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Termyn8or -> RE: Plunging price of renewable energy makes end of fossil fuels inevitable, says report (4/5/2017 10:32:00 AM)
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FR
Some good points being made here and I fully agree we have to break this addiction to fossil fuel, both coal and oil. But there are problems that most do not forsee.
Let's say they make electric cars for ten grand that can go as far on a charge as a tank of gas now. You cannot charge the battery as fast as you can fill up the gas tank. Perhaps they'll have replaceable batteries where you just pull one out and plug the charged one in. An inconvenience but not an insurmountable one.
But people do not see the big picture. First of all, many people now have 200 amp service in their house if they have AC and all electric appliances. Does anyone have an idea how much it takes to generate 240 volts at 200 amps ? Or say 100 amps, the reason the 200 amp service went in is because 100 amps was not enough. If you give up fossil fuel then you give up gas. An electric stove has a 50 amp dedicated circuit. And if you have an electric furnace I almost pity you. Those things pull juice and don't even put out as warm air as gas. So they have to run longer.
That is alot of solar, and that is not even the beginning of it. Your house, your car, chump change. Try running a foundry on solar. Try using the Bessemer process on solar. Try running twenty CNC controlled high power machines on solar. And as mentioned, a solar powered plane ? Yeah, let's give that a try. And the US' war machine won't be converting anytime soon and they are the biggest users of petroleum based fuel.
There is no sense in going to electric cars even until we get viable solar. Right now, more CO2 is produced by generating electricity than by cars. So going that route now will only exacerbate the situation. Also, what about trucks ? Just to get over Colorado they need turbochargers. They got two huge fuel tanks to feed the monster. Try that with batteries.
We need more industry in this country to be economically viable. For that we need energy. There's a reason China is not converting to solar. It simply cannot power all their factories. They'll be happy to sell you some solar cells though, which is pretty much what put Solyndra out of business.
With better technology it will become viable, but that is still years away. One of the biggest problems is all the losses associated with conversion. Why the hell would you take and convert solar energy to electricity and use it to run a heating element in your house ? The losses are staggering. Why not just have a huge Fresnel lens over the house to heat it ? No conversion, completely efficient. But the technology, if even possible, does not yet exist. And we have another problem with solar - known as clouds. And winter. And being too close to the poles.
Wind is another one, simply not reliable. I want power in the house 24/7/365. That means batteries, and even as good as batteries have gotten in the last decade they are an environmental nightmare. Eventually they have to be discarded, and that is worse than all the CO2 we could emit if we tried harder.
I agree we need to make the change. There are too many of us and we are polluting too much because of sheer numbers. Everyone wants their own car. Well OK, build us electric cars for ten grand. I do not need a user configurable touch screen dashboard. With an electric car I don't even need an oil guage. A speedometer and something that indicates the level of charge in the batteries. Don't even put a fucking radio in it. Make it a manual transmission - if it even needs one. Seems most of them don't. Another advantage is that in a traffic jam they do not have to idle, they just turn off. In highly congested areas this could be good. Think of all those cars just sitting there idling on the interstate because of a traffic jam.
Some people (on Usenet) are hailing the advantage of hybrids. Some of them own them and they say they perform well and get great mileage. The regular ICE kicks in when climbing hills or whatever, but then it goes electric once you are on a flat road. It is probably a step in the right direction, but not a complete solution.
Another thing to realize is that we fight oil and pipeline wars. Very little else. Put in a government our oil companies can manipulate and fuck them over. Without the need for that the military can shrink, and maybe protect this country instead of those 130 others. They are the largest consumers of oil in the world. You didn't think they were paying the soldiers that half a trillion a year did you ? Of course these assholes might decide to attack China for their solar panels, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.
Progress comes in stages. What we do not need is government mandates. That hurts us. Look, they invented TV, then figured out how to give it sound. Later cam color TV. Now we got 4K TVs. We had the Model T Ford, now we got trucks that have direct cylinder injection and variable valve timing. We had bag phones, now your smart phone has more computing power than most PCs. But there is no way to force this shit. It comes when it comes and not a day sooner.
The real problem is that we lack innovators. The schools and Parents are not teaching the same as they used to. What's more, that might not be so much of a change. Last few years I went through an encyclopedia, a version of which I had as a kid. I was never interested in reading about the people in it but I decided to. Many of the inventors and innovators in this country were either first generation or off the boat. Like TV for example, that guy was from Scotland.
Anyway, like most other things, we will probably end up buying solar panels from China. Solyndra was actually a good idea but there is a reason that private money was not in it. They could not stand up to the competition. It was a "feel good" action by liberals.
They say "Nothing happens until something is sold" but what has not been invented is hard to sell. Go ahead and buy the patent for a black box. I got some oceanfront property in Kansas forya as well.
My point is to not further cripple our economy pursuing things that are not yet possible. Are you really going to buy a new electric or hybrid car ? What about the energy it takes to melt down your old one ? They started this shit with flourescent lights a long time ago. They were four foot tubes and forty watts and put out more lights than incandescent. I used them in my business. They also lasted longer.
But that wasn't good enough, they went down to 32 watts, and now they don't want to start when it is cold. Then you had to change ballast and that didn't work. You still had that annoying flicker and problems when it is cold. I don't know about you but I am not for paying to heat a building that has no people in it. They wrecked a good thing. There is another saying - "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". People in power need to learn to leave engineering to the engineers. When those lame assholes interfere they fuck everything up. Remember "Cash for clunkers" ? That was the worst thing they ever did. They poured paint like substance into the crankcase of perfectly running engines. How the fuck is that eco-friendly ? It was also illegal to sell any parts. This is not green. We cannot trust this government. And of course they subsidise oil to some extent.
The only thing they can do is to support and possibly subsidise research onto alternative energy. They made a fuck cluster of Solyndra though by not doing the homework. They should have know about the market before dumping all that money into a loser. But that's liberals forya. Never worked a day int heir lives but think they are captains of industry. Not that the republicans are better. They are ALL a bunch of spoiled rich kids who do not know how stuff works, how to build it or fix it, and half the time even to use it. Put Trump i front of a CNC milling machine and see what he does. I fact the "community organizer" Obama as well. In fact any politician. They do not have the ability to do what needs to be done - PRODUCE SOMETHING OF VALUE.
So if you have any bright ideas you think will take us out o f this addiction to oil, get go fund me or something and start your own business. Then YOU get the profits. Get a good patent lawyer and sell internationally. Set up companies in other countries to avoid US taxes. Do it all Man. If you got the idea, the world will beat a path to your doorstep. But you have to develop the technology for that. Even China might go for it. There is a team of US based people there helping them clean up their environment because it has gotten so bad. They can't have people dying on them. That is the cost of industrialisation. Well, we had a river that burned so I guess we been there done that.
T^T
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