INTRODUCTION Dillon
Pinnacles, about 25 miles West of Gunnison, ColoradoINTRODUCTION Dillon
Pinnacles, about 25 miles West of Gunnison, Colorado
| On the main page, the
background is high altitude wildflowers off Ohio Creek Road W of
Gunnison, Colorado. Look at this article, Meadow's
End, or the recent National
Wildlife magazine article Lessons
of the Flowers for the sad fate
awaiting them. Research
projects at the Rocky
Mountain Biological Laboratory in
Gothic concluded that these
flowers will disappear in a few years due to the expected global
warming, to be replaced by sagebrush like the Gunnison area. (I
assume Gunnison will look like Grand Junction, or even drier!) To find some good references on global warming and a few of my own comments, click on “WHY?” here or on the previous page. “HOW?” is the main content of these pages, with information on renewable energy resources which are very promising, technically interesting, and often not so well known to the general public. The emphasis is on large-scale (greater than 100 Megawatts) rather than small scale or community efforts. There are many references available on local efforts for conservation and individual renewable energy projects, with much more knowledge and experience than I possess. Such efforts could bring the largest and most immediate reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. However it is clear to me that we must also address the “industrial” generation of energy, and my background and experience are better suited to this topic. I will give lots of web references, if possible to material accessible immediately on the web. (Out of respect for copyrights I give web locations rather than local copies of articles; some references may disappear, if so please let me know.) “WHEN?” discusses possible time scales to get these resources installed on a large scale, of course dependent on funding and political choices. These pages were first written on April 2008, and now (November 2008) have been updated a few times as shown in the Revision History. It is clear that events have rapidly overtaken what was written so that many further updates are required already, and more will follow as events (including political) unfold. So please look at this site from time to time to see the latest version. This web site is an outgrowth of efforts involving ACE (Alliance for Clean Energy) to persuade the Tri-State electrical cooperative and its local cooperative member GCEA (Gunnison County Electric Association) not to build a large coal-fired power plant for future expansion. After a couple of tries at a "white paper" on alternatives to coal burning I decided web pages would be more likely to be read. The two small icons below here are for the remainder of my personal web pages. The left one is for family and friends, the right one is a slide show of our trip to China in September 2007. Click on my name to send me a comment or question: Here is
the Creative Commons license which applies to these web pages.
Basically, H. G. Wells epitaph he suggested in 1947: “Damn you all, I told you so!” |
