Repost,

A note on energy of the future…

I know for a fact that there are numerous places where there are strong winds quite frequently and I have seen calculations that a county sized patch of land in the right place - if populated by wind farms, could power the entire US.

The issue is that yes the wind is intermittent so it would be a very good idea to not put all of the farms in one patch, and even more important, it is necessary to build a smart grid to carry that power across larger distances. However, this is not impossible to do and there is no reason we could not get a substantial amount of our power from wind in the future.

A home windmill is another thing that if everyone had one - with proper battery storage for when the wind was not blowing, would make a dramatic impact. In fact, a home in the right area with a combination of solar panels, wind and the right battery technology could easily be completely off grid.

However that is small scale. Full scale windfarms however actually have the power to supplement major cites. This is another one of those things that we should be rapidly deploying.

In the near future, if we did things properly, densely packed cites that run major city wide utilities and services would be primarily supplied by modern generation nuclear reactors. As you moved out into the suburbs, windfarms and solar become very attractive. Fossil fuel cars would be phased out and replaced by electric vehicles. The cities would need to develop plug in infrastructure for parked vehicles. Your home, supplemented by your own solar or wind would charge up your vehicle.

Now imagine if you will how much money you would save if you did not have to pay for gasoline?

Imagine how much money you would save if you did not have to pay for heating oil because you had an electric system in your home, that was supplemented by your own collection of energy.

Sure the capital investment up front might seem high, however, the switchover would quickly pay for itself and continue reaping profits - and then huge amounts of money could be used for other things than propping up hostile nations, or destroying our environment.

It is a win, win, win all the way around. It would be a win even if AGW were not an issue from both an economic and a security standpoint. It would be a win from a diplomatic standpoint because the real and only way to tell people like Saudi Arabia to join the civilized world is to take away their leverage.

And yet, because oil companies and coal companies have politicians on both sides of the aisle (but particularly GOP) completely bought and paid for, we don’t do it.

We must break the strangle hold that these vested interests have over us. The choices could not b more clear. Massive economic boom from domestic energy production or total collapse of our civilization and billions of deaths.
Are you really interested in destroying your nation and killing your children so that some oil tick can live better for a while?