I Will Never Understand Wind

"W P Dixon" wrote in message ...
Interesting dilemma!
Some say nothing is happening to the earth, some say the earth is doomed
if we keep it up.

And the earth is doomed if we don't keep it up... The sun will not last
forever --only another 5 billion years or so... Since I don't have anything
all that pressing that I need to do in the meantime that would cause me to
be elsewhere, that kind of concerns me... grin

"Grumman-581" wrote in message
news:fjUee.54089$r53.23998@attbi_s21...
"W P Dixon" wrote in message ...
Interesting dilemma!
Some say nothing is happening to the earth, some say the earth is doomed
if we keep it up.

And the earth is doomed if we don't keep it up... The sun will not last
forever --only another 5 billion years or so... Since I don't have
anything
all that pressing that I need to do in the meantime that would cause me to
be elsewhere, that kind of concerns me... grin

A big problem is failure to think in the long term :~)

In article fjUee.54089$r53.23998@attbi_s21, Grumman-581 wrote:
And the earth is doomed if we don't keep it up... The sun will not last
forever --only another 5 billion years or so...

As an aside, whilst the Sun remains main sequence, life will be
extremely resilient. Anyone who's tried to keep a patio free of weeds or
has seen an abandoned airfield or road will know how it doesn't take
long for life to reclaim even tough surfaces like asphalt.

Remember the film, "The Day After"? Had those events come to pass in
1983, by now the ruins of Kansas City would be well overgrown.

The thing is, it'd be nice to keep ourselves in a situation where we can
continue to enjoy the high standard of living we do now - and that will
require change of some sort.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

The thing is, it'd be nice to keep ourselves in a situation where we can
continue to enjoy the high standard of living we do now - and that will
require change of some sort.

Agreed.

But I, as opposed to many, have faith that the economic system will
"provide" us with the solution, as it did when petroleum supplanted whale
oil. If I had to guess at this early stage, I'd say that the solution will
be hydrogen -- but there's really no way to tell.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In article au2fe.55730$NU4.36038@attbi_s22, Jay Honeck wrote:
But I, as opposed to many, have faith that the economic system will
"provide" us with the solution, as it did when petroleum supplanted whale
oil. If I had to guess at this early stage, I'd say that the solution will
be hydrogen -- but there's really no way to tell.

I'd guess more diesel-type fuels; trouble with hydrogen is it's
difficult to store, difficult to handle, costs lots of energy to make
(either with oil directly or by electrolyis). Diesel-type fuels on the
other hand can be made from biological products (such as algae - that
way you could have an industrial manufacturing process instead of an
agricultural one), and would not require a vast replacement of existing
infrastructure. Jet engines already run on a type of diesel fuel. So do
Thielert GA diesels.

We already run our glider club diesel vehicles on used cooking oil
kindly donated by one of the pubs...

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
In article au2fe.55730$NU4.36038@attbi_s22, Jay Honeck wrote:
trouble with hydrogen is it's
difficult to store, difficult to handle, costs lots of energy to make
(either with oil directly or by electrolyis).

Today it is, but it's like oil was 100 years ago.

Not wanting to be harsh, but stop thinking statically, in the short
term...try thinking like an inventor/entrepreneur, not a schoolboy/employee.
Most of all, stop barfing back with the schools/media feeds you.

I, too, believe that hydrogen is the fuel of the future, but perhaps in a
slightly different vein. One of my senior projects involved the
calculations on what it would take and what would be the result of
converting hydrogen to helium (the fusion reaction).

The output is an amazing amount of energy. If we had tossed as much money
at taming fusion as we have tossed at unworkable military toys, we'd be
riding around in electric vehicles with fusion providing the recharge
energy.

Jim




Today it is, but it's like oil was 100 years ago.

Not wanting to be harsh, but stop thinking statically, in the short
term...try thinking like an inventor/entrepreneur, not a
schoolboy/employee.
Most of all, stop barfing back with the schools/media feeds you.

"RST Engineering" wrote in message
...
If we had tossed as much money at taming fusion as
we have tossed at unworkable military toys, we'd be
riding around in electric vehicles with fusion providing
the recharge energy.

And best of all, we wouldn't have terrorism because they wouldn't have the
money to sponsor it... They would all go back to being the POOR camel
****in' Bedoins that they had been throughout history (vs the rich camel
****in' Bedoins that they are now)... Hell, if we spent the billions that
fighting the latest skirmish is costing us, we might have been able to find
a cheap alternative for petroleum... Of course, it would have been more
economical to just nuke 'em to start with...

RST Engineering wrote:
If we had tossed as much money
at taming fusion as we have tossed at unworkable military toys, we'd be
riding around in electric vehicles with fusion providing the recharge
energy.

We tossed hundreds of millions of dollars at it at Oak Ridge alone for at least
30 years. I don't know much about what's gone on there since my father died in
'89, but they may still be working on cold fusion down in "reactor row." Last I
heard, they still hadn't licked the problem of plasma containment.

George Patterson
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the
mashed potatoes.

In article , Matt Barrow wrote:
In article au2fe.55730$NU4.36038@attbi_s22, Jay Honeck wrote:
trouble with hydrogen is it's
difficult to store, difficult to handle, costs lots of energy to make
(either with oil directly or by electrolyis).

Today it is, but it's like oil was 100 years ago.

Not wanting to be harsh, but stop thinking statically, in the short
term...try thinking like an inventor/entrepreneur, not a schoolboy/employee.
Most of all, stop barfing back with the schools/media feeds you.

Actually, it's the schools/media feeding everyone this hydrogen pipe
dream. It's precisely because I'm thinking like an inventor/entrepreneur
that I suspect it will be much more practical, cheaper, faster and
better to develop diesel based technologies when it comes to the storage
and use of fuels (particularly in large machines).

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"