I have installed a wood burning furnace in my backyard so this winter I ought to be able to heat my entire house using that. I'm not a fan of windmills at all but I think solar makes sense if you live in an area that gets enough sunlight and geothermal is downright cool. As I'm sure everyone can guess, I am largely skeptical of and oppose government attempts to impose renewable energy. Eventually, renewable energy will make economic sense in most cases and will become common at that time.

 

Right now the technology has a lot of inefficiencies that make it prohibitively expensive for most people and impractical as a replacement for fossil fuels. Eventually the science types will find ways to make it more realistic. I don't buy into the end of the world prophecies that are pushed by the modern environmental movement so I believe we have time to let the technology develop. 

Bingo!

 

 

Well, I separate some waste, lend my laptop's "power" on behalf of BOINC computing (for The Zeitgeist Movement team) and this summer I'll go to do some volunteer work on low-energy ecologic house and wild animal shelter. I don't know if that counts as a support of renewable energy sources, though.

Some Christians might think you're on to something here. In Russian language chernobyl means wormwood. And because Chernobyl was inlands, then it might point at the recent Fukushima trouble and its fish-mutating project there. 

God's plan seems quite similar to plan of a mad scientist. Hell, I wonder why nobody made a Bond movie about a Christian mad scientist. 
Anyway, your grandma should check her mushroom encyclopedias, if there are any extra-strong psylocibes growing on the island of Patmos, which John the Evangelist seemed to enjoy a lot.

A correction - China is investing more money in all categories of renewables than the US, not just making 'more solar panels', so if you then add in the lower costs there, the disparity is even bigger. You seriously tried to minimize the significance of where China is at relative to the US.

Progress is being made all the time, in the technology as well as the investment, more so in countries where the government is seriously involved in both investing itself and in encouraging private investment. It is a synergy, not a dichotomy.

Waiting for market forces is, in many cases, such as this, a recipe for being left behind. Government has frequently been the trigger for whole new, and real, booms in the economy, while the whims of the market have led to some of the biggest bubbles.

The US's problem is partly due to the sheer size of its geography and economy, it is too easy for it to become so self-focussed it misses the significance of what is going on beyond its borders.

No, I simply don't care what China decides to spend its money on. I was just pointing out that in the case of solar panels they have a built in advantage that has led to many American solar companies to move production over there. If China becomes the world leader in green energy and American investors miss the boat, I really don't care. If you are telling me that you think renewable energy is a great investment and will make the investors rich, put money in it yourself. If you are right, you will become richer and I won't, good for you. Don't come to me using taxes to take my money to make the investment.

 

Anyone who is seriously into investing can tell you that just because everyone else is investing in something is not a sufficient justification to invest in it yourself. Only history will tell for sure which investments were good and which were bad. It wouldn't be the first time I thought to myself "Why didn't I invest in X, I would have made a killing" You invest where you want, I will invest where I want. If you are right more often than me, you will be richer than me, c'est la vie. I see no reason to get involved in a dick measuring contest between countries over investment in anything.

 

My argument here is really more of a moral one than one based on efficiency. It is theoretically possible that China will make wise investments and experience an economic boom due to green energy, while the US lags behind in that sector. Maybe China does know better than I do, maybe Al Gore knows better than I do, maybe you know better than I do. That doesn't mean I will willingly give up my freedom to invest my money where I believe is best. I would rather have the freedom to invest in losing investments and fall behind economically than to have any government deciding where to invest my money. Just like I might be making a bad decision to drink or smoke or even to not believe in god. I don't want government protecting me from my bad decisions or forcing me to make what it believes are good ones. 

 

If China (or any other government) is able to create new technologies that revolutionize the world, good for them. If any government eventually creates a micromanaged economy that is more efficient than capitalism, which I would argue has not occurred yet, but may be possible, good for them. I would rather be free in country that isn't the most powerful economy than to live in an economy where I don't have freedom. I am fortunate to live in a country where I can more or less have my cake and eat it too. 

 

Fossil fuels without a doubt are something we need to get away from

BUT

With any new technology you are still stuck with input vs output and there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine.

Whatever we come up with will require harvesting materials and energy to produce those materials. And even after that we still have to consider the waste produced by the product.

I think the bigger problem long term is population and consumption. As long as the population explodes it will require more material and the more material we produce the more material we will eventually discard.

In combination with "renewable" energy, the world needs to do a far better job of population planning. I don't think it will mean shit if we get off oil tomorrow. Pollution is pollution even if the climate does not change.

