Radical Noesis - Thinking outside the box

Certainly, there is a lot of talk about renewable energy sources (wind, sun, tide, geothermal, etc.), and various other energy schemes such as hydrogen fuel cells, methane hydrates, and - the alternative de jour - biofuels. Yet, when you take a hard, close look at these various alternatives and the amount of energy we currently consume, you find that at best none of these alternatives will ever replace more than a fraction of our current energy usage.

In the past, we have analyzed the amount of energy available from sunlight and compared it to our current oil consumption. In doing so, we demonstrated that our basic energy problem is one of over-consumption. To replace US daily oil consumption with the products of photosynthesis
would require 46% of the planet's entire surface area. The world would require the entire surface area of the planet and then some. This is a direct appropriation of the entire product of photosynthesis, leaving nothing but a barren Earth.

Biofuels transform the products of photosynthesis into a useable fuel. They do so at an energy loss. If the direct energy of photosynthesis is not enough to replace our current oil consumption, then biofuels will never do so. Furthermore, biofuels are dirty and environmentally destructive. And biofuel production will compete with agriculture for prime farmland, exacerbating a rise in hunger as oil-based modern agriculture begins to fail. Biofuels will harm the poor, as a study by economists at the University of Minnesota contends.

Using photovoltaics, the US would require 17% of the planet's entire surface area, or 59% of the land surface to replace its current daily oil consumption. The entire world would require 40% of the entire
planet's surface are, or 1.37 times the entire land area.

While some industry insiders are pushing for more nuclear plants, this is not really an economically viable alternative, let alone environmentally. A recent analysis suggests that the construction costs
of a new nuclear building spree could be much higher than in the past, and that the cost of electricity generated by these plants could likewise explode.

While we certainly should expand our usage of renewable resources, we cannot realistically expect them to replace hydrocarbons. So long as our consumption remains at anything near its current level, we will be dependent upon oil and natural gas for the majority of our energy needs, along with coal. And so we will focus on these three energy sources for the remainder of this article.

Continued at mountainsentinel.com