On Electricity (Generation)

Engineer-Poet wrote a piece a few months back that focuses on electricity production; or rather how or what we will need to do to keep pace with people's demands while balancing that with environmental and economic impact. Lengthy but well-reasoned and good reading.

Comments

Re:They're typical media

[AKAImBatman]

They will not post what they disagree with. Try telling any green environmental lefty that Ethanol is a bad thing and show them why, and they turn their nose saying, "But, but, but, but its GREEN!"

There's nothing wrong with Ethanol, save for studies 30 year out of date that are perpetuating the idea that it's energy negative. And it's not a "green" problem. It's a problem of finding an alternative fuel source before the rising prices of petrol cause too many economic problems.

As it so happens, Ethanol is being used as an ocatane-booster additive in the majority of gasoline today. In part, it's because it's safer than cleaner than most of the chemicals previously used to improve octane ratings. Another part of it, however, is that up to 10% Ethanol mixtures are helping to lower the cost of gasoline as the prices for gas surpass that of Ethanol.

Re:They're typical media

[Sunburnt]

"Try telling any green environmental lefty that Ethanol is a bad thing and show them why, and they turn their nose saying, "But, but, but, but its GREEN!"

Wow, what an uninformed stereotype. Plenty of us green environmental lefties have serious issues with increasing society's reliance on industrial agriculture, and see the potential usurpation of the oil lobby by the corn lobby as a meaningless substitution. Our leaders keep trying to find new and exciting ways to supply our energy demand without examining the nature or utility of this demand. Sustainable energy will come from changing cultural attitudes regarding the worthy expenditures of energy, not a shuffling of environmental issues.

Someone better tell China

[Shivetya]

because for all the work we do it won't amount to a hill of beans if China doesn't play along. Go look at many of their cities, they look even worse than the US did at its height for pollution.

Hell, their only fix for good air during the Olympics will be to ban cars and shutdown nearby industries.

Still got to love this comment on his blog :)

"There is sufficient biomass energy to replace motor fuel and then some... if the energy is not wasted. "

Well duh. Thats the problem with his whole page, its all stuck on a BIG bunch of IFs.

but the biggest problem is turing grain crops into fuel, there are just so many uses for grain crops in everyday products that a slight increase in their pricing because of competition with fuels could force consumer prices up, masking the true cost of these new forms of power creation.

100 Years of Fission / Reliable Lift

[bill_mcgonigle]

But I'd prefer we have 1,000 years to solve that problem than have 100 years or so to solve the current one.

Very well put. There's only one known solution to the problem at hand, and we need to start lighting up one of these plants every two months to get the carbon problem solved - nothing else has a chance of doing it (without 'killing off the human race' as an item on the table),

Besides, we only need enough time on fission to get fusion perfected. That should take less than a hundred years. Then we only need to wait until we, as a race, consider that we have lift into space as a reliable technology. Then we just take all that old fission waste and send it into the Sun for the next generation of solar system to enjoy. And that's assuming we don't have a better solution for it by then.

But, the current course is for nothing to get done and the problem to get worse. The "environmentalist" groups seem to think that's the best course of action (scare-quotes intended) and that implementing wishful thinking is a sufficient plan.