Good article! I too thought oil was the liquid remenants of dinosaurs. I recall posters of the beasties on the wall of my Grade 6 classroom, although admittedly I don't recall why they were there.
I suspect your observations about nuclear are correct. It is likely the only viable energy source for the future, despite what the wind and solar crowd say. I read somewhere that there are specific limits to storage capacity with those sources, despite the problem of wind not blowing and sun not shining.
As for the USA developing fusion first, that is certainly possible. But the current political climate may get in the way of any serious development. Politicians are...well...politicians. And we know what that can mean.
Isn't it amazing the tales we are told and carry with us through our lives without ever questioning them?
Wind and Solar panels have their place, but as far as I can tell they should play very little role in our overall energy production. My personal experience of pouring out thousands of dollars in the past four years on solar panel technology and first hand seeing that it provided a pitiful amount of power has definitely soured me on solar panels. They don't become a better idea just because of tax breaks (someone is still paying for them!).
Politics can mess things up, but in this case I approve of the government providing some funding for fusion research. This gets into the whole concept of a free market. Can or should a private company spend the money to develop fusion and reap the rewards? If we are successful (with government funded research) what corruption will occur to steal the profits?
Those are good questions and deserve some thought. While I prefer less government involvement since it almost always goes wrong, the questions of corruption, risk and reward, etc, are important.
It's not simple! For certain projects that (need?) benefit from huge amounts of funding (like building the highway system) it seems government has a potentially good role to play. Overall, yes, I'd prefer to keep government "tiny" and out of everything!
I've not researched it, but I believe the railroad system was built with private funding, but rumor is that was full of corruption and had some rather ugly aspects to it too. How involved was the government in building the railroads? Certainly they had some role in allocating the land (taking it away from private owners?). We could argue that the cell phone system has been built on private funding too. Correct?
Monopolies are bad (whether they are private or government) but where do you cross the line from needing a mega corporation to fund something vs them having a monopolistic market position?
Good article! I too thought oil was the liquid remenants of dinosaurs. I recall posters of the beasties on the wall of my Grade 6 classroom, although admittedly I don't recall why they were there.
I suspect your observations about nuclear are correct. It is likely the only viable energy source for the future, despite what the wind and solar crowd say. I read somewhere that there are specific limits to storage capacity with those sources, despite the problem of wind not blowing and sun not shining.
As for the USA developing fusion first, that is certainly possible. But the current political climate may get in the way of any serious development. Politicians are...well...politicians. And we know what that can mean.
Isn't it amazing the tales we are told and carry with us through our lives without ever questioning them?
Wind and Solar panels have their place, but as far as I can tell they should play very little role in our overall energy production. My personal experience of pouring out thousands of dollars in the past four years on solar panel technology and first hand seeing that it provided a pitiful amount of power has definitely soured me on solar panels. They don't become a better idea just because of tax breaks (someone is still paying for them!).
Politics can mess things up, but in this case I approve of the government providing some funding for fusion research. This gets into the whole concept of a free market. Can or should a private company spend the money to develop fusion and reap the rewards? If we are successful (with government funded research) what corruption will occur to steal the profits?
Those are good questions and deserve some thought. While I prefer less government involvement since it almost always goes wrong, the questions of corruption, risk and reward, etc, are important.
It's not simple! For certain projects that (need?) benefit from huge amounts of funding (like building the highway system) it seems government has a potentially good role to play. Overall, yes, I'd prefer to keep government "tiny" and out of everything!
I've not researched it, but I believe the railroad system was built with private funding, but rumor is that was full of corruption and had some rather ugly aspects to it too. How involved was the government in building the railroads? Certainly they had some role in allocating the land (taking it away from private owners?). We could argue that the cell phone system has been built on private funding too. Correct?
Monopolies are bad (whether they are private or government) but where do you cross the line from needing a mega corporation to fund something vs them having a monopolistic market position?