[ExI] Wind, solar could provide 99.9% of ALL POWER by 2030

spike spike66 at att.net
Mon Jan 21 04:01:52 UTC 2013


>... On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl
>...

>> ... so we start to get serious about alternatives: we build 
> nukes, we install ground-based solar, we build enormous wind farms, we 
> manage to not get into wars over dwindling fossil fuels, we do all 
> things needed to transition to renewables, in a period of about 30 years.

>...It's too late. A number of people are going to die, and I doubt they'll
go gently into the good night... Eugen Leitl

Articles like this one, pointed out by Tomasz Rola, make me think otherwise:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/09/the-cheapest-generation/30
9060/

The article has the ring of truth to it from my own experience.  I talk to
teenagers whenever I get a chance, and I have noted a remarkable
characteristic of the Y generation: as a group they don't seem to give a
damn about cars, and don't seem to have much of an appetite for high end
consumer stuff.  I notice whenever I go to car shows, it is the graying set,
seldom 20 somethings and almost completely absent of teens.  I don't know
what the under-30 crowd does to entertain itself, but I have an interesting
theory, perhaps driven by hope.

When one is young and single, motivations are driven by the desire to
copulate.  I think of all the driving that took place in my own misspent
youth, and the yield, which was so low as to be almost negligible.  The now
generation can make all this happen so much more efficiently using Facebook
and all the other ways that young people meet online.  If you are striking
up relationships online, the pool of potential mates is enormous, so one
might as well start with someone who lives close by, and all the
energy-inefficient aspects of the mating game can be done using electronic
connections only.  So my theory is that compared to my own misspent youth,
the amount of driving per unit copulation has reduced by an order of
magnitude.

Regarding  a comment I posted regarding very small scale suburban
agriculture, doing such a thing is analogous to restaurants discontinuing
the long-standing practice of bringing water.  It didn't save much water,
but the constant reminder caused the proles to start thinking of water
conservation on a large scale.  If everyone starts to grow food plants where
one's yard once was, it doesn't actually produce much food, but it produces
useful awareness of the effort and energy that goes into food production.
This awareness is appalling in its collective absence in society today.  We
never think much about food, and we take completely for granted that food
will always be in the local supermarket.  What if we all grew a little food
in our own yards?  Would not that cause us to become far more aware of the
challenges ahead, and influence us to get on them?  I think it will.

spike






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