How About No More Electric Boats?

That is quite true, and I have used an electric boat in a business application.
During a period of doing marine refrigeration service work in Newport Beach, Ca., I had available for a time a Duffy 17ft electric boat to ferry myself and tools around the harbor to boats for service work.
It was nice, and eliminated the problems with vehicle parking and transport of gear/tools overland and down onto docks.
As the boat was moored across the street from my shop, it was easy to use,, that was a clean and efficient use of electricity.

 

For large scale energy storage, there are perfectly good options for grid-scale storage that don't use batteries. One could pump water up to a mountain lake, to later tap as hydro-electric power; there is the possibility of short-term storage in the use of low-resistance fly-wheel energy; as was mentioned already, heat storage for running steam turbines is already in use.

I'm personally encouraged by electro-motive technology, because I think it represents a significant step forward in human technological history. It is the next step ahead from combustion engines. Ingestingly, electric delivery trucks were being used in NYC before the combustion engine became the popular choice.

 

I think that slow electric boats can be a better solution because they are not as weight sensitive as planing boats. They can use AGM batteries which can be completely recycled or reused.

 

Good point.

But do you also consider the energy costs to build the alternative?

If we are going to consider this argument, shouldn't we judge all the alternatives by the same criteria?

 

Perhaps the designs can be changed to make the materials more recyclable.

I think recylability is the key to our future on Earth (and it will be certainly very important in space).

As far as the argument "I worked hard, and I earned it" goes, I find that very troubling for two reasons:
1.) do you mean that you simply worked hard, or do you really mean that you worked hard in a career that happens to be quite lucrative?
2.) even if the former is the case (I don't doubt that you worked hard), does that really give you the right to disproportionately be spoil the environment we all live in, for your convenience?

One of the most effective arguments I have heard against capitalism is that it produces a super entitled class, which thinks that rules and limitations are for everyone else but not them.

Sort of reminds me of the ruling elites in the former Soviet Union.

There may be better ways to get to the fish than to use planing boat technology, which requires massive energy use. Perhaps some form of powered multihull which goes say 10 kts instead of 20 to 30, and uses far less energy, might be the answer. Since it doesn't have to endure the pounding of the planing hull, it might be able to be built somewhat lighter too.

I agree that taking 2 to 3 times as long to get to the fish is an inconvenience. But I think such inconveniences may well end up being the price we all have to pay to have a sustainable future.

 

That is obvious part of the life cycle. Some people might ignore it but of course it is taken into account in all serious assessments.

that is why the foundations are being researched a lot. concrete is a big CO2 source and the foundation blocks can be massive.

 

No. Because the auto engineers are demanding it. The CAFE requirements (in the US) are so high that they are becoming more and more difficult to meet while providing an affordable vehicle.

Electric cars may not be the whole answer. Hybrids make a lot of sense, because they can use smaller engines, and they don't need the huge expensive batteries that all-electrics do.

Methanol may give ICEs a new lease on life. It has far more hydrogen than other liquid fuels do. Each methanol molecule has just 1 carbon atom in it for 3 available hydrogen atoms. Gasoline has an average of around 6 for every for every 13 available hydrogen atoms.

Methanol is not perfect. It readily mixes with water, and is produces considerably less power than gasoline. But it is relatively easy to produce from methane, which is not necessarily a fossil gas.

IMHO, CAFE rules are junk. A carbon tax would be far more appropriate, even though at some point, it would likely have to be followed (at least in the US, where most are forced to rely on personal automobiles) by rationing.

 

I understand the point that building a new wind turbine creates some form of pollution and i just found that the larger turbines are capable of generating enough electricity to power up to 16,000 homes. How Much Energy Does a Wind Turbine Produce? - Clean Energy Ideas https://www.clean-energy-ideas.com/wind/wind-turbines/how-much-energy-does-a-wind-turbine-produce/ Reading that made me think that over the lifespan of the wind turbine,it more than justifies itself.There does seem to be an unexpected fringe benefit to the offshore turbines in that my local offshore windfarm is about three miles from the coast and there used to be a seal colony with a typical breeding season seeing 200-250 pups being born annually before the windfarm.Now the numbers have increased to about 1250-1400 per year and there seems to be a big enough fish population to sustain them.Might this be connected to an area of seabed of 2-3 square miles now being impractical for fishing boats to operate in?
The construction of a typical turbine consumes an amount of steel and the fuel to transport the materials and prepare the site and I would guess the blades for the bigger units use as much composite material as perhaps twenty 60 foot powerboats.As much fun as an be had with a 60 foot powerboat,it doesn't yield too much benefit for the greater population and over it's life will cause an amount of pollution.The owner of the boat may well work hard for his money but in other parts of the world there are likely to be people working just as hard and unable to afford a dugout.We need to use resources responsibly or future generations may curse us for the restrictions they face as a result of us consuming too much.It may mean we use a slower boat to go fishing among the windfarm towers close to the coast rather than blasting forty miles offshore.

