We don't have an energy crisis.
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We don't need to have an energy crisis.
Many of us have at this time in history the feeling that life could be so much better, but it seems to be getting worse. How do we turn this around? I think each of us holds a part of the puzzle in our own unique abilities. We each have a role to play in making a better world. Let's just do the best we can. We all have different manifestations of the same problems.
The quick solution is often the dirty one. We have the illusion that oil is the only type of energy; but energy is all around us. There is an astounding number of new methods of energy generation being researched. And there are new design advances in older alternative energy choices. There's wind, which, for all the badmouthing it's received by those invested in the status quo, has enormous potential to provide clean energy. There's geothermal - again, with current advances showing huge possible application. There's solar, another rapidly improving technology receiving so much resistance from those who are either honestly ignorant or cynically self-serving. These really clean technologies harness the energy already existing in nature - neither making pollution nor requiring enormous capital investments to build (as with so-called "clean coal" and nuclear), There is tidal energy - which I guess you could say puts the moon to work, by using the regular rise and fall of the ocean to generate power. There are fermentation processes by which waste organic material can produce energy.
There are schemes for combining several technologies to overcome limitations of each. One example has to do with hydrogen made by electrolysis from solar. The common complaint about solar is that it doesn't work when and where the sun isn't shining bright. But this can be overcome by using excess solar - in off-peak hours when it's not needed - to produce hydrogen via electrolysis, which can then be used when and where the sun isn't shining. It's so simple we'll someday wonder how we could have not seen it.
There are many highly technical research projects ongoing into new energy processes, claims that I lack the expertise to evaluate. There are even claims that nature's energy can be harnessed "from thin air" so to speak, like a properly tuned radio pulls in a signal from the air. Though the science is too advanced for me to follow, I do think that what is being sometimes referred to as "free energy" is actually possible from a philosophy of science perspective. Think of all the examples in your life of those times in which something good did not happen because someone or other was stuck on doing things the old way. There are vested interests which have consistently acted to shelve new technologies - for no other reason than that they threatened the business plans of entrenched technologies. Go to the library and take out the film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and you will see that it wasn't inevitable that gas guzzling SUV's clog our traffic. We could have had by now very comfortable plug-in electric vehicles that don't pollute at all if plugged into electricity made by fuel cell or other alternative energy.
I have often said we could have Heaven on Earth if we just worked together. This is not just impractical romanticism. Idealistic dreamers are often accused of being unrealistic, but the world we have now is in some ways so hellish because of the actions of those "practical" cynics who always rest on their "I got mine" vested interests by saying "It can't be done" every time somebody comes up with a good idea.
======
We don't need to have an energy crisis.
Many of us have at this time in history the feeling that life could be so much better, but it seems to be getting worse. How do we turn this around? I think each of us holds a part of the puzzle in our own unique abilities. We each have a role to play in making a better world. Let's just do the best we can. We all have different manifestations of the same problems.
The quick solution is often the dirty one. We have the illusion that oil is the only type of energy; but energy is all around us. There is an astounding number of new methods of energy generation being researched. And there are new design advances in older alternative energy choices. There's wind, which, for all the badmouthing it's received by those invested in the status quo, has enormous potential to provide clean energy. There's geothermal - again, with current advances showing huge possible application. There's solar, another rapidly improving technology receiving so much resistance from those who are either honestly ignorant or cynically self-serving. These really clean technologies harness the energy already existing in nature - neither making pollution nor requiring enormous capital investments to build (as with so-called "clean coal" and nuclear), There is tidal energy - which I guess you could say puts the moon to work, by using the regular rise and fall of the ocean to generate power. There are fermentation processes by which waste organic material can produce energy.
There are schemes for combining several technologies to overcome limitations of each. One example has to do with hydrogen made by electrolysis from solar. The common complaint about solar is that it doesn't work when and where the sun isn't shining bright. But this can be overcome by using excess solar - in off-peak hours when it's not needed - to produce hydrogen via electrolysis, which can then be used when and where the sun isn't shining. It's so simple we'll someday wonder how we could have not seen it.
There are many highly technical research projects ongoing into new energy processes, claims that I lack the expertise to evaluate. There are even claims that nature's energy can be harnessed "from thin air" so to speak, like a properly tuned radio pulls in a signal from the air. Though the science is too advanced for me to follow, I do think that what is being sometimes referred to as "free energy" is actually possible from a philosophy of science perspective. Think of all the examples in your life of those times in which something good did not happen because someone or other was stuck on doing things the old way. There are vested interests which have consistently acted to shelve new technologies - for no other reason than that they threatened the business plans of entrenched technologies. Go to the library and take out the film "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and you will see that it wasn't inevitable that gas guzzling SUV's clog our traffic. We could have had by now very comfortable plug-in electric vehicles that don't pollute at all if plugged into electricity made by fuel cell or other alternative energy.
I have often said we could have Heaven on Earth if we just worked together. This is not just impractical romanticism. Idealistic dreamers are often accused of being unrealistic, but the world we have now is in some ways so hellish because of the actions of those "practical" cynics who always rest on their "I got mine" vested interests by saying "It can't be done" every time somebody comes up with a good idea.
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posted by St. Jim the Composter at 2:58 PM
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