MANTRA THINKING: "ENERGY SHORTAGE" IS THE WRONG TERM | 2008-03-18
"Energy Shortage" is the wrong term
Our problem is not AVAILABLE energy per se. We face a lack of USABLE energy.
As Prometheus points out in an SF thread, hydrogen technology is not a means of producing power, but of packaging it.
As just one example we have an almost unlimited supply of potential hydroelectric power, which is a form of solar power, available. But it hard to put a waterfall in your gas tank.
There is an almost unlimited amount of heat energy two miles beneath your feet and that is peanuts compared to what is further down. But the Planet Earth will not fit into your air conditioner.
Our challenge is to get the energy that is available into our cars and homes. Peak Oil makes sense because we will not be allowed to.
We face a difficulty which, on the technical side, isn't that different from the ones white technology has routinely dealt with. It reminds me of the attempts at powered flight around 1900. The gas engine had given us the power, we had to ADAPT it.
The Wright Brothers did that in the Kill Devil Hills, not at Kitty Hawk, in December of 1903. But they did not face the problem then that they would now.
First they would have needed a permit to use the Kill Devil sand dunes. The police might not have allowed them to risk their lives that way. Jane Fonda and a guy with a guitar would have demonstrated against their putting that ugly, smelly thing in the air and scaring the birds.
What is creepy is that this is NOT an exaggeration. In fact, these would be just the beginning of their problems.
Let's get real, gang:
All energy production and use involves risk. The minute anyone tries to do anything, the activists come out, as nuclear energy shows.
We have an army of vested interests any serious technology will have to fight. We have another army of Mommy Professor Activists whose full time job is to protest ANYTHING. We have another army among our three million lawyers -- oddly enough, about the same number we have in our prisons -- looking for anything to make a lawsuit out of.
What we face is not a shortage of energy, but a glut of Mommy Professor's kids.