by Calbear94 » Wed Oct 03, 2007 10:26 am
It doesn't take a genius to see that glaciers on land have shrunken dramatically in the last 100 years...the photos prove it. A trip to the northern and southern extremes, would allow us to see that enormous ice shelves (some that are as old as 500,000 years) are melting and sliding off into the seas. When ice melts into water it expands...leading the water levels in the seas to rise. Low-lying coastal areas around the world will be flooded. This is fact. Tuvaluans are already about to lose their island in the South Pacific, so many have moved to New Zealand as "climate refugees." We can haggle over the rate of climate change all we want, but it is all but obvious except to those who perhaps don't want to change their lifestyles, that in the last 100 years carbon emissions occurring from man's use of fossil fuels has caused the Earth's temperature to rise 3-5 degrees. Americans drive larger cars than their counterparts in both Asia and Europe. The U.S. was the only attending country to not sign the global warming treaty. We already have the technology to do away most of our use of fossil fuels, yet we don't use them on a large scale.
By placing windmill farms on unoccupied areas of the west, we could produce enough electricity for the U.S.'s needs, thus eliminating the burning of oil and natural gas, and the U.S. of nuclear power. Ethanol made from switchgrass, rather than corn, plus electricity, could supply all the power we need to operate the types of automobiles that we already drive. Electricity produced from clean, alternative energy sources, for short low velocity trips, switchgrass-ethanol (which still produces greenhouse gasses, but much less than gasoline) for longer high velocity trips.
The old days of alternative energy being "too expensive" are over. For example, a house in the southern U.S. with solar panels installed will pay for the cost of those solar panels in just twelve years from energy savings. In much of the south, an energy surplus would be generated in which electricity would actually be provided by the homeowner to the power grid, causing electricity companies to pay the homeowner. This length of time to recoup the investment will continue to decrease as ever cheaper photo-voltaic film is being produced.
Everyone knows the power of the oil companies, but even farm politics is standing in the way of energy progress. Corn is the main source of ethanol right now, though switchgrass is less expensive. This caused a spike in the cost of corn, leading recently to surging dairy prices in the U.S. and food shortages in Latin America as tortilla prices rose more than 50%.
Alternative energy is not only sound environmental policy but also for national security, of which economic concerns are a key component. Dependence on oil has created a destabilizing effect. China's economic gains have been remarkable since the government liberalized its economy. China has been gaining global market share, threatening to someday replace the U.S. as the most economically influential nation. Right now, China's only disadvantage is that it consumes vast amounts of energy resources, much of which are imported. However, China is in the process of building the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, called "Three Gorges." When completed, it will provide all of the electricity that China needs, not to mention provide protection from floods for some of its largest industrial cities. China could reinvest some of its eventual energy savings back into the production process, allowing it to manufacture higher quality products and more advanced technologies. Its takeover of the global market would be nearly complete.
Brazil is the leader in ethanol production, Europe in the development geothermal and oceanic energy sources. I fear that the U.S. is falling behind in the development of alternative energy because of a failed policy based on petroleum dependence. The U.S. is hoarding its strategic oil reserves. There is enough shale under the Rocky Mountains that, if it were economically feasible today to extract the oil from the shale, would place the U.S. at number one in the world in terms of oil reserves, ahead of even Saudi Arabia. I hope that the U.S. is not gambling on U.S. petroleum dominance for the future. It would only be short term dominance and speed up climate change.
Last edited by
Calbear94 on Wed Oct 03, 2007 10:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
