Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

So far, the entire biofuel push has been more or less a sham anyways. The amount of energy used to create biodiesel from corn, for example, is greater than the amount of energy released by the resultant fuel.

The economic justifications hold little water, for all intents and purposes. Pushing very hard on the development of renewable energy sources, should yield at least satisfactory results, once a minimum threshhold of funding is introduced.

And to clarify, even if it took solar panels 20 years to recoup their investment in energy costs, compared to the current cost of oil, it is beyond a win-win situation from day 1 (more American jobs in PV-cell fab plants, less reliance on foreign fuel, less reliance on fossil fuel altogether, reduced environmental impact, etc), but it's also a hell of a lot better expenditure of even say $1trillion, than propping up banks whose greed and avarice did nothing for America but highlight how egregiously abusable our free market is, and how abused it has been.

Even if the expense came out to $1trillion every year for the next 5 years, that sort of outlay would create such a stupendous energy surplus as to justify and allow us to rapidly pay off the debt so incurred by the project.

Jim,
you really need to educate yourself on fundamental physics.

Look up, for example, energy density per square meter in new hampshire - and you will find that voltaic cells will *never* be relevent in northern climes.

Which for example, is what field studies confirmed.

Just like ethanol - (unless you are talk cellulosic ethanol which has some real promising developments) solar cells simply *cannot* satisfy our energy demands.

It isn't only a problem of energy density, toxicity in manufacture, limited life, and cost. But the combination is nuts.

Now, I do think we can use tidal, wave, and wind as renewable energy sources. But the costs of these will ALWAYS be higher than nuclear. (Again, energy density).

At least nuclear absent ridiculous political costs. We can game the system anyway we want.