Quote:
Originally Posted by jharbert
We'd need 52.5M acres of land devoted to palm oil production to completely replace diesel with biodiesel made from palm oil. Taking the low end of the algae estimates (that algae would produce 7x the yield of palm oil), we'd need only 7.5M acres devoted to growing algae in order to completely replace diesel with biodiesel. That's a hell of a lot of land, yes, but consider this: We currently use 943M acres of land for food production in the US. We'd need just 0.8% of that land to grow enough algae to completely replace diesel fuel.
0.8% is trivial. All we need is the political will.
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Another view of what MIGHT HAVE BEEN?
But not as long as the oil companies/military control energy and foreign policy?
http://www.solarpowerrocks.com/solar...-sick-graph-2/
These figures are in millions. The source for energy R&D expenditures is from the National Council for Science and the Environment.
Though the war in Iraq now costs about $120B a year, two authors (one a Nobel prize winner) estimates the total cost of this war exceeds 2 Trillion Dollars.
?Accrued liabilities for U.S. federal employees? and veterans? benefits now total $4.5 trillion. Indeed, our debt for veterans? health and disability payments has risen by $228 billion in the past year alone?The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the interest payments on the money borrowed to finance the Iraq war will total $264 billion to $308 billion.?
That $2,000,000,000,000? Well, that amount of money could?ve built solar thermal plants here that would have provided energy for 2/3rds of our nation?s energy demand.
http://www.solarpowerrocks.com/solar...etty-damn-far/
After hearing President Bush beseech members of Congress for $68B more dollars for the war in Iraq tonight, I got myself to thinking. If we?re already spending $120B a year on this war and we simply decided to bring our troops home, how far could we get in meeting our nation?s energy demands solely with sunshine and that extra $68B dollars? Well according to an article in the Green Wombat last month, a solitary solar thermal plant sized at 92 x 92 miles could take care of our entire energy demand. That?s the size of land that purple square takes up in the above map. Granted, for security purposes it would be a dumb idea to go and build a lone solar plant like this, so let?s do some more realistic math. The land area cited in that article was 92*92mi = 8464sq. miles. Let?s say we intend to create 16 solar thermal power plants and scatter them about really sunny areas of our country such as the southwest, Texas, and areas of Florida. 8464/16 = 529sq. miles for each solar thermal power plant. It just so happens that the square root of 529 gives a clean 23! So we are in search of sixteen 23 by 23 mile plots of sunny land to power the entire country. We?ve got $68 Billion dollars to spend on all of them, or $4,250,000,000 for each one.
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If you really want to shake things up, consider that since the Iraq war began, we are now roughly $9 Trillion dollars in debt. Many people, including myself, don?t have any concept of how much money that really is. Well, that?s $9,000,000,000,000 dollars.
Remember those 16 plots of 23?23 miles we needed to satiate the nation?s thirst for energy? Well 9 Trillion dollars would be enough to purchase about 2,813 Nevada Solar Twos! That?s 9sq. miles * 2,813 = 25,317 sq. miles of solar thermal energy ?
more than triple the land area in solar power plants to satisfy the energy demands of our entire country!
It truly is depressing to imagine what the other 2/3rds of that $9 Trillion could have been used for. Universal health care? Education? Ugh!
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But *s friends are making out like bandits? The rest of us? We're letting them do it.
With SANE people in power the whole energy issue could be solved eventually...OR...we can just continue electing idiot savants who like to line their own pockets at our expense?
a new policy....I intend to ignore the nescient...a waste of time and energy. 
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