A short news report of a wave energy project in Australia that looks very promising. Australian's are pretty clever too ;)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-02/a-...
Interesting and disappointing to note that in tough economic times, the Australian Government is planning funding cuts to this type of innovation.
Considering in 100 years, the same problems for electric cars still exist, yes I have my doubts even on the scale of decades. Building up solar, wind, and other energy even over decades is a massive infrastructure project, and that is just replacement. It is not a matter of just replacement, but replace both current and future energy needs. See 3000quads.com
Plus, the general solutions are to pass subsidies and mandates, which lock in more expensive technology, taking away the incentive to innovate.
The American people as well with people in any economy is going to gravitate towards the most cost effective energy source regardless of what that source is. If any alternative energy was more cost effective than fossil fuels then that would be what people use. Government at the behest of AGW cultists and environmental wacko activists have been sparing no expense in artificially forcing the cost of fossil fuel energy sources up to make very expensive alternative energy sources more appealing. However considering that government makes 10s of billions in tax revenue and technology is expanding fossil fuel reserve supplies worldwide making it cheaper and the exposed crony capitalism within the alternative energy industry the attempts to force alternative energy solutions using artificial price schemes on fossil fuels has failed miserably.
I don't think that anyone is doubting anyone else's ingenuity.
However, it must be acknowledged that there are very real problems that would need to be solved for the green dream to be realised. Energy storage is proving to be problematic on large scales, for instance. It is even problematic on quite small scales like powering a car.
Nature solved the problem of storing the sun's energy in a compact space when it invented coal, gas and oil. It seems churlish not to make use of that.
There are other problems apart from ingenuity. For example, government have poor records at being entrepreneurs. If they were good at it then they would be rivals to Bill Gates and not rivals to Barack Obama. When governments try to be entrepreneurs they throw money at something. Not their money, note, our money. That is why things like this happen: http://nlpc.org/stories/2014/03/25/duke-...
That is also why Solyndra happened. People saw an opportunity to make some money out of the government and they took it. In my view, a better approach is for someone to spot the need and then try provide for that need in a way which will personally benefit himself. That way the commitment is more than any government department (or NGO) could ever provide. I guess that makes me a capitalist. That is also why you had Gates, Jobs, Edison, Ford etc.
People only wholeheartedly back governments in times of war as far as I can see. although, they sometimes pretend to back them if the government threatens violence as the alternative. As a thought experiment, remove all the innovation currently in use that was created by capitalist entrepreneurs but keep all the ones created by government. What do you have?
"With *present* technology, I'm pretty sure we could cut our fossil fuel use in half, easily, in just a couple of years"
I have no idea how you can be "pretty sure" of this. Do you think it is as easy as unplugging a coal plant and plugging in a wind or solar power installation?
I'm certainly not against alternative energy. I feel thorium power plants have great promise; most of the benefits of nuclear with less risk. However, I'm not sure when they would start becoming feasible. While it's not non-renewable, thorium is certainly a very abundant element and would be a great transition from fossil fuels to eventually fully renewable power.
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Edit: You might also want to consider this:
- Globally 3.5 billion people lack proper energy access, and 1.2 billion are children.
- About half the children in the developing world attend schools without electricity.
- Some 1 billion people receive substandard healthcare because of a lack of electricity.
I'd like to see your plan for renewable energy addressing these problems without "ruinous costs".
It's great that you can absorb a little (or big) jolt to your electricity bill. Hey, it's great that you have electricity. Just think about that for a few minutes.
If solar and wind was capable of being reliable and effective, ingeniuos people would be doing it, and making money out of it now, like they did with frakking.
Renewables are just not energy dense enough to be more than a slight help
Cutting to the chase Fracking improves the available feasible energy supply on a global level. It's really in the hands of the political mainstream. Green is a cop out, environmentalist avoid, and alarmist bleat. There really is nothing more to say.
Maybe we should stack all you people worried about it in a controlled apartment complex and build a bio-dome around it. Then you could fight over what the thermometer would be set at. 13.8C or 13.81C?
People don't really care about the science any more and it seems like they never have. They have shown their cards and keep showing the same hand. Nothing has changed since 1989 as polls suggest. It's obvious climate science hasn't been very convincing in telling people what they think is happening, but it sure seems as if Government intervention is the answer for these environmental zealots even if it is against people's will. That's simply called Government Elitism and tyranny over people.
When alternative energy is viable economically and technologically to compete, it will. Someone gave the example of Solyndra which is a very good example of what happens when governments get in the market and choose. It isn't a coincidence that Solydra's founders were big campaign donors to Obama and Democrats. Crony capitalism isn't a solution. It is the problem.
