I recently saw a documentary about the largest windmill in the world being built in Germany. They were stating some facts about windgenerated power in general, and one was that all the windgenerators in Germany put together produced the same amount of electricity as 4 nuclear power plants. I of course don't have the source for that figure, it could be completely bogus.

But it seems to me that if everybody is going on about the power of the sun and the reason for global warming being sunspots or hotter magma - if those natural powers have so much energy, it would make alot of sense to invest and research the heck out of it in order to utilize that energy.

But (and here is the conspiracy aspect if you will) economic interests of the traditional powerplantcorporations that rely on gas, oil and coal are strong, and economical power is almost always correlated in politics - and there doesn't seem to be real interest in giving up that monopoly and power. And at least in Germany, protecting the coalindustry is something that the all politicians do to some extent. The left wants to subsidize coalmining because many workers would lose their jobs otherwise and that would hit a whole region extremely hard even though it doesn't make sense economically, and the right is always schmoozing with the heavy industry and doing (politically) what is beneficial for them. But I also heard that BP is investing alot in research into alternative energy sources - so I am curious how things will develop in the next years.

I don't think there's any conspiracy.  Fossil fuels are simply great sources of energy. They're like energon cubes from the Transformers.  Very concentrated.

In the long run, it will be solar power, fusion, what have you. But right now, the technology isn't even remotely there.

I don't think most people realize just how inefficient solar panels are presently. I should have scanned the size of a 7.5KW solar array. It's HUGE and it worked out to something like 900kw/h per month -- about enough for a home during the summer.  Not the type of thing you'd want in your backyard.  To get the same amount of energy from coal, you'd need a small pile.  

I think it should be noted that we're still using old Nuclear power plants.  If we could rebuild those 70s designs using 21st Century Technology, we could easily double their output while reducing their waste amounts.  The last construction of a Nuclear Plant was in 1977, although it came online in 1996 (utilizing 1977 technology and methodology).

The stop on the building (and renovating) of Nuclear Reactors in this country is one of the greatest tragedies of our Energy Crisis.

The rest of the world has renovated and built new Nuclear Reactors and proven this... but here in the US it's become a political propoganda tool.  Pointing at such things as Chernobyl as reasons we should move away from Nuclear Energy... mind you, that's the only incident to date of any signifigance.

This might be the case in the USA. But as utemia hinted it is very different in other countries Brad. In Germany for example wind energy covers about 6.4% of the demand already. Water 3.4%. The German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein is planning to cover all of its electrical power demand by means of wind power by 2020.

All this was supported and promoted by the government. So such a change is possible.

There are even countries like Spain, where at peak times wind energy covered half of the countries demand.

I looked up the numbers on Wikipedia (german).

Very inciteful.  And true to a degree.  As we saw in the old USSR, government can do anything it wants, but to do it for the benefit of society, your statement is true.  However, the latest craze among the Climategate crowd is to basically make the whole world a new USSR with mandates that will do nothing for their stated goals, but will have the effect of making government the only game in town.

Exactly.  

I for one would feel better if we had newer nuclear reactors and could switch off some of the old ones.

Considering all the ones built in this country were done when the 8086 was the cat's meow of processors (or before) for computers?  yea, I can go along with that.

That might be a good thing...nothing top hack into. Old doesn't necessary mean bad or inefficient, although I'm sure there is room for some improvements. You have to give credit where credit is due, that these 30+ year old designs are producing 20% of our energy (and 100% of our carrier and submarine forces) after all these years is quite impressive.

Speaking of Spain, seems I heard something recently that their alternative energy program is turning into a colossal money pit. I don't have the source at hand but apparently sunny Spain, isn't sunny enough.

Sometimes we have to see beyond the things we want to believe so that we can see that sometimes there is more than what we want to believe. Not only do these corporations not want to give up their monopoly (who would? would you?) but lets not forget that if they fall, their fall will be much worse than anything we saw in recent years. Obviously a person who builds a money making business would not risk losing it to try something that is not a sure fire success.

