Edison on solar energy... Is this true? If so, from where?

[EllenB]

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy -- sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. -Thomas Edison, inventor (1847-1931)
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I find in "The New York Times," --
"In 1931, not long before he died, the inventor told his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone: 'I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.'”
-----------------------------------------
Any guess where I could find the entire quotation?

Thanks for any guidance!

Ellen Blackstone

[bobg...@cox.net]

From Wiki:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. In conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone (1931); as quoted in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31

k

[EllenB]

Thanks! I found that whole quotation in several places, too, but I'm wondering if the first part, "We are like..." through "...sun, wind and tide" is actually part of Edison's original quotation, or if that might have been appended by someone later, perhaps to prove a point. I find "I'd put my money on sun and solar energy..." in many more places. -- I wonder if anybody has the original source material, i.e., that book! (In the meantime, I've requested it from my library.) THANKS! EllenB

[bobg...@cox.net]

My guess is that the Wikiquote accurately relects
what James Newton wrote. As to whether Mr. Newton
accurately reports Edison's words, well, who
knows. :)

Sadly, Google Books doesn't have a preview:
https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22

If your library doesn't have it, Amazon does:

http://www.amazon.com/Uncommon-Friends-Firestone-Charles-Lindbergh/dp/0156926202

22 reviews on Amazon - 18 5* and 4 4*. Not bad.

Happy hunting!

ObQ:
Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people
say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that
even less can one trust what people say about themselves.
--Dame Rebecca West [Cecily Isabel Fairfiield] (1892—1983)
"Sunday Telegraph" (London) [1975]

k, an all around good guy! :)

[David C Kifer]

On 3/19/2013 11:56 AM, bobg...@cox.net wrote:

> From Wiki:
>
> https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison
>
> We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be
> using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the
> sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run
> out before we tackle that. In conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone (1931); as quoted
> in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel &
> Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31

While President Obama would like to eliminate gasoline-powered vehicles, such vehicles still
provide major advantages for consumers. Pound-for-pound, the energy stored in the chemical bonds of
gasoline is about 100 times the energy stored in today’s Lithium-ion batteries. This translates into
about a ten-to-one advantage in driving range for gasoline vehicles.
If electric cars succeed, look for magazine lounges at charging stations. Gasoline fill-ups
require two to three minutes for small cars and four to five minutes for SUVs. The best 440-volt
commercial charging stations require a driver to charge an EV for 30 minutes or more.
Electric car owners who drive every day are in for a surprise. Their battery pack will need to be
replaced. Batteries are based on a chemical imbalance, a separation of charge that produces the
electrical potential. The day an electric leaves the showroom, chemical reactions are at work to
remove the charge from your lithium-ion battery. Faster charging, frequent charging, warmer
temperatures, and storage at full charge degrade the battery more quickly. Either the owner or the
manufacturer will need to pay for a $10,000 battery replacement about year four or five.
But can’t an EV purchaser take pride that his car reduces global warming? Well, not really. A
study last year by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that, for a vehicle with
a 100,000 kilometer lifetime (when batteries would need replacement), EV environmental impacts were
“indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle.” The reason is that manufacture of an EV emits
about double the carbon dioxide required to manufacture a diesel or gasoline car, primarily to build
the metal batteries of the electric.
The study also found that “EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity,
freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating
from the vehicle supply chain.” In other words, production of electric car batteries may become a
major source of pollution. Suppose we go slowly on promoting electric cars, Mr. President?
-- Steve Goreham, Obama promotes electric cars, but they still fall short, _Washington Times_ March
19, 2013
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/climatism-watching-climate-science/2013/mar/19/obama-promotes-electric-cars-they-still-fall-short/



--
Dave
"Tam multi libri, tam breve tempus!"
(Et brevis pecunia.) [Et breve spatium.]

[andrew....@gmail.com]

Yes all that is true, mostly, about today's electric cars with today's batteries. Energy storage is the holy grail and why electric cars haven't gone mainstream. I believe that nut is soon to be cracked however, at least sooner rather than later. Researchers around the world are working on it with a lot of promising solutions. It is not a question of if, it is simply a question of when better batteries will be developed (better energy capacity to weight ratio, faster charger, more environmentally friendly, more affordable, etc).

And the same goes for fossil fuels, it is not a question of if they will run out, it is a question of when. Where did the energy in fossil fuels come from in the first place? Mostly the sun and stored in the remains of the decayed biomass. It all comes back to the sun. We must learn to harness it for the masses or we will perish in mass. Any system reliant on non-renewable and unsustainable resources will eventually fail.

[kim.abb...@gmail.com]

“We are like tenant farmers, chopping down the fence around our house for fuel, when we should be using nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy—sun, wind, and tide.”