Tuesday, January 10, 2006

rant #2

rant one was about jeep. rant 2 is less of a rant, and more of a cautionary post. i'm worried about people in the northeast. out here, we're worried about the rising cost of natural gas. and, it'll effect us. but, out there, people may be in some serious straits. especially the least of these. fuel oil prices have doubled over the last year, and funds to purchase it haven't. some will be weighing the question, "heat or eat." this is true sad situation in a nation as rich as ours. i don't know what the answer is though. is it more gov't price help? how can charitable organizations get involved? what other options are out there.

9 comments:

Unknown said...

If we could eliminate the necessity of an energy market, I think we'd go a long way toward a healthy and safe America and world. Imagine if we powered everything with safe and free electricity using... I don't know... huge solar arrays in the desert.

What if, instead of
“We will put an astronaut on the moon and return him safely to earth within this decade.”,
The president said
"We will power homes, vehicles, and businesses with free and non-polluting energy by the end of this decade."
???

(Nikola Tesla had a vision for the free and universal distribution of power through the air using AC power, but it would probably be found to cause cancer.)

Adam said...

Think of all the animals and plants you'd displace/harm while errecting these massive solar arrays in the desert.

En guarde.

edluv said...

i saw a interview with a guy who was talking about coal, and the ability to process it into a form that it can be used like oil. the process and technology have been around a long time, but the cost was preventative until recent spikes in the cost of oil. and, the u.s. has lots and lots of coal.

(although mine safety is an issue)

Unknown said...

Oh yeah, totally. I'd violently protest a huge disruptive PV array in the desert. I was just saying that if we got the great minds together and did an energy race like the space race, we could eliminate a lot of problems. We should put the solar cells on the moon and have a huge battery-charging station up there, and have shuttles carry all the chemical power cells back to earth. Or something.

Adam said...

That would extremely cost prohibitive considering the millions of dollars it costs to launch a shuttle.

Unknown said...

Not if the shuttle is powered by solar batteries on the moon!

Adam said...

Well, you got me there, I guess it's just recovering the initial cost of each of the $450 million launches necessary to erect your solar collection array on the moon that we'll have to worry about.

Unknown said...

Are you saying my erection plans are dysfunctional?

Anonymous said...

You can talk about environmental disruption of large solar arrays in the desert.

You can also talk about the huge envrionmental destruction of open-pit mining in the Appalachians for coal, where they displace thousands of hectares of forest and river and valley to get at the coal beneath (because it's easier to rip up an entire vally than construct a safe underground mine!) But hey! They fill it all back in afterwards, so no harm done, right?