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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (218604)	3/2/2013 6:27:16 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543741

The economics often don't take into account total cost of ownership. Carbon is a fine carrier of energy. I admire it and even in a solar economy carbon will persist. Carbon is actually environmentally benign if the carbon comes from the atmosphere - i.e., we precipitate and chemically alter CO2 into other carbon compounds. People think "solar" is one thing - when, in reality, it is a whole family of technologies that are coming into prominence - from direct conversion (artificial photosynthesis that is more efficient than natural photosynthesis), bio synthesis using blue green algae and harvesting lipids from that, and then there is what most people know which is photovoltaic. All are part of the solution and if subsidized as half as heavily as fossil carbon was / is for the past hundred plus years - the price starts looking attractive.. It takes a while to slow a speeding train and the best time to start is early. The problem with accounting for "cheaper" fossil carbon in the present is the cost in the future which is heavily discounted by current thinking. If for instance burning fossil carbon now means that you will pay four times as much in 20 years for air conditioning, the price starts dropping quickly.