Skip to main content

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!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

Peru, South America - Week well spent

Growing up in India the only Peru I knew of was a tropical fruit (Guava for those whose lingua is English).   Not until high school did I discover that it was also a country in the South American continent. So it was this early April week that we decided to hit up Peru - the land of the once glorious Inca people that lived 500 years ago.  Today Peru is the third largest country on that continent with a diverse geography that stretches from the drier Pacific coast plains to the high mountains of the Andes and the Amazon river valley to its east. Our trip was primarily a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the last remaining, lost (now found and documented), large scale, mostly undamaged, city of the Inca nobility, called Machu Picchu (MP).  The Inca were great architects and builders.  MP is a UNESCO world heritage site affording it high visibility to the tourism trade and therefore crowded year round.  Our timing was not quite high season allowing us...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...