So anyhow, photoelectric decidedly beats any sort of biofuel for powering a society, other than the fact that it is useless for transportation other than via wired applications (catenary/3rd rail) because of the energy density issue. There’s then the fact that covering sufficient of the Earth’s surface with solar cells to power a modern technological society would result in an ecological disaster by cutting off the sunlight to major ecosystems (not to mention that the sun shines only during the day, duh). So even if we did replace all our cars with electric street trolleys and electric trains, we have to power them with *something*. And that something is going to probably be nuclear in the end, because everything else has even worse environmental repercussions.

I hear all these things about how we should just cut back our lifestyle yada yada yada. But the majority of energy use is for manufacturing and transportation, i.e., is necessary in order to maintain technological civilization. Besides, I don’t see anybody who talks about “cutting back our lifestyle” rushing out to live in unheated one-room shacks with no electricity or hot water, giving themselves baths only in the summertime with a sponge and a pot heated on the stove. Well, there are a few who do that, but generally they’re not the same ones talking about “cutting back our lifestyle”, typically they’re just antisocial and don’t like people and this is the only way to live if you’re not willing to embed yourself into a social network…

The “pond scum” reduces CO₂ when growing and releases oxygen, so it’s “green” at that point.

There are better and safer ways of doing things, they just don’t involve profits for the entrenched corporations.

Without energy-dense power sources, you don’t have large-scale civilization because transportation grinds to a halt, and technological civilization simply cannot exist. Without technological civilization, approximately 3 billion people die rather swiftly, within a matter of months rather than a matter of years, because they lose the ability to transport food and water and manage its distribution. And right now, storing energy in the chemical bonds of complex hydrocarbons is the best way we know of doing that. Perhaps we can reverse-engineer how plants do this, and create these hydrocarbons with nothing but carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight, but my suspicion is that the energy density needed to create sufficient hydrocarbons that way would require nuclear power to do it on a big enough scale to keep technological civilization going… and nuclear power has its own problems, albeit mostly political ones since the latest designs are inherently safe (they utilize the laws of physics to ensure that it’s simply physically impossible for them to melt down or explode as long as they’re loaded with the specified fuel — you’d have to change fundamental universal constants to make it happen, and if that occurred, exploding nuclear reactors would be the *least* of our problems).

So anyhow, that’s why we (humankind) are going to keep drilling as long as it’s less expensive than hooking a nuke up to a photosynthesis simulator. It’s all about energy density, in the end… at which point, you have to talk about making it as safe as possible, because saying “don’t do it” simply isn’t going to work, there’s just too much relying on having an energy-dense power source.

– Badtux the Energized Penguin
.-= last blog ..To be fair to Comcast… =-.

I disagree about assembling people who actually know how to do deep-water drilling properly, if that’s not “a set of measure zero,” as one of my math profs used to say. The more we find remedies to the flaw that led to Deepwater Horizon, the longer we will avoid finding real solutions… and I’m convinced none of those involve oil at all.

I saw how the “invisible hand” really worked over Transocean who was forced to limit their dividend to a measly billion dollars this weekend. That will show them not to have wells blowout. 😈

I get a feeling that they don’t want anyone to figure out that there was no regulation of what happened. That makes their claims look silly.

To be honest, I have no good idea what kind of regulation would help. I think they need to round up some people who actually know how to do drill in deep water and set up a standard practices model. It’s hard to tell people what they can’t do, if you don’t know what will work.

Oh wait. For a moment there I thought I was a glibertarian. Sayyy, have you noticed that the glibertarians have been distinctly quiet about this disaster and what it says about the need for government regulation?

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
.-= last blog ..To be fair to Comcast… =-.