Re: [Phys-l] Energy use

[Leon de Oliveira <leondeolive@gmail.com>]

We ARE doing this in developing countries. There are companies 
developing fuel gas from biomass and selling small solar panels to homes 
to provide energy to light the home at night. The biomass fuels use 
local input and create much less damaging pollution improving the health 
of women in the homes that use the gas. These are ways to improve 
standards of living in poor and developing nations without large power 
plants and infrastructure. They are financed by micro loans as well. 
These areas are greatly improved but this is by no means a way to bring 
them to our energy consumption level. But then again would we want to?

Leon

Folkerts, Timothy J wrote:
> > What we can do is find ways for people around the world to generate 
> > enough energy to improve their standard of living ...
> >     
>
> Can we indeed do this???  I certainly hope so, but it will take some
> MAJOR changes.
>
> Planetary-scale energy needs will only be met by "harvesting" energy
> from planetary-scale sources:
> * energy from the earth (geothermal)
> * energy from the sun (including wind and biofuels)
> * energy from the moon (tides).
> * energy from atoms (fusion - not fission because we don't seem to have
> enough U)  
>
> Until we start thinking on these scales, we are thinking too small!
> Furthermore, these are mostly diffuse sources, so storage &
> transportation on a global scale become an issue too.  If we do not
> figure out how to (or develop the will to) harvest these sources on
> these scales, civilization will not continue as it is.
>
> Tim Folkerts  
>
>
>
>
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