Replies to post #205507 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Zeev Hed]

Very antiquated calculations, it can be done with today technology at half that, and it is laughable when the author talks about :"shortage of materials", silicon is sand, and sand is almost as abundant as water... it is also laughable when he talks about availability of land, your roof, which is a wasted piece of real estate is the "required land" for a good chunk of the required power (a normal house can supply its energy requirement with less than 100 square meters of solar collection, show me a roof smaller than that in suburbia) but I am not going to go into an argument about it here. I have said long tim e ago that there are two issues, energy independence and potential greenhouse effect from the use of fossil fuel. Frankly, the former is more important, IMTO, than the latter (another Saint Hellen could compensate for 10 years of excessive CO2 discharge, and reforestation to improve the natural carbon cycle could do the same thing, just double the area of forests in the world and you absorb a lot of that CO2 discharged. As for energy independence, we have as much on the north America continent as we'll need for the next 30 years, and if crude stays above $30/barrel for good, it makes financial sense t extract it profitably. That is why Saudi Arabia, is not going to let crude stay that high (except adjustment for the falling dollar) for long, the don't want Canada to develop its shales deposits.

[langostino]

razor - cost of voltaics ...

Arrggghhhh. Drives me nuts how cost comparisons never capture the externalities. I guess the energy and materials industries know there would be hell to pay if externalities were ever figured into anything and sensible government tax and trade policies adopted to account for them.

Needless to say, when full-cost accounting methods are employed, full-scale photovoltaics wind up being considerably more advantageous in that comparison than they are in the more narrow analysis, as there are tremendous costs to fossil fuel extraction, refining, and consumption which are conveniently omitted from the cost of fossil fuels.

John Kerry and the Democrats are utter morons if they fail to seize on this issue and put together an alternative national energy policy, then stick it up front in the campaign. It's the back door to dealing with Middle East foreign relations, war and peace, corruption of the political system through the buying and selling of government policies to Big Oil and big autos for campaign financing, etc., etc.

Let's see ... an alternative energy policy, (a) cuts total energy costs - private and public, (b) cuts the price of war in the Middle East - money and lives, (c) cuts huge costs in health care that flow downstream from air pollution, (d) lowers tax burdens due to (a-c), (e) stimulates job growth in a new industry, (f) stimulates a leadership industry for the U.S. which, if best in class, would result in new exports and improvement of balance of trade ... etc., etc., etc.