This works, but most of what is burnt are fossel fuels which didn’t just start yesterday making a mess of our planet. They are either dug out of the grond or drilled for making a mess of the planet. Nuclear uses radio active elements to boil the water but as most know the spent fuel is a problem we havent solved yet and the potential for a disaster will never go away.
The planet has rivers all over it and flowing water runs twenty four hours a day and can hardly be stopped. It can be dammed up and the falling water used to make power but most people hate dams. Like at Niagra we us part of the water from the falls for power but could never get away with using all of it.
Solar wind and tidal are upcoming ways to generate power from renewable energy but all are costly and only generate part of the time.
Geo thermal using the natural heat from the earth is fine but places to be able to use it are far between.
Our engineers have done us wrong for decades because they like doing things in big way and aren’t content in doing little things that will add up to much more over all. We used to grind our grain run factories and many things with water wheels on often small but steady flowing creeks. When electricty got going these water wheels were done away with. Electricity didn’t have to be on a stream and could be used almost anywhere.
Electricity lead to coal fired plants and the big dams and was produced in large quantities to supply us. This led to the grid and most of what we are used to today. Later oil nuclear and then gas began to fire plants to generate electricty because they were a little cleaner than coal and didn’t require all digging hauling and problems that the use of coal has.
So we are where we are today killing our planet and having all this burning and generating power not being enough and costing more all the time. Now those renewables look good but aren’t the whole answer. We are dependent on foreign oil and coal and both are like having a gun to our heads. The coal is going to bring about this carbon tax they are going to pass and not only will be the largest tax ever levied on our Country but will raise prices to cover it. The oil is going to raise in price or be shut off and we may not be able to adjust if that happens. So what are we doing not much.
The coal industry wants us to think they can make clean coal. The oil industry wants us to think we can continue using oil. Our Government is at the mercy of these big business interests the enviormentalists so they won’t do much to fix or change things. Obamas spending on clean energy and the grid is a drop in the bucket and will change little. The crisis we are in today is a peanut to what could happen if a big oil crisis happens. Coal needs oil to run the machinery trucks and trains to use it. So we are gambling everyday that things won’t go south fast.
What we have that could generate all this power we need cleanly and won’t run out or be harmful to us or the planet is that running water in our rivers and streams. We have the technology to build turbins that just the flowing water can run through and turn generators. The same water can be used over and over as the river flows down stream. Just think how many turbins could be installed in the mississippi river every say half mile of it’s length. No big dams no backing up the river or big ugly facilities. Gates could be placed in the generating system to still allow river traffic and any inconvenience to that would be little to pay for what we were getting out of it.
The Germans used coal to make the fuel they ran their war machines on because they had no oil and almost took over the world using it. We more or less stole that technology after the war and have never had it surface yet. It may be because the process was dirty but wouldn’t it make more sense to our scientists to work trying to do this cleanly than to figure out how to burn coal cleanly.
Many of these things that could be done weren’t done because oil was cheap and coal abundant. Our future hangs in the balance to whether we can adapt. Big business, what we want to rely on only does things to make money they don’t care for Country People Planet or the future only the buck they make. So the call from the repubs. to let the free markets and business find ways to solve our prolems is insane. We need a Government who has a plan and makes things happen instead of putting us all at the mercy of business world prices and availability for the energy we need.