If the planet never grew a degree in the next thousand years, our exploding population will end up in a giant toilet. A clogged toilet is a clogged toilet, be it the equator or either of the polls.

We as  a species see ourselves as separate from nature, and we are not. We think falsely that we can reproduce at will and there will always be enough resources for the babies we make.

We are no different than the successful army ants that plunder everything in front of them not realizing that they have ended up in a dry river bed about to be flooded by rain.

 

 

 

 

OK, so what are the world's government doing about the matter?  From what I can see, not so much.

Kyoto exempted three of the top five producers of CO2 and allowed Europe to ignore what they agreed to.  Small wonder that we would not agree to it.

Copenhagen, from what I saw was a chance to spend the day time worrying about the matter without producing anything remotely like a useful idea and the evening having ambassadorial banquets.

In the mean time, the American billionaire Elon Musk has inked deals with several major automotive manufacturers to produce all electric power trains.  That and GE is one of, if not the largest producers of nuclear reactors in the world.  Iti has already been mentioned.

As far as China is concerned, there is an elephant in the room that no one wants to mention there.  The one child per couple policy guaranteees that their population is aging faster than any other nation on the planet.  In not too many years, they are going to have to deal with a retired workforce and too few working people to support them.

Even if they raise the retirement age to shortly before the final check out, the fact is that older people can't handle industrial work the same as young people.  And there will be way too many old people to create an administration unless they also create a crippling bureaucracy at the same time.

 

Well, you don't have to go with one technology or another to do this but what you choose depends on your local conditions.

 

>>

 

I used to know a guy on another forum who lives at the ass end of the Marianas islands, where they have a power grid but it has too much down time to depend on. What he did was to get some solar cells (probably half as many as he would need to go totally solar) and he built a windmill. He has enough car batteries under his porch to hold him over a three day blackout.

 

>>

 

I have also heard about people doing a poor man's version of geothermal. If you had to excavate, that would be pretty pricey but it would also be a one time cost. On the other hand, if you are looking at new land that need to be contoured anyway, you can set the cooling heating loop in place before you bring in the fill.

 

Basically what you are doing is putting the underground loop deep enough that the soil temperature is a consistently comfortable year round. That would be about 8 ft/2 meters where I am. Then you connect that to a heat exchanger somewhere in your house. It would not mean that you don't want some heating/cooling (if nothing else as a contingency just in case of trouble) but it could be a large offset for your ongoing bills.

 

>>

 

Another option is solar thermal. My senior year in high school, one of the class project in physics was building a solar thermal panel on the cheap.

 

What we did was to get an old refrigerator from the scrap yard, take the parts we wanted and bring the rest back. I would think the copper would be worth reclaiming but I have since spoken to a refrigerator repair man and while he get that stuff all the time, apparently not.

 

We put the former hot side loop in a plywood box painted black on the inside, used a cheap foam rubber kit for a gasket and stapled a sheet of clear acrylic over the top for the window. One of those would not produce enough heat for a whole house but as the fridge guy told me, there is a huge supply of that stuff ripe for the picking.

 

>>

 

If you put all of the options on the table, then the solution for each person is probably unique.

Ethical in what sense? In the sense of a more Pristine Earth philosophy on human consumption? Or maybe one that's done for the benefit of human welfare?

How about something that is done purely in the sense of enlightened self-preservation? Yeah... I could get behind that, easily so, but I'd have to be convinced first that it's in my best interest to do so. No, fanciful tales of disease or not-so-fanciful claims of widespread crop destruction aren't enough for that. For starters, what was the last great epidemic we Western nations have had a hard time dealing with? HIV? Spanish Influenza? H1N1 didn't turn out to be much of a problem for us in developed lands. Neither was West-Nile. No, you're going to need better evidence of a civilization-threatening pathogen -the key word being evidence and not just theories and speculations. Then there's crop destruction, and why I still don't have to care. Arable land is disappearing? Well if viable agricultural land is disappearing in places where it was once active, there's a very good chance that viable farming climates are appearing somewhere else in the globe... usually somewhere North. No one starves... or even goes hungry, if agribusiness moves fast enough.

A person usually needs lots of wood to fuel those things.

Then you and I are both in the same camp. I don't think there has been a single attempt at regulating energy by 'Mommy government' that hasn't been at least daftly executed, if not poorly thought-out and planned.

 

Again, it appears we're unintentional bedfellows when it comes to modern environmentalism. It seems that no one has (to my satisfaction) proved that it's a threat to the developed world the extent environmentalists often purport it to be. "Put up, or shut up", as it is often said.

