Re: [Phys-l] Get Aggressive On Global Warming

[Faraday321@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/18/2007 3:37:35 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
rbtarara@sprynet.com writes:

-----  Original Message ----- 
From: "Chuck Britton"  <britton@ncssm.edu>


> Is anyone interested in CO2  sequestration?
>  (being tried in some Scandinavian country  IIRC)
I hope so.  That is what looks to me to be the  most promising of any short 
term schemes for reducing greenhouse  gasses.  Solar, wind and biomass are 
not going to be able to take  over the load from the fossil fuels (currently 
90% of energy supply  world-wide).  They can help but as my yearly student 
project shows,  trying to turn just the oil and natural gas usage over to 
renewables  involves millions of large wind generators, 10s of thousands of 
square  miles of solar collectors, 100s of thousands of square miles of 
farmland  and trillions of dollars of capital expenditures.  The fact that  
there is probably enough fossil fuel for 2-300 more years (at about double  
today's cost) and the fact that the infrastructure is already in place for  
its use, suggests that figuring out how to use the stuff with minimal  
emissions is probably a more prudent way to go at this point in  time.  Doing 
so will give us enough time to either pare down the  world population to 
something that can be sustained with acceptable damage  to the environment or 
else to really figure out some new energy  source--maybe even fusion (was it 
this list where somebody described  fusion as 'The Energy of the 
Future--always was, always will  be!"

Rick 





You put your finger on the core casual problem. Population.
 
Bob Zannelli 



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