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Given enough money, time, and motivation, technology can solve nearly all problems. However, if oil prices jump although we will be highly motivated to seek solutions, money will be in shorter supply, and we will have ever less time to come up with solutions. In fact, we already know what the 'solution' to the problem is, but money and motivation to implement these plans is nearly non-existent.

   

Well, just a little mini tangent, please.... ^___^

Your standard-issue incandescent light bulbs waste nearly 90% of their energy into heat, meaning that only 10% is actually used to illuminate your reading. You might as well have a heater on!

And yet these light bulbs still riddle every building and street and town and city across the U.S. Guess it's just too tempting to get these in packs of 3 per $1 USD and change....

Imagine how much energy could be saved if as many of those fixtures as practical could be swapped for Compact Fluorescent Lighting, which release very little into heat and light significantly more per watt. Or for that matter, LED lighting which converts over 90% of its energy into light.

And surely something can be done about the heavy cost with enough demand.... '_'

   

On that theme were a few other books in the original link: Collapse, The Collapse of Complex Societies and Beyond Oil. Company of Strangers is a good read as well. The point being made is not that the sky is falling but we are all mutually venerable as we are so interdependent on trade. Like it or not what effects Vietnam effects Cambodia that in turn effects China and India that effects Russia and Europe and the US. Domino's all in a chain. Have one collapse the world economy is resilient enough to withstand a downswing but a massive drop off may bring the whole house of cards down.

There was a time when the President of the US sneezed and the world caught a cold, now the inverse is true. We have become dependent on a system that could ultimately become our undoing. It has happened time and time again though out history.

   

Mad religious delusions=Maurice Strong.

   

Mad Religious Delusions en masse = Fact? Tell that to the natives of Easter island!

Maurice Strong

What's your idea of global environmental cooperation there ziggy? Who would be acceptable to table such an idea? Is this a vendetta vs the man or the idea?

   

Yeaaaaah,... Once in a while I close my eyes and wonder how society was like when it was an established "fact" that the world was flat. It's really hard to imagine given that the luxury of hindsight and the other perks of the 21st century really cloud one's vision. But given the lack of technology, the lack of education among the populace, the widespread influence of the church(es), and the overlying threat of stigma, ridicule, isolation, exile, torture or death for anyone who questioned this "fact", and I suppose it becomes understandable why anyone would have wanted to sustain this [literal] "mad religious delusion".

Although just to make sure we don't delude ourselves now, perhaps just plain old "delusions" is probably the best term. That way it's more readily recognizable that life, even now, is full of them, and in more ways than may seem obvious given our shortcomings. -_-'

   

Ziggy, your dreaming.

Alberta power demand March 2005 = ~8,000MW
Alberta installed wind capacity 2005 = ~120MW

I don't know if the info I have is still accurate, but there is only 120MW wind energy installed in AB, and represents about 100 wind turbines. Add onto this the fact that wind turbines do not have an endless supply of wind. Alberta's wind farms have a capacity factor of 20-35%. This means that of the 120MW installed, you are getting the equivalent of around 120*.30 = 36MW. Compare this 36MW to the 8,000MW that you required in Alberta and you start to see just how "tick on an elephant's back" your "massive" windfarms really are.

Coal is the new hot commodity in North America, like it or not. It is going to become even more prevalant moving forward given natural gas's soaring cost and the inability to supply the North American insatiable demand for electricity with other forms of generation.

m

   

doesn't it already provide 1/2 of America's electrical energy needs? And although that works fine for them, i don't know how much coal we have up here in Canada, but i don't think it is that much. i heard somewhere that the US has about 150 years supply of coal left, which is quite a long time considering it has been using coal for about that long so far. Canada gets most of it's electrical energy from hydro-electric and nuclear power. We coulld get rid of coal power here all together, if we invested a bit more into smaller scale projects for electricity. Instead of building one huge dam that creates a lake the size of a small country, or a series of them to flood an area the size of Germany (see northern Quebec), build smaller ones that provide power for a local town. Or make it cheaper for individuals to have a wind turbine to power their home, or to use solar energy to heat it. A lot of the electricity that we generate gets lost due to resistance in the powerlines themselves.

   

You are from Ontario, which you can tell from your post without reading your location

Alberta is 80% powered by coal, Saskatchewan 70%, and Canada is over 25% thermal generation, with nuclear at about 12% from what I can find. Canada is also a net exporter of coal, making it an important commodity for the country.

Your "we could get rid of coal here altogether" is a very frustrating and common response. It is untrue. It is also the reason that people in the East don't understand why westerners are so concerned about Kyoto. It is the primary source of power for millions of Canadians, you can't just discount these people.

I don't mean to get on you here, bro. There are people in Alberta that don't even realize that coal is their number one source of power...hehe.

Take care
m

   

Hey, that's fine Mukluk. I was basing what i said on my knowledge that Ontario and Quebec are the largest power consumers in Canada. About 1/2 of Ontario's electrical energy comes from nuclear, about 1/4 each from hydro electric and coal. Quebec has massive hydro electric generation capacity up around James Bay in a project where they plan on flooding an area the size of Germany, as well as other facilities already in operation. They also have a fair amount of nuclear generation also.

that is from http://www.ieahydro.org/AboutHydro/Hy-Canada.html . Sorry the info is old and doesn't come from a particularly reliable source (it has .org) but it is the best that i could find.

   

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