Posted on 07/09/2016 7:19:18 AM PDT by rktman
Fool me once, the adage says, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The reality-based fossil fuel version states: Fuel me for 150 years, fuel me forever or at least until creative, entrepreneurial spirits can devise reliable, affordable alternatives. The 2016 Democratic Party would change this adage to read: Fuel me for 150 years, fuel me never again.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton want to regulate drilling and fracking into oblivion, or ban them outright. Clinton also says she isgoing to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.
The draft Democratic Party platform supports a phase down of fossil fuel production on public lands, turning those lands into engines of the clean energy economy, getting 50% of US electricity from clean sources by 2027, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% below 2005 levels by 2050.
This Big Green, Bigger Government, Democratic ideology represents destructive madness.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
LOL! Sadly for us, a whole lot of ignos. Somebody could do a live feed of her killing and eating puppies and they’d still swoon over her coolness.
The human race is going to be using carbon-based fuels until well into the 22nd Century, and perhaps beyond, because for the most part, these compounds are relatively easy to re-synthesize, they have a controllable energy output, and they take advantage of the fact all the products of their combustion are fully recyclable in an earth-type atmosphere.
Some day, there may be the capability to tap into the fusion-energy cycle, similar to what provides the power source that is the sun itself, but that projection is always “thirty years” into the future. Right now, the conversion of light energy into electrical power is feasible, but neither particularly efficient nor cost-effective, as compared to other energy transformation schemes. Real high-volume generation of electric power depends on a much more vigorous heat source, like the decaying of atomic isotopes into a lower, more stable element, capturing the heat, and using it to generate steam from the plentiful supply of water this world is blessed with. The steam drives huge dynamos, and the power is distributed to the point of consumption by a vast and highly complex network of transformers and power lines. While all these marvels of engineering are remarkable in and of themselves, they are but a bridge to some more reliable system, which would involve generating electrical power on site as needed, at the moment of demand.
Fission, as a source of heat energy used to drive the huge dynamos, may come from uranium-fueled atomic piles, which in the end, though vastly more efficient than coal-fired or other “fossil fuels”, have their own problems, in the form of creation of large numbers of “spent” fuel rods, which still contain some 97% of their potential energy. The conversion to use of thorium-fueled Molten Salt atomic piles has the advantage of being able to tap into this remaining energy in the “spent” fuel rods, thus solving two problems simultaneously - removing the “spent” fuel rods from storage inventory, where they would have to be kept for perhaps 10,000 years so the radiation would be reduced to a “safe” level, and being a much more flexible device, in terms of being able to be scaled down to much smaller size, and able to be placed in close proximity with residential and industrial complexes, as the stray radiation is much less, well within “tolerable” levels.
Right away, that vastly reduces the need for highly complex (and vulnerable) transformers and transmission lines.
We have not even BEGUN to engineer our way onto a REALLY energy-efficient future. Nor shall we, if we waste time and valuable resources on inefficient “feel-good” devices that shall never occupy more than a small niche in the whole energy generation equation.
I may be going out on a limb here, but I would think that if the concern is global warming, the solution is not to cover the earth in black panels.
Where are Christo and Jeanne-Claude, when they are needed?
http://miami.curbed.com/2013/8/29/10207970/wolfson-moving-image-archives-christo-surrounded-islands
Indeed. The Eastern Massachusetts landscape is positively mutilated by “alternative” energy machines. A ride down rt3 to Cape Cod reveals acres of solar panels where once were bucolic woods, productive farms and cranberry bogs.
Huge, ugly wind turbines often sit locked in the “OFF” position, and dominate the sight lines on the highway. Homeowners who have been suckered into ruining their roofs with solar arrays can’t sell their houses to people who don’t want them anymore. Magnificent mountains in Maine are littered with turbines that produce energy for Connecticut, while chopping up the indigenous raptors.
And...somehow..(surprise, surprise!)...our electric bills don’t get any lower.
Re; Covering the earth in black panels. I tried to do a quick calculation of the land mass necessary to accept the installation of one-half billion solar panels on our landscape, but my cheap dumb-phone doesn’t have enough available memory to calculate the thousands of square miles it would take to accommodate the physical, technical monstrosities.
Fuel can be made from coal and there is a considerable amount of that. All else, just go back to steam.
Increasing the cost of living increases dependence on the federal government. That’s what the crooks want.
Did you just describe the fundamental operation of a nuclear power plant to me? If you did, Big Rock Point Nuclear Power plant used to be located just east of me when I moved here to Charlevoix in 1976. It has since been decommissioned, and the spent fuel shipped to God knows where. Maybe Yucca?
Nuclear power plants are exactly what I am talking about. The problem with uranium-fueled power plants (and the reason they get locked down and never replaced) is the residual radiation hazard that exists even after they are decommissioned.
Thorium-fueled Molten Salt plants address most of the major problems encountered with uranium-fueled power plants of just about every variety. India is right now working on making these their standard of electric power generation, and they expect to have a number of them online, starting by 2020. They have demonstration plants up and running, but nothing like an economically viable design yet.
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