 

I did work very hard and for not much money and was overtaxed for the benefit of others who did not work hard.
Except for my present boat , 2 kayaks for my kids and a canoe for my wife and me, all my boats were homemade and under 21 horsepower. Those capitalists you like to call robber barons stitched this country together with their industry(work) and used the fruits of their work to build roads, railroads, schools, hospitals and libraries and generally lifted the people out of a level of misery and poverty that I doubt you understand or you would not have made that remark. I don't have a lot but I worked for it and want to share it according to my choice and not by those of a mob of coveting thugs.
Entitled? Hardly.
Furthermore, I hardly leave a mark on my environment unless you mean having 10 times as many banana plants than I had 6 years ago, the net result being a miniscule carbon footprint.
I don't fly around on a private jet virtue signaling about the environment. I just clean up after myself.
The CAFE standards are just another example of the thuggery of power mad masterminds.

 

"In 1917, Orville Wright suggested that Hartzell use his walnut trees to manufacture an aircraft propeller for his plane and others. As a result, Robert Hartzell founded the Hartzell Walnut Propeller Company in Piqua that same year, and the company provided "Liberty" aircraft propellers for World War I warplanes.[7][8]"Hartzell Propeller - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartzell_Propeller

Walnut was the primary material propeller blades were made out of and some very large, high speed blades are made. The wind power generation industry is in its infancy, although wind power has been in use for centuries. Perhaps the massive wind farm isn't the answer and a network of house-top wind turbines that are leased from the power company is more in line with the future.

The wind farm in Puerto Rico is dead, killed by Hurricane Maria. It just stands on the hill looking like a post-apocalyptic movie. In one two years, not a single turbine has been brought back to life. Foundations in, towers in place, turbines, probably still in great shape, blades shredded.

 

Yes, we should. We live in a world created by using energy stored in fossil fuels. It is unrealistic and foolish to believe that the lifestyle can be maintained without those fuels. The alternative technologies are not capable of offering the same lifestyle. In fact they can only work by changing the way we live. Whether that is good or bad is irrelevant, technologies have limitations. The "greens" claim that the world will have the current luxuries and more by using the alternative technologies; which is untrue.

 

Its always amazing to me to see how many people want to be against "green" energy. Even if it is not a perfect answer why would you oppose advances in technology that the mission is to improve life? To me it sounds the same as hearing stories of people not believing that the internet will catch on and that its just a fad.

 

This brings up an interesting point. Maintaining our current standard of living may or may not be the goal. There are so many disparate opinions on what is desirable, what is of value over something else. The only consistent value is that each of us wants to feel the "right thing" is being done. What that "right thing" is, is open to interpretation. Sacrifice here to gain or preserve there, etc.

"Green energy" is both a relative term and an opinion that, like all these issues, is human-centric. That fact gets lost in the rhetoric because one side or the other uses images of an Earth that cares what it's atmosphere is composed of, that somehow benefits from a diversity and abundance of life, that is "better off" without the plague of human industry (activity). In the end, it all boils down to what is best for and what makes us humans feel better about.

Maybe the standard of living the ancient Egyptians and Greeks and Persians lived can be enough, most of them were happy, or maybe some Gene Roddenberry future is what we should be striving for. I, for one, care only about my freedom to act within my own sense of virtue. Any system that attempts to impose a moral value upon me is to be resisted, even if I agree with those morals. I should have the freedom to make choices for myself.

On the other hand, imposing rules that prevent one group or individual from stepping on or restricting the freedom of another group or individual is a restriction that I can live with. Not only that, but I recognize the necessity of such restrictions. This is the purpose of giving power to a government, to prevent the theft of individual freedoms by others.

 

Yes, the Bill of Rights is a good thing. I'm glad you agree.

 

Seems like the price of oil would be on a long downward slope after 50 years if they are finding larger amounts and if the Earth is creating more.

Fracking Wells concentrate tiny amounts into sizable pools, but do not last as long, even when they can the re-fracted.

Most of the large, cheap, easy finds of huge oil pools like in the middle East countries may have been discovered, as announcements about new huge easy technology pools has not been forthcoming. There may be more large undiscovered pools, but the question is if they will be worth looking for, because of the cost to pursue?

It cannot be assumed that fossil fuels will continue to infinity to maintain or increase current lifestyles and luxuries. Limited resources are way more restrictive to a way of life, than unlimited Technologies.