Reddit reviews Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air
We found 5 Reddit comments about Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Uit Cambridge Ltd.
Not a dissenting voice, but Prof Sir David MacKay is a wholly dependable mainstream physicist who analyses the linked problems dispassionately and with a keen sense of humour. Free book here though it's the sort of dip-into book that's better on paper, and you can buy it here or if too lazy to read, watch him for an hour here. He doesn't talk about collapse, but leaves you to draw your own conclusions.
(Was a dependable physicist. Very sadly, he died last year, only 48 years old.)
I'm afraind I don't know but i jst came here to say
READ. THIS. BOOK.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0954452933/davidmackay0f-21
it is fantastic
I'm basing my opinions on the course I studied at university, which followed this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/0954452933
I will concede that during our study we didn't look into cruise ship operations, and how that might increase their carbon footprint (cruise ships being generally much more luxurious than air travel), but on a weight moved per distance basis, ships are vastly more efficient than planes.
EDIT: From the above book, a chart indicating passenger-miles-per-gallon: http://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_128.shtml...which would indicate you're correct!
Further edit: http://www.withouthotair.com/c15/page_92.shtml shows the energy use per ton-kilometer, demonstrating that fundamentally at least, ships are more efficient.
Going back to the original point of all this, I would guess OP isn't thinking about taking a cruise ship to antartica, so adding himself to a boat should have a lower footprint than adding himself to a plane, I think.
It is a pretty spot on analogy. Cocaine at first feels bloody fantastic to the individual. The more you use it, the more you get hooked. But every time it is taken away from you, you can't bear it. Then it starts crippling the systems around you, finally it cripples you and you start to think why you liked it in the first place. But you are too dependent on it, so you use it until it finally kills you.
There is NO such thing as free electricity. Renewables come with a hefty investment price-tag. Even now they can't compete with nuclear, coal or even gas if you take life-cycle costs. Besides renewables cannot satisfy out requirements PERIOD. Because of technology, land and cost issues.
It is all mathematics, and the numbers for renewables just don't add up.
The short answer is no, and you can read all about it here:
Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air, by David JC MacKay
On paper from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0954452933/tag=davidmackayca-20
On your screen from a pdf from the author, here:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/cft.pdf