I'm all for going green, I just don't want to sacrifise everything just because a few people think the end is near if we don't change. We are more likely to be destroyed by a meteor that we may not even know it's on it's way than we are destroying our planet thru climate change or global warming.

We need to accept the fact that while there is nothing wrong with changing to alternative fuels that the change can not and will not happen over night. 1) because today's technology is not advanced enough to sustain our societies needs and even in 10 years it still will not be, and 2) considering those who invent it, those who build it and those who will sell it will all be looking into profiting from it; the technology will not be cheap and could cause more financial harm than good.

I would have thought we would have been more advanced in all of this by now but politics have made it impossible at this point. Just look at how quickly every car company came up with an electric or hybrid car out of thin air. Politics and money is the name of the gam anywhere on this plant.

Not necessarily bad (they dont do windows!), but inefficient?  I can't see how efficiency has not increased in the last 30-40 years.

Germany is alot smaller than the US. Texas is several times bigger than Germany - so maybe size is an issue in the distribution of energy. You probably know that Germany has passed a law to stop using nuclear energy in the future and to compensate that loss with "green" energy. Renewable energy is already providing 16% - and it is possible to increase that to compensate the loss of the nuclear power plants.

I am leery of nuclear power. One - the problem of nuclear waste hasn't been solved - a permanent 100% secure storage place for the highly radioactive toxic waste is nowhere in sight. There is also the issue of future generations and wether they will have the knowledge about the danger it poses - after all we don't know how long our form of modern society will last and how and if knowledge will be preserved in the future, say in 4000 years. Highlyn nuclear toxic waste from today will be dangerous alot longer than 4000 years. Two,  do you know how long it takes to debuild/take down an old reactor? Years and years and years. You can't just tear it down like a regular building.

Everything to do with nuclear power is connected with high risks, even if itis possible to operate a powerplant securely. When it is possible to create energy with other means, and enough energy at that - economic interests should not have the absolute priority. Germany is trying to make an example with their attempt to stop using nuclear power in the future.

The majorityof electricity is generated by coal/gas power plants and that won't change for a while.

Actually, you need to delete the word "nuclear" and it is more true - as we just saw yesterday in Connecticut.  Production of power always carries a risk.  It is how you mitigate that risk that defines whether it is "safe" or not.

Gas is dangerous. Every once in a while an appartment house explodes because of a faulty gasline. Just recently it happend in Lüttich in Belgium - 15 people died. 

I haven't heard of a way to mitigate the toxicity of nuclear waste. All you can do is bury it somewhere and hope that nobody finds it or stumbles across it. But such a place hasn't been found - most of the places in use or future sites pose some risk. It is fairly  difficult to find a place that is absolutely earthquake secure, has the right sediment that allows for a secure site and that will remain like that for a few thousand years.

Yes, this is true. And why is it exactly that they're not serious alternatives? Because they haven't been seriously pursued.

Meanwhile, you live in a nation whose oil production peaked back in the 70's...and I don't care how much folks squawk about drilling ANWR and offshore, U.S oil production at best could maintain it's present level, but will NEVER increase by nearly 30% to hit it's peak in the 70's.

So, over 60% of your oil is currently being imported, and more and more it's the expensive type of oil and less and less the cheap and easily reachable oil. This does not bode well for the future, of any nation as once cheap oil goes you have a whole host of new problems to deal with.

Then you've got coal. There's plenty of it, but the mining still leaves lots of nice little presents in the surrounding area and it aint fun living next to a coal fired power plant.

There's plenty of natural gas still out there, but as more and more folks switch to that as oil based energy becomes more expensive you're still only delaying the inevitable. Russia is cashing in big time on natural gas right now but at best that spigots going to be running for another two decades and then they'll start seeing diminishing returns very fast.

One country has got it right though. China is on track to become the leading producer, world-wide of solar panels and wind-turbines. They've recognized that they've got big problems and are trying to deal with them before they become un-manageable!