Electric and Gas Cooking

Electric and gas are the primary means for cooking.  Although there are still some great places for buying wood fired pizza or wood baked bread, very few people use anything other than gas and electric for their cooking needs.  Some of you may have seen the infrared grills that speed up the outdoor cooking and some applications have been developed for the personal kitchen.
Occasionally you may come across and appliance that offers you both electric and gas, like the item pictured above, but for the most part we are forced to choose between the two options when we purchase our appliances.
Most people who have been trained in cooking prefer a gas cook top.  The issue of controlling the heat to a very specific level.  The argument of electric and gas is not just about the level of heat it is also relevant to the timing of the heat.  With gas you are able to turn a burner to a certain level and have almost instantaneous heat.  With electric heat you are forced to let the heating element arrive at the level of heat you need and then you are almost certain to have too much heat and when you turn it off you will have high levels of eat for many minutes longer than you need.  This can be very destructive when you are making a hollandaise sauce or anything that is sensitive to precise levels of heat.
I love to cook but I am not a pastry chef and really dislike baking of any kind.  My wife who loves baking has a very strong opinion about electric and gas.  She strongly prefers electric oven for baking cakes and bread.  The issue is that you need a consistent temperature for a longer amount of time.  Gas has a hard time maintaining a precise temp in the oven for a long time.  The space in an oven is larger than the surface of pan or skillet on a single burner on the cook top.
Recently we saw a home that had the perfect setup.  On the island in the kitchen was a 5 burner gas cook top and in the built in cabinets was a double electric oven.  It seems like in the electric and gas discussion that perhaps this is the overall best solution.  Using both of the sources of energy for what the area in which they perform optimally.

Electric and Gas Alternatives Hydrogen Genorator powered from Solar Panels! Free power

Incredible the possibility of being freed from electric and gas with the hope of generating hydrogen from solar panels. Although a small experiment is a long way from giving us hydrogen powered cars, it still holds out the possibility of energy sources and transformations that seemed to be nothing more than pipe dreams a few years ago. It seems to me that with sources for electric and gas both running out that perhaps now is the time for inspiration for true innovation and exploration into power sources that would really propel us into the next millennium.

Imagine if the president inspired us now like happened almost fifty years ago. Can you envision the president giving a speech similar to John F Kennedy, when President Kennedy gave the speech about exploring new frontiers and being the first nation to send men into space. It became the impetus for years of exploration and technological advances. Such a speech if given today could not rehash the old standbys of wind and solar power or electric cars. Instead we need a leader to inspire us to finding freedom from electric and gas power. Perhaps it won't be a president, but an entrepreneurial business man who has vast resources to provide some incentives and promotion of the advancement of exploring new sources of power. If a business man steps to the plate it can't be to invest in a current plan with hopes of expansion, but someone who is willing to motivate scientist and other great thinkers to explore ideas that have never been touched.

Electric and gas are the current ball and chain that have kept us invested in relationships with dictators and other men who have evil intents. In some way our selfish investment in their resources gives us ownership of some the guilt for their bad acts. What would it take to free us from the prison bars of electric and gas? Some of us may choose to live in a very simple way that reduces our usage of the resources, but it is unlikely that we will ever achieve cultural freedom from large amounts of energy consumed on a daily basis.

Perhaps all of this will only happen if the crisis of a shortage of energy sources reaches a critical juncture that pushes those with the research facilities and the training to truly focus on solving the problem and bring us into a hopeful view of the next 1000 years.

Electric and Gas?

Electric and Gas Power Options

 Electric and Gas Vehicles
Electric and gas are the primary choices we have for vehicles. It seems like the 21st century would have given us far more choices than those simple two electric and gas. We have had a vast many technological advances, including space travel, micro computers, laser surgery, etc... and yet the most we have gotten in advancement in personal travel is electric and gas.

Electric and Gas Benefits
Electric and gas are both rather aged technologies. Although the electric car is fairly new, there have been several modes of transportation moved by electricity. Mass transit has been able to take advantage of electric power for years because of the ability to move large amounts of weight on a specific route. In order to transfer the technology to personal modes of transportation there was a need to free the vehicle from the limitations of a train, cable car, or bus route. It would also need a means to store the power in a small amount of weight. The weight of batteries needed to store electricity for a short distance was vast and outweighed the capacity of the engine powering the vehicles until just recently.
Electric and Gas Downsides

Electric and gas both have their own downsides. Electric and gas also have a tremendous history of positive benefits that we all enjoy immensely. Electric often is sourced in burning coal, or nuclear. The coal although much cleaner than it ever was before is still a blight in both the burning and even more so in the mining. Mines are dangerous for the men and women who work in them, but they have a devastating almost slave like effect on the communities where the mines are located. The families feel no hope of escaping as generation after generation enter the mines and only exit after years and full of disease or in a wooden box. Nuclear seems less hazardous to the communities until you receive the annual emergency warning with procedures to follow in the event of a nuclear disaster. The details about where to find your kids when they have been bused out of the danger zone to multiple locations depending on the weather and the severity of the disaster. This doesn't even cover the disposal of the nuclear waste which wee have no idea how long the danger exist or if we can adequately secure the waste against leakage or other damage.

Electric and Gas Damages
Gas clearly has contributed to smog and pollution with the vast amount of gas used everyday in our cities and in the country. However, the damages from gas maybe even more far reaching. The wars that have been fought over oil rights to secure that black gold in order to refine the oil into the precious commodity that all of us consume everyday gas. Even for those of you who don't drive a car, ride a bus, take a train, or fly anywhere, still in all likelihood, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, your books or your computer were shipped in some mode of transportation that consumed vast amounts of petroleum products of some sort.

Electric and gas still have made our lives significantly different than they were 120 years ago when there was no access to either electric or gas. The advancement of technology made possible by rapid travel that allowed us to experience more and the rapid communication exchange that allowed ideas to be combined and advanced our cultural development at an astonishing rate. Even medical and health advancements have been aided tremendously by the use of electric and gas.