SuperSparky
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6 months ago
in Energy Crisis! What Energy Crisis? on Zaphu Forum
The square footage analogy with the barrel of oil isn't exactly honest. It is true that much energy is there, but we do not have the technology to extract 100% of that energy in the same amount of square footage
While voltaic solar power is becoming more and more efficient, it is not nearly ass efficient as what is extracted from a barrel of oil.
Mirror farms are also not (yet) as efficient per square foot of collected solar energy as that barrel of oil either.
With all of the ingenious ideas of alternative energy out there, none of them are as practical and as efficient as oil. Want to make alternative energy practical and more desirable than oil? Make it cheaper and more efficient than oil. Oil is only artificially expensive due to the simple fact of its supply being outlawed, not because it's not readily available. There's plenty of energy under the USA alone that makes the Saudi Oil fields seem like playgrounds. The USA has natural gas fields (160 years worth, if harvested), coal (which can be processed and refined into other fuels), actual oil, etc.
Want oil prices to go down? Simple allow competition. Allow extraction of our own resources to compete. Allow refineries to be built. Allow nuclear to be competitive. This allows for a good economy, and everything rests on energy. Forcing alternative fuels by holding back easily available energy sources just ruins the economy and now nobody can afford to research and build the alternative energy competitive sites. Why? It costs money to manufacture the materials to build an alternative energy plant. Energy is needed to manufacture the parts. Energy is needed to ship those parts. Energy is needed to assemble them into the power plant. It all takes energy. If you think that legislating away the ability to drill or dig known and working energy sources to force new sources is going to work, then you have a big absence of common sense and reality. Nobody is going to pay to build these outlandish new and un-tested ideas if they can't afford it.
Drill for oil, dig for coal, use nuclear. Allow the country to economically benefit from self-reliance, and then replace those abundant sources of energy with the alternative ones. The biggest key is to show and prove it makes energy cheaper (or as cheap) than oil or coal or nuclear, and prove that a whole new infrastructure is not necessary to deliver it. A good economy breeds innovation. Keep forcing our economy to depend on foreign sources and all you do is weaken its ability to afford to change.
There is nothing I'd like more than to not have to depend on foreign oil, or oil itself. However, practical intelligence must be exercised in choosing an alternative. How are you going to build the mirrors, glass enclosures, windmills, turbines, etc. if there's no cheap energy to do so? How are you going to pay for the energy to ship this heavy equipment to their destinations? It takes old technology to build the new.
Good luck on your alternative energy utopia while choking off what we already know that works.
While voltaic solar power is becoming more and more efficient, it is not nearly ass efficient as what is extracted from a barrel of oil.
Mirror farms are also not (yet) as efficient per square foot of collected solar energy as that barrel of oil either.
With all of the ingenious ideas of alternative energy out there, none of them are as practical and as efficient as oil. Want to make alternative energy practical and more desirable than oil? Make it cheaper and more efficient than oil. Oil is only artificially expensive due to the simple fact of its supply being outlawed, not because it's not readily available. There's plenty of energy under the USA alone that makes the Saudi Oil fields seem like playgrounds. The USA has natural gas fields (160 years worth, if harvested), coal (which can be processed and refined into other fuels), actual oil, etc.
Want oil prices to go down? Simple allow competition. Allow extraction of our own resources to compete. Allow refineries to be built. Allow nuclear to be competitive. This allows for a good economy, and everything rests on energy. Forcing alternative fuels by holding back easily available energy sources just ruins the economy and now nobody can afford to research and build the alternative energy competitive sites. Why? It costs money to manufacture the materials to build an alternative energy plant. Energy is needed to manufacture the parts. Energy is needed to ship those parts. Energy is needed to assemble them into the power plant. It all takes energy. If you think that legislating away the ability to drill or dig known and working energy sources to force new sources is going to work, then you have a big absence of common sense and reality. Nobody is going to pay to build these outlandish new and un-tested ideas if they can't afford it.
Drill for oil, dig for coal, use nuclear. Allow the country to economically benefit from self-reliance, and then replace those abundant sources of energy with the alternative ones. The biggest key is to show and prove it makes energy cheaper (or as cheap) than oil or coal or nuclear, and prove that a whole new infrastructure is not necessary to deliver it. A good economy breeds innovation. Keep forcing our economy to depend on foreign sources and all you do is weaken its ability to afford to change.
There is nothing I'd like more than to not have to depend on foreign oil, or oil itself. However, practical intelligence must be exercised in choosing an alternative. How are you going to build the mirrors, glass enclosures, windmills, turbines, etc. if there's no cheap energy to do so? How are you going to pay for the energy to ship this heavy equipment to their destinations? It takes old technology to build the new.
Good luck on your alternative energy utopia while choking off what we already know that works.
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P.S. I do not assume that 100 percent of solar energy is recoverable. But only a small fraction (less than 0.01 percent) would replace all of the oil energy we currently use.