- Joined
- 18 Feb 2007
- Messages
- 1,367
- Reaction score
- 77
- Country
The Noun 'Luddite' springs to mind.
GM food production may be the saviour of feeding mankind, as Fracking may be the temporary saviour of the UK energy supplies.
Green energy may be the Utopia of which we all dream, but it is an unworkable solution for the energy requirements of todays world. All of the so called green energies are unworkable.
1. Wind energy requires a particularly small window of conditions to generate power. It is environmentally bad as the destruction of wild habitat is inevitable in their construction. It has been postulated that the energy required to produce a Wind Turbine (Steel production, road Construction, Material Transport etc costs more both financially and environmentally than the energy they ever produce in their life time. It just does not work.
2. Tidal Power has big problems in silting up rivers and water courses and is ridiculously expensive to construct. At least it is predictable and not weather dependant.
3. Wave power is a joke, and also needs the correct weather conditions to generate anything.
4. Solar panels require solar energy, which may be an option in Australia but the UK, I think not.
So I am not sure which green energy sources you are in favour of.
Methane(Natural Gas) is in fact a gas several factors greater in the green house effect than CO2, so it could be argued we are doing the planet a service by burning it.
So if Methane is that bad should we slaughter all of the fahting sheep and cattle wandering around as they are polluting the planet, or may be harness the gas by putting bags on their backs and a supply tube stuffed up their back sides. Clearly ridiculous but more environmentally friendly than Wind Turbines I am sure.
The modern world has evolved by energy useage and production, to stop it would mean a return to the dark ages and the subsequent reduction of the number of people on the planet by infection and the cold and starvation.That may be a good thing as there are far to many people on the planet already.
Like it or not, we need energy, green production of it in the quantities we require and the times we require it is unworkable.
The only practical solution that I can see is the cracking of the Fusion process.
Returning to Fracking. It is not an ideal solution but in my view far safer both environmentally and worker safety than Coal Mining. A lot of the Fire in water examples have been proven to be nothing to do with Fracking and caused by Methane getting into the Water Supply from Coal Mines.
The energy supply is a complex problem, but the solution cannot be so called green energy. We have to accept that energy generation is a polluting process as in deed Life itself is polluting.
Before man evolved, Oxygen was a pollutant, without it Man or life as we know it would never exist. I am not by any means suggesting pollution is a good thing but the very process of living is polluting, all we can hope to achieve is minimising the amount we throw into the environment.
My view is that Fusion minimises it more than any other practical mean of energy production.
