🚀 go-pugleaf

Jack Reed wrote:

> My view is that nuclear power is the only alternative to global-warming
> fossile fuels. I analyzed the U.S. wind power potential back in 1974 and
> found that about a 400-mile North-South swath of wind turbines east of the
> Rocky Mtns from Texas to Canada COULD produce four times our annual national
> power needs, most of it produced in Spring months. It would take quite a
> bunch of batteries to spread it over the year. Or we could cover Arizona
> with a photo-voltaic blanket and only need night-time battery storage. All
> pretty impractical.

Or use reversible hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells, these gases being not all that
hard to store in a large installation, and in a closed system poisoning from
contaminants would cause less trouble. It might even be more efficient to pipe
the low-viscosity hydrogen to remote fuel cells than to undergo the electrical
transmission losses from the optimal PV, wind, or nuclear energy locations.

<snip>
> ... There's some smart people modeling climate and global warming coming
> up with opposite answers, depending on modeling assumptions that have not
> been validated on either side. Result?  Maybe 50:50; so I don't want my
> descendant's survival depending on the flip of a coin! The only proper
> response is to do all we can to reduce fossile fuel pollution while further
> researching the intricacies of climate response.

Yes, that seems to me a sensible plan for action.