Energy...Flashes Energy...Flashes

(Page 2 of 2)

January/February 1976
By the Mother Earth News editors 
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A MAJOR PUSH FOR SOLAR HEATING IN NEW ENGLAND has been announced and guess who's behind it? None other than the dealers who supply oil for the area's 2.4 million burners! Spectacular price hikes for imported petroleum have apparently shown the oilmen the (ahem) light, and their organization The New England Fuel Institute now hopes that solar outfits can provide 35% of Yankeeland's home heat. Why, we could have told them that a long time ago!

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A CASE OF MISTAKEN ACCURACY? Well, it's hard to say, but the New York Times definitely did announce in a recent issue that President Ford would (and we quote) "receive a relief map of the remnants (our italics) of the state of Alaska, sculpted out of the steel and piping used in construction of the Alaska pipeline." Obviously, the Times slipped on this one isn't that right; Dr. Freud?

THE SINKING SENSATION YOU FEEL ISN'T YOUR NERVES it's the continent slowly caving in! At least that's what Joseph F. Polland, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist contends. According to Polland, the U.S. is steadily giving way as more and more oil and water are pumped from deep beneath the ground leaving huge, collapsible caverns behind. California's San Joaquin Valley has fallen more than a foot since the 1920's, the land expert explains. The area around Baytown, Texas (near Houston) has sunk more than eight feet and could drop another three by 1980. Oh well.

DR. ANTHONY SAN PIETRO, CHAIRMAN OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY'S plant sciences department, envisions someday using the sun's rays and our (the professor hopes)'intimate understanding of photosynthesis the process by which greenery converts radiant energy to chemical form to produce large quantities of usable hydrogen fuel from what he terms "solar harvesting systems": vast groves of trees, gigantic algae ponds, or perhaps even a new, specially developed plant species. Sound promising? Well maybe. Or perhaps we should just relax and limit population to a level that can be comfortably supported by the natural vegetation that has already evolved on this planet. Has such an audacious idea ever occurred to a chairman of a science department?.

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