way is a threat of US >interests. Although I've been a somewhat-uncaring pied-piper cheerleader for bringing US style stock-market investing to worldwide alternative energy interests, I am going to have to modify or change that because I do not think this is always beneficial to the parties involved. Bringing stock-market-mania to the latest car invention or energy inventor or community is not necessarily the only way or the best way to get a community more set up with improved and cleaner and more convenient energy usage and access. >5. Efficient energy usage is key for the future, we cannot continue to use >energy and just wasting more than 50% for nothing more than stupidities. It >is much more to gain on efficient usage than improvements of efficiency in >energy production. The problem here is that we measure our economic >successes (GNP) in how much we waste, not how efficient we use energy. It >sounds stupid, but who said that humans were smart? I think that *in part* our profligate wasteful attitude toward energy could be somewhat helped by and when it becomes more financially dear. For example, here in San Diego, while the energy crisis was painful, we did get much more conscious about conservation very quickly when our prices came up, and we made some progress. Not enough, to be sure. We were set in our ways and one doesn't change an already-industrialized set-in-its-ways community so easily. But there was some evidence that a pricing and supply crisis would result in some needed conservation. Sort of going too far off-topic, but it was very interesting to see energy-saving light-bulbs, including the expensive supposedly long-lasting kinds, fly off the shelves over the last couple of years when all our lives we'd been told that they either were an urban myth or that they were too expensive and we'd never buy them. Several times I ran into them being partly sold out until stores got used to the idea that we now completely demand them. That said, I do not mean to imply that such a market mechanism can be the only way to arrive at the conservation improvements you suggest. But it has always struck me, all my life, that folks do not think in terms of the economics of energy.... of the profits to be made just in one's household or business! How could a restauraunt throw away its grease, for example, and *pay* for it to be taken away, and cause a problem for a waste operator, for example, instead of turning a negative into a positive, seeing its potential value either for on-site energy generation or to sell to an enterprising local business? How could they do that? One problem we've head I think in the US for a very long time has been the attitude that getting any sort of energy out of waste involves flirting with a dangerous possible toxicity problem.... i.e., anything close to "incineration" will be bad for the community. We need to get over this. Waste/energy... two intertwined technologies in-need-of-addressing political-economic research and science research and implementation. >6. It is so many "ready to use" technologies in the energy sector and we >should concentrate on them. The current research of new technologies is >getting too much attention and we are not "seeing the forest because of all >the trees". Yup. Perhaps a different example than you had in mind, but President Bush has once or twice gone on record as saying something like (looking around for the quote): "I hope some day that these renewables will be the dominant source of energy in America," the president said. "I'm not sure how realistic that is." -- President Bush May 19, 2001 This "needs more work" attitude was reflected, just as an example, in his proposals for ANWR Oil drilling which included something like $30 Billion in tax breaks for the drillers and one or two billion (I don't remember the exact figures) much of it for *research* into alternative energies (as though they're not read to make any sort of real contribution). This slap in the face has not been corrected to my knowledge. He's still trying to portray a-e as being unworthy of making a solid big contribution right now (not to mention seemingly opposing even discussion of the importance of conservation). >HOW IS THIS FOR A STARTER? Superb. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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