I don't think that there are many people who are sane, that are against
'alternative' energy, per se. The trick is that the word needs to be
combined with that other little word "practical". That seems to get
forgotten in all this. PV panels are all very well, if you've got a
country
below say 45 deg N, with a lot of unused desert available. Even then, you
have the logistics and losses involved in shifting the power that you
generate, to anywhere that it's needed.

This is not a problem -- not in the US, anyway. We have a big connected
grid.

People keep saying that solar energy doesn't work at night. Correct. But we
need less energy at nigh. The idea is to have a mix of energy sources.


We already have an 'alternative' power technology that is both clean and
practical, and that is nuclear.

You talk about "practical", but what is the "practical" way to get rid of
the waste?


I appreciate that there are potential issues with recycling waste
nuclear material, but I am sure that these are not insurmountable.

It isn't just what's left over from the fuel rods. It's also the stuff that
the radiation contaminaes.


And don't make the mistake of thinking that 'alternative power' is all
about responsible people trying to save the planet. It's not. Whilst such
scientists and eco-minded people may have been at the centre of the
original concepts, it is now all about big business. Selling the public
these
technologies by way of the hysterical global warming issue (trends now
indicate a cooling again BTW, much the same as we were being told back
in the 70s) and pseudo science that has little if any foundation in fact,
is
making huge amounts of money for companies who are having their products
built by the biggest industrial polluters in the world, and don't actually
give a toss about green issues ...

I thought you had more sense. Where do you get this business about "cooling
trends"?

Regardless, global warming ultimately has nothing to do with it. We need
safe, renewable sources of energy. We can't keep burning fossil fuels
indefinitely. THAT problem should be driving us to develop them as quickly
as possible. We should have been working on it aggressively after WW II.
But, no. "The Market" will automatically solve all our problems.

It appears that work on extracting oil from algae (which appear to be the
source of natural oil deposits) has been going on for more than 30 years,
mostly at oil companies. Why do you think we haven't seen any progress?

There are some things that are too important to be left to the people who
profit from them.