23rd July 2006, 2:34 PM
A Black Falcon Wrote:Somewhere around 20% of the energy produced in the US is used up by air conditioning...
Very true, and with good reason. It would be nice to make it more efficient, but there's not too much wiggle room. Forcibly moving heat from two equal temp locations (and as it goes on, from a cooler location to a warmer location) just requires a lot of energy.
A thought I had is that while a modern home with "all the trimmings" (as opposed to your grandfather's house where lighting one room at a time and a half hour of TV a week are about all the energy hogging he requires) simply can't be sustained by today's solar panel tech (and the fact is no matter how advanced we get, even at 100% efficiency (which is impossible anyway though we can get close) there is only so much sunlight in any given area). BUT, I think maybe a single device could be run off a large number of panels. Since air conditioning (and heating too, we use a LOT of energy heating our homes in winter) use so much, MAYBE we could get the devices running exclusively on a roof coated in said panels (more panels for bigger houses mean more energy to go around, perhaps). Of course, this is just an idea for a way to save energy, and it would also require people WANTING to buy that instead of going off the grid.
Another possibility is nuclear energy. That's very clean, with FAR less tonage of waste (though the waste is more dangerous) than coal or oil energy, and ALL nuclear plant waste can be sequestered away, and far better now with the tech we have it simply isn't a threat when locked into a sort of foam structure. Even if that's cracked it still isn't a danger. The main issue there is psychology. After the distaster of Chernobyl (sp?), no one trusts the stuff. There's good reason to be scared of such an accident, that's why they need to be run well and monitered at all times. However, nuclear plants aren't the only ones that can have accidents. I seem to recall massive oil spills and other such things, and unlike fossile fuels nuclear, even with that horrific event, wasn't a global environment shift that ends all human life. Also, a lot of people seem to be afraid the mere presence of such a plant exposes people to unhealthy doses of radiation. Not accurate. A well run plant emits next to zero radiation, and often enough that next to is zero. You can stand staring directly at one of the reactors at the bottom of a radiation absorbing pool of water and be perfectly safe and still able to reproduce. You get more radiation sleeping next to someone in bed than from living by a well run nuclear power plant. You also get more smoke living with a smoker than living next to a well run fossil fuel plant, but those usually aren't nearly as clean as nuclear. Further, new techs for harvesting the materials needed basically recycle the stuff until all that's left is safe to hold in your hand, so long as you don't eat it (then it, like all heavy metals, will bond to your bones, and that's poisonous for reasons besides radiation anyway). Further, all studies regarding nuclear plants and various diseases in various communities show no increase in the rates of cancer and other illnesses in communities living in plants compaired to other towns not anywhere near said plants. But, again it's psychology. If someone is living by a plant in fear and they happen to get cancer (even if there's no way to trace it to the plant and no evidence that living next to one causes an increase in cancer cases), it's immediatly the plant's fault.
The last danger often cited is that if the materials are hijacked, they can be turned into weapons. That's true, but it's also true that someone can infiltrate a fossil fuel plant and sabotage the whole thing making that into an attack of Midgar proportions.
Anyway, the only other issue is cost of building it. About the same as the cost of building other solutions.
Anyway, I offer nuclear because it's about the only thing that really seems to answer ALL the issues of not using fossil fuels. Wind would be nice (and unlike a lot of people I personally wouldn't see huge fields of them as ugly), but it's not as efficient, requires a lot more space, is as expensive as other methods to originally build, and is not nearly as stable a source of energy due to the fact that wind can start and stop blowing or change direction (especially true in Oklahoma). Solar pannels, even at their best, will require a lot of space themselves and they too will fluctuate, every single night in fact, and also when cloudy. Using vast battery stores to make up for this would also cost a massive amount.
Nuclear, if you ask me, is the best option right now. The rest is either a pipe dream or something that isn't up to the level it needs to be at just yet, but we might look into it later.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)