Your Questions About Green Living

Why arent we enforcing the use of renewable energy and alternative forms or fuel?

why do we persist on continuing using our cars, boats or other vehicles when the price of oil is so high with so many protest from many industry groups across the world pleading their national governments to do something about the price of gas.

Is it not obvious enough that oil will run out and with the increasing price of fuel world wide? Its like humans are willing to pay more fuel money to drive thier car from A to B.

Why are we so reliant a non renewable resource that will eventually out. Its like society has a fetish for oil and fuel where we have become so dependent on it.

What can be done to break this addiction to non renewable resources that we depend so much on.

Will fracking give us the breathing room we need for renewable energy development.?

There is a lot of concern right now about the environmental impacts of fracking for natural gas. Natural gas production by fracking, though, is considerably more environmentally friendly than coal production by mining. Production and transportation costs are enough lower for gas than coal that gas is now a cheaper energy source than coal in the U.S. There are substantial reserves that can be developed by fracking in the rest of the world as well.Coal, which fuels about 45% of U.S. electrical power generation right now, generates about .96 Kg of CO2 per Kw-hr of electricity produced. Natural gas only exhausts about .57Kg CO2/Kw-hr when burned in the same efficiency powerplant. Newer dual-cycle gas-fired plants can about double the efficiency of coal-fired plants. Replacing coal-fired plants with natural gas would therefore decrease our CO2 output from electrical generation by more than 20%. In the 10-20 years until solar becomes the cheapest form of electrical energy, will lower-priced natural gas decrease our CO2 output enough to keep us below a 1000 Gt budget for world cumulative output from fossil fuel?
Edit – Larry, Who’s this “they” you are talking about?I was in the semiconductor manufacturing business in 1974 and heard no such thing.
Edit – Larry The Chairman of Evergreen Solar has stated that they will have grid parity in less than 3 years, with no improvement in the cost of silicon. MIT Tech review lists several companies that have demonstrated use of a recently off-patent technique for making silcon/polysilicon wafers at about a 50% savings. I base the 10-20 year estimate on those two sources, Moore’s law, and my expectations of how fast the solar industry can scale up.
Z – The reason natural gas prices are so low right now is that fracking has brought so much more production online. Those left-wingers must not be quite as effective as you think. Can you give anything other than your opinion why solar won’t be cheaper than fossil?
D/dx – I’m of the opinion that biomass methane can’t scale up fast enough to make a significant contribution before solar dominates. Contradictory evidence will be read and appreciated.

Renewable and non-renewable energy sources?

Ok i need(one place in the world it is used, advantages and disadvantages) of the following

coal
oil
natural gas
Nuclear power
solar power
Hydroelectric power
Geothermal power
tidal power
biomass

Why are more and more people not realizing the impact they have on the world?

It seems to me and others I have talked to that more and more of us are under the impression that this world is never ending. The population is rising, and I can’t help but feel that people who have more than one or two children are clueless and selfish. This world can not continue to support a population explosion. The more space we consume, the less area we have to support ecosystems, the places required to grow food, support wildlife. This is directly impacted by population.
My second issue is renewable energy. Auto manufacturer’s are just now realizing they need to be responsible. Technology in automobile engines have shown that 50 mpg is not impossible to acheive. It’s been around since the 60’s. Electric cars have been around since before then as well. Am I the only one disturbed by all of this? The stupidity of those who are driven by money instead of the desire to help.
And those who say Nuclear energy is clean….think again. The bi-product is toxic. Be aware
As far as my understanding of our impact on the world, lets just say part of what I do is to provide the world with energy efficient designs for everyday use. It’s my day job. To further my point, nuclear energy has a bi-product that is toxic for hundreds of years. How much of this bi-product can we bury and forget about? It is not a realistic solution. Example: wind, water and solar are clean solutions to provide energy. Coal burning facilities are one of the worst contributors for greenhouse gases. Maybe not first on the list, but it is a problem. There are always new ways to save energy, flourescent light bulbs save energy, but how many people just throw them in the garbage and introduce mercury to the landfills? We use less energy but pollute in other ways. I have no solutions although I do help to make this world more energy effecient one building at a time. My need is to get everyone to reflect on these issues. Be aware, the time is now.

What will it take to change the way we consume energy on a mass scale?

From oil to coal we seem to be consuming energy from non-renewable sources. Do the major energy companies have a solution for a post-oil world? Does industry have a plan in place for producing goods when the lights go out? Are we just going to sit around and wait for the wells to go dry?