You can wait for some guy in a garage to solve the problem.

to candles and hand-cranked generators, I want to scream. They have no interest in exploring all the new advances that are going to power the future. Its fear. They understand fossil fuel engines, but when it comes grasping something as intangible as wind, water and solar they are the modern day equivalent of cavemen who looks at anything new like it was scary magic.

They understand very well what alternative power generation involves.

But you're right about one thing: They are fucking TERRIFIED.

Until they can figure out a way to control, claim exclusive rights to, and "monetize" wind, water, and sunlight, they're going to keep obscuring and opposing it for all they're worth.

wearily,
Bright

but not for the typical Republican voter who has spent years watching self enforced reeducation programing. I'm saddled with lots of hardliner Republicans in my family, deniers and skeptics all, and they believe the whole propaganda spiel that civilization will crumble without gushing gobs of oil. All these other energy sources are just hippie pipedreams, a scam, some dastardly plot to ban fossil fuels and force everyone to hug trees. They are seriously scared of some imaginary dystopian future.

We DO, in fact, currently lack an alternative to carbon-based fuels when it comes to industrial/commercial transportation and the like. Not just in infrastructure, but even outright 'technology'.

Sure we have the Leaf and the Prius and electric streetcars/buses to shuttle people around and such ... but this is a tiny fraction of the total energy consumption the Western World considers it's birthright.

As a 'world', we sure as hell don't have 18-wheelers, Cargo Ships, Commercial Jets, nor do we have combines, or tractors, or other similar earth-moving devices ... that can be run on something other than fossil fuels.

The onus is on 'us' to prove that 'it can be done' at the scale at which things are currently 'done'. And frankly, 'our side' ... is not even close ... at least not yet.

There is, quite simply, no 'portable' renewable fuel with anything remotely approaching the energy concentration of fossil fuels, and even if their were, there's no infrastructure to produce it.

I doubt there's ANYone outside the fossil fuel industry itself that wouldn't LIKE to see 'alternatives' developed. But these people in your family are not wrong if they're pointing out that such alternatives on the scale outside of heating/cooling our homes, and getting individuals from point A to point B ... does not currently exist.

And there's no guarantee that there will ever be one ... esp. not one that will support the 'standard of living' that we're presently accustomed to in the USA ... one where fossil fuels provide EVERY SINGLE man,woman, and child, on average ... with the work-equivalent of 24 human 'energy' slaves, each working 24 hour days, 365 days a year, on their behalf. We currently have nothing else that even approaches providing that kind of 'luxury' aside from FF.

Look, I am CERTAINLY not suggesting we should not be doing ALL we can, as a WORLD, to wean ourselves from our dependence on fossil fuels. But it's also no exaggeration to say that 'life as we know it' at this moment is 100% dependent on the energy contained in fossil fuels, and without them ... well lets just say, we wouldn't be here chatting about the subject ... if we were even alive, we'd be out in the Fields ... in all the many senses of that word.

Not saying it's entirely some hippie pipe dream to get off of fossil fuels as a world, but it's definitely still in the 'dream' stage. And it will stay there until someone shows the Western World an electric-powered commercial airplane that can safely fly 300 of us at a time across the Pacific in 12 hours, or a solar-powered cargo ship that can bring us 500,000 plastic salad shooters and 5 million packages of Cheez Doodles over from China ... in under a fortnight.

Energy, at least at the levels needed to support our current 'Western' standard of living does not grow on trees people ... I know every here on DU THINKS it does ... but they're frankly just incorrect ... at least insofar as things presently stand. Without fossil fuels, many BILLIONS of the world's population would be dead within a year or two.

And the couple billion that LIVED ... would likely wish they were not so cursed at to have not been amongst those who perished.

Thems the facts (as it now stands, again), sad as they are to hear.

Facts pointing out real problems and challenges are not welcome on the DU. Unless it's a unicorn or a pony, you need to take it elsewhere.

wires at a long distance like say from the moon to the earth for example, that would have them shitting in their pants.

Some people continually work against their own best interests and you aren't going to get that kind to admit they are wrong if they are standing in water up to their butts. They simply can't bring themselves to do it. Always someone else's fault.

For another year and one half, that person would be Obama. He always gets the blame.

I wish there was a more detailed animated description of how it all operates in sequence.

I do not know if this will help you or not, but my take is that this works in principle like the foot crank on a bicycle.

The cranks can turn all the way around, and add energy to the back wheel to keep it spinning, or you can do sort of a half crank, peddle backwards, and then push again. Not a full spin, but still adding energy to the back wheel.

In this case the "crank" is the big pendulum float, and as it moves relative to the frame this intermittent rotational energy is captured and transferred to the rotating generator. I did not see any schematics, but it looks like it is probably done with hydraulics and hydraulic fluid flowing through pipes instead of chains and gears, but similar energy transfer idea. With hydraulics, you can also capture energy peddling backward, forward, or a partial movement which this pendulum float is constantly moving relative the frame in any waves.

waves where the total wave motion moving particles at 360 degrees straight above the epicenter is the L wave. The particles farther away, fall in to a lesser and lesser degree until flat at the longest distance circumference from the epicenter (ground state).

I'm not sure about the status of the San Francisco idea. It met some resistance from environmentalists, and IIRC was not similar to the Hawaii project.

Here's some info in case anyone is interested:

http://www.sfenvironment.org/article/hydro/wave-energy

In 2009, the City of San Francisco undertook a study to understand the wave energy resource and feasibility of generating electrical power from waves in the Pacific Ocean west of the City and County of San Francisco. The results of the study are encouraging, and suggest that over 100 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of power - enough to power ten percent of San Francisco homes - could be produced annually at a cost in the range of 17 to 22 cents per kilowatt-hour (¢/kWh).

recovery is still in the very early stages, so it is a very good thing every time someone does work with it, however, it has a long way to go to be competitive with solar electric. PV is now under $0.04 KWH. http://climatecrocks.com/