On 05/13/2011 08:20 PM, John Berry wrote:
I just don't believe that, first off we know that there is more than
enough recoverable solar energy to take care of all energy demands many
times over.
And that's just solar, yes there would need to be a big project of
installation and you would need to store the energy in the day time to use
at night but it is totally doable.
I wanted to see if I could find something that summed up how much energy
could come from these renewables but I can't find any such info, what I can
find is that renewables currently account for almost 20% of the electricity
generated.
So are you saying you think it would be extraordinarily difficult to have 5
times more wind farms? (I have never seen 1 in person) I don't think so,
5 time more solar, that would still not be much.
5 times more hydro may be a bigger challenge but it wouldn't be impossible.
5 times more Tidal power
5 times more wave power
You get the point, it would be pretty straight forward.
And many of these can be cheaper than Nuclear or easily competitive.
Really where does your belief that these are insufficient come from?
Do you really think that Nuclear makes so much more sense?
Cost-benefit reasons? I'm not an expert in renewable energies, but I
tend to think that people who is
in charge of designing and developing energy policies are not stupid.
Solar, hydro, wind, tidal and wave power all have their problems.
Solar is expensive and relatively inefficient. Some breakthroughs are
needed. Nocera's artificial leaf looks promising, or recent advances in
photovoltaics. Anyway, there seems to be a need for maturing the
technology. This is probably the best of all renewable energy sources.
Hydro is costly, environmentally damaging, and limited.
Wind has availability and continuity problems. It seems it also has
maintenance and cost-benefit issues. High altitude wind power can be an
option, but is new, has some serious technical shortcomings, and needs
to be carefully evaluated at the cost-benefit level.
Tidal and wave power both look promising, but are relatively recent.
Both will probably suffer too from maintenance and cost-benefit issues.
It's sad to say this, but oil and nuclear energy seem to be the best
options for energy generation.
I clearly prefer to move to nuclear in the short term, instead of
sticking with oil.
One of the consequences of the nuclear accident in Japan will be that
better and safer nuclear plants will be designed and built. They will
also be costly, of course.
On the other side, other consequence will be that more money and effort
will be put into renewables, and that's very good.
Would your view be different in you lived in Japan?
Would yours if you lived in Iraq?
Listen, I don't want to polemize, but faced with the alternative between
oil and nuclear, I choose nuclear. Better and safer nuclear power, that
looks like the best option for me at the moment.
More research and investigation into renewables and into alternative or
future sources like cold fusion is clearly a good idea, of course.
