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Scotland Building Wave Power Farms
eldavojohn writes "Scottish engineers are taking advantage of the huge ocean coast that Scotland enjoys by building a 'wave farm' to harvest electricity from the ocean's powerful waves. These big red tubes have been named the Pelamis System after a sea snake. Max Carcas, the business developer for the firm, says it is 'a bit like a ship at anchor or a flag on a flagpole, it self orientates into the waves ... Waves then travel down the length of the machine and in doing so each of the sections, each of these train carriages, moves up and down and side to side.' These snake-like movements push hydraulic fluid through generators to produce electricity."
May the Maths Be with you!
Oh this will NEVER work, it won't even put a DENT in the countries energy needs, it's all a POINTLESS endeavor.
You'll just have to keep buying foreign oil.
Funny, that is the exact same argument that liberals use when talking about ANWR. Fact is, any energy added to the grid is a good thing, as long as it produces more energy than what you put into it!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Another proof that patents and copyrigths are the enemy of humanity(but very profitable for the elite few).
What has allowed us all to overconsume energy is that we are insulated from the real costs and impacts of doing so. We don't care about what blows out of the smokestack if it (mostly) goes elsewhere- for us, those costs are externalized (until we pay our health insurance premiums). We buy gasoline (in the US) that is taxpayer-subsidized, which insulates us from feeling the price pain that would otherwise motivate us to either conserve or switch to an energy source that mitigates these costs.
What makes excessive consumption bad is not that it is excessive; it is that there's a consequence of doing so that is undesirable. Get rid of the undesirable consequences and where's the sin? I don't think there's a value in eyesores; they a) don't really make us conserve, and b) are themselves one of the undesirable consequences we'd all rather be without. In essence, they're a solution that comes with a different set of problems, just like the ones we're trying to solve today.
Cost makes us conserve- pretty much every other factor is secondary. Concern about the environment makes us conserve, when cost doesn't override that concern. We'll tolerate mercury in our food so we can have cheap coal-fired electricity, and government deficits so we can subsidize gas prices. We'll for SURE tolerate eyesores, no sweat. (especially since they'll end up being placed in less-desirable locations- again, a function of cost externalization). In other words, there's virtually zero redeeming value in having your power come from an eyesore, simply because that won't incentivize the sort of low-to-no-negative-impact living you seem to really be interested in.
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.