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Tech That Will Save Our Species - Solar Thermal Power
NoMoreCoal writes "Salon has up a story by Joe Romm, former undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration, discussing a lesser-known alternative energy solution. It's a technology that (he claims) is ready to provide zero-carbon electric power big, fast, cheap and (most importantly) right now: solar thermal power. 'Improvements in manufacturing and design, along with the possibility of higher temperature operation, could easily bring the price down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour. CSP makes use of the most abundant and free fuel there is, sunlight, and key countries have a vast resource. Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources.'" Interesting stuff, even if he does mention the Archimedes Death Ray.
this is similar to a nuclear reactor, where heat is causing water to spin a turbine. i suspect that that this will do the same, but it will be faster.
If people can get past, can they get future? Best way to confuse a stoner
We have Kansas and Nebraska farmers who would love to plant wind farms, but no infrastructure to get the electricity they would generate to the consumer.
Is there infrastructure in the southwest to deliver all this electricity that they would generate?
My sources say the east and west half of the country aren't connected in any useful way that would allow the delivery of Nebraska or New Mexico electricity to, e.g., New England.
Answer: No. Instead we have a monkey in the white house who's giving subsidies to grow corn to make ethanol instead of coming up with real solutions.
You're talking about tampering with big money and business by threatening to put another energy source in front of Oil and Coal! Won't happen under our current mindset. Decades down the road, maybe. Right Now: Our leaders are marketing Coal as an alternative - for some unknown reason (pre-existing multi-billion dollar investments and stocks).
... and they die - pretty much every day. Every thing in the great home we call a Universe has a life cycle, and right now, we're in our middle ages. Until people can understand their place in the Universe, we're better off just heading down the path we're on now.
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Oh, but wait, there's more! You're talking about pitching these ideas to a country who's people still believe, and are led by leaders still emulate, the essence of this place being created by a mythical being - God. God fixes every thing with prayer. God will fix the globe's crisis if we just keep praying. Reality still has not set it in yet.
It's going to take some more naturally occurring global happenings (hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, flooding, ice-melts), and finally an eventual relenting to the factual knowledge that Solar Systems are born
What ever. Ride the global marketing campaign known as Operation Global Impending Doom - AKA Global Warming. Years ago it was called greenhouse gases, you remember right? Those same greenhouse gases that allow the surface temperature to have risen to a habitable state for species growth. Yeah those green house gases. The ones that were 1000 times the level they are now during Earths volcanically active years
I'm all for streamlined energy. Yes. But stop selling it like it's the latest greatest thing that will SAVE THE WORLD. It's not going to happen. In 5 Billion years when our sun swells to the orbit of Mars and consumes every thing in it's path either form heat or from contact, all your efforts will essentially, mean nothing.
What people need to start thinking about is where the hell we're going to go in the next 50 years when the climate here on Earth grows to an uninhabitable state DUE TO NATURALLY OCCURRING GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE - THE SAME CHANGES THAT SHAPED THIS BALL OF ROCK AND WATER THAT ALLOWS YOU TO EAT SLEEP AND BUY MORE STUFF.
Like any economic comparison, the cost of the Iraq war should also factor in the the value of the next best alternative. Supposing that's energy development, we have to consider that energy infrastructure is durable, while a war is not. In absolute fact, developing durable energy infrastructure will, in the long run, even provide benefits to Iraq (the ostensible value generated by the war.) Oil is one destabilizing factor in the region. Although it provides monetary benefits, it also leads to political upheaval. The value of energy infrastructure could be a net gain by the people of the middle east.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea