I understand that coal is evil and President Obama has said he wants to bankrupt the coal companies. Oil is evil as is nuclear. Add to that the horrible necessity to run power lines where people can actually see them. Hdroelectric dams always inconvenience fish, kayakers, and who knows how else. So, all this must be stopped right now. My question is quite simple. What do thse people want us to do? There is no viable alternative. There will be some day and when that day arrives we have no problem. In the meantime, we do, in fact, have a problem. So, what are we supposed to be doing? If a private company has a promising solution they would be able to raise money through investors. Absent that, the government can fill the gap with taxpayer money which, unfortunately, gives free rein to political corruption and produces $50 sixty-watt light bulbs and bankrupt companies with the officers pocketing $500,000,000 or so of taxpayer, not politician, money. What to do?
The left wants us all living in caves, or better yet commit suicide for the good of the Earth - except for them.
Alternative energy is being worked on in a number of different areas. Partially because oil is finally expensive enough, partially because "green" is a good marketing tool, especially when requesting grants from the government, and partially because technology is advanced enough to model the chemistry, and manipulate the biology. Of the 3 sources of energy, nuclear (geothermal), tidal, and solar. Solar has the highest energy density, and the most available globally. The efficient conversion of solar energy to usable energy is highest is solar steam (Stirling engines would have higher efficiency, but don't seem to scale well), with photo voltaic taking a distant second, followed by vegetation. Of the 3, solar steam need huge storage systems - most are less than 3 hours, PV, use the grid, so really don't store energy, plants however, store quite nicely. There was a recent series of threads on Miscanthus giganteus, a fast growing grass, that could be made directly into gasoline. Algae is a perennial favorite because it grow far faster than anything else. The trick is converting plants to energy. The simplist is to grind them up and feed an existing coal fired power plant. Not good for transportation fuel (except for the magic battery - more on that later). Supposedly Miscanthus giganteus can be converted to gasoline, if so, so could algae, after the oil is extracted. I recently read that South Africa developed a cost effective coal to oil process, and the Chinese are building a bunch of these plants. Coal is carbon, as is a lot of the plant matter. Are these processes available today - no. Will they be viable (drop in replacements for existing fuels at, or below current cost) in 10 years, probably not. But they will, providing the environmentalist allow it, the MMGW crowd are patient. How do we speed the process? Low cost energy, to grow the economy, to fund experimentation, to develop the apparently unrelated technologies that will provide the missing pieces.
