OPINION OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA! (White Giant)

hummm... You can still edit your post and correct that. See the notepad with the pen? Click it. ; )

Got your people mixed up MM, but I don't mind if Zetetic doesn't!

First off Zetetic: Saying the British Isles are "a bit cloudy" is an understatement! Just like our Oregonians here, the Brits don't suntan, they rust!

Back to MM for a second: TMI is okay. The one reactor is down, but the other two are up and running, and have been. One of my high school classmates (J. Heuser) is head of security there.

On to the discussion. Zetetic, your assessment of the energy problems/solutions is on target. Hydro is clean, efficient, and incredibly low maintenance. Watched a program(me) on the History Channel a couple months back which attempted to show what the world would be like if every human disappeared tomorrow. One of the things which amazed me was that the Hoover Dam would continue to pump out electric for a couple decades e

John: I didn't know what that notepad was for. I been searching for an edit button, but now I know lol. I'll use it next time

JMR, I watched that exact same program on the History Channel too! incredibly interesting stuff they had on there. The wind mills, too, would still be producing electricity as well. Pretty interesting thinking about how green technology would far surpass fossil fuel tech, even long after humans have vanished! lol!

JMR, I have no idea why you would hand someone a pencil when they're selling you a program, but I don't ever remembering someone giving me one to use lol. I DO remember that Kevin Costner stole my pen after I asked him for an autograph there lol.

But, um, I guess after all these rants, my original point was that the Chinese should put all their energy into developing all these technologies we have been talking about, in order to be more independant from foreign resources. They'

Got it backwards MM. The program guy is supposed to give the buyer one of those pint sized pencils to keep score with. I didn't get one that day, and I still want it! lol.

Regarding the Chinese once again, they're not strictly developing fossil fuel programs. They are also beginning construction on what would be one of the largest hydroelectric complexes in the world on a river in western China running along the border with Tibet. The name of the river escapes me at the moment, but it's a large river which runs down into India. And therein lies a problem. If the project is completed the river flow will be so drastically reduced that approximately 1 million Indians will be without water. Considering the on again/off again relations between China and India, this could be interesting.

Off topic interlude....

This thread was started on Thursday, May 24, 2007.....Is wwwporkchop even playing anymore?

lol who knows? but its a fun thread so...

Yeah I think it's the Yangze River, or the Yellow River (that may very well be the same damn river tho)

One hydroelectric dam is not going to put a dent in the future energy demands of China though. They'll probably do what we did, and in fact they already are: throw up a bunch of cheap coal or oil burning plants.

Robert. Fusion is what you were looking for. The process as theorized is to covert a hydrogen isotope into helium which liberates massive emounts of energy in the process. E=mcsquared I believe. The developemental problems have centered around magnetic containment of the process and energy output/input ratios as I recall, but it does indeed represent the best long term prospects for mass energy production. The "blow up the world" thing is so much misinformation. Unlike fission, the splitting of heavy elements, fusion is not a process that is self sustaining. It can't "run away" or get out of control. However, it does produce heat energy in "bursts" that largely contribute to the engineering challenges in utilizing it for electrical production. I believe the French are developing a plant which uses fusion to produce lower temp plasma to heat water to steam turbines much like fission plants work today.

At any rate, I have

Incidently, someone might want to fire up some new threads for this discussion as this one seems to be becoming a bit unwieldy.

Just a thought.

MM: Switch grass

Never heard of it, but it sounds very interesting.

Renewable sources of energy

I think the best way of selling the idea of large-scale conversion to renewables to a reluctant population (such as oil-dependent Americans) would be in terms of energy security. Even if it works out as slightly more expensive in the short term, the investment will pay off as the price of the technology will fall with widespread adoption. You then have a country that is less dependent on potentially expensive imports from unstable parts of the world.

Britain used to be self-sufficient in oil until output from the North Sea peaked in 1999. Even then, the price of North Sea Oil fluctuated with the global price, so even self-sufficiency in a commodity does not guarantee a secure supply (if foreign buyers will pay more, they'll be able to buy more raising prices for domestic buyers).

MM