Zaphu Forum - Latest Comments in Energy Crisis! What Energy Crisis?

Re: Energy Crisis! What Energy Crisis?

hankjmatt — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:53:57 -0000

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.
ClubPenguinCheats

Re: Energy Crisis! What Energy Crisis?

Zarah966 — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 02:24:10 -0000

Energy consumption should be reduced. This is important for the development of the country.

Re: Energy Crisis! What Energy Crisis?

Maddyj — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 06:45:03 -0000

Energy consumption is increasing day by day. It should be used wisely.

Re: Energy Crisis! What Energy Crisis?

SY0-101 — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:37:13 -0000

Energy crisis is a situation in which the nation suffers from a disruption of energy supplies (in our case, oil) accompanied by rapidly increasing energy prices that threaten economic and national security. The threat to economic security is represented by the possibility of declining economic growth, increasing inflation, rising unemployment, and losing billions of dollars in investment. The threat to national security is represented by the inability of the US government to exercise various foreign policy options, especially in regard to countries with substantial oil reserves. For example, the recent disruption of Venezuelan oil supplies may limit the US policy options toward Iraq.

Re: Energy Crisis! What Energy Crisis?

FreemonSandlewould — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 17:04:02 -0000

Solar is rather dilute. It will only be an option when you spray painting some pucky on a surface + attach electrodes is the recipe. Silicon is rediculous and CdTe is obviously limited or it would be more visible....its had adequate time to manifest and apparently has not.

As for me I want my own personal nuclear reactor be it fusion or fission.

Re: Energy Crisis! What Energy Crisis?

SamDavis — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:42:07 -0000

I agree that alternative energy should not be subsidized, unless there are clear net social benefits to such a subsidization which there often are not. For example, the subsides enjoyed by corn growers in the US are in my opinion nothing more that handouts for a politically powerful lobby, namely agribusiness. It would be much cheaper to import sugarcane derived ethanol from Brazil than to make corn based ethanol here, but this comparative cost advantage is unjustly negated by tariffs that benefit a few (mostly wealthy) farmers while American consumers pay the premium. The exciting thing about the drive for alternative energy today is that if fossil fuel derived energy prices remain high, then these alternative sources of energy become economical in the free market place, independent of subsides. This is a prerequisite for these alternatives to finally take off. The environmental dividends that will accompany alternative energies is icing on top. I am excited and can't wait to see what happens.

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.

Re: Energy Crisis! What Energy Crisis?

SuperSparky — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:22:07 -0000

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.