Meeting Energy Needs For The Future
Posted: Monday, November 23, 2009
by Richard Vail
Chisel & Plane
Energy, What To Do?
While I do disagree with those who believe that anthropomorphic global warming I do support many of the things they endorse, though for economic reasons. Thus, in North America, we have enough coal to last for at least the next 400 years at conservative estimates, that doesn't mean we should be using it to produce our electricity.
Additionally, by recycling many of the products we use, we decrease the amount of energy necessary to produce those same items. My wife and I recycle most everything I can because quite frankly our land fills can't hold the huge amounts of garbage that we fill them with. And by recycling we reduce the amounts of raw materials we need to make many of those products we use on a constant basis such as paper products, plastic, glass, and metals.
I think we need to seriously increase the funding for alternative sources of energy especially geothermal , wind and solar (including methods of obtaining same from space). But we also need to reinvest in nuclear power .
By investing in Nuclear power, we can greatly reduce and even end our dependence upon coal fired electrical plant. France and Japan both use nuclear power plants for 75% or more of their electrical energy needs. Even Dr. Patrick Moore , co-founder of Green Peace believes that we need to fully exploit nuclear power as a solution to many of our energy needs.
Going back to the early days in Greenpeace in the 1970s and 1980s, we were totally focused on nuclear war and nuclear testing in the Cold War. We failed to distinguish between the beneficial uses of the technology and the evil uses of the technology.By building wind farms in those areas which sustain the minimum amounts of air necessary to run large scale wind farms, North and South Dakota, Northern Texas, off the coast of Rhode Island, Southern Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, North and South Carolina, and other areas, we can further reduce our dependence upon fossil fuels for energy generation. Recently, the Kennedy family successfully, through the offices of the late Edward Kennedy, senior Senator for Massachusetts, defeated the creation of a wind farm to the south of their family compound on the belief that it would be an eye sore and reduce the property values of the family holdings. Hopefully, the companies that were deterred before, will try once more. While wind generation isn't the complete answer, it is one of many.
It became clear to me that there was a logical disconnect. The people who were most concerned about climate change were most opposed to nuclear power. Greenpeace is against fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric power. Those three technologies produce over 99 percent of world energy. What kind of a path to a sustainable future is that?
Yet another source of energy that we have only begun to explore is tapping the power of the earth's core. While it isn't the " millions of degrees" temperature recently claimed by Al Gore , it is several thousand and is more than ample to super heat water, or other appropriate liquids to the temperatures necessary to power turbines. While this technology is still in its "infancy," once it is properly explored and sufficiently developed there is no reason not to use it as part of our arsenal of energy production.
The last promising area of energy generation is solar power. At the present time, it too is still in its early stages of development, costing roughly $1.28 for every $1.00 of energy produced. However, with continued funding and research it should be possible in the next 10 years to reduce the cost to roughly $0.33 for every $1.00 generated.
So, while I don't accept the science of anthropomorphic global warming, I do agree that we need to reduce our impact upon climate in general. One merely needs to see pictures of the industrial waste lands in China and portions of the former Soviet Union to understand that our planet cannot continue to support us if we poison it. By developing more efficient ways of supplying energy needs, and using several sources of renewable energy we will be able to sustain economic growth for decades to come.
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Top-level comments on this article: (7 total)Hi Richard. Very interesting and informative article. Where I grew up is the location of the PNOC-Energy Development Corporation's Leyte Geothermal Production Field producing 708 MW. Worldwide, the Philippines ranked second to the United States in producing geothermic energy. Thanks again for sharing this information. Happy Thanksgiving. ~Nenita~my thanks to you for taking the time to read it...and I didn't know that PI was that far along, if I had to guess, I would have guessed Iceland!...thanks for the input.
Great article. Very informative. I think we have to do more, but what I have learnt (I teach environment in construction)is that the kids (the next generation) are just not interested and unless we can tap into them and make them believe what will happen if we don't it makes me worry it will be too lateOf course, we do, but then engaging the next generation in actually participating in our future...isn't a new problem, it's one that our parents faced...and their parents...and so on, ad infinitum! They will come around when they are ready to, just as we dit.
Thank you for a well written and aptly put piece. My dad worked for the power company in the 50s through 70s and he was all for conservation back when the company was doing everything to sell more and more electricity.... so I was raised looking at this. We are in a very windy (consistently) place and should look into a turban ourselves. Marijo (Mary Jo is how it is pronounced - again, my dad and his "before his time" ideas even on the spelling of my name)Thanks for reading and commenting, I appreciate the feed back. I'll be doing a lot more dual posting (here and on my blog, as I can), if you'd like to hit my blog just do a search for "thevailspot" on blogspot dot com
Very Good story. we all need to do our parts in the research and looking for ways to be a little more clean. if not for us , then for our children.certainly! But it's not just for that, because even if we continue to use coal as our main source of electricity, it WILL run out eventually, and we need to have something in place to take over when that happens. Unfortunately, the "greens" have blocked nuclear power for the past 30 years and we have a lot of room to make up there. I think though that they are coming to see that their opposition was very misguided in this country. Now...if we could only get the Chinese & India to build more nuclear plants that coal...that would be a neat trick, now wouldn't it? Far better than the trick they used in England to "cook" the books the the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia...
Very well written, interesting, informative and though provoking article. Thanks for sharing. Linda DThanks for taking the time to read it.
The information in the article was wonderful and timely, and the writing style was very personal, I felt like I was actually talking to you about this subject. I did see some writing errors that took away from the article, however. You make mention twice to 'antrhopomorphic global warming'. I'm guessing you mean global warming caused by mankind, but anthropomorphic means in the shape of man. Maybe I'm misinterpreting that, however. Also, in the third paragraph you start with "My wife and I recycle everything I can..." That should be 'we can...'Aside from a few editing glitches, which happen to all writers, this is a very good article.Yep, you're right! though Anthro is the term generally used. and the abreviation is AGW...and right again the 2nd time. That's what happens when you are writing late at night and that "writing frenzy" 'cause you just have to get it down...I could avoid it if I just took a bit more time. But I often get in the groove and have to crank it out before I lose the train of thought.
Great article. Well done.I very much enjoyed this article. All the main alternative fuel sources are represented.Welcome to SearchWarp.Pleased that you enjoyed it. Now the real trick will be to get our political "betters" to actually do something sensible as opposed to something expensive and rediculously bureaucratic.
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