Steven asks…
what do you think of a battery recharger powered by dance energy alone.?
Mobile phone operator Orange said on Tuesday it had teamed up with GotWind, a firm specializing in renewable energy, to produce a recharger powered by dance energy alone.
The portable kinetic energy chargers will be given a test run at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, the world‘s biggest greenfield music and arts celebration that begins on a farm in Somerset on Friday.quite interesting,dont you think so?
The Expert answers:
Wow that is interesting…
That’s the world i some day want to live in. Where we dance to keep our batteries charged. LOL.
Robert asks…
What do you think is the biggest problem in our world?
For me its the fact that most countries are not getting along and there is war. Also I think that the non renewable energy resources are also a big problem.
The Expert answers:
Humans are animals in a constant state of denial.
Our biggest problem is our xenophobic instinct. It came in very handy when we were living as small bands of apes which competed for food. Killing strangers increased our food supply and also helped us pass on our own genes. Dead apes don’t bear children.
Sadly, our culture has become far more sophisticated than our biology has. Religion is an attempt to force us to live unnatrually as peaceful strangers, but it is just an imperfect fix. Even sadder is how humans use their intellect to pervert this stopgap into just another excuse to kill.
Perhaps it will be our culture which eventually saves us, but at a rather frightening cost. I believe we are now standing on the threshold of a new era where humans will physically begin to merge with their own technology. Genetic engineering and bio physics will probably be the forces which allows humans to live peacefully together, but we will no longer be human.
Those of us who still are will probably be on display in some future zoo. Groups of humans will wander in separate enclosures. Every now and then groups will be allowed to view one another and I suppose the visitors will enjoy watching these apes verbally assalt one another with racial hatred. Male chimpansees have to “go ape” every now and then to maintain their sanity, and I suppose humans are no different.
Thomas asks…
The effect of renewable resources on the scarcity argument?
So the basis of Economics is that resources are scarce and we need a system to allocate them efficiently.
But what if, in the future, all or most resources are renewable? Food is renewable. If we switch to ethanol or wind or solar energy, our energy is renewable. Trees are renewable. Etc. So what happens when there is no longer any scarcity of resources in the world?
The Expert answers:
The law of scarcity would apply to those renewable sources of energy, for example……
The scarcity of time taken to build them,
the scarcity of materials taken to build them,
etc, etc, the law of scarcity affects almost everything in the earth
Joseph asks…
How does renewable energy help in third world countries, and how does it improve there quality of life?
The Expert answers:
One nation using renewable energy will do very little except POSSIBLY slowing down the depletion of our resources. It would take the majority of countries to do so in order to have any significant effect.
Ruth asks…
how would the world be different if we use more renewable energy?
im doing a persusaive essay on this
The Expert answers:
I don’t know what you mean by “different” or “we”. So, I have to make some assumptions.
If your country (the “we”) used more renewable, these things would need to be considered: is there sufficient infrastructure (as in enough transmission lines and substations, etc.) for the variable loads that the grid could see. In the US, the infrastructure cannot take more than about 5-7% renewables (excluding the reliable but socially unfavorable hydro power) because of the variability. An alternative is to build natural gas fired power plants to “match” with the wind and solar plants so that when the wind is too high or low (or at night or cloudy), it would start up and provide a level load for the grid. But then, a lot more mining and smelting has to be done to make the aluminum (or copper) to run the huge amounts of extra wire that need to be run (a nuke, coal, or gas power plant needs a lot less wire than a wind or solar plant, per MW).
Alternatively, one could consider Denmark, probably the leader in domestic renewables with all the wind power they have. They have the highest cost of electricity in all of Europe, because there neighboring countries built extra power plants (mostly nuke and coal) to be able to provide Denmark with the power (at highest possible cost for peak, instantaneous demand power off the grid) for when the wind drops off).
So, either “we” would have to pay a lot more for electricity, use a lot less (so much lower standard of living, and long term economic instability to decrease), or both. Likely both. If “renewables” were economical or technically viable, they would be a installed and used a lot more, rather than only being “viable” with government support or force. They are indeed a necessary and good thing for the 5-7% that most infrastructures can support, especially for the locales where they are really most economical (often in places where the population and energy demand is low, where the winds sustained and the sun is out and direct a lot, like deserts).
Thorium nuclear, breeder reactors, and hydroelectric (none getting much support anywhere) are all renewable, safe, and perhaps sustainable, but always with tradeoffs. They can and are all used as base-load power (the best of all power supplies). Their use could reduce the cost of electricity (and therefore all power), and help in economic growth.
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