People in denial might, but a lot of people are skeptical of the current state of alternative energy development as well as the U.S. government's ability to manage it without unintended consequences as well as doubting the investment of taxpayer's money in new technology in the form of subsidies and other incentives. The concern and skepticism is legitimate, but we do tend to forget that major-and very successful-economic developments in the United States have been overseen by the government, often because the financial burdens and country-wide scale of those projects were far beyond the scope of American business-even the most gargantuan corporations in many cases. Railroads are perhaps the best example; with government support, the development of railroads was a key factor in turning the U.S. into the economic powerhouse it is today.
At the time, there was a percentage of the population that in many respects reflect the alternative energy opposition in the U.S today; some of that opposition was economically based, some the fear of the unknown, and quite a bit of the opposition came from people who objected to a fledgling technology that didn't appear to them to have the potential to be superior to existing technology...horses, wagons, boats.
We have many other examples of government investment that were not directly related to economics and profit margins, some older and some newer. Of course, the military is a good example and no one that I know of pretends that anything other than central government control of the military in a global environment would be better than what we currently have; the Interstate Highway system is another, to name just one infrastructure project that was successful and benefitted the country in many ways. Looking a the ability to coordinate even more highly technical issues, space exploration is of course an obvious example. So these projects don't always go south or demonstrate the inefficiency or incompetence of government, although there are examples that do-usually more administrative than infrastructure, though.
Do we need to be cautious at this juncture? Absolutely, but comparatively speaking we must also use judicious management as we set our priorities for development. For example, another answerer here notes that half of the global population lacks proper energy access. If we think in terms of developing traditional infrastructure, such as electrical power, imagine the staggering cost of building new electrical grids capable of serving 3.5 billion people, not to mention the time to construct the grid. Is that really more cost and time effective than putting solar panels on top of schools, hospitals and etc? I didn't really notice many people objecting to the distribution of cell phones in developing countries as an alternative to stringing telephone wires all over (or burying fiber optic cables.)
As far as the time frames that you reference, I would concur that 'a couple of years' is pretty optimistic. Clearly you weren't being literal, but figurative in your use of the phrase, but I personally think 10 or even 20 years to reach a 50% reduction in fossil fuel use-just as an off-the-top-of-my-head timeline. But we have seen many instances of the naysayers having problems with grasping timelines, expecting things that are predicted to occur 50, or 100 years-or even centuries in the future-to happen in the twinkle of an eye. That being said, alternative energy development timelines would be an interesting conversation in and of itself..how long would it take us, for example, to develop thorium reactors? Or hydrogen to power cars? Or Algae as an efficient source for the production of ethanol?
The truly ingenious people, though, are the ones who are indeed, skeptical of things-combined with analytical and creative minds, there are probably untold thousands of them tinkering with ideas in their garages and basements even as we discuss the potential for alternative energy here today. The people who say it can't be done are the ones who have and will continue to drag us down as a Nation.
A common denialist refrain is that "Alternative energy can't replace fossil fuels, it's just not good enough yet".
Now, I agree that if we tried to transition to 100% non-fossil-fuel energy tomorrow, we'd be pretty thoroughly screwed. But most people aren't talking about transitioning in a few weeks, or even in a year. They're talking about transitioning away from fossil fuels over the next decade or 3, sometimes over as much as 50 years.
Do you really think the American people (and other people around the world) aren't clever enough to figure out replacements for coal, oil, and mined natural gas over the next several *decades*, especially since the basics of several forms of replacement technology are already in place?
With *present* technology, I'm pretty sure we could cut our fossil fuel use in half, easily, in just a couple of years, if we made it a priority (without ruinous expense, btw). Do you really think we couldn't improve that to at least within shouting distance of 100% replacement with a couple of decades to work with?
Any other thoughts?
Denialists ignore the fact that solutions to AGW, mostly new energy sources, are to take decades to implement. Why do denialists think that progress has stopped?
The only people who think we lack the ingenuity to transition is the warmons who think the government needs to pick. Look up Solendra to find out how well the government chooses.
It is rather obvious that the greenies don't have any ingenuity. On this site they cannot come up with any scientific solution to the problem. All they can think of is tax and tyranny. THAT'S REAL INGENIOUS!
The only ingenious actions they take are to ingeniously find ways to pilfer our money and ingeniously enslave mankind.
Crony capitalism is certainly a problem in such transitions. But abiotic oil geologist JimZ can't see it when it is right in his face:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/busine...
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/s...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_cha...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_o...
(Newsweek) http://www.sharonlbegley.com/global-warm...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011...
http://jcmooreonline.com/2013/01/31/engi...
