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Colman:
You're making the assumption that practices based on the assumption that you can be profligate with cheap energy will carry over into a situation with expensive energy.

yeah some energy valhalla, where we're all wearing electric suits and roaring through megawatts till sparks are flying out our fingers.

there seems to be no awareness that we don't actually need to be permanently plugged in to some grid the whole time.

this is a blind spot, and is very culture-centric, as we argue here in yurp about how many teras we 'need', and apparently will never be glutted by the use of, while millions of people could already be using a couple of panels in places like nigeria and running a clinic fridge and some lights with.

instead they will probably have some corrupt bureaucrats negotiating a nuke plant for them with some 'western' company!

and all this with the planet temperature rising, and water shortages looming. solar and wind don't gobble water, once they're up and running..

it's effing lunatic, and what's especially distressing is how many intelligent people can't see this for what it is: a last ditch, extremely well-financed effort to keep the public dependent and ignorant, about something that we have the tech to give everyone some of, and that could be useful in so many ways.

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Tue Feb 9th, 2010 at 03:06:51 PM EST
[ Parent ]
and I think your attitude is dangerous. To mankind, and the world. Higher energy costs is not a good outcome for anyone, and especially not for the poor of the world, because they will not be able to afford it, or, most likely, be able to field the technical cadre to maintain a network of windmills, the smart grid they need, or the load balancing facilities to keep things going, ect. The monstrous centralization of a nuclear power station has upsides, as well as downsides - for India, and other stable-but-poor countries manning and maintaining these stations is easier than farming the entirety of the countryside for energy.

There is also the basic fact that if the choice the public is offered is one between costly energy and frying the planet, most likely the planet will fry.  Maybe not. Maybe the current generation is more righteous than mankind has been so far. But is that really something you want to bet the world on?

Re: Water. Two words: Nuclear desalinization.

by Thomas on Tue Feb 9th, 2010 at 05:16:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]
You want to claim that wind energy is too high-tech for developing countries but nuclear isn't?... Huh.

You should know that India is a wind power pioneer, too, with almost 11 GW installed (nuclear: 4.12 GW). Suzlon even bought majority in a top German manufacturer (REpower).

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Wed Feb 10th, 2010 at 05:20:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]
You want to claim that wind energy is too high-tech for developing countries but nuclear isn't?... Huh.

what can you say?

they're teaching grandmothers in india to install solar, maybe they can moonlight at westinghouse!

the bit about how inefficient it would be to harvest energy from the countryside too...

obviously a grid for their nuke nirvana would be worth installing, but empowering them off the grid, not so much.

concern trolling, poor planet, it's dying of coal fumes, what it surely needs now is to be bathed in radioactive rays, while declaiming how solar energy will pave the world with cement.

it beggars belief...like most topdown -is there any other kind?- capitalism.

~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Feb 10th, 2010 at 09:30:22 PM EST
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