Termyn8or
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Joined: 11/12/2005
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I have to go along with SMC when it comes to solar. Of course there are many problems in implementing it.
If we are to harness this solar energy, I doubt it would be free. First of all if it is done on arable land and precludes growing food, it is nothing but another tradeoff. But there is plenty of desert on this planet so that issue can be disregarded for now and we must move on to the real issue. Storing and trasnsporting the energy.
See people don't live in the desert, that is a desert by definition. So how do we get that energy to where it is to be used ? There are several ways, the problem is that none of them are all that efficient right now. Even the collection system is an engineering challenge. That is at least surmountable, they know what latitude it will be at and design accordingly, these things are not going to be portable. But what do we want out of them, steam, or heat by some other medium, or electricity ?
You know it could be both. Ovonic type solar cells, along with others basically use only a small part of the spectrum, thus a dichroic type coating could be applied and it could generate both. However with the inefficiency of today's solar cells the best I would hope for is that the facility could generate enough electricity to sustain itself, and go on to produce heat. But then the heat is most likely to be turned into steam and used to generate electricity anyway, so what's the use ?
However I do believe that using natural resources is the key to this problem. This can encompass many things. We are talking solar thusfar, but what about wind ?
For example you could have wind powered pumps that pump seawater into tanks up high, then the water pushed by it's own weight is a form of energy. I read somewhere that someone actually harnessed the tides of the ocean not too long ago. Never heard anything more about that.
Maybe what we need to do is back up, at the moment we are thinking backwards, which works sometimes. But not here apparently. Maybe we need to go way back and think forward from there.
The pyramids are nice, but they are pieces of shit. There is an ancient building on the American continent somewhere that functions as a clock and calendar, using the incident angle of the sun's rays. If they could build that, putting up a bunch of mirrors should be a simple task for us. It's just that all of the currently available technologies with which to store and transport the energy are hopelessly inefficient.
And anything right now that will make anything move, like to turn a turbine or whatever, will require water. I've heard that some deserts don't have all that much water :-)
The realist can see why these things are not implemented now, and I will say that money is one of the reasons. But if the money people were reasonable people, which they are not by any stretch, EVEN IF THEY WERE it would be unreasonable for us to have them go whole hog into this today. If I had forty million in the bank I would gladly put up say half of it. But all of it ? No.
Actually the people who really do figure this out will probably do well.
I'll tell you what big money does not want to see, is self sufficiency. This can be done now, but the cost is very high. You could have an electric car, all electric home except heat, partly geothermal and partly an adaptive heating system. You could have a well for water and a septic tank and your gutters collect rainwater, up high, and that stored kinetic energy is used to power your cellphone chargers and your uplink or whatever for the internet.
I know science and I know and see the analogies throughout. How hydraulics is so similar to electronics, take the case of an automatic transmission, an old one without computer control. The valve body is a circuit board. The circuit created is technically an analog computer. How does this apply ?
Because perhaps we need to do a little math. Would it be more efficient to pump water up to a high tank and use the flow to serve our needs on demand, would be more efficient than batteries for example ?
Y'know they say necessity is the mother of invention, well I have something to add.
Simplicity is the mother of success.
See where I am going. Get out of all these exotic materials and who the fuck knows. Get into the forces of nature, make gravity your friend because he ain't going anywhere anytime soon.
See whadd I mean ?
When you know science of course you get ideas, but usually they are shot down before they are ever expressed. Can't do this because of that, can't do that because of this, and so forth. Indeed who would attempt something they knew would fail ?
But there are times when 'out of the mouths of babes' come answers. At any time someone could pop up with an answer that even seems assinine on it's face, but when considered carefully might just work. It would not be the first time in history you know.
Maybe part of what I am saying is that ,,,,,,,,,,,, you could be hitting this from two different angles -
Economical/sociopolitical - Gas is ridiculous, and it's even worse in Europe I guess. We live in what I now dub "The Oil Age". Just like the stone age and the iron age, it will run it's course.
Ecological - If you want to save the planet, you must work with the planet. Like a friend who needs help, they must participate. Yes ask what you can do for your planet, but also ask what your planet can do for you. She has gravity, geothermal heat all stored up and gets something like 1/138,000th of the sun's energy. And the sun can be a very big friend indeed.
I preface this now for the benefit of someone who said something ; I mean no romantic intent. But I will say this, the answers for the future might actually be found in the past.
T
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RE: Alternative Fuels Roundtable - 
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