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Alternative Energy

Political football, nice soundbite, campaign contributor, hot science, can all be considered analogous to these two words today.
What it is really 'not' is an idea that has matured.
But putting on your engineer hat on for a second (or two or however long it takes to put the hat on and do some implied thinking) I have always wondered if that notion of 'alternative energy' even means anything.

Alternative to what? Is it truly that important that we coin a phrase to distinguish 'Fossil Fuels' from any other form of energy producing source?

Frankly that is also debatable since natural gas for example is a result of fossil action (those dinos that did themselves in for a cause) yet in many instances it is deemed to be a cleaner alernative to petroleum based energy.

Take the example of electric energy to power automobiles - eh? What is all that about? The electric power today on workable models on the road actually comes from a battery source. Where does the battery come from - have you asked?

In most instances these are Li Ion models - wherein the Li is extracted as a rare earth from the mother at considerable expense and guess what - lot of pertroleum fuel driven equipment.

So the analysis can indeed cause paralysis if one was to truly distinguish what we mean by 'alternative'.

Energy is constant (E = mc2) said a wise man once. You cannot create it or destroy it. If that is indeed the case then we need to consider how best to harness what is there through thoughtful investment of time (another complex paradigm I know) rather than filling all the ether (just like this inane blog) with more petroleum consuming media (think newsprint) yapping about it!

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