Can't Get Something For Nothing
(this has the label of "pop-culture" because I believe global warming is a popular culture thing)
Environmentally crazed lefties (socialists are what they really are) don't seem to understand that you cannot get something for nothing. In this case, "something" is energy.
Currently our industrial society is geared around using fossil fuels. Fossils, as you should know, take a LONG time to make. Fossil fuels, by extension, are made naturally over a very long period of time. The commercial and industrial infrastructure is already in place to support mass use of fossil fuels. But the socialists/communists don't like using fossil fuels because they *claim* that it contributes to global warming. Bunch of bunk, if you ask me. Watch this video and it will cure you of your global warming mental illness. For the rational and logical among us, this presentation seems scientifically sound. However, it is more than 1 hour long. EDIT: Here's a link to a Fox News article that talks about this documentary.
(BTW, in that video, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace calls the global warming environmentalists "anti-human" and communistic)
So the socialists want us to stop using fossil fuels and start looking to alternative energy. Alternative like what? Solar and wind power? "Yes, of course, Mother Nature would be most pleased if you just powered your house with solar energy." In the documentary, they showed a clinic in Africa that had no power source but two solar panels. With those, you could power either the refrigerator, or the lights. Not both. Hey that's great...either you can see, or you can have vaccines that won't go bad. In order to power a modest African village, you'd probably need a solar panel the size of Montana. The socialists wouldn't like that because that would take up a lot of space and wouldn't be pleasing to environmental eyes. It would "disturb" the natural flora and fauna. Same thing with wind. You can't expect to power your house with one little out-of-the-way turbine. But we can't set up large scale wind farms because it supports "heavy industries" and disturbs natural flora and fauna. Wind and solar would require a lot of space. Space and time are in a continuum, and so if time = money, then are space and money and time all tied together? Who knows...
What then? How to please the socialistis? Hydroelectric power? You don't think that would disturb the aquatic ecosystem at all? At least birds can fly over wind farms. Fish can't "swim over" hydroelectric dams.
We're running low on options...maybe the best option we have is nuclear power. Personally, I think the main cost here is risk. Although I haven't rigorously researched it, I believe that nuclear power is the most efficient energy we currently use. Everyone knows the equation E = mc^2. It is the heart of nuclear power. The amount of energy we can get from the most miniscule amounts of uranium is astounding. Any amount of anything multipled by 90000000000000000 is a lot. The downside here is high level radioactive waste. But at least it wouldn't contribute to global warming, right? (In the words of Paul, I am out of my mind to talk like this)
If you want someone to blame in all of the supposed energy woes, I suppose you have no one to blame but God. When God created the universe, I imagine He set forth innate properties of matter and energy. One of those is the principle of conservation of energy, which means that energy can neither be created or nor destroyed, only converted between different forms. So you see, it took me all that time to demonstrate that you cannot get something for nothing. If you were to try, you might be fighting God.
(Note: energy generation is a topic of benthic proportions. I acknowledge that I only scratched the surface on a lot of these, and probably left out many details.)
Categories:
environment
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politics and junk and stuff
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pop-culture
Another problem with using nuclear power is that (to my knowledge) every country that starts a nuclear weapons program begins it under the guise of researching it for peaceful energy usage. Who wants to open that can of worms? And wouldn't countries like Iran and North Korea find it all too hypocritical if *we* were allowed to use nuclear energy, but they were not? Not that they don't already see us in that way...
But if you ignore the weapons aspect of it (and if you find a way to take care of the waste safely), nuclear is the "cleanest" of all the energy sources.
Oh, and by the way, the biggest users BY FAR of fossil fuels are the plastics and polymer industry (I studied this in college). Using alternatives for your house and car will hardly make a dent, even if everyone else did the same. So now you have to make people stop buying plastics. Which means we need to find another way of packaging food and other consumer items. And we need to find other ways of making packing peanuts, coats, windows (many windows today are made with plastic rather than glass), insulation in your house, pianos (would we really like to go back to elephant ivory?), computers, cars (which are FULL of polymers, inside and out), and the list just goes on and on. Take a look some time at everything around you that involves plastic. Eliminating them would mean a complete change in our way of life, no doubt about it.
"Another problem with using nuclear power is that (to my knowledge) every country that starts a nuclear weapons program begins it under the guise of researching it for peaceful energy usage. Who wants to open that can of worms? And wouldn't countries like Iran and North Korea find it all too hypocritical if *we* were allowed to use nuclear energy, but they were not? Not that they don't already see us in that way..."
My understanding is that there are ways to pruduce nuclear energy that does not produce wepons quality byproducts. One of those is what is known as a pebble bed reactor. I'm not a nuclear scientist so i do not know all of the details, but I have a friend who is. He says that Pebblbed reactors are not the best but they do not create problematic waste like other reactors because the fissionable material is encased in a graphite "pebble" that makes the disposal much easier.
Please excuse the bad grammar. I wrote that much too quickly.