beeeerock
Active Member
I actually don't have much use for articles like the MondayNotes link provided. They seem to focus on the half-empty glass... as if negativity will solve anything. As if we have the choice to just keep on doing what we've been doing.
Instead of calculating how many square miles of panels are required, how many storage batteries are required, it's also valuable to compare the human effort required to put it all together.
To do it all in a year? Crazy talk. To do it over the next decade or two? Seems pretty simple to me, if resources are applied appropriately.
Consider how much PV nwdiver has installed as an after-work hobby of sorts... i.e., not his day job. Scale that across the population as a small percentage of the people with the skills and interest and apply that to a decade of work. The 'volunteer' watts alone would be quite significant. These would be the 'grassroots' solar supporters - similar to grassroots political supporters - actually practicing what they preach.
Add in what companies like the big oil companies - faced with becoming as obsolete as farriers - might do to maintain some sort of energy business... why not the PV business or electric business in general? How much did they blow on the aborted arctic drilling adventure alone? The cost to build the numerous pipelines at issue today? Divert some of that to solar or wind and now we're talking big scale and we haven't even added in government efforts (if they ever get their collective head out of their collective butt).
It's not a question of 'possible or not', but rather, 'how difficult, how costly and how long'.
Compare this to the efforts over the last century that seemed impossible... flight, lunar landing, nuclear energy... even the incredible number of square metres of asphalt that didn't exist a hundred years ago. Improving the grid and adding capacity isn't even close to rocket science - it just requires will and money.
Instead of calculating how many square miles of panels are required, how many storage batteries are required, it's also valuable to compare the human effort required to put it all together.
To do it all in a year? Crazy talk. To do it over the next decade or two? Seems pretty simple to me, if resources are applied appropriately.
Consider how much PV nwdiver has installed as an after-work hobby of sorts... i.e., not his day job. Scale that across the population as a small percentage of the people with the skills and interest and apply that to a decade of work. The 'volunteer' watts alone would be quite significant. These would be the 'grassroots' solar supporters - similar to grassroots political supporters - actually practicing what they preach.
Add in what companies like the big oil companies - faced with becoming as obsolete as farriers - might do to maintain some sort of energy business... why not the PV business or electric business in general? How much did they blow on the aborted arctic drilling adventure alone? The cost to build the numerous pipelines at issue today? Divert some of that to solar or wind and now we're talking big scale and we haven't even added in government efforts (if they ever get their collective head out of their collective butt).
It's not a question of 'possible or not', but rather, 'how difficult, how costly and how long'.
Compare this to the efforts over the last century that seemed impossible... flight, lunar landing, nuclear energy... even the incredible number of square metres of asphalt that didn't exist a hundred years ago. Improving the grid and adding capacity isn't even close to rocket science - it just requires will and money.
