So I would like to take some of your time to explain and dispel some of the popular notions about climate change, renewable and sustainable energy, and a couple other things. So I suppose I will start out with a couple phrases that I hear uttered quite often that are really just a bunch of “codswallop”; they have been really becoming annoying because I hear them so often. I will then go on to explain in depth why I think so and do my best to supply you with the real picture. The reason for this is because people need to know what the facts and figures of the matter are, instead of what is spewed out by the media and the countless so called “green” internet sites out there
-“There is a ton of wind, solar, tidal, geo-thermal, energy out there.” Really? A ton of it? Where is it? Take into consideration that the amount of energy humanity, especially Americans consume is pretty huge as well. We need numbers not adjectives to solve this problem. When numbers are usually expressed they are used to shock and awe people that really have no understanding for what they mean; an example of this is a statement like “If Americans used just one roll of recycled toilet paper we would save 30,000 trees, 100,000 gallons of water and keep 20,000 tons of carbon from being dispersed into the atmosphere.” I will try to avoid doing this; which brings me to my next point.
-“Every little bit helps.” I will talk more about this later, but for now chew on this “If everyone does a little, then we will achieve a little.”
- I will also throw in my two cents on what is sustainable and what is renewable; I’ll probably talk about some other stuff too.
Now that you have read that you might be brimming with a little animosity and might be thinking that I think that this whole energy, global warming, climate change debate is a bunch of bull, but that is extremely far from the truth. In my opinion these issues are the most pressing in just not American society, but for the future of humanity as well. We need clean, renewable, sustainable energy now, or better yet we needed it yesterday.
Like I said earlier I would talk about the numbers and I will try to make the numbers as easy to follow as possible, but when dealing with energy you deal with some really big numbers and some rather scientific words. I will be using the kWh to describe most of the energy from here on out so if you are interested in what a kilo-watt hour is then look here; because Wikipedia will be better able to explain it than I (I mean I’m no engineer, hello poly-sci!) I suppose I should talk about what energy is too and the simplest way to do that is that energy= force x change in distance; or energy = force through a distance (E=F x). Power is different from energy in that power is the rate at which energy is being used or power= energy divided by time. Energy is also called work so for example driving your car requires a certain amount of energy, which is constant, the only thing that changes is the rate at which your car uses energy. If I haven’t lost you yet and your ears haven’t started to bleed then you are doing pretty good, if that is not the case then I apologize and you might want to get something to soak up that blood. Do not worry though because physics is over. If you are still curious as to what I am talking about pickup any engineering or physics textbook or look here or better yet here; this is a online text by the author David McKay, this is the same text that I am getting a lot of ideas from, so if you think I’m full of it then I encourage you to check out his book, it is www.Withouthotair.com
With that out of the way I’ll get down to talking about how much we really use. By the way I’m getting these numbers from the Energy Information Administration .
So the U.S in 2006 used about 100 quadrillion BTUs(1 BTU or British Thermal Unit is roughly the equivalent to the amount of energy produced by burning one wooden match1) throughout our entire society. Whoa! That sounds like a huge number and it is so why don’t we shrink it down a little.
100x1015 BTU x 1 kWh x 1 year x 1 person =211 kWh per person/day
4312 BTU 365 days 300 million Americans
That is a much simpler number don’t you think? Now you might be thinking no way! There is no way I use that much in one day. Well maybe you don’t, but this is the average for every American and it includes driving, residential use, industrial use, commercial, transportation such as mass transit and commercial trucking. So now we have a basic yardstick for how much energy a person consumes in a day =211 kWh p/p/d. You have direct control over roughly a third of this through your choices when driving or at home. The rest of the energy usage comes from industial, commercial, transportation and electrical generation(thats right you have to use energy to get energy, that is another one of the major problems with coal and petroleum) I suppose I could go and talk about how each sector consumes energy, but that would be going into minutea and I don't have time to do that. So just be happy with the yardstick number or better yet go look it up yourself.

Originally I was going to write about everything in one long blog post, but that would be one very long post and you would get bored with reading about the subject. Plus I've got other things to do right now as well, damn logic class, it is neither logical nor classy! Never fear though I will be back to finish what I've started. I'll get into the good stuff about renewable energy, wind, solar, hydro, etc. It is all such a interesting subject that has such a division between smart people, that is why we need numbers not adjectives to really talk about energy.