Environmentalism is a particularly old movement -since the late 60s, I believe, and has much of it's roots in the anti-industrialistic sentiments of that very time period. "Think about what we're doing to Mother Earth!", and so forth. "Global Warming" is hardly a new word -nowadays the reigning buzzword is Climate Change, since greenhouse gases can apparently trigger colder winters.  It existed before there were computing power sufficient enough to accurately assess the risks, and shameless propaganda becoming of such a movement (often shown in many classrooms.) And as for computing, there's still a great deal of mathematical chaos that needs to be worked out of the system (or so I'm told.)

No, I don't think we're anywhere near the 'final word' on environmentalism, but I'll admit some pretty big steps have been taken toward that end.

It currently could not even meet 20% of our energy demand, according to what I've read previously on RRS. At it's current tech, Alternative Energy will not save the world from an energy crisis. As for what Alternative Energy could potentially achieve, get back to me in oh, say... 10 or 20 years when we have the actual data. If I had to make a guess, wind and solar energy will never be absorbed in sufficient amounts to supplant coal power. That's another thing, too. Most of the energy that wind turbines and solar panels would replace is coal power. Are we... importing a great deal of coal from the oily portions of the Mideast?

Finally, even at 20%, people are dieing in droves of heat exposure during the summer. A few dozen million are dead within a decade. Say goodbye to internet and videogaming on anything except car batteries. Electrical appliances with moving parts? The fridge? Nope, can't operate that on 20% either. With us washing clothes on scrubbing boards again, and our food going bad in just a few days, I don't think it's quite the option you claim it is. It's a bit like saying "we are 20% less fucked during an energy crisis if we invest in Alternative Energy."

 

Ok, but we're still the economic powerhouse of the world. For the price tag on Alternative Energy patents to be pallative, I believe it would have to supplant at least 45% of our immense electrical energy demand. Otherwise, I'm estimating it would be more profitable to mine coal out of the ground... especially with it's supply dwindling. You know what happens to a commodity's profitability when supply diminishes, correct? Yeah. It balloons.

 

I don't doubt that it is real, but it still has a few rough edges that need sanding, so to speak. Nor do I buy into the claims of environmental fanatics or the aims of Pristine Earth proponents. I dare say that I strongly suspect I've run into one or two while here.

What difference is 20% going to make with regards to either climate change, or keeping modern civilization alive? Everything we appreciate (and take for granted) now is practically in ashes. Science is at a standstill. Quality of life has taken a sharp dropoff... for everyone. Money may well be worthless in some parts of the world (no electronic banking.)

The main contribution individuals can make is in purchasing choices. Only a relatively few are going to be in a physical position to do their own thing.

The most direct contribution now might be buying photo-voltaics for domestic power. They seem to be getting into the cost realm where pay-back times are realistic, maybe with a little help from government subsidies.

Even if all the electric power used to charge an all electric vehicle is from coal-fired  plants, they are still ahead on CO₂ - see here, for example. Hybrids are a bit behind. As more power is produced from other than coal, they are definitely ahead.

Algae are still promising, both as a source for bio-fuel, that may directly replace oil, and for removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

The problem with global conferences is the fight between those who do care and the rest, and especially the Saudis and others who definitely don't want oil replaced.

I think that makes it more up to the greener nations to lead by example.

And of course private companies based on renewable/carbon-neutral products are important too.

So if China, Germany, etc can really demonstrate that getting off non-renewable carbon-based energy can be profitable, that will give the international market a chance to work to help 'the Planet'.

And yeah, AiGS, I know about the age-bump in China. It is definitely a problem, but I don't think it is going to kill the economy.

 

 

Fads of consumerism are bad? I consider the fact that we can afford to blow money on luxuries a positive, it means that the populations basic needs are being met and they have money left over. I don't think efficiency for the sake of efficiency is a good thing. We have excess labor available because it takes a rather small portion of our population to grow the food we need and build our shelter. I see no problem with using the excess labor to provide ourselves with luxuries that make life fun and more comfortable.

 

And why would you assume that if China's economy surpasses the US that we will necessarily become impoverished? China getting wealthier does not directly translate to the US becoming poorer. Economic transactions often make both parties involved wealthier, that is why we trade because it improves our lives and the life of the person we are trading with.

 

If the US becomes impoverished, it is our own fault and will be do to us running ourselves into the ground, not due to the economic success of any other country. I am the first one to point out our economy is in great danger, but I don't think it will utterly collapse. Our federal government might, our dollar might but the economy as a whole is compartmentalized enough that it will be able to recover from those blows.

