Peak Energy
Asked to imagine life in 2050, the artist Guy Billout, author of the mind-bending book Something's Not Quite Right, wonders why the quest for alternative energy has overlooked the volcano.
Smithsonian magazine, August 2010
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Comments (2)
POTATOES!?!?!?!?! what are you thinking? when we travel to mars and beyond who knows what type of resources we will find?we have the smarts and ability to acess and use all sorts of energy sources that are so obvious but we just have to think outside of the box a little. and dont think about potatoes because we might run out of food so dont use the 1 thing that actually runs deep within the human body.
Posted by Daniel Horn on January 18,2011 | 07:17 PM
The problem is that while our energy needs are global, volcanoes are strictly local. "Input of heat from sun to earth dwarfs the heat from the earth's interior. That input of heat from the sun averages 200 watts per square metre, over 2000 times the less-than-one-tenth of a watt per square metre loss of heat from earth's interior." --Bryan Lovell in "Challenged By Carbon" page 30. (He's British, hence the spelling. Economically accessible energy from the earth is small potatoes.
Another problem to consider is the initial capital investment to access this energy and maintenance costs. Volcanoes are not a friendly environment to work in or around.
Posted by Frank Weigert on July 12,2010 | 07:38 AM