Melting Down - Water & Steel Turned Into Turbines?

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Melting Down - Water & Steel Turned Into Turbines?

Posted Jul 24, 2008 by Julian Darley

The rate at which the unthinkable is happening is also becoming unthinkable. Glaciers in the Tian Mountains in western China are melting so fast that it is easy to make the connection to global warming. The glaciers which now see rain instead of snow in summer supply millions of people in Xinjiang with drinking water. One tangible result of this is that the Chinese leadership is pushing ever harder to install wind turbines wherever it can, including in Xinjiang, where one of Asia's biggest wind farms is being built. China is forecast to become the world leader in wind by the end of 2009.

Meanwhile, Ford is seeing some of its own sacred gasoline-hogging glaciers melt, in the form of imploding truck and SUV sales. It is hard not to recall that Peak Oil analysts predicted this demise several years ago, even as Ford and others were ramping up. If they had been able or willing to hear the message of geology, they may have made other plans. Now the lots are full of unsold, and perhaps unsell-able hunks of steel. Ford is trying to counter this by quickly retooling some of its SUV factories to make formerly derided small European cars. However these vehicles still run on fossil fuels. Ford may one day consider melting its useless trucks into wind turbines, which could then power Ford's fine electric vehicles - which almost went into production a hundred years ago.

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