LOL yes, I guess I am a yuppie twit, since I'm not impressed. The stereotypes you're dragging out are entertaining, though. As are your arguments- if you're changing your furniture and your shrubs every few days, you really need to learn some discipline, but I doubt it's true. Too funny, man.

That's fair. I'm considering the fact that endo vs exo depends on how much energy you introduce as well as what amount is retained.

I knew that would get responses like this. So you're saying you use twice or three times as much fuel every day, so that once every few years you can haul something? Sounds reasonable. I guess I'm silly for renting a truck for those occasions.

And there aren't many of those Explorers out there with wheelchair mods on them that I've seen.

:) speak for your own education, though mine wasn't climatology. I said existing processes- as in not converting energy from stored sources. Simply put, using energy already in the system instead of introducing more that would not have been there otherwise. Of course the sun supplies a lot of energy; that's where much of what we use came from in the first place.

I wonder if you have a number for global energy production from fossil, nuclear and other similar stored sources to compare to the 1300W/m2 you note for the sun? I'm not sure off the cuff that a relatively efficient car creating 20kW at cruise, multiplied by hundreds of millions, is insignificant.

And you have discovered how to advance the technology enough for it to be buildable within the available open space, without destroying habitats and greenspaces that are protected? The solar energy concentration is not sufficient to convert the amount of energy we need with the technology we have without bulldozing half of the available landmass. This argument is similar to the (thankfully abortive) ethanol argument, which had Brazil contemplating how much of the rain forest they could knock down to grow corn without destroying the world's oxygen supply.

If it were as easy as you think, it would already be solved, for Pete's sake.

Nuclear energy is an excellent alternative, but it's far from inexhaustible, and it releases a huge amount of energy as heat that would not have been released without human intervention. I don't drink the global warming Kool-Aid, but this argument doesn't work very well against it. You're generating energy from otherwise inert sources-- what we need to shut Al Gore up is a mechanism that generates energy from existing, heat-creating processes, and that produces work. That mechanism would hopefully produce less heat by diverting energy to work, but nothing that anyone has put forth yet does that. The greenest technologies we have now only put the heat generation further up the production chain, and so far, they produce more heat than the traditional, low-tech methods. That's part of why none of them are commercially viable.

Sorry, not a Greenie. I'm addicted to facts, I'm afraid.

We need research into different energy sources, it's true, but what boggles my mind is why people don't address the simple things in their own lives, if they're concerned about energy conservation. The funniest thing I can see in this particular arena is the moron who rails against the oil companies and middle eastern governments, terrorists, and whatever else, then gets in his Explorer to commute to work by himself, getting 3 mpg, while babbling on his phone about how bad the energy situation is. If you drive a truck (no, I don't use the euphemistic 'SUV'), then shut the F up- you're part of the problem.

There is so much BS going around about alternative energy sources, but we could make a big difference now. I haven't ever owned a car that got less than 25 MPG, and I work half of my time from home; when I don't, I often ride a train. I doubt there are many alternative energy advocates that are close to my carbon footprint, but they put their faith in technology that doesn't exist instead of getting their supersized butts out of their trucks. And people listen to them anyway.