Comments on: There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

By: Jared Miller

Jared Miller — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:14:16 +0000

People who try to save animals at the exspence of sacrificing clean energy are just as bad as a coal burning factory. You probably work for them.

By: Hear Hear

Hear Hear — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:42:42 +0000

Excellent post! These points/hypocrisies aren't raised enough.

By: Jack

Jack — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 23:42:29 +0000

A bird that is stupid enough to fly into a giant, moving blade deserves to be removed from the gene pool.

By: Concerned Californian

Concerned Californian — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:01:28 +0000

Actually, there is a geyser in Calistoga, California called "Old Faithful." Not quite one of the "bastions of Californian naturalism", though, when compared with other things, like the Sequoias.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:58:08 +0000

Old Faithful is in Yellowstone, Wyoming, not California.

By: nobec

nobec — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:18:18 +0000

I am not trying to say the current renewables are great, but I hope people reading this realize that oil/coal/natural gas are much worse options in terms of environmental concerns. For example, although I've never read a study on how many birds (and other organisms) are killed by the operation of, say, an oil- or coal-powered plant in a year, it is likely somewhat higher than 4000.... Our options are limited, and if we want to give future generations the ability to harness even a fraction of the energy we use (again, I'm not necessarily saying we should), it would be imperative to implement such technologies as wind power. You don't need to convince me, but if you wanna be serious about how to convince a large group of people to get away from things that are bad for the environment, don't go picking on wind, as it's probably your best bet in terms of a replacement (you can pick on the others, even sun, which has a lot of mining issues as well. Also, solar energy is more of a photon thing, not so much harnessing actual heat, so that transition was a bit rough, but I liked the thought....). Oh, and they've been called renewable because, well, they are. we're not going to use up the heat from the magma of the earth (no, not even by causing earthquakes), we're not going to use up the sun's light, and we're not going to use up the wind, even if we move it off course a bit. That's where the idea of "free" comes in. This "free doesn't fully take environmental costs into account, and it certainly doesn't take money into account (why should it?). So basically, I think the decision is clear: we continue using the terrible energy sources or we try to convert at least some of our power to less terrible sources or energy. And/or we could try to use less energy (I'm not talking about turning off the water when shaving, more on the lines of stopping smelting and generally cutting back on an industrial scale). But thanks for the article! It's always good to see things from as many sides of a situation as possible.

By: JJ

JJ — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:44:37 +0000

you left out a few things:

dams kill fish. a lot of fish.

and wind and solar both require a lot of mining and transportation of metals. which requires fossil fuels.

the only way that renewable energy can really work is if we drastically cut our energy consumption (no more aluminum smelting and such).