Imagine Buenos Aires In 2030

[gpop]

Why not solar? Admittedly, the batteries suck. When they should have been developing better tech after the cold-fusion debacle in the 80's (if it wasn't actually cold-fusion, it was a damn good battery) but of course the oil companies made sure that that would disappear.

The main problem as I see it is not so much how to collect photons and store them - more to the point how we use energy.
If you've ever been on a sailboat for a long trip, you have small solar panels and wind turbine to maintain the batteries for the radio, navigation equipment, navigation lighting, and enough juice to start up the engine. There's no frivolous use of energy when you are watching each amp. Folks got to learn to live with less.

 

[scotttswan]

seems like a good a place as any to post this.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

seems like a good a place as any to post this.

House Republicans are not the brightest bunch, but they're even less transparent.

 

[ajoknoblauch]

Why not solar? Admittedly, the batteries suck. When they should have been developing better tech after the cold-fusion debacle in the 80's (if it wasn't actually cold-fusion, it was a damn good battery) but of course the oil companies made sure that that would disappear.

The main problem as I see it is not so much how to collect photons and store them - more to the point how we use energy.
If you've ever been on a sailboat for a long trip, you have small solar panels and wind turbine to maintain the batteries for the radio, navigation equipment, navigation lighting, and enough juice to start up the engine. There's no frivolous use of energy when you are watching each amp. Folks got to learn to live with less.

Not so much to live with less, as to use what we have more efficiently.

 

[pauper]

seems like a good a place as any to post this.

You should look at the scientific literature rather than the public comments.

I could read that but I don't believe it

If your ice cube melts in your glass it doesn't overflow its displacement

I'd swear I was back in primary school but this is the debate in the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology - I guess then we shouldn't be so surprised at some of the nonsense that appears on these pages.

 

[camberiu]

Yes, these Republican representatives are not the sharpest tools in the shed. But they are not alone.

SOURCE:

 

[scotttswan]

Yes, these Republican representatives are not the sharpest tools in the shed. But they are not alone.

SOURCE:

"A two-megawatt windmill contains 260 tonnes of steel requiring 170 tonnes of coking coal and 300 tonnes of iron ore, all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons. The question is: how long must a windmill generate energy before it creates more energy than it took to build it? At a good wind site, the energy payback day could be in three years or less; in a poor location, energy payback may be never. That is, a windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it.”

SOURCE:
Thomas Homer-Dixon professor in the Centre for Environment and Business at the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada.

I wonder why they left that bit out.

 

[camberiu]

I think the main point here is the 170 tons of coking coal and all the hydrocarbons necessary to mine, transport and process the ore to build one. There is no way around that.

Might as well want to start reading the last paragraph of page 91.

 

[scotttswan]

I think the main point here is the 170 tons of coking coal and all the hydrocarbons necessary to mine, transport and process the ore to build one. There is no way around that.

I would say that the main point is that in 3 years they pay back that energy and then the following 20 odd years of their "lifetime" they provide free energy!

Even better is we don't need to re-mine the iron and turn it into steel as we already have it and can recycle it.

 

[thorsten]

I think the main point here is the 170 tons of coking coal and all the hydrocarbons necessary to mine, transport and process the ore to build one. There is no way around that.

Wow, to build a huge machine, one actually requires energy? That's some ground-breaking discovery!