It's all right there in front of our eyes and has been for years, but nobody wants to face it.

Use less.


Extravagant alternative energy sources take energy to make. Look at the energy footprint of one solar panel. How does that compare to the maximum possible energy collection potential of that panel over its lifetime?

Throw away your SUV and buy a hybrid. How much energy will the SUV consume when somebody buys it from you cheap? How much energy did it take to make your new hybrid?

Burn ethanol. How much energy did it take to make the fertilizer, till the soil, plant the corn, make the herbicides and pesticides that are absolutely necessary to eliminate competition for the corn, and then harvest and process the corn? How much energy to dig the well and pump the water (which is draining the aquifer) for the ethanol plant?

How much energy is consumed driving one single aircraft carrier around the ocean for one single deployment? Then there's the aircraft, and the refueling aircraft, and the air force patrol aircraft. It's sinful. Trust me.

Use less.

Period.

Do you still fly that chopper?

There are solar-plants that have a positive energy-balance.
There are wind-power plants that have a positive energy balance.
There are vast areas where either of them can operate economically.
There are technologies to make both technologies base load capable.


When it comes to first generation bio-fuels and hybrid cars, both admittetly are nothing but the first step. Living in a market economy, I know that the corporation which produce both need both money and to be sure that people buy such stuff, before they can invest in implementing the second step of those technologies. Which are non-combustion based cars and second generation bio-fuels.

Use less won't work. People want more, and people hate people who tell them that they have to want less. Hence, in a free society every attempt to implement such agenda will fail.

__________________
"I think that gay marriage should be allowed."
- John McCain on an episode of Hardball, 2006, before the commercial break

"I do not believe that gay marriage should be legal."
- John McCain on the same episode of Hardball, after the commercial break

"John McCain does not speak for the John McCain campaign."
- Tucker Bounds, Spokesman of the John McCain presidential campaign.

The straight talk express. You gotta love it.

You make a good point, but if we used hemp to turn it into bio-diesel, this makes much more sense than Ethanol. In fact biodiesel is far superior to Ethanol in every way, except one. You have to have diesel engines to run the fuel on, something we don't have many of in America.

It is time to go diesel and biodiesel.

Audi has just introduced a DIESEL sports car that gets over 40 MPG.

KickingTires: Audi Unveils New Diesel Sports Car

No, I have no problem with $4 gas. Gas is valuable to me. Id pay twice that, maybe more. The only crisis here is that people dont want to pay a premium for something they want very badly. People adapted to $2 gas, and now 3$ gas. They will adapt to $4 or $8 gas.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

I would also be willing to pay double for gas, but guess what, that makes the price of ALL products go up. It rises our trade deficit, it will make many stocks go down.

How will all of this effect the economy?

And since oil is priced globally, the increasing costs price out the poor world and the consequences of that are horrendous.

Andrew

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Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

1. There are no solar or wind facilities that are base load capable. I'm responsible for two 100 MW sites with gas turbine generator sets and when our utility started looking at beefing up their renewable inventory to meet future requirements, they looked hard at wind. We were told to expect to start and stop the GT's as many as 300 times per year to account for the load shift in the wind source. The GT's are the only units that can respond fast enough to pick up the slack from dying wind or solar generators. The coal plants are way too slow. We (coal plant) ramp at about 1 to 2 MW per minute. Solar dies instantly every time the sun hides behind a cloud. Wind does the same thing. There is no source within range of us that provides any solar or wind that could even hold a candle to base load. Electrolyze water and generate hydrogen to compensate? Sure. Just waste 40% compressing the hydrogen. That doesn't count mechanical and thermodynamic losses in the hydrogen engine.

2. No I don't still fly that helicopter.

3. I didn't start the thread because of prices. Even though that's a huge factor in energy in general, the root of our problem is how much of it we squander. The per capita use of energy in the US is incredible when balanced against any other nation in the world. History and every other nation in the world prove that we don't actually need it. We're spoiled. Why is it that instead of investing in industry that limits our need for energy, we just keep looking for cheaper alternatives. I own 2 diesels (a VW to get to work and back and a Ford truck for the farm) and made biodiesel for a while. I think it's great but it still doesn't solve the problem. It didn't help me burn any less fuel. My net cost to produce was less than $1 per gallon. If anything, it was license to squander and I enjoyed making the processor and the fuel, so it was a fun hobby. It still requires methanol to make too (about 15 - 20% of end product volume) which is entirely petroleum industry derived. It is manufactured from natural gas.

I know there are house designs that can cut heating/cooling system usage to next to nothing. Why not focus on things like that? Are cross-country drives and international flights for vacations really necessary? Yes, I know, people want it and will just pay more to keep getting it.

Bottom line is that right now, the best thing we can do is cut back on usage.

Minus the poor in oil producing countries...

__________________
"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

No problem, I can afford it. I work. I can even work more if thats what I need to maintain my lifestyle.

__________________
http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

Hot diddly damn for you.

__________________
"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas

There are wind- and solar plants that are base load capable. In Spain, the EU constructed a solar plant with a positive energy balance. It can store enough energy to be base load capable. It does this by freezing and melting salts in a big accumulator. In Germany, engineers have made a wind powerplant base load capable by letting it pump air into an old mineshaft. A german meteorologist managed to predict local wind directions and strenghts precisely enough to provide "semi" base load capability for wind power plants of an entire region. In another example, a small corporation just bought a solar plant, wind plant and natural gas energy plant and interfaced them. This makes the network base load capable. There are many appendages for implementing base load capability to renewable energy, and they already have been realized. The problem is that most of this solutions have to be further developed to make them usable on a large scale.

Your remark on changing housing design is right. A lot of energy could be saved by doing that. For certain regions, geo-thermal energy would also be an option to cut demand for energy.

__________________
"I think that gay marriage should be allowed."
- John McCain on an episode of Hardball, 2006, before the commercial break

"I do not believe that gay marriage should be legal."
- John McCain on the same episode of Hardball, after the commercial break

"John McCain does not speak for the John McCain campaign."
- Tucker Bounds, Spokesman of the John McCain presidential campaign.

The straight talk express. You gotta love it.

I like to look at realistic approaches. The only way the American people are going to start conserving energy is when the cost really start hurting. In our instant gratification society, too many people will not even open a window, instead it is turn up the air conditioning. Hard economic times are the only thing that will get the American people to start getting serious about energy conservation. Of course, this might be coming, but if hard times come, or not, we still need to look for alternatives.

GERMANY will have at least 25% of their electricity from solar by 2020. We could be utilizing the Arizona desert right now for solar and I bet panels their would do a lot better than in Germany. The problem is that the energy industry has used every dirty trick in the book to get us to this point in time. They wanted us dependent and most people are very dependent.

There are advances in wind power pretty regularly and it is now a great source of power in the right areas. While no single source is going to cure what ails us, a combination of all of these technologies just might make a big difference, but we have to start NOW. We must start investing in the future, even if it hurts a little bit right now.

Well, great for you. I guess that's all that matter is that you are ok, right? Screw everybody else?

No, they have the same ability. Its not my concern whether they choose to work hard enough to pay for gas, or be slackers and ride the bus.

__________________
http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.