Some of the major arguments I hear against alternative energy are that it requires new infrastructure and uses technology that is untested or has low energy input/output over the course of its life - The term for that escapes me now. So what do you think about Iceland?
There’s an educated, technological, racially homogenous nation with high land elevations, small geographic size, actual urban planning and copious ammounts of geothermal energy.
Seems to me like a recipie for a pocket of society surviving the current big 3: peak oil, climate change and water shortages. Maybe not so good on the 4th though: warmongering empires in decline.
Thoughts?
The term is energy returned on energy invested, and this applies to geothermal power too. They’ll need the energy in order to build and maintain the geothermal power plants. Direct geothermal heating for hot water and homes requires less energy investment and would probably be more practical. I also don’t think they gotta worry about warmongering empires in decline because geothermal energy can’t be easily exported.
Energy returned on energy invested.
Thanks locke.
It would take energy to build new plants but, they already have almost all of their electricity supplied by said plants and wouldn’t require new ones for some time. Maintenance is also pretty low on those things IIRC.
For warmongering empires in decline - thats too much to type. How about WMEID? - I was thinking more about secondary effects than a direct attempt to seize their electrolosis plants or whatever.
Alternative energy infastructure is not all good. I live in the desert southwest in the US. This is a living desert with more biodiversity than a northern fir forest. Yet, people like Obama have ignorantly decided that the desert will now have thousands of square miles of solar panels and mirror reflectors. Large powerlines will be built so we can sell the power to LA and Las Vegas so they can continue to waste energy. The desert is hot but not dead. Clearing hundreds of acres of shrubs, soil crusts and reptiles, mammals, insects will heat up the Earth by taking away mass bulk of carbon storing bio matter. Google Crassulacean Acid Metabolism to see how desert plants keep carbon out of the athmosphere. Plus when you pave the desert, you get even hotter tems. Go to a strip mall in Vegas if you don’t believe that. The amount of biodiversity genocide associated with clean energy is a crime. Plus, they want to put powerlines through every national park and wilderness area to get it all to the big cities.
Solar can work on vacant city lots, roof top and the prices of do it your self could come down and surplus energy could be sold to power companies. The problem with that is we will not be buying it all from one central source. And we do have to support this massive corporate machine, don’t we?
What a shame that the whole green trend has now just become another money making scheme for big energy. Plus, how will solar power get rid of all the gas using vehicles? It won’t, and when Obama talks about drilling for domestic oil, it becomes obvious that he is yet another chump for the big boys.
Conservation, population control, educationg yourself about desert bioregions may actually save a few acres of open space.
Yeah MoonPlaya, we can’t all live in Iceland, so I’m also suspicious of some “green” alternative energy schemes that want to bulldoze pristine creosote-cactus flats near where I live. I had a friend who got a job clearing federally threatened desert tortoises off a desert area so a solar company could scrape it up. Green?
Also, are there rare geothermal-adapted plants around those springs in Iceland? What happens to them when they tap the energy.
I didn’t mean to suggest that “green” solutions were in fact green. Or brown or blue or whatever ambient color the environment in question possesses. I was sharing one of my thoughts and how it relates to my current understanding of our problems. I was also asking wether anyone could point out any thing that had been forgotten or overlooked or any egregious errors I had made while keeping “greenness” and the possibility of technological societey surviving in Iceland (or other suitable areas for that matter) as the seperate topics that they are.