Panel Caving Mining
whats wrong if someones makes money through alternative energy?
I know it sounds like a quick way to make money when they scare us with global warming, but who even wants to work on an oil rig out on the open sea? I rather have a job in the city. what about all the coal miners that die for our electricity? how many die during installations of wind turbines and solar panels? at least you can survive the fall, not many survive when methane pockets explode and mines cave in.
There are several basic logic errors in your concepts about alternative energy sources. First is solar cells and the fact that they will not produce as much energy in their lifetimes as they use in being produced and the disposal of manufacturing waste from them. The original concept for solar cells is they would be used in huge satellites, produced in orbital factories from lunar or other orbital materials sources. Here they would operate at 4 times the efficiency they can on earth because the filtering affect of the atmosphere is removed. Also in orbit they would operate 24 hours a day where on earth over a year they might average 6 to 7 hours a day. And then there is the waste issue, in orbit the materials can be easily turned into something else usable where on earth because of environmental laws they must be put into a dump instead of being recycled. Because of silly environmental laws the US now recycles less than one third of the manufacturing waste they did just 50 years ago and it costs more to dump it instead of recycling it.
Wind turbines are also very inefficient and currently their power costs more than any other because of just a few basic facts that are due to design flaws in the machinery itself. The main problem is the propeller on a post design copied from the old Celtic windmills of 1000 years ago. There are new and better designs out there that could be used but they are not acceptable to the environmental community because they are not visible. So the why things are not proceeding is mostly because the major environmental organizations are only letting those programs that pay them off with enough money proceed. And the fossil fuel producers pay the best so the real answers like nuclear and space based solar have laws written to keep them from doing what they could, at least in the US.
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/CoEvolutionBook/
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ColoniesInSpace/index.html
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/spacepower/index.html
http://www.permanent.com/s-index.htm
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/868/1
Henderson Mine