 

The mistake that end of the country theorists like Glenn Beck make is that they forget the US has backup forms of government and a highly compartmentalized economy due to our decentralized government structure. If the federal level collapses, we have state and local governments which provide most of the necessities anyway (police, fire, teachers, etc.) and while our economy as a whole sucks, certain states are experiencing strong economies. North Dakota for example grew 7.1% 2009-2010 and several other states grew at a respectable 3-5%. 

BS,

about consumer 'fads', I will concede that a problem only really arises when they involve the 'consumption' of finite resources, over which there is going to increasing international competition, and possibly conflict. As more resources get into that situation, this cannot be ignored.

The other issue is just how much even the US can isolate itself from the international scene in a much more 'global' world.

To back up cj, I just heard a documentary which discussed forestry practices in the US, particularly in California, with regard to the redwoods. It appears that selective logging of a few mature trees can actually be more productive than felling many more younger ones. It seems to have been assumed that younger, obviously growing trees were adding the most wood, but this is not the case. The big trees add more actual timber per year, it just is not so visible to the naked eye.

This leads to a new approach which minimizes the impact, by leaving the understory undisturbed, just taking out a few of the oldest trees trees per year, which may actually produce as much lumber, on a more sustainable basis, than clear felling.

I can't speak for Americans, but Canadian loggers are and must be experts on the wilderness, for various reasons. Safety and job security chief amongst them.
Study after study has been commissioned and carried out to determine the least damaging and most productive methods of logging over the long term.

Is that a rhetorical question?

No, I have no doubt that these various climate conferences that occur every so many years achieves nothing in the way of progress of green laws and technology, but I have quite a few doubts as to the effectiveness of green technology in it's current state and the state it will be in for the next few decades. The only thing I see accomplishing ANY reduction of fossil fuel use, is either fusion or fission, and the potential lying namely in fusion.

This isn't The Day After Tomorrow we're talking about, + are these more rhetorical questions? Big Oil didn't reveal the outcome of their investigations because there was no gain to be had in it. I realize that now, as to where I did not previously.

Let me be a bit clearer- I'll stand behind Green tech when it can replace 60% or more of our energy needs, and if 99.99%, all the better. Only fusion can do that.

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Well kapkao, those are not rhetorical questions. Although if it pleases you to think so then knock yourself out. Ironically, you provided almost the answers that I had in mind though.

 

Big oil did not have the grand announcement that they had been vindicated precisely because despite the best efforts of the people who read the documents, there was nothing that was sufficiently in their interest to announce.

 

Now you say that you will wait for a complete solution but that could be quite a long way off. Sure, ITER may one day put us on the path to exactly low cost abundant green energy but they are still doing the excavation on site. They may not be ready to light that particular candle for another 8 to 10 years. Even then, it is only a research facility and there is no plan to ever use it for actual energy production. That could be another 20+ years out.

 

In the mean time, climate modeling is not yet good enough to tell us what to expect or when to expect it but a more conservative number such as my 20% green energy may provide the head room to push back an eventual worst case scenario.

 

Also, remember that we have other research that we need to do along the way. What good will it do to be able to produce all the power that we could ever want when the power grids are not even capable of moving much more than we are making now? We are going to have to rebuild the world's power grids before we can even use fusion meaningfully.

About transmission lines, there is continuing progress toward some form of practical super-conducting material suitable for long-distance power transmission, which will dramatically reduce the losses.

These will be more necessary than now if we are to take full advantage of certain categories of renewables, which are only available optimally in certain areas and certain times. This reduces the problems of the variability of wind power, and the timing of tidal and solar.

Many renewables only start to become economical in large plants, even more so than with fossil-thermal, which then requires the power to be distributed.

Yeah, I knew that about ITER. It's purely an experimental reactor, and I think most the 'experiment' lies in what containment materials are most effective for the various temperature and radiation concerns.

 

You actually have a good point in that sentence. We might use Green as a preventative measure against a climate crisis. The climate, as I understand it, is doing some fairly anomalous things already, like a constant El Nino/La Nina cycle, and of course the Winter and Summer months are becoming a little more extreme each year. The "Worst case scenario", as I understand it, would be a hypercane. A hypercane could kill several dozen million people easily, and most likely hundreds of millions during and in the aftermath. That is, if it could actually happen. It's still just a computer simulation more than anything at present.

 

 

As I could conceive it, it isn't a question of replacing the current lines over even using all of the energy produced by fusion (I don't think we'll be doing that until I'm 6 feet under, but maybe demand will skyrocket along with supply), merely to replace most of the current (and future) demand. Are the lines we use now not sufficient to meet current demand (esp. during summertime)?