Increasingly, there are articles all over the popular press about generating power from the sun, wind, and waves. Like this one : http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/07/0024204&from=rss.
I'm sure to the average American (and world citizen, for that matter) these seem like great ideas to tap inexhaustible sources of power with no effect on the environment. It makes me cringe - people's naivete!
The same people that believe that putting gases into the clouds and thereby changing the rate of absorption of solar energy by our atmosphere, feel that there will be no effect of intercepting solar energy before it hits bio-mass and the ground.
The same people that believe that global temperatures warming causes massive polar ice melting, which is bad because it disrupts ocean currents feel that there will be no effect of taking energy out of those very same currents via turbines and other wave-energy capturing devices.
The same people that believe that global temperature rises are causing wind patterns to change and thereby ravaging some areas with floods and others with drought, feel that changing wind patterns by putting up wind turbine farms and thereby taking energy from wind currents isn't going to have any effect on weather patterns.
Is the glaring hypocrisy visible only to me?? I suppose it's too much to expect many people to understand the complex interrelationships that occur in nature and science and the intricate linkages between cause and effect in such a massively emergent system - but then why are many of these same people so vocal about what they think is happening and the 'solutions' to them??
Now, I'll admit I don't understand these issues completely (who in their right mind thinks they really do?) and I too am talking out of my rear about much of this, but the point I'm making is that nothing is free and completely 'clean' in these sense that it has no effect on the environment. Taking energy from any large system, be it from burning fossil fuels or taking it from the sun, wind or water, is going to have some consequence. The main difference is that these other systems are more directly connected to our weather and much, much less understood. Going from the kettle to the fire, in my humble opinion.
The only source of energy that I can think of that possibly has no side effect on our massively complex system, and is inexhaustible, is gravity - and the power that is generated from capturing it's energy in the form of waterfalls and streams - though I'm sure if you look hard enough you'll see some effect there too.
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