Oil headed for 70 bucks s barrel. Here we go.

My large 5er is running on nothing but sunshine right now, and that includes furnace, TV, MW, toaster... anything but air.

Turtle n Peeps wrote:
Lets look at energy production over 70 years and see how "green" is doing.

As you can see, fossil fuel hasn't dropped much at all. In fact more and more and more of all types of energy is used but fossil fuel stays around 90%.

Now the type of fossil fuel has changed somewhat. Take for instance coal. It got "legislated out" and it shows. Even though the new admin is ok with coal it's hard to come back because you have sold off all your equipment and shuttered your sites.

NG, another fossil fuel, took over where coal dropped off so the fossil fuel % remains around the same as it was many years ago. NG is also a lot easier to get with WAAAAY less man power.

Talk all you want about solar. It's only 1% of total production and has stayed that way for a long time. Solar takes a lot of land and Tusk knows this. That's why he does not have any solar at the chargers like he said there would be.

The right term is renewables, not just solar.

The backward South must be pulling the whole country down as the Western states are way ahead in renewables as energy source.

CA is already at 33%, Oregon is 47% and WA at 75%.

CA and WA targets to be 100% renewables by 2045. Nevada is drawing plans to be net solar electricity exporter with it's abundant sunshine.

Yes hard to see a trend in solar/wind on a 70 year graph as the cost has only been competitive for the last 5 years. The next 20 years should be a bit more interesting.

FishOnOne wrote:
Relax boys and girls...Oil speculators with more fear mongering is driving the prices temporarily up.

And let's not forget it's been time to start winter blend for those of us that DO STILL FREEZE.. That always moves the price up as well.

Relax boys and girls...Oil speculators with more fear mongering is driving the prices temporarily up.

Give it time.
We went from gliders to the space program in 60 years.
No difference here.

Coal is cheap, readily available, can be found almost anywhere, and actually improves the air by making it visible. The residue is wonderful for backfilling our beautiful lakes and streams. "In 2012, 470 coal-fired electric utilities generated about 110 million tons of coal ash." Think what fun things we can do with all that. Bury a lot of unicorns, I bet.

We just néed to harness unicorn farts like some of you folks think, I mean dream, is possible.
Them things have like 1000x the bus of natural gas and best of all, they're environmentally friendly (Anyone ever smelled a unicorn fart? That's right, you haven't...) and renewable, because they just appear out of thin air!

Lets look at energy production over 70 years and see how "green" is doing.

As you can see, fossil fuel hasn't dropped much at all. In fact more and more and more of all types of energy is used but fossil fuel stays around 90%.

Now the type of fossil fuel has changed somewhat. Take for instance coal. It got "legislated out" and it shows. Even though the new admin is ok with coal it's hard to come back because you have sold off all your equipment and shuttered your sites.

NG, another fossil fuel, took over where coal dropped off so the fossil fuel % remains around the same as it was many years ago. NG is also a lot easier to get with WAAAAY less man power.

Talk all you want about solar. It's only 1% of total production and has stayed that way for a long time. Solar takes a lot of land and Tusk knows this. That's why he does not have any solar at the chargers like he said there would be.

time2roll wrote:

monkey44 wrote:
OK, how about those NY apartment buildings twenty-thirty stories, a hundred apartments, a hundred families. Put one solar complex over the entire roof, you might get enough power to feed electric to the top ONE floor or even TWO, or THREE, what do the other ninety families do?

Well, they bring in power from an external grid?? And that cost as much to build and maintain as any other power source. We do not have perpetual power production anywhere ... It costs use and maintenance fees, and soft labor, and engineers. That's not inexpensive, even if renewable and sustainable. Unless you individually grow your own groceries and create your own power, there will always be a cost equation.

Actually there is no need to expect rooftop solar to be the 100% solution. This is not metric electricity... solar power can flow through the existing grid just fine.

Some local solar would reduce the need to improve the existing grid as power demand grows.

Yes solar does come at a cost and that cost is lower than coal.

A centralized or regional solar energy source will force the grids to inter-connect and will provide a natural redundant system that can by-pass and re-route problematic lines to get the supply where it's needed most and prevent massive blackouts.