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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (65430)	1/11/2003 12:23:32 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

with progress and knowledge, management of the risks will improve. I think part of my enjoyment of seeing GM take over the world is the knowledge that it is driving the Econuts nuts! They are reaching for every distortion and salable lie they can think up, but they just have not been able to stop it. The attack this week on "The Sceptical Environmentalist" was great. It showed the world just how desperate these people are.

To: Dennis O'Bell who wrote (65430)	1/11/2003 11:33:07 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The problem with relying on solar energy as a big energy source for modern civilization is that the solar constant isn't great enough. Certainly cannot be done with solar cells. Solar power can be used for heating but there is no way it can meet our mechanical or industrial power requirements. If you derive energy source by growing plants you then have to convert them to liquid or gaseous fuel. This requires expenditure of energy; it's not cheap. The cost is significant. Growing plants to produce BTUs will in some places displace food crops. The usual problems of mass and mono cultivation will persist: soil depletion, disease, drought. And of course, land unsuitable for large scale agriculture will be cultivated. There are large ecological problems associated with growing things for primary energy source. The energy for fuel cells will mostly come from where most of the mobile stored energy is coming from now: oil wells. The advantage of fuel cells is that they increase the efficiency of energy conversion greatly and are much less polluting than conventional combustion processes. Much fuel will eventually also come from nuclear and fusion power which can be used for hydrolysis of water. Using hydrogen as primary fuel is not without problems, either. Although in many ways safer than gasoline or natural gas because its lighter, hydrogen is difficult to handle and store and requires somewhat different materials and technique - as a primary automotive fuel, hydrogen will require building another fuel distribution system alongside the present ones. Going to fuel cells will reduce, but not eliminate world dependence on Middle East oil and so stability in that area will remain a concern for the greater world for a long time. solarserver.de