And I’m curious what they call heliostats in Spain. Its probably something like solstates or statsoles.

A piecemeal approach, as you say, to energy supply is a wise course of action. I’m watching a Modern Marvels episode on History Channel that has a few awesome energy-generating solutions like a huge tower with turbines at the bottom that get turned by the convection of hot air up a funnel that is collected by a low level greenhouse field. Also, Andrew you should be proud of this one, there is a solar tower system being built outside of Seville, Spain that focuses an array of mirrors (Heliostats, I had to throw in the technical term because it is so awesome) on a system of coils filled with water on the sides of the tower which get heated and generate steam, in turn operating a turbine. Cool stuff.

What I get out of this is that we should shoot for a piecemeal energy program. Use a little of this, a little of that, just to make sure the resources needed for each solution stay at some sort of equilibrium.

Side note: Its interesting how our efforts to use ethanol as an alternative energy have ended up disrupting the food supply balance and creating skyrocketing grain prices.

Also what happens to the system (which isn’t closed on an earthly scale but on a Universal scale) if we take the energy from wind and transfer it into electricity on a large scale?

And Jake you make a great point about unanticipated consequences. Determining said consequences is the key to genius. I think your Feynman quote is appropriate here.

The energy to create wind is constantly being replenished by those forces you state. That drastically increases the amount of energy disruption required to make an impact and would must definitely have to be figured in to any calculations performed if one were to calculate just how much energy is required to cause tangible change.