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May 4, 2007 We hear and read about all kinds of optimistic news about ethanol, biofuels, hydrogen, nuclear power, solar power, wind power, and so on. However, none of those really look like they would be cheap enough to properly fuel our petroleum-addicted economy. The costs of driving to work and trucking food to our stores would be absolutely staggering for any of these, drastically lowering our standard of living as well as weakening our military defenses. Hydrogen would be extremely dangerous, at the high levels of our present energy usage. Nuclear would also be extremely dangerous in the long term, when the wastes must eventually be taken care of. Ethanol (alcohol) or biofuel (from cellulose, etc.) would consume far too much water, if we're trying to replace our present petroleum consumption. The capital investments in solar, wind, tides, and geothermal are just not practical for America, when we consider the cost of storing the energy and making the systems transportable for cars and trucks. Not at our enormous levels of energy consumption. <br> Those self-destructive crazies in the Middle East might actually make the whole place go up in flames, as in my nightmarish essay, "The Very-Likely Destruction Of Iraq" (U.-K. April 16), and you can quickly read through that here. Well, what can be done? For one thing, you can look up the word "Sasol" on wikipedia. You'll see that South Africa (in spite of their terrible unemployment and crime situation) is converting their plentiful coal to gasoline, on a large scale. It does cost more than our gas, but not much more, and Sasol is generally a great success. What we need to do right now is invest a lot of money in research and development, to further improve that process. Then we need to start building the equipment for large scale use, way in advance of when we'll need it. We're still not too late, and it must be done. ------------ About the author: Dan Shanefield is a retired engineering prof, who worked at Bell Labs and then at Rutgers University. He wrote the book "Industrial Electronics for Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians". Visit his website or email: shanefield@ieee.org Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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