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Gaffer Variety:
Energy 045:
By Willie Gaffer:
June 19, 2006:
I don't knowhow many times I will feel compelled to address this same issue. No one seems to get it. I have never seen so many harebrained ideas for solving our energy problem. One of the most contemptible is the conversion of food to fuel. Many Michigan farmers are really for this notion. They are building plants to convert corn and soybeans to fuel for automobiles and trucks. Of course, the Governor along with the media is right in there patting them on the back and telling them how this will help Michigan's economy. That makes me sick.
There does not need to be a God for us to define and understand sin. Burning food to fuel automobiles or trucks is a gross sin. There are millions of people starving in this world. There are babies who could use soybean baby formula to survive. They are currently starving. To use soybeans for fuel while that is going on in tantamount to murder. To convert corn to fuel while people are starving in Africa is tantamount to murder.
There are two stages to solving the energy problem for automobiles. First is to produce a true hybrid automobile. Second is to find a replacement for the conversion unit that does not depend on fossil fuel. For this a new energy source will be necessary. Both of these things pose difficult engineering problems which is probably why no one has invested much energy into them. Harebrained ideas are easier. No serious engineering is required for these.
I have already examined the concepts involve in the hybrid automobile and the new energy source, but let us go over them again. The single most difficult problem of the hybrid automobile is to find a way to store huge amounts of energy such that it is readily available to the drive units. Without that, we can have no true hybrid. All we can have are kludge solutions that have terrible performance and give us very little advantage over conventional automobiles.
In a true hybrid there would be no direct connection between the conversion unit (car engine) and the drive units (wheels). The conversion unit would convert fuel into electrical energy which would be stored in a storage unit. Unless we make some major breakthrough in battery technology, this storage unit will not be a battery as we now know it. It will be something else, but it will be a breakthrough in technology.
In this true hybrid this storage unit will be the source of energy which would supply energy directly to the drive units. The conversion unit could then run at constant speed and maximum efficiency. Currently, in automobiles we convert only a fraction of the fuel to useful energy. The rest is wasted in heat and air contaminants. The drive units would be the variable speed parts. They would be electrical motors built into the wheel housings of the auto. Four wheel drive would be implicit. Four wheel steering would be a piece of cake.
This hybrid automobile is only a short term solution. Eventually it could yield fuel efficiencies that would give us 100 plus MPG. That's good, but not good enough. We will still be burning fossil fuel and contaminating our environment. Cars will still be the major cause of global warming. We will still have to solve the problem for the long term. We will still have to solve the energy problem for home heating and industrial power. Conservation, or any kind of hunkering down, is not a solution. For true humans, hunkering down is simply disgraceful and unacceptable. The only acceptable solution is to find a clean alternative source of cheap energy.
Consider that famous equation from Dr. Einstein, E=MCC. What does it mean? E stands for energy. M stands for mass. C is the speed of light. We are really talking about the speed of light squared. That is one heck of a big number. That means it takes one enormous amount of energy to masquerade as a tiny amount of matter. Considering what is possible, we must realize that even a fusion bomb is small potatoes by comparison. If we could release all of the energy it takes to hold even a few ounces of iron together as iron it would make a fusion bomb seem like a firecracker by comparison. Clearly this would be the area of research for a source of energy to replace fossil fuels.
Of course, the money for this research will not come from government. Especially so when we have a president whose main pastime is to pour billions of government dollars into the pockets of his billionaire cronies. He will create a smokescreen by supporting harebrained ideas that he knows will not solve the problem. Windmills will not do it. You can't put a windmill on a car. Solar cells will not do it. They are very limited to sunny areas and there is no good way to store the energy. Fuel cells will only delay the inevitable. That hydrogen they use has to be generated somehow. That requires energy. No matter. Oil is king in Texas and in Washington, even if it means destroying the Alaskan wilderness and killing Arabs.
So, to begin the search for a true energy alternative, we will
also need a new government. I don't mean Dumbocrats instead of
Republicrumbs. I mean a new government made up of human beings
instead of politicians. I don't think this is the kind of research
that can be done in the garage of some isolated genius. My guess
is it will take billions of bucks. That kind of investment can
only come from government or Bill Gates. The last time we undertook
a project of that scale was in WWII. It too was for energy, nuclear
energy, and the result was the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
It was the A-bomb. What we want now, is a project of equal size
for something much more benevolent. We want and need a source
of clean cheap energy.
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