Good one Terry!
When I worked at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station I was amazed that the
"Florida Solar Energy Center" was a 1/2 acre lot with a chain link fence and
a building that couldn't have been more than 2,000 square feet. The 1/2 acre
also enclosed the parking lot! If you're familiar with it CCAFS, it borders
the South perimeter of Kennedy Space Center and combined, the together are
about 30 miles long.
There are SO many unused pads and facilities with an incredible amount of
open land around them.
It wasn't too hard to figure out why the Solar people were jammed into the
1/2 acre with not even enough room to walk between the ground mounted solar
panels.
I guess Washington can't squash development of alternative energy, but they
can make it hard to do!
The facility has since moved but still only has a staff of 15. Doesn't
really sound as if we are very serious does it?
MMC

"Terry Spragg" wrote in message
...
bowgus wrote:
My opinion ... for long term hydro (I'm in canada eh), wind, solar make
sense (usually lotsa wind, solar, and water around boats by the way).
But
for the short/near term, it's looking like mainly natural gas ... e.g
bld
has some units selling in japan, fcel units here and there. All I know
is,
somebody better start building that hydrogen infrastructure (and finish
it)
while we still have the fossil fuels to do the work.


The sticky point with hydrogen is that it takes so much energy to
produce. Where are we going to get all this energy, which we're
already
short of?


There is no shortage of energy. There is a shortage of power
conditioning technology, like refineries, battery manufacturers, or
solar collectors.

There will be no actual oil shortage for at least 10 years. Longer,
if we each take personal responsibility for reducing energy wastage
and usage in a big way.

We are being weaned, ever so gradually, by the oil guys who want to
orchestrate the last 10 years of oil to be a pricing frenzy. They
are consolidating their garrotte on the refinery industry, now.

Someone should start up a company to build a modest refinery on a
big old slow ship with tanker hose connections, perhaps an obsolete
single skinned tanker? You could anchor it anywhere, and empty it if
a storm threatened. A refinery is just a big old still, after all.
You can make a moonshine still from an old coffee maker.


Think of hydrogen as part of a battery system, a refillable battery,
if you will. The hydrogen gets "charged" at a hilly wind or desert
sun site, and tanked or pipelined to users, who "discharge" it to
create a substitute for transpiration, where we cut down trees to
build this city.

It's not rocket psciance, it's rock and roll.

If Vegas's sewers went to a solar lagoon, the water extracted by
Zenon (TM) Zeaweed (TM) could provide hydrogen without having to
pipe in special water, or poison the ditch to the sea. Is there a
runoff from Vegas, a river, or something? Some of the hydrogen
produced by solar power and electrolysis and stored under a tarp
could even be used to provide peak load electricity in a turbine or
internal combustion super clean "steam" engine, bonus exhaust: pure
water. The dried crap, sterilized by the sun, would make good
odourless fertilizer for corn to make corny diesel, gasahol, and
livestock feed, for the rabbits or goats under the sunshade solar
collectors.

Trangenic goats can be used to produce very fancy medical drug
feedstock, and would never escape death valley, whatever, unaided.

Serendipity? Problems, or solutions? It's really all in our attitude.

We want lotsa cheap durable solar shingles, and the right to sell
excess power back to the hydro company, even at 15 percent
efficiency, or windmills where we can't hear them and where there
are no birds or bats!

Low pressure H2 pipelines would not depress permafrost, and could
even float on cables above the ground or river crossing using low
pressure anti static plastic pipes, greenhouse ventilation tubes
actually. Such a pipeline could be unreeled from a helicopter, and
anchored in rock, filling with gas as it is installed in the air.
Crews could use very simple straight clamps to essentially close the
low pressure line wherever needed. Occasional ground valves could
contain mishaps, like Caribou antler entanglements.

We need lightweight, flexible solar cells to print on the tops of
the gas bags, along with the telemetered pressure gauges, like the
ones they are going to print on solar powered electro-deflective-gel
fleshed orthinopter high altitude balloon launched surveillance
robot birds, like they demo'd on Discovery last week. Ain't war
technology great?

What do you think they use to lift big balloons, H2? Helium? Don't
make me laugh! Who do you think sabotaged the Hindenburg, and why?
Who promotes expensive, inefficient helium to preserve their old
technology? Yup, shipping magnates, the oil guys, the heavy
pipeline guys, and wildcat drillers.

That is the future, but don't look to the oil guys to put themselves
out of business real soon, yet.

I said it about tungsten, of which I have a now near worthless
collection recycled from incandescent bulbs over the years, and I
optimistically say it about oil, Like some one said about buggy
whips. Horses might still be popular if it wasn't for the horse muck.

Oil is becoming obsolete, just like coal did. There are energy wars
being conducted internally, by rich traitors and poor
scientist-enterprenuer heroes.

Set the army engineers on it, if you want to see a peace dividend.
Remember that quaint term "Peace Dividend?"

There is lots more coal in the ground, we just don't need it right
now, because oil is easier and more profitable.

There is no shortage of energy, only of imagination.

Terry K


Iceland is blessed with practically unlimited geothermal energy. So
they
can produce hydrogen for their own use as well as export.

Matt O.