The text below is copied from my comment published in the New York Times as no. 82 in the comment section on Paul Krugman's column. (Added 25 October / An important proposal to create GSG at Roosevelt Island was reported in the NYT on 24 October and will be added here ASAP). I plan to add several pictures above but since my comment has my blog referenced I want to add a comment at this time, more later. My text below says simply, until the United States government develops renewable energy plans that are at least as good as those in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and possibly other European countries it is doomed to fall far behind these countries environmentally and "energetically".
Interestingly, the first comment filed on Krugman's column says the same thing I do, using Germany as example instead of Sweden. That comment was approved of by 424 readers. Although my comment was submitted at 1:30 AM Eastern Standard time, the Times shows it as being submitted at 10:21. I note this because ordinarily the first comments printed are those that are the most read.
The Times shows the following comment as being submitted at 10:21 am. In reality it was submitted at 1:30 AM since I was writing in Sweden.
I agree with Paul Krugman. I am an emeritus professor in geology familiar with America,the Fossil Fuel Nation, who, in retirement, lives in Sweden, the Renewable Energy Nation.
I ask a simple question: Who in the United States is doing the analysis to show what full scale conversion to Renewable Energy sources could do for employment while at the same time moving America into a future the Republicans do not want to see?
The answer is, to judge from what I read every day at midnight New York Time in the NYT OnLine is: Nobody, either in the institutional sense matching API efforts or in the journalistic sense.
For both the President of the United States and the New York Times there are only two kinds of renewable energy worth mentioning: wind and solar, neither of them 24/7 sources. Both are valuable, neither provides widespread multi-level employment opportunities.
Thus I offer a simple proposal for a journalist or a Think Tank.
Study the renewable energy system in Sweden - present and planned -(or another European country) and compare that in detail with the energy situation in, let’s say enough of New England to give a population matching Sweden’s 9 million (I’ll suggest Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island all of which I have lived in).
A sample. Heavy frost outside here in Linkoeping, Sweden where all 140,000 of us are being kept warm by Distance Heating (DH) based on the combustion of municipal waste and by Ground-Source Geothermal (GSG). My home heated by DH, my neighbor’s by GSG. The buses and taxis outside my window are running on BioGas produced in Linkoeping from waste. The rail system is running on electricity from hydro and nuclear power. The landscape just west of me provides a magnificent display of wind turbines on a scale I have never seen in New England.
Imagine the labor force needed to create that in New England. For a small sample see Only-Neverinsweden.blogspot.com (Larry Lundgren/emeritus Univ Rochester)
I ask a simple question: Who in the United States is doing the analysis to show what full scale conversion to Renewable Energy sources could do for employment while at the same time moving America into a future the Republicans do not want to see?
The answer is, to judge from what I read every day at midnight New York Time in the NYT OnLine is: Nobody, either in the institutional sense matching API efforts or in the journalistic sense.
For both the President of the United States and the New York Times there are only two kinds of renewable energy worth mentioning: wind and solar, neither of them 24/7 sources. Both are valuable, neither provides widespread multi-level employment opportunities.
Thus I offer a simple proposal for a journalist or a Think Tank.
Study the renewable energy system in Sweden - present and planned -(or another European country) and compare that in detail with the energy situation in, let’s say enough of New England to give a population matching Sweden’s 9 million (I’ll suggest Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island all of which I have lived in).
A sample. Heavy frost outside here in Linkoeping, Sweden where all 140,000 of us are being kept warm by Distance Heating (DH) based on the combustion of municipal waste and by Ground-Source Geothermal (GSG). My home heated by DH, my neighbor’s by GSG. The buses and taxis outside my window are running on BioGas produced in Linkoeping from waste. The rail system is running on electricity from hydro and nuclear power. The landscape just west of me provides a magnificent display of wind turbines on a scale I have never seen in New England.
Imagine the labor force needed to create that in New England. For a small sample see Only-Neverinsweden.blogspot.com (Larry Lundgren/emeritus Univ Rochester)
I must admit that I've never understood the ideas of the 'let's do nothing' crowd when it comes to conservation. Even if global warming isn't happening, how would using energy more efficiently harm us? Surely it'd be in our interests to insulate our buildings properly, use renewable energy, design our cities rationally to reduce the environmental costs of moving people around, etc. I was reading about Facebook's decision to build a server farm in Luleå yesterday and idly decided to look up the district heating scheme there. Sure enough, it covers all the industrial premises in Luleå too, making it a bit of no-brainer for Facebook to open up in a place like that. And it uses waste heat from the steelworks for a combined heat-and-power plant. You'd think that people in the northern states of the US would be queuing up to offer facilities like that … and then make a load of money exporting the technology all around the world.
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