[PLUG-TALK] Re: [PLUG] Debian experts?

glen e. p. ropella gepr at tempusdictum.com
Sun Feb 25 18:23:16 UTC 2007


Cool sub-rant, Jeme!  If you do move away, you have to promise to stay subscribed and rant periodically. [grin]

However, I do disagree with one implication of your point.  It's true that all these "alternative" energy ideas are just variations on the same theme of "burn it"!  But, the underlying point is that we need diversity in our energy repertoire.  Ethanol is just one of many energy harnessing efforts we _should_ pursue.  The process for extracting energy from oil should continue being refined.  We should continue to make solar, wind, and water power more efficient.  Etc.  The point being that the more we diversify our energy repertoire, the more opportunities we have to live "sustainably", lessening the deep impact of any one exploitative practice on the earth, increasing the opportunities of the earth's complex system to come up with compensatory processes, etc.

I grant that many of our youngsters might be scientifically illiterate and innumerate because they have little reason to care.  But, you also have to admit that the majority of the scientifically literate and numerate are _still_ linear thinkers who don't see or understand systemic phenomena.

Why is that?  Why are these plenty intelligent fully grown mature adults so ignorant of _systems_?  Perhaps for the reasons you state... "set the children in a room and dump baroque and ill-formed information on them".

Jeme A Brelin wrote:
>>  Query state (or federal) legislators on science and see how little
>> they know, even on the subjects of bills they sponsor or on which they
>> vote.
> 
> Boy howdy!  I got a letter from Barak Obama the other day that goes on
> and on about using ethanol as an "energy source".
> 
> I wish we could sit everyone in the fucking country down and explain to
> them that there's no such thing as a "fuel", there are only batteries.
> Every battery must be recharged from some other energy source.  Every
> battery takes more energy to recharge than it can store.  So most of the
> time, you're better off not putting the energy into the battery in the
> first place.  However, some energy sources are just draining off into
> entropy, so storing that energy in batteries might be a sensible thing.
> 
> Ethanol is surely storing solar energy as chemical energy.  So's oil. 
> All the same there.  However, on any kind of industrial scale, ethanol
> also requires huge amounts of oil for the cultivation of the corn (or
> whatever), the harvesting, processing, and shipping.  In the end, it's a
> net loss.
> 
> You get the same shit with hydrogen.  Use electricity to break down
> water and then ship hydrogen all over the country as a fuel?!?  Are you
> fucking idiots?  If you have so much electricity lying around, you can
> ship that around MUCH easier.
> 
> So, we don't need better fuels, we need better batteries and better
> energy sources.  The only energy sources that makes sense are ones that
> can be siphoned off with no measurable effect on the supply (solar,
> tidal, geothermal, etc. -- at least until we learn that we're fucking
> things up that way, too).  And the only batteries that make sense are
> ones that can be recharged in the device from electrical input (until we
> figure out better way to ship energy).

-- 
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
The Government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion. -- John Adams



More information about the PLUG-talk mailing list