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Re: the energy (Modified by Leigh Palmer)



On Friday, October 29, 2004, at 11:35 AM, Leigh Palmer wrote:

On 20-Oct-04, Brian McInnes wrote, after much with which I agree:

Energy, the abstraction invented by the early nineteenth century
natural philosophers and used by them and by engineers, has become the
property of the media, of entrepreneurs and of politicians. The
energy they talk of and understand (?) is indeed a substance. It's
the stuff that is found in coal, in gas and gasoline, in uranium, in
the wind, in reservoirs high on the hills, in sunlight, in moving
water and in hydrogen. All of this is good energy, especially if we
own it (perhaps we can fight a war for it if we don't). A trouble is
that some of this "energy" is non-renewable - we squeeze it out of the
coal or the uranium and sell it and the customer uses it and it's gone
- a non-renewable resource. Other brands of "energy" are renewable
and that's a bit of a worry too because we mightn't own it at the
moment but if a corporation can own genetic codes then owning sunlight
and wind and tides won't be too much of a worry.

I think it is important here to distinguish, loosely, free energy
(which is not conserved) from the energy of a system. It is free energy
over which wars are fought.

Leigh