There is enough solar energy hitting the Earth on any given day to power the entire planet and then some.
This article crunches some numbers: http://ecoworld.com/blog/2006/06/14/how-much-solar-energy-hits-earth/ "the solar energy hitting the earth exceeds the total energy consumed by humanity by a factor of over 20,000 times" If we can harness just a tiny fraction of that energy, we'll be good for another few millennia. We, as a species, will figure this out. We have to. Ethan -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Simon St.Laurent Sent: Friday, August 01, 2008 11:09 AM To: Sustainable Tompkins County listserv Subject: Re: [SustainableTompkins] Major discovery from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution Andy Goodell wrote: > It's certainly another feel-good article talking about another form of > alternative energy. Without any numbers or hard data though, it has no > value other than to make MIT sound green, and raise our hopes that > technology will save us. > > The article says they hope within 10 years this could power our > houses. In 10 years we may be wishing we could power our houses on > anything really. I hope in 10 years we won't need to power our houses. It's also about energy storage rather than energy generation. While there's promise here, it promises only to solve one part of the family of issues around energy infrastructure. I worry about the raising of hopes as well, though at least this sounds helpful. Simon St.Laurent http://simonstl.com/ _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
