The Oil Drum

176 comments on DrumBeat: March 10, 2007

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wimbi on March 11, 2007 - 10:30am

Marotti32- I share your optimism. After all, I saw smoking vanish from airplanes, blacks get the vote in our USA south, and other impossible things happen in my lifetime.

Right now I am enthused by the prospect of solid biomass as the mandated heat source for buildings, combined with small stirling engines to generate most or all of the building's electricity. I know it is possible because I have done it for my own house. My steady state use is 350 watts electric, and about 10kW (shame on me!) heat rate in the winter. Wood does it just fine.

Better houses, as made in Germany, would meet their requirements at less cost.

I live in hilly country, and pumped hydro seems quite feasible as an energy storage method- and would offer opportunity for heat pump source/sink.

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Marotti32 on March 11, 2007 - 11:13am

I saw smoking vanish from airplanes, blacks get the vote in our USA south, and other impossible things happen in my lifetime.

Wimbi, I just come from a Sunday afternoon walk, I don't know why but today I passed the "Berliner Mauer" memorial just a few hundred meters away from my flat. The last left-over pieces of this ugly building still look cold and inhuman, even on a sunny spring day. But it is already almost 18 years ago, when this wall became history

Change is almost a question of bold and determined decisions. On ever scale. My optimism about the EU decision is simply based on the experiences I could see going on here. There is change going on, still very small, but as many TODers know it is the exponential growth which is difficult to understand.

The exponential growth, the environmental pressure and the political support will result in more change than many people can anticipate know.