It's amazing that we can be so short sighted when it comes to the concept of energy consumption.I'm not referring simply to fossil fuel consumption, I'm talking about all of it.'Alternative' energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydro are all just illusions. They are all just methods of extracting stored energy or energy transferrence to a storage medium, for later extraction.
The reasons they won't work, is because of scale. We cannot possibly predict the effects of worldwide alternative gathering methods. We can't sufficiently predict what effect we would have on the environment if we were to begin transferring tidal energy or wind energy. Each of these methods also requires material and energy extraction for production and maintenance. How much tidal energy do you have to gather to offset what it cost to create the barrages? What effect would they have on the tides, the land, flora and fauna? What effects would we see in 20 years, or 50?
No currently placeable method is perfect. We are constantly looking for a silver bullet. The problem is there isn't one.
We are constantly finding new solutions that never play out like we hope. Hybrid is the solution de jour. Be green! Be energy efficient! It's all bull. Hybrid cars are a boondoggle. They don't save money or energy. They have a higher cost of ownership, and their *fabulous* MPGs generally aren't even close to accurate. Much of the efficiency gain can be applied to standard fuel only vehicles. Where does the battery go when it dies? Battery heaven I'll bet. No harm to the environment there. Want a humvee? No? Try our hybrid instead, so you can feel just a little less guilty about killing mother earth.
Ideally, if we could harvest solar energy without depleting the stored or earthbound solar energy THAT might be sustainable, but we'd have to find some way to gather and transfer that wasn't earth-centric.
Ethanol? Forget it. Read up on it. Find out about energy density and subsidies.
Hydrogen? It's essentially the same thing: we're consuming. Currently we can't do it efficently. Production, storage, distribution and use issues abound.
The truth is we're always going to be dissipating stored energy to heat, and hopefully gaining some use out of it. The best thing we can do is to try to make the methods we use more efficent. Drop the humvees for subcompacts. Come up with a more efficent engine. Walk instead of drive. I hate to say this too (cause I love steak sooo much), but minimize our consumption of agricultural meat. Eventually we'll run out no matter what, we just need to put that off for as long as possible.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
My hybrid gets an average of 43 mpg. Which can be significantly increased to around 50 if all I do is freeway driving. Battery recycling is probably an issue, but right now CO2 emmissions (and NO2 and CO) are the primary concern.
I also groan a little when I hear commercials that claim that online transactions are "green", specifically the e-surance commercial. I would rather cut a few trees down then end up with landfills full of old CRT monitors that are full of lead and cadmium.
I don't think that the green movement is all bad though. First, as a chemist, I am hoping that a lot of money is poured into new research (selfish I know). I don't know what the limits of technology are, but the guy who came up with the wheel didn't say "that whole round movement is bogus, people are always going to be walking and carrying stuff on their backs".
So, yeah, scorn the stuff that is obviously jumping on the marketing bandwagon, but please give science a little time to address some of the issues we are now facing. There might be some really big things on the horizon!
Post a Comment