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Eric Schmidt: Where Would Google Drill?

Commonwealth Club
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Jon Irenicus Avatar
Jon Irenicus
Posts: 5
Posted: 10.10.08, 01:55 PM
I detect quite a bit of dishonesty here in the wanton anti nuclear sentiment. I have seen widely varying reports of the cost of nuclear, not surprisingly it is reported as much higher from sources against nuclear power for any reason. Saying something is more expensive is not enough, I need numbers, from multiple sources. The dishonesty I see is that I suspect that even IF this guy agreed that nuclear was say half the price of wind or solar, I think he would STILL be opposed to it on general principle based on the irrational worry over waste.

But lets give him the benefit of the doubt on the numbers in terms of the relative cost of nuclear compared to solar lets say solar was cheaper today, you still have the issue largely ignored with baseline power generation when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine, some interesting battery storage options like flow batteries are coming into the fray, but that does not eliminate the problem entirely even IF such storage devices were put in place. Often times the best places to put solar or wind farms is away from larger city clusters and even states, how will the power get to where it needs to be? Last I checked, we have yet to achieve room temperature superconductivity, there will be energy lost in the transmission so you will have to produce even more to compensate.

A nuclear plant can be placed virtually anywhere, often times very close to the places where its power will serve, and it provides non volatile power independent of weather conditions. And again, we have three sources of non volatile power generation.

coal
hydro
nuclear

radical environmentalists have issues with all three, the first is emissions, the second ecosystem damage, the last waste. But the last two produce virtually ZERO carbon emissions. But apparently that is not enough for the utopia energy production some are going for.
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joemurrayaz Avatar
joemurrayaz
Posts: 0
Posted: 12.15.08, 10:36 PM
Thank goodness
This is quite honestly some of the most intelligent thinking I have heard in a while. While the Republican's are chanting "Drill Baby Drill" for carbon and revenue producing oil, I am glad than we have people like this that are thinking about the good of man-kind and the future of this very small planet. I applaude Google for thinking about this kind of stuff and their vision of how we can manage future energy demands thru the use of energy efficiency and alternative energy. Have you ever seen Steve Ballmer, Rex Tillerson, George W. come out and say anything close to this level of intelligence?
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mszlazak Avatar
mszlazak
Posts: 12
Posted: 08.25.09, 11:18 PM
Geothermal is in the experimental stages, there is no real world demonstration but I do hope it pans out. It has good potential even though it's geographically restricted.
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Moshasha Avatar
Moshasha
Posts: 2
Posted: 08.27.09, 03:37 PM
I applaud Google for its good intentions, really, but I do not believe they understand the repercussions of their actions. the man is ignorant to say the earth doesn't lose heat. The earth has been cooling down since its creation. Taking away heat from the earth will just catalyze the process. Yes, oil companies are awful because they're stealing Earth's reserve resources to heat itself, but this new type of energy will be robbing the earth at its core. And with access to this new incredible energy source, you know technology will do its job of trying to use it up as "efficiently" as possible- not wanting to waste a bit of that gift. The acceleration of the heat utilization will be so great that before imaginable, we'll be facing a situation like Mars.

Instead-use what our beautiful earth has delivered to us through the countless millennium of trial and error. The need to discover and invest in biotechnology has never been so pertinent as now when we're facing the smile of the low interest, no money down, no papers mortgage lender that is geothermal energy. They do not realize what they're getting themselves in to.
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