The Oil Drum

"Why do you call nuclear 'The most modern'?"

To further clarify this comment, wind power has been used for centuries, in ships and windmills, it's a small step to connect a generator to these. Also, I don't have the referece, but the first wave energy device was proposed i believe, but not built, in the 1800s. Renewable energy technology is merely the refinement of an old idea. The high technology comes in when you want to make them economic.

By contrast, nuclear fission has only been understood relatively recently, hence it is by far the most modern.

Crobar;
Sounds like you do neat work.

There are just lots of 'New' and 'Old' aspects to everything. It's not just the technology, that might be old and get renewed- or the source, recently considered archaic, but 'rediscovered' and reapplied in a New Model. Just consciously making a change, even if it's to something our Dads left behind, like using a Pushmower (to get some 'cardio') or eating real Butter and Dairy delivered from a local farm, instead of 'Modern' Margarine and Soymilk-food-product from Monsanto, the act of choosing a change in how you do business is a Move Forward, which is muddied by the devaluation of terms like 'Reversalists'.

Putting sails on Cargo ships would be a move Forward, not back. They could still be using Bunker Oil when needed, could have their radars and GPS of course.

Bob

crobar -

I happen to have a side interest in ocean wave power and began looking into it in some detail about four years ago. I even dabbled with an idea of my own, which upon further analysis turned out to be of dubious value.

The conclusion I sadly came to was that ocean wave power will never be more than a highly location-specific means of generating electricity. The locations with truly great wave power potential are not particularly abundant and tend to be away from highly populated areas. While ocean waves generally have a much greater power density than wind, their highly variable and oscillating nature makes the extraction of that power a daunting and very expensive endeavor.

However, the Pelamis people seem to be having some success, and I'd like to see them and other make a go of it. But it's going to be a long uphill battle.

The problem is that Stuart (Intentionally or not) DID include prejudicial or leading characterizations in his definitions of 'Reversalists', which quickly set up a negative value-judgement on that label.

'..Advocates of Electric Trolleys and Banjos..'

Come on! That's 'belittlement through cuteness' and a very weird set of associations. I guess I'm alright if I've got a Combine and a Stratocaster, but fie unto me if I'm seen intown with my Prius and the Sousaphone and Cornet in the backseat. (That's my Dad, BTW) With that comparison, he made his views of Electric Light Rail completely clear. Noone could miss the message, could they? So what makes them Backwards and inappropriate technology, which is the implication? He wrote an article on that a year or so back, with much the same dismissing of the potentials of Transit Oriented Development, and how unlikely it was, since the trend wasn't moving that way.. Predictive Graphs, feh!

Wind:
Yes. It's 'OLD'. This is the point. Does that make it backward? "Reversalist?" If wind were just blowing the Other Direction, would that make it properly 'Forwardist', and hence, properly Modern? Actually, its 'ReNEWable'.. Old AND New. The wind blowing this morning is NEW wind. Today's power.