Green Energy

Over the past couple of years, I have heard over and over again about the energy crisis. How America needs power to run her industries. We need this power to run everything in our lives, from your refrigerator to factories that produce goods. The question is where are we getting the power for all these appliances? I will tell you, they come from a number of sources, coal, oil, and nuclear, or hydraulic. The question that I have is why haven't any of the major candidates talked about building more hydraulic damns? They are looking for a more green source of energy, what is more energy efficient than running water of a turbine? The reason that we burn coal is that is the cheapest, and very plentiful out on the east coast. The reason we burn oil, because it is convent if there is no other source. The reason we use nuclear is that it is cheap and efficient. The reason we don't run our power dams at full strength because environmentalist in the 80's and 90's said that it was harming the salmon runs up the Columbia. Nevertheless, what is worse do you think for a salmon, a fish ladder or a fisherman? Salmon fisherman will net around 142 million dollars of personal income. 62% of salmon caught are caught in the Columbia river basin1. So why aren't we doing more to produce clean power and less to over fish our rivers.
I happen to live near by, and I almost never see the dams running at full strength. I bothers me why we are spending millions of dollars on cleaner methods of power research. In fact according to one blog, we spent 771million in 2006 on alternate energy2. So once again why are we spending hundreds of millions on cleaner energy when we have one of the cleanest energy sources available to us right now?
If we have the technology available why not run all our power from either wind or water? One reason is the rich aristocratic democrats who so highly tout a green stance don't really want to. Mr. Ted Kennedy recently objected to a bill that would have built a 130 turbine wind farm with in sight of his summer house on Cape Cod3. So as we still pay around $3 a gallon at the pump you can rest easy to know that you are not disturbing Mr. Kennedy's view.

How would a wind mill farm help your price at the gas pumps? If we could put all the oil burning plants out of business, and that would drop our dependency on the product. That would mean demand is less thus the price drops.
In recap, we spend millions of dollars to research a cleaner energy source when we have at our disposal a totally clean one available. That we don't have running at full capacity because of the environmentalist lobbyist. Finally, the rich democrats don't want to pull their weight, so as the common person buys energy efficient light bulbs, hybrids, and other energy conserving ideas. They are repeatedly countered by the Democrats buying SUV's for their entourage, chartering private jets, and vetoing bills because they interfere with their housing views.
http://chopsui101.blogster.com



I am not a author but these are the web sites I got my the information from.

1 http://www.nwcouncil.org/library/ieab/ieab2005-1.htm
2 http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2006/03/mixed-signals-federal-funding-for.html
3 http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/27/kennedy_faces_fight_on_cape_wind/
Permalink
tags: green, energy, biofuel, ted, kennedy + add tags
savecancel
posted on Thu, May 15, 2008 11:47 AM
CommentsRSS Feed
Want to leave a comment? Log In to your account
Renwable is a good way to go, but a long way to go too byMontana0073 months ago (0 votes) (report abuse) (reply)
I read your post quickly so there may be a few particular points that I've overlooked, but you make some valid points. I've been interested in renewable energy since I was young and have spent a fair amount of time researching the subject and arrived at many of the same conclusions. I think that at some point we should also differentiate between renewable energy, clean renewable energy, and low impact renewable energy. Many of the trends to move toward things like ethanol and biodiesel still generate airborne pollutants, but I'll save that for later and it's still a step in the right direction in some regards. Unfortunately, recent finding with ethanol are confirming what many have predicted regarding an adverse impact on food and a poor net energy value. Although people are frustrated that we aren't using more hydroelectic, wind, solar, and geothermal energy sources there are a lot of reasons that it will be a slow process to create a system that can accomodate current and future demand. The main obstacle is matching the demand for energy to the supply of energy. The grid, as it stands right now, has no significant storage capacity. This poses a sizeable problem since you can only generate wind energy when the wind is blowing, hydroelectic when the river is flowing, and solar when the sun is shining. The excess energy has no where to go. Coal, diesel, nuclear, etc. can be produced on demand, which make it attractive to energy producers and lend stability to our energy infractructure. There are ways to physically store potential energy with hydroelectric by reducing flow, but then water rights also come into play and you can't just shut off the water to folks down river. you also need to consider that the highest demand time in climates like Montana is in the winter and that's also when hydroelectric dams have problems keeping up with demand as a result of ice flows. You can store in battery banks too, but we will have a significant environmental impact if we go that route. I'll let you infer what you want about current hybrid cars. There are some systems in the works to try to store energy, but it's difficult and costly and won't likely come about until the cost/benefit is more reasonable. One of my ideas is to produce hydrogen through electrolosis and physially store the hydrogen so that it can be used on demand in retrofitted generators. This has it's problems too because of the massive amounts of water that must be used to produce the hydrogen. It may however have an unintended positive side effect of ensuring pure water sources as hydrogen becomes a primary fuel source. There is a lot more to discuss about this so I'll save some for later.
i <3 windmills bytiredofbeingjudged3 months ago (0 votes) (report abuse) (reply)
i remember reading in the chronicle that people in the paradise valley area were against proposed wind-mills, because they were 'an eyesore.'
didn't realize there was a kennedy in the neighborhood.
RE: i <3 windmills byMontana0073 months ago (0 votes) (report abuse)
I can understand not wanting wind turbines installed in areas that detract from mountain views, but there are lots of other places that they work well. We've got to be careful what we install and how we do it. Livingston is actually not the best area for wind turbines because of it's gusty winds. Strong predictable wind with good density is the best choice and is usually found in places that aren't populated like Judith Gap. People tend to shy away from living in places that have wind every day and the land is usually not as productive. California is talking about photovoltaic (PV) panel farms being installed on a massive scale, which is another one that is going to have some unintended poor consequences. The energy (heat) reflected back into the atmosphere from photovoltaic panels is not unlike the superheated air that has become a problem over major cities. When PV panels are not installed integral to building surfaces they also take up massive amounts of land. It's unfortunate that nuclear has gotten such a bad rap over the years, but it has huge potential. If they could figure out a way to dispose of the byproduct (there are some ways like super-heated kilns) efficiently it may be a good route. I hope that this is one of those issues where we can find some common ground and start solving the problem.
There aren't.... bydwainegf3 months ago (0 votes) (report abuse) (reply)
There aren't many more places to put Hydro dams. Running pipes will work for small operations but they also cause some environmental concerns. I feel that we (USA) should look at every option at once and use the resources we have now while researching alternative sources. That means building more coal and nuclear plants. We could build more coal plants at Coal Strip for instance. These plants can be built rather quickly when compared with nuclear plants. Use the extra power generated at these plants to make Ethanol and demand that the auto industry build cars that run on this fuel. We should also find a way to get the oil out of the shale/oil rock found in Colorado,Utah and Wyoming. If we could find these new sources of energy to run our cars, we could become more energy independent. Finding ways to harness tidal currents, wind power, solar panels.... can also augment our needs. I have often wondered why new houses don't come with solar panels. This would only add about 1% to the cost.
There are a great many options available, unfortunately there are radical elements (Exteremist enviromentalist) that don't want solutions presented that don't fit their agenda. They will file law suits and otherwise delay some of these solutions. These kind of actions in the past have put us where we are today. We don't have enough refineries, we aren't drilling for oil in areas that could be utilized, coal has been ostrisized...... Now we face a shortage of gasoline driving the price through the roof, our electricity costs have doubled so have our home heating costs. I would love to see everyone working together and compromising to acheive the end goal